Monday, December 24, 2012

Christmas Cookies

 

With everyone's favourite special guest: Christmas coloured vanilla chips!


Me? Oh, just whipping up some sugar cookies to decorate, with a handy mug of white hot chocolate.


The chocolate colouring? Oh, that's because of the Kahlua.


Almost ready!


It IS difficult to get a real red with food colouring. Good thing we bought those pink glitter sprinkles.


Talia confuses cookie decorating with finger-painting


We used regular buttercream icing for decorating, as opposed to the gel icing or royal icing. It was easier to make, and it didn't seem to make much of a difference since we weren't using piping bags anyway.


My cookies. Most proud of the giant pink whale on the right, the uh... social commentary zombie below, and of course the minimalist reindeer on the left.


Other award-winning creations include "Kangaroo with Stole"


 And Tony wins best use of toothpicks with this train


 And always, of course, the raccoon-deer!

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Hanukkah Dinner


 Treats for everyone this year. A potluck Hanukkah dinner, for which I made an Irish coffee cake. Because um... well if you know Ulysses... um... you'll get it.

That and I this cake graced the cover of the latest issue of Fine Cooking and I just wanted it. Assign dessert to me, and your potluck gets serious.

Only the chocolate curls didn't work out at all. I even tried their tip of taking a vegetable peeler to the chocolate bar. But flakes are better than nothing, and CERTAINLY better than Christmas-coloured vanilla chips, so all in all a success.


I just love this apartment. At this point a discussion was had about the waiting list of potential tenants, with the result of a few disappointed guests (mainly me).


Table is set, manischewitz poured.



The menorah is lit and a prayer is said.


And then the light doesn't even last through dinner! What is this?!

A good night. All very traditional and warm, at least until we migrated to the Jane Bond and I tried to buy that Nat King Cole record with Hanukkah gelt as a joke, and the DJ didn't know what it was. And then I couldn't find any real money, so that was embarrassing.

In other news, I hear Vancouver got REAL SNOW today, while my mother just picked fresh herbs from the garden here in Waterloo.  What is THIS?!

Next up, decorating Christmas cookies!

Sunday, December 9, 2012

So What Have YOU Been Doing Lately?!

Probably something big and important. But so have I!


 Ooo, hey, this is KIND OF a big deal! Look how big that projection is!


One of the most stressful nights of my career spent on this and the printing is backwards. On the other hand, the specially commissioned photography is a smash hit! At least with me.


ArtShare! Not originally my idea, but I voted for it over my own contributions at the beginning. Then Got tired of it and passed it off (nothing against the title, but I was working on two at the time, and looking up art galleries gets tedious). Jelena did some amazing things with it, and it looks real swanky.


I want to read this book. At least I know how it ends, kind of. The best part? When a panelist said they were dissatisfied with the cover design because it looked like a D&M cover. Our reaction: "It looks like a D&M cover!!!!!!!!!!!!"


Of all four titles, this was my baby. I'd like to say I designed this, but it was a real D&M person. I found the black splat, and I chose the font. Oh, and the back cover, which you can't see here, was all me. Again, copyright issues.


The final design for Twitterverse. Deemed the most "do-able" title, this might become a real thing one day, and well isn't that something? The little book that could. If we could actually get the CBC community blog in on this, oh momma (I've been watching a LOT of Frasier, I do warn you)


Our lovely presentation materials. Particularly lovely is Lee's catalogue design which, although 'spooky,' is an Emily Carroll original. And it's the fall season anyway! But really, I've worked on catalogues before, and the panel was right to say it looked as professional as can be.

An example of the postcards for Twitterverse. I wish I had taken all of the extras and used them as Christmas cards.

My point is: I haven't been doing a whole lot of anything, other than school. But that's been quite a bit of work, and a lot of stress, and I'm sure I haven't been the most pleasant person to be around. But for three glorious weeks, I don't have anything to do but finish Willie's quilt and hear about your lives. Making the usual trips across southern Ontario in snowstorms, hoping not to get into any accidents. And if I DO, let's let it be like the one many years ago, where I calmly swerved away from oncoming traffic into a soft snowbank that couldn't have damaged the car if it tried. We were stuck, sure, but within ten minutes a kind gentleman in a pickup truck stopped and offered to tow us out if only we had some rope. With low hopes, I opened the trunk to find nothing but coils and coils of rope.

A story I tell every Christmas, but still... the thankfulness never dies. So go get your Christmas tree, and leave the rope in the trunk. You never know when you'll need it.