Merry Christmas!

I had the most wonderful Christmas. I got to spend it with my parents and with Jeremy. After doing our family Christmas on the 24th in the am, we headed down to Houston for the meeting of the parents. Surprisingly it went really well. Everyone got along and they talked for hours. In fact we only played one game of apples to apples and the rest of the time they all just chatted away. I requested that Jeremy and I open our gifts alone in bed on Christmas morning, so Jeremy surprised me and brought in the little rosemary tree from the kitchen and put all our gifts around it. It was very sweet. In addition to other things he got me these two awesome gifts. First, a Mario Batali book. . I'm so excited to make all these dishes! Okay, well a bunch of them at least. Secondly, he got me this stoneware piece from pampered chef. It's a small stone plate and it's perfect for making bacon in the microwave. I know, I know, bacon in the microwave doesn't sound that great, but on this stone it comes out freaken awesome. Plus I'm sure you can make other yummy stuff on here. A great investment.

My parents got me a bunch of cool stuff including lots of Craftsman tools (which I desperately needed) and a reciprocating saw! Is it weird for me to be excited about this? They also sent me some flowers when they were in Hawaii. Here's a pic about some of them. Aren't they beautiful! They also sent me an orchid the week before. My house is now filled with all these beautiful flowers plus the rosemary tree and poinsettias from Christmas. My new years resolution is to keep them all alive as long as possible.

Finally I must show off some other cool stuff I got. First, I treated myself to a new knife for Christmas. It's a Ken Onion Shun 7" Suduko.












Also, I have to show ya'll these really cute spatulas from Williams Sonoma. My friends bought me this nice big one, because they know that I'd been looking for the small ones, which happened to be sold out all over Austin. It was really nice of them. (I have great friends). Then Jeremy found one small set (the only ones left in Houston) and got them for me (I have a great boyfriend too!).











Thanks to all my friends and my family and Jeremy for helping me have a wonderful Christmas. It was the best! Check out my flickr page for more photos of Christmas and dinner. But for now, I'll leave you with one more photo. These are the banana purses that I made for dinner last night. Mmmm, yummy!