Blog

We had a wonderful Christmas time with our family over the Holidays. I hope you did too ;)

We celebrated with a Christmas Eve dinner at our house which was a more traditional Eastern European feast and the next day we had another dinner at my sister’s place – which was a little less formal and where meat was served ;) Here is a glance at that magical Night Before Christmas!
As starter, we had: red borsch with little mushroom dumplings. For the main course we had: breaded seabass, broiled tilapia with vegetables, mashed potatoes, two kinds of pierogies with cabbage and potato & cheese, mushroom sauce, cabbage with white beans, there were some other dishes that I can’t even remember probably because I couldn’t eat them. But I included my new favourite dish, which is a lentil casserole (above photo on the right). This is a great meal in itself but it went great with the whole meal.

You see, this was my first Christmas as gluten free and semi-vegan. Thank goodness, I still do eat fish, just not breaded or else it would have been a tough Christmas. That’s why the lentil casserole was both delicious and my saviour. Ok, so I had only about two dishes out of all 12, I still filled up and felt terrific. No hard feelings about saying ‘no’ to some of my favourite delicious foods…. No problem at all ;) The night wouldn’t be A NIGHT without a visit from Santa! I didn’t know my daughter was such a good girl this year ;D

A big thank you goes to two Etsy shops: Woodwings – thank you Elizabeth for that custom painting of Gabriella on the pegasus, and Rose Feather Toys – for a beautiful purple knitted pegasus. These were beautiful and will be treasured always. Although, the ponies from the world of My Little Pony still stole the show! ha, those 3 year old’s – don’t know a good thing ;D

This year’s Christmas Eve was especially magical. However, we missed my little sister who now is living in Cambodia volunteering her time teaching English at an orphanage. This girl has the biggest heart – she should have a blog herself ;)  But no, we’re still selfish and want her all to ourselves for Christmas ;) She was gone, but the little Daniel, my nephew replaced her chair (add ‘high’ before that). It was his 1st Christmas and it was so lovely to hear little baby blabbering and watch the two kids playing under the table and having fun.  Little Daniel is actually the 12th grandchild in my family – eventually I’ll share with you why only 2 kids were at this Christmas. Let’s just say, a family wouldn’t be a family without some drama…. ;D
I hope you had a wonderful Holiday this year with your close ones. And I do hope it was filled with love, laughter and even magic ;) Please do share your holiday traditions and festivities in the comments below, I would love to hear about it.

I’m still enjoying a slower paced time with some shopping get togethers and family and friends’ visits. This week is quickly going by with New Year’s right around the corner. We are just chilling at home for New Year’s this year. So many of our friend’s are out of the country actually for New Year’s that maybe we’ll throw in a Post-New-Year’s party next weekend ;)

What are your plans for New Year’s? Are you in a party mode or low-key mode like us?

PS. I will be announcing something very exciting in the new year, a little secret project I’m working on. I will see you very soon with the news ;)