This is the scene we woke up to yesterday morning:
It’s a rare event when I pull on my boots and my coat and walk down the driveway to take a picture before I’ve even had one cup of coffee. But this wonderland was worth it! We couldn’t have ordered a more picture-perfect Christmas. And what a Hudson Valley welcome for Rick and Doug!
The view from the inside. Magical and wondrous.
We did the usual – had a first cup of coffee while the coffee cake was warming in the oven. Then we had piece of the cake while drinking our second cup of coffee. Then we opened presents.
Our first Stella-baked coffee cake.
Don went on and on about the coffee cake. We love it no matter what oven bakes it, but he swears – and I think he’s right – that this was the moistest and most evenly cooked coffee cake we’ve had in our over 20 years of indulging in this Christmas tradition.
Stella is a queen. We’re so glad she’s back in action and a part of our lives. (I wish I knew her story!)
We spoiled each other with presents. I especially wanted to spoil Don because somehow – due to schedules and time spent apart – I never got around to giving him a birthday present. So this was a combined celebration.
He got a lot of stuff, but opening this one was definitely a thrill:
The ukulele he has is the smallest size and he mentioned that he wanted something bigger. Yippee, I thought! I went to our local guitar shop – these guys are the best – and picked out this version. It’s made by Kala. The wood grain is gorgeous. It also has a pick-up (which means it can be connected to an amp) which was one of Don’s wishes. I picked out the neatest retro-looking case – I’ll take a picture of it later.
He’s a happy camper. And that makes me happy. What is it now? Four guitars (one is mine) and two ukes? I’ll have to do a count.
Though two of my gifts haven’t arrived yet (Don has now learned the lesson of choosing faster shipping around the holidays) I was definitely blessed.
You might remember that I’ve started to collect Wallace Nutting hand-tinted prints. I had two of them. Now I have three, with the addition of this beauty:
A Corner of the Garden. Don chose it because it reminds him of my garden. I really love it.
He also bought a first edition of Wallace Nutting’s Biography (which is also the title), copyright 1936, signed by Wallace Nutting himself. Oh my heavens. What a treasure!
The day was completely packed. We had to shovel 4 or 5 inches of snow in order to get to Rick and Doug’s as well as cook the food that we were bringing to the dinner. Once we got there, we relaxed and basked in the glow of good friends and good conversation.
Exhausted at the end of the day but what a beautiful exhaustion!
I hope your day was lovely, filled with love and laughter and peace.
Happy Tuesday.
Sounds like a near perfect day! (late presents ugh) I had a loud and lovely time with the Grands opening gifts. Then Ashleigh arrived and was swept up in Christmas playtime. I went home for a nap and then brought Mom over for Christmas Dinner. Sara outdid herself. It was so good and just a wonderful time to be together. A nice QUIET night and then more time with Ashleigh today. A very good Christmas. Love your gifts and the ukulele for Don is perfect! Hugs!
A perfect Christmas for you and yours. So happy to hear that! xo
That is one beautiful uke! I thought it might be larger than usual, but it was hard to tell from a photo (now I’m thinking of Mr.Wizard’s photo of a little fish he caught, held close to the camera for the super-sizing effect).
Sounds like a lovely day, complete with a magical blanketing of snow.
Well, ukes are small to begin with, so we’re talking degrees of small!
Sounds like the perfect day…complete with a fresh snowfall….and a subsequent workout! Love the uke and your Wallace Nutting…it does look like your garden! We had a wonderful day here, too. So nice to have all the family together, plus my youngest son’s girlfriend…she’s become a regular at family gatherings. (??) Great gifts…great dinner, great company…lots of laughs!
I looked around my kitchen this morning, in the fresh sunlight…boy, does it need a good cleaning! But, that will have to wait…there’s more family time to indulge in first! Enjoy your day! ;)
Hmmm. Maybe the girlfriend might become more than a girlfriend?
I’m so tired today that I am doing very little. And I’m fine with that.
Mayyyybe? Time will tell. I’m not doing much of anything either…just some laundry. Christmas, fun as it can be…can also be exhausting! ;)
This Christmas was exhausting, especially because it involved shoveling heavy snow. xo
Yes, you did get quite a lot of snow! We only got an inch…just enough to make it all white. ;)
xo
the snow looks beautiful, the coffee cake looks delicious and the gifts sound like excellent choices for you and don. i am happy for you both!
grateful to go to church and spend time with my beloved family. we also watched “it’s a wonderful life”, opened presents, made and ate good food …
now back to work (bleh, but i am thankful to have a job).
hope you all have a great day!
kathy in iowa
Oh, It’s a Wonderful Life is so lovely, no matter how many times we’ve seen it, right? Have a wonderful day.
how wonderful!
that snow. and the glow in the windows of the cottage.
but especially that darling little white tree with its bark cloth skirt and vintage ornaments shining its lights and reflection in the window with the cold snow outside.
it is all so merrily cozy! I love it.
and don…
with his new uke he’s just too cute!
I made a poem. :)
but he is you know.
He is indeed! Thank you, Tammy!
Your photo of the inside and outside of the house were picture perfect indeed. A late Merry Christmas wish is being sent your way.
Merry Christmas to you, as well!
Sounds like you had a wonderful Christmas. We did, too. Christmas Eve church service was lovely. My husband is church organist and choir director, so he is so incredibly busy at this time of year, plus, even retired, he still teaches PT. So many Christmas/ Winter concerts and commitments. I feel like we can breathe a bit now. The kids stayed over on Christmas Eve, and after church and opening presents, we didn’t go to bed until after 1:30 AM. Fun having them in the morning for coffee and breakfast before one set had to leave for Christmas in Lake Geneva.
Your coffee cake looks absolutely delicious, the Christmas cottage picture is lovely, and your gifts all look so special! Sounds like Christmas w friends was also fantastic. How did they enjoy the Winter Wonderland on Christmas morning? Enjoy your Tuesday (??)! I am so confused by what day it is…………………
They were thrilled. It’s as if Christmas this year was designed just for them!
Glad you had a nice day. The snowy photo with the red Merry Christmas is a perfect holiday card.
My best gift was an assortment of the most beautiful yellow tulips (bulbs) which are currently chilling in the frig. Can’t wait to see them force in 2018!
Oh lovely! Did you open your Barbie house?
OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS BUT I FORGOT. Everybody’s been so distracted with everything-fire including me that the Barbie house went to the wayside. I guess I’ve felt like I had it for so long – well, I don’t know what I thought. Another OMG, if we’d had to evacuate, I would have left it behind. It had escaped my brain cells in all the ‘upset’. Everything still feels disorienting; last night was the first night since Dec 4 that I actually shut the drapes and in so doing shut down ‘firewatch’. We’re at nearly 90% containment and it’s in the backcountry which I hear they’re letting burn to the perimeter of another burn area from 10 yrs ago in which case it’ll snuff itself out, but we had another fire start up on Saturday (Ojai/Santa Paula area) unrelated to the Thomas Fire so we got on edge again, but it’s under control. I can’t even find a nail file with all my stuff thrown into totes and bags so I swear I just HAVE to unpack all the evac stuff tomorrow; and be rid of all thoughts of fire including the fear and uneasiness. My husband finally washed one of the cars yesterday but the ash was back on it this morning and I’m going to the doctor tomorrow because my lungs/airways just aren’t gonna recover from breathing smoke for three weeks on their own; I need a prescription cough syrup or something, darn asthma.
OMG I FORGOT THE BARBIE HOUSE. CANNOT BELIEVE THIS. I wonder how soon I’d think of it? I guess as soon as my loved ones reminded me. My husband totally forgot it, too. O.M.G. But it’s been the most disjointed, emotional, bewildering December that anybody but a Southern Californian would find hard to imagine. I so LOVE the idea of January 1 and a new start on so many levels. I have become completely paranoid of fire. I don’t even know if I can enjoy a candle in a candleholder again.
I’ll let you know about the toy house. Thank you for even remembering my little detail there! I’ll wait until I can clear a path and have a place to set it up; it’ll be a fun thing for New Year’s weekend. Man, my brain is really addled, isn’t it. Wow. Should I be worried?
You’re welcome and no, you shouldn’t be worried. Stress takes over and we forget things because all of our energy is focused on the source of the stress. Look at it this way – you have something to look forward to! xoxo
What a perfect Christmas you had! Mine was wonderful as well. Now on to New Year’s Eve! I will be cleaning and puttering around this week because I like to end the year the way I want to end 2018. Clean house, clean slate, and lots of resolutions to make life better for me, my family, my friends and the world. Tall order, but I am up to it. May you and Don have the best year ever. May it be filled with good health, joy, peace, family and friends. Ring out the old and bring on the new! All my love to you both!
I was cleaning today but more serious sorting is in order for the new year! Love to you, as well, Tana!
That coffee cake looks exactly like the one my aunt Ellie is famous for in our family – SUPER yummy and absolutely the best thing EVER to have with coffee. Her version is baked in a square pan however. Yours looks MUCH larger, unless it’s just a photographic illusion [the angle or something]. I’d actually prefer one that size – LOL – because that coffee cake is simply the best! Even great the next day – in a slightly drier state. Pairing it with coffee then is even better! Although the weekend was pretty yucky weather-wise, we had a very bright sunny Christmas up here in Rochester. We lucked out & got just a coating of snow. The roads yesterday were fine. Black pavement on all the main drags. Took sour cream noodle bake to my brother’s as my contribution to the annual family feast, except I substituted plain Greek yogurt for the sour cream [shhh – and no one noticed!]. We’ve been scaling back substantially on our present-buying over the past several years, now that even the kids in the family are both in their 20s. But my SIL found this really fun game. Everyone brings a $25 wrapped present to the circle & starts out with a random gift on their laps. Dice are rolled & depending on the result, presents are either opened, exchanged right or left, or outright stolen [once something’s opened, if you roll a 3 or 4, you can steal a gift if someone has something YOU like]. Once all is opened & visible, you either keep what you have or can negotiate with others around the circle. Needless to say, hilarity ensued! I went home with a Cuisinart vegetable spiralizer & a supermarket gift card! Can’t wait to spiralize me some potato noodles! Sounds like y’all had a wonderful day too. Love that painting! Pleasing ignorance here but what makes a picture hand-tinted? As opposed to an oil, a watercolor, an acrylic etc. Does the drawing start out as an uncolored print that’s then hand-colored by the artist? I’m clueless. Have a nice slow Boxing Day, Claudia – doing little & “chilling” is important too. And have some more coffee cake. Peace. ☕️
#Resist
#ProtectMueller
Seriously, this coffee cake is the best ever. We’ve been making it for about 20 years now (it was in a Whole Foods holiday recipe magazine way back when. Love your new family game!
Nutting (and others at the time) took photographs and the photographs were hand tinted by painters that he employed.
Dear Claudia
This year I was late for a Christmas greeting,I I intented to do so yesterday but I was so busy on Chistmas Eve that I didn´t realize you weren´t going to post on that special day.Anyway I want to wish you the best for the rest of this year and I hope 2018 brings you health ,a lot of work and happiness to both of you !
xoxo Alicia Buenos Aires
PS: The photo of your house on Christmas day is a real dream!
Thank you so much, Alicia. Sending you Merry Christmas wishes and the best for 2018, my friend. xoxo
So happy you had a fun Christmas Day with Don, and later on with Rick and Doug. Love the Nutting, and Don’s use. I don’t mind late presents into January, as that always extends the season! We had fun, also, with present opening on Christmas Eve, and a full day of baking and cooking for the Christmas dinner with Dad at assisted living, along with Mom, my brother and DIL, and my nieces, nephew and new niece-in-law. Lots of laughter and good food and cheer all around. Missing my husband during these times (and every other time) will always be a part of my life, but I found I can laugh and enjoy life without feeling guilty or needing to do so FOR him, just doing them for myself. That’s probably the best gift I gave myself this year.
I’m so happy to hear than, Wendy. That IS the best gift you can give yourself. Much love to you.
Glad you had a nice Christmas. The picture of the snow is beautiful. Queens only received rain. I received a lot of books and some clothes. I also got a set of brushes and some paint. I like to do a little painting and drawing. Don looks so happy with his ukele.
Marilyn
Painting and drawing will be a welcome respite from this cold, Marilyn! Sounds like you had a lovely Christmas!
So happy that you and Don had a great Christmas day…Happy for Rick and Doug too…had they never seen snow before?..My son and I had a good time too…We exchanged gifts at midnight then slept in for the morning…then got up to do the cooking…after we ate I was so tired I told him to rinse the dishes and stack them cause the rest of the day we are relaxing!…You two know each other so well….I can tell by the perfect gifts you got each other! Hugs…
Oh, they both lived in NYC for years. They’ve seen snow. But Rick had been living in San Diego since we both moved out there in 1993.