Holiday Recap

It's all over now! The trees need to be taken down and the decorations need to be put away, but here is how I spent my holidays:

In early December, I attended Glow at the Cleveland Botanical Garden. Regional garden clubs each choose a theme and decorate a tree for display. I enjoy the creativity and the homemade ornaments. My daughter thought this Elvis tree was the most unique.

But I think we enjoy the gingerbread houses even more. Many of them are beautiful creations like this one, done by professionals.

There are also plenty of contributions by kids, which always crack me up, like this one. You can just see the thought process . . . "How much more can I add???" I think it's supposed to be a baseball stadium.

Between visiting both sets of grandparents a few days before Christmas, we took our kids out to lunch to a popular hot dog diner. Not my usual fare, but the kids got a kick out of this place. There were about 30 choices of dogs, with names like Kraus Von Slaw and the Frito Bandito. I had the Shaggy Dog, which had sauerkraut and mustard toppings.

After Christmas, my husband and I attended a wedding at the House of Blues. The couple have actually been married over a year and living overseas, so this was an informal ceremony where they read their own vows to each other. The theme was 1920's Art Deco, though this room had a goth feel to it.

Before the meal, we had a cocktail hour in the Foundation Room. I pulled this photo off their website, as it was too dark to take photos with our phones. There were less than 80 guests, so we felt honored to attend. The food was FABULOUS. We were honestly shocked that HOB made such good food. The cake was black and gold and designed to resemble the invitation. It was a memorable evening!

Every year, we host the Cousin Party (my kids' cousins) and have pizza and plan games.  This year, we gave Bean Boozled a try. It was a hit! The funny part was that after watching some online videos, we thought the jelly beans would taste much worse than they actually did. I honestly couldn't tell if I had the chocolate pudding or the canned dog food when it was my turn. Two people thought the barf merely tasted like ricotta cheese. It was decided that skunk spray was the worst.

New Year's Eve was spent at home, enjoying our traditional crab legs and a bottle of champagne. We brought this one back from Napa Valley and it was excellent.  Happy New Year!