Harrison’s Baptism

Last weekend we had a beautiful day to celebrate Harrison’s Christening. It was an unusually warm day in the middle of March. No coats required. We were so blessed in so many ways.

It was extra special because his grandmother is the one who got to baptise him and very close friends of ours agreed to be his Godparents.

He looked like a little angel in his gown. He is now the first of the third generation to be baptized in the gown. My mom and all of her 9 brothers and sisters wore it on their big day, and many of my cousins have worn it too. And to make it even more special its made from my grandmother’s wedding gown. Even though much of my family couldn’t attend, it was like they were all there with us.

He acted like a little angel too. But that should come as no surprise to those who know Harry.

Many thanks to the church and all those who made the day such a memorable one.

Good hostess, bad blogger

That’s me. I don’t have many pictures to share of the holiday party (bad blogger) over the weekend because I was doing my best Martha Stewart impression (good hostess). At least I was trying to.

I pretty much landed back in Ontario on Tuesday night and was in Holiday Party mode immediately.

On Wednesday I made a list and checked it twice ten million times. What can I say? I’m type-A.

I wanted to keep things simple for myself for a few reasons. For one, I didn’t have much time to get things prepared both in number of days before the party, and in between Harrison’s naps. For another, I didn’t want to be busy prepping things the morning of the party or have to fuss too much about cooking up hot food during the event. I wanted to enjoy myself and welcome people at the door, and get them a drink and all that other etiquette stuff. Not to mention I had a hair appointment and we had another appointment on Saturday morning related to an exciting new development here at Casa O’Leary. (No, I’m not pregnant. Are you CRAZY!?) Stay tuned this aft for a picture of the new addition that we brought home.

I served a mix of hot and cold hors d’oeuvres. Most of what I made at home was the baking/sweets.

I made an all white dessert selection. (That sounds pretty racist. Yikes! No offense intended. I just thought it would look pretty and wintery).

Clockwise from the top: A Christmas tradition in our family – Nutty buddies. I’ll post this recipe for you soon. They are heavenly and more than one party guest told me they were hoping I’d have them on hand. Several others asked for the recipe. They are THAT GOOD! Shortbread cookies. Recipe courtesy of my friend Elysia. Cream puffs courtesy of M&M. I dusted them with icing sugar myself! And finally some sugar cookies to round out the sweets.

I had a couple more items on the list but I hit a few snags.

The first snag was that I made a full shortbread recipe and put it in a shortbread pan (to give it a nice design) and I took it out and it looked like this:

Wop wop! I guess I didn’t bake it long enough? Or maybe I didn’t grease the pan well enough for it to slide out? I don’t know. I made a regular old batch of rectangles to make up for it. I also tried my  hand at macadamia nut brittle. It turned out like this:

Double wop wop! What a seriously devastating waste of macadamia nuts. It may not look so bad in this picture, but it wasn’t hard and candy-like at all. It was just sorta solid. As a result of this double disaster I didn’t have time to make another dessert. I was going to make some chocolate moons (dusted with icing sugar) to round out my buffet of white sweets.

In the end I think we had enough of sweets for everyone.

As for the rest of the menu the table started looking like this:

And I brought out more cold stuff and baked up some hot stuff as the day went on.

The menu:

A large veggie selection with onion dip. I used one of those gourmet dip mixes. You know the ones you always get in gift baskets? Yeah, it was great and I used a bit of extra onion that I had from making…

A cheese bell. I thought I was being clever. I made my cheese ball to look like a big bell. How festive, right? Right? (Side note: I’ve only made the cheese ball twice and I haven’t yet made it into a ball. For Courtney’s shower I made it into a cheese bump.)

Large shrimp platter (Also from M&M)

Cheese selection tray from Zehrs catering

5-layer Mexican dip with nacho chips

Oriental Party Pack from M&M – A few people mentioned the party pack has almost become a holiday staple, a tradition. And why not? Those little pot stickers are so good!

Bite-size spanakopita from President’s Choice (Zehrs) In a majorly convenient Christmas miracle of miracles the Oriental Party Pack and Spanakopita had the exact same cooking directions for both time and temperature so I was able to do batches of each at the same time. That made my life a lot easier! Highly recommend.

And of course we had a selection of bevvies.

I liked the green and red together and I also froze cranberries in ice cubes in advance to brighten up the bucket. In addition to the bucket drinks I had lemonade on hand for the munchkins and a white wine sangria for the grown-ups.

And finally, because the party was meant to be casual and fun and kid-friendly I knew that people would be stopping by with their kids. And what do kids need? Something to keep them busy! So I baked up some gingerbread men ahead of time and let the kids “dress their own” gingerbread man. I had icing, and a variety of toppings to dress them up.

Here’s Liam’s creation.

So cute! He later decided he didn’t like the dried cranberries so much and promptly undressed his gingerbread man.

That’s all the photos I managed to snap of the party. Like I said, bad blogger.

It was wonderful to see those who could make it. I think I’ll host an open house party again next year. It so was nice that people could drop in and stay as long as they liked. Many people came by before hitting their work party or other holiday parties later that evening, so I think the format worked just as I planned.

Maybe this little party will become a holiday tradition people look forward to. I sure hope so!

How about you guys? Any holiday hosting? Any bad blogger-ing? We’ve only got one more Christmas party to go to this year and it’s husbandman’s work party in the city. I’m really looking forward to a night out amid all the hustle and bustle.

Starting at the beginning

I have lots to fill you in on since I’ve been away including a re-cap of my trip and what I’ve been doing to get the house ready for the Christmas party tomorrow, but what better place to start than at the beginning?

Before Harrison and I left for Nova Scotia we put up our Christmas tree. Normally we don’t put up our tree until December, but since we’re hosting our Christmas party on Saturday I wanted to get it up early so I didn’t have to rush around once I got back.

I always grew up with a real tree. In fact, my family has been going to the same tree farm for as long as I can remember. This wasn’t just any ordinary tree lot either. This place had Christmas music blaring on loud speakers, staff dressed as elves to price your tree, and my personal favourite: fresh baked cookies and hot chocolate inside the house for a post-tree hunt warm-up. It’s a tradition in my family that I really cherish. Even after I went away to university my parents would wait for me to get home after exams to trek out to get the tree so that we could all go together.

In this house with our two cats we opted for an artificial tree so that we wouldn’t have to worry about our cats trying to climb it, or drinking the water, or who knows what they’d do to our beautiful conifer. A couple years ago we picked out a 7-foot pre-lit version from the artificial tree lot that is Canadian Tire that I quite like.

And as far as traditions go we have our own. Since the first Christmas that husbandman and I were dating we have bought each other an ornament. At the time we didn’t have a tree, but we always knew we’d have our own place and our own tree some day, and when we did we’d have a special set of ornaments to adorn our tree right from the start.

It didn’t take too long to get it all decorated. The longest part was going through all our ornaments and reminiscing about the ornaments we gave each other and why.

Here’s Harry and husbandman putting the first ornament on our tree.

 

It’s a peanut! Thanks to my aunt and uncle who brought this back for us from a huge Christmas store on a recent shopping trip in the US.

Here’s a picture of one of the angels in the trio of angel ornaments that husbandman got me for that first Christmas together.

And finally, here’s what it looks like all dressed and lit up.

It doesn’t have a theme and it isn’t extra fancy, but it is very personal. Almost every ornament tells a story.

I’m getting ready for the holiday party this weekend and really looking forward to seeing everyone! Hope you all have a great weekend. Anyone putting up their tree this weekend? Anyone have any sweet holiday traditions that have lasted for years or planning to start a new one this year?