Decorations

ugh, at this rate it will be Easter before I get through the Christmas posts.

Our house was (as usual) very decorated for Christmas. Claudia and I both like the fun Christmas ornaments and Claudia has a pretty good idea of how to make things look awesome.

I already showed the tree and the wonderful dinner table, but here are some other elements of the display..

This is the advent wreath, one candle for each sunday in Advent. Claudia bought the wrought iron piece a couple of years ago and she fills it up a little differently each year. Liam likes to blow out the candles.
These little fellows go on hard boiled eggs to keep them warm, but do fit in quite well.
The kitchen counter was dominated by the big Advent Calendar. Claudia filled each door with yummy treats and a special one on Sundays. You can also see our two nutcrackers, the hunter and the Scotsman, who is alongside my smoking monk. I love the smoking monk so much, he is fat and jolly. The recipe holder gets filled with Christmas cards and there are some little bears hanging down from there too.
Even our key box gets decorated. My Mum sent these ornaments, first in 2001, then the second one when Liam joined the snowman family.
Liam is not left out, his room has its own little Christmas display. The Nativity was of course constructed by Opa Franz for Liam, and the tiny tree was one that Claudia had when she lived in an apartment. Under the tree are some little smoking men and a snow globe with Santa inside.
I have just about wrapped up the Christmas posts now, I think I just need to show one more and then I can move on... Christmas is such a nice time it is hard to let it go, even though it is 4 weeks gone, snow is all melted and groundhog day is just around the corner.

Well, Germans don't celebrate good old GH day, but they all know it very well thanks to the tremendous success of the Bill Murray film.

Sweater Buddies

I am rather swamped these days so I have not really had time to post much.

So here is a photo of me and Liam in matching sweaters. Claudia knit them both, we are supposed to look like typical Bavarians.

Christmas Music

Here is a gift that Claudia gave to Liam that was a HUGE success. It is one of those gifts that we are a little nervous may not have been the best idea... for our sake.

We had taken Liam had to Christmas markets with us in the time leading up to the big day, and he was very very taken with the brass bands performing Christmas songs. At one point he was standing down next to the band, pantomiming his own trumpet and making "doo doo dooooo" noises of his own along with them. Based on this, Claudia found this lovely gift.

It is a plastic trumpet with four notes, and it basically sounds sort of like a harmonica. It is thankfully not quite as loud as we thought it may be. It was a big success from the moment Liam opened it. He was running around yelling TRUMPET TRUMPET at everyone he was so excited.

Then the concert started. He did not have it quite right in the beginning...
After a while he figured it out though. I like that you can see he is clearly playing it with a big smile on his face.

This concert lasted many many many hours. The trumpet was at his side for dinner, book time, it went to bed with him, and was in his hand first thing the next morning. We heard about three full days of uninterrupted trumpet music. When I say music I am being VERY generous. It is more like uninterrupted random note blowing at varied volumes and lengths. Sometimes there is a pause for a loud announcement "I AM PLAYING THE TRUMPET NOW" and then the concert resumes.

It must have looked awesome, since uncle Bernhard decided to give it a go. You can see that Opa Franz was not impressed with his musical stylings.

Bernhard clearly needs to take a lesson from little Satchmo Anderson, his musical moves seem to impress all the ladies.

Christmas Dinner

One of the big excitements (and worries) of this past Christmas was that we were having the big dinner in our home for the first time. I have rarely made food for more than 4-5 people and I have never cooked a turkey.

So, there was some learning to be done. Lucky for me, the internet, cookbooks, and Claudia's magazines were full of tips and how-to articles that worked well for us.

We had 7 normal sized people plus Liam for dinner, so we figured on a turkey for 8 (Bernhard always eats enough for 1.5 and Liam is a 0.5) This seemed like around 5.5kg would be good. Sadly the grocery only had 4 or 6.5kg birds. We went big since leftovers are better than hungry guests.

I prepared it pretty much like I would a chicken. Clean it out, rub exterior with oil, salt, pepper and stuff with some lemons, rosemary and bay leaves. Seemed safe enough. here is the beast just about to go in the oven.
Bernhard took a moment to approve on the size of the Turkey.
For the first couple of hours, I left the bird wrapped in foil so that it would not dry out, then the last 45 min or so it was uncovered to brown up a bit. It sure did fill that oven up...
In the meantime, all the other things were being made... Claudia bought some real fresh cranberries (which had come from Canada, yay!) and made the sauce. Turned out really great.
Claudia also did a Tiramasu for dessert which I forgot to photograph, oops. Then she turned to the decorating and table setting, which you will see shortly.

I moved on to side dishes. Mashed potatoes (also forgot to take a picture) were first.

Then there was stuffing, made from Bread crumbs, butter, red onion, sage, bay, salt + pepper. Pretty easy and I have done this before.
The exciting new side dish was red cabbage, which we all enjoy, but had only bought frozen in the past. This time I was going to do it myself. So this one had cabbage, apples, bacon, onions, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and some spices.
This needed the biggest pot we had. I think it turned out at least as tasty as the frozen one, but I think it could have been a little more apple-y.
After a looong time doing side dishes, the turkey was done and brought out. I think I maybe could have taken off the foil a little earlier to get it more brown, but it was quite eatable and tasty like this.
Claudia had also spent a lot of time and thought on setting the table in a very fancy Christmasy way. Everyone's place setting was all done up like this. You can not even tell that earlier in the day Liam spilled juice on everything forcing Claudia to re-wash and iron all the table cloths... haha.
With the table all set and the food all done, we just had to set the lighting and get people in there to eat it up.
I think at the end of the day, we managed to prepare quite a nice Christmas dinner, everyone finished the evening with a very full and happy belly. I think that Ryan even challenged Bernhard for the title of most turkey consumed, something that is not easy to do at any time.

A Look Back at Christmas

So I am back to work today and that means I am using my work computer once again... I had a few glorious weeks of not thinking at all about HP or Paper, but that is all over now.

So, it is all very late, but I can finally put on some updates around our Christmas season.

The tree is the first order of business. We receive a tree as a nice gift at the Christmas party our house builders give each year. For five years after building, we are invited.

Here is the bare tree as placed in the seat of honor.
Next I added some lights...
Claudia had unpacked all the tree decorations and Liam of course stuck his nose right in there. He wanted to help decorate right away.
The little book ornament he put onthe tree was fine, but he also was very very keen on the spongebob funny ones we had... They did not really fit in with the other nice decorations. After some discussion, we put the Spongebob ones on the tiny tree in his room so he could look at them even more... and we did not have too haha.
At the end of the session, our tree was all done and looked pretty nice.
The illuminated tree was in the "sorry Dave" post.

I just took the tree down yesterday, Christmas is really over now.