Hello Everyone!

Hi everyone, I am so happy to finally be sitting down at my computer and sharing with all of my wonderful blogger friends!  We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and Christmas - Thanksgiving Day was celebrated here and Christmas was with Frog Hollow Farm Boy's family.  Both days were full of fun, family, food and our signature cocktails.

So, I'm just posting a few photos to get you up to date with some things.  

Our Thanksgiving Table

Some Christmas Decorations

Our cat Olive sitting on a warm woodstove!

One more photo from our July trip to Ireland, just needed to share that blue water with you all!

Wedding dress in window in Florence, Italy

This is a magnificent photo of our brave boy Connor.  

Connor is my niece Jennifer's little boy.  He was diagnosed with a form of leukemia in late October and is being treated vigorously with different chemotherapy medications - the treatment protocol involves two years of treatment.  

This photo was take by a photographer with a company called Flashes of Hope at the hospital right when Connor was diagnosed.  Since then Connor has lost his hair.  

His prognosis is very good - we pray for him every day.  

That's all for now friends.  I will be visiting as many of you as I can - that's the fun part of blogging!

Ciao, bella!

Preparing for Thanksgiving

Like all of you, I'm in the midst of preparing for Thanksgiving, but I needed an excuse to sit down for a few minutes, so I thought I'd show you what I've been doing all day.

You need to know that there are two very large closeups of a photo of some cookies that I just can't remove from this post.  I don't know how they got there and hope you'll just ignore them.  And I see that some text is mixed up.  Yikes, I am really sorry but Blogger is just not cooperating with me and I don't have the time to start over.

Preparing some appetizers. 

These are Parmesan Cheese Sticks from the Barefoot Contessa's recipes.  I started cutting the dough up in small squares because I was losing so much cheese when I was twisting the long strips of dough.

These are the ingredients for the Stilton Tart with the Cranberry Chutney.  The tart was easy to make and turned out so delicious looking, but my cat Olive jumped up on the counter while it was cooling and while I was out of the kitchen and began eating it.  I am really bummed about that.

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Some temporary storage in our unfinished pantry.

A vintage dishtowel found in Lambertville, NJ last Sunday.

And some photos of the Thanksgiving table, lit up with all of the candles I love to use in the dining room.  No food yet though!  I'm taking photos today because I know I'll forget as soon as I have my first glass of wine tomorrow. 

I'm using some vintage dishes that I picked up in Vermont a few years ago.

Here's another close up of the vintage china.  I'm using an orange pottery charger from Positano, Italy as a contrasting color, picking up the orange of the flowers on the plate. I also have green pottery chargers, also from Positano Italy, that are used alternately on the table.  The large white plates were in the clearance aisle in TJ Maxx. 

Our green turkey from William Sonoma - he'll be filled with homemade cranberry sauce!

Wishing all of you a very Happy Thanksgiving!  Thank you all for stopping by and taking a look - I know how busy you all are today! 

I also snuck in late at Tablescape Thursday - there are so many, many wonderful table setting ideas - and I was number 100!

Ciao, bella!

Decisions! Decisions!

Last night I had dinner with two wonderful friends, both teachers from Tewksbury and both very special in their own rights.  Carol and Becky, that was a delicious bottle of wine, wasn't it?  :)  Here's to many more!

I've been looking through all of my cookbooks and my back issues of the Thanksgiving themed Bon Appetit,  Martha Stewart Living and Gourmet magazines to find appetizers for our holiday parties.  My most favorite issue is a 1979 copy of Bon Appetit - the subscription was a gift from my mom and the recipes were used for the very first Thanksgiving dinner that FHFB and I hosted in our first home in Rockway Township, lovingly called "Little House on the Highway".  We still make the cornbread stuffing and Italian Roasted Turkey recipes from this issue!

You can see that it's definitely been used!  The cover is detached and the edges are frayed.

More magazines saved from prior Thanksgivings...

My collection of Thanksgiving recipes and decorating ideas also includes several little pamphlets from Whole Foods and Williams-Sonoma. 

So far I've come up with my first draft of appetizer recipes for Thanksgiving.  I know, why am I serving so many appetizers in addition to the traditional turkey dinner?  Well, my family has a tradition, at every gathering, to sit and chat for a 2-3 hours before the meal while eating delicious appetizers and drinking whatever special cocktail we have prepared for the day.  For Thanksgiving we're thinking of serving a light but delicious white sangria, with slices of apples and pears.

Can I call this list of appetizers a transformation of sorts, from an empty piece of paper to a list of 9 appetizers, most of them making it to the final cut?

Here's what we have so far:

Alton's Salty Sweet Pecans
Cheese Straws
Parmesan and Thyme Crackers
Cheese Tray with Many Varieties of Olives
Veggie Tray

Crostini with Sun Dried Tomato Jam
Olive-Garlic Soft Cheese Spread served with Whole Grain Baguette
Prosciutto Cups With White Beans
Stilton Toast and Cranberry Chutney

I haven't linked to each of the recipes because many of them are from a fantastic link I found on Epicurious.com called Cocktail Party Menus - it's just full of delicious cocktail party menus with all of the recipes linked in as well - a very easy site to work your way through.
I'm linked in to Transformation Thursday with Gina at Shabby Chic Cottage- stop by to see all of the ideas and links!

(from Google Images)


Ciao, bella!