Happy Holidays

I'd like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New 2012! This will be my last post of 2011, so I thought it would be best to round out the year with photos of lots of delicious food. We hosted a brunch this past weekend for some of our friends. Despite worrying about having about 40 people in my tiny house at one time, and hoping that I would be able to cook enough food for all of the people who came, I think it was a great success. I know that we enjoyed the opportunity to spend time with many people, some of whom we haven't seen at all this past year.

I found those plastic reindeer at Michael's and just spray painted them white. I just need 6 more to round out the set!

I figure it's best to start with photos of the desserts.

The menu included sweet potato brownies, ginger molasses cookies, cornflake marshmallow chocolate chip cookies (from Momofuku Milk Bar cookbook), and apple cider doughnuts from Weber Farm.

We also had a mix of fruit, biscuits, croissants (I attempted to find country ham for the biscuits, but apparently it's illegal to sell in Maryland because I couldn't find it anywhere!), bacon jam (of course), baked grits, and two different breakfast stratas. I use the basic recipe for a strata from Williams Sonoma and then just make up my own vegetable or meat mixtures (I also cube the bread instead of just placing the slices in the pan). I made a veggie strata with sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, and spinach, and then a meat strata with italian sausage and sun-dried tomatoes.

Don't you love those little amputated arm sign holders from Fishs Eddy? I DO!

And here are a few photos from the party...

Henry doing the dreaded "cheese" smile for the camera.

We told him to say "boogers" in this one. Much better.

Most of our friends have kids, and they're all the same age, so that really worked out well.  They all played really well together and the damage to the living room was only temporary.

And to just throw one last craft project in the mix, I thought I'd share these really cute and very easy gift bags I found on Pinterest. I don't have the Fiskars machine or punches to cut out the shapes, but since I only had to make 6 of these for Henry's "fwiends" at daycare, I figured I could manage to cut them out by hand. Are they cute or what?

Happy Holidays everyone!!!!!!