So here we are midway through the festivities, with Neighborhood Pizza Night and McNamara Christmas behind us. Let’s review, shall we?
Neighborhood Pizza Night was a fine time with many food gifts made. I made this Sriracha Salt, Middendorfs made all sorts of chocolate bark, Madly Pop’n sent Chicago Mix popcorn and the Coluntuano’s gave everyone their famous hand made tomato sauce so we have something to look forward to. I had planned to serve this Cake Batter Chocolate Bark from How Sweet It Is, but by the time I got home from work on Friday, this is all that was left:
Looking at you, Guitar Boy!
Fortunately, our neighbors from Pastries So Tasty make cake pops!
For the record, Baker Boy made lots and lots of cake pops, but by the time I could clear the children out to get a picture, this is what was left!
And they also did this with a Christmas wine topper. Cute!
Every year since we’ve moved here, which is also the year we acquired a digital SLR camera in an attempt to capture ANY picture of baby Drummer Boy smiling, we have created The Block book of pictures through the year. It forces us to actually create a yearly photo book and it makes a nice gift for the neighbors. Here is the 2014 edition on top of all the others:
Speaking of gifts, in honor of this here blog, the Borkowskis gave us these awesome lucky rhino bookends. And a gift card to TJ Maxx. Borkowskis are enablers.
In other gift news, when you make a joke saying the boys’ band should be called Turkey’s Furcula and you have a friend like John with immense creativity (see Fake Sister’s costume in Halloween posts), a touch of OCD and a love of music, you get this from the Rehors:
That’s right, Furcula concert t-shirts. For the whole family. Here’s the back:
Turkey’s Furcula, with the special guest, The Cranberries. Oh wait, such a gift would’t be complete without an magazine cover (bonus Furcula poster inside!):
In the end, all 34 people had a lovely time, and Kevin ordered…
…just the right amount of pizza.
Next day was McNamara Christmas. At the last minute (since Thursday I was flying from LaGuardia to Chicago, so it was anyone’s guess whether I’d be home by Saturday) I made this Smoked Salmon Dip from thekitchn. It was yummy and it tastes great with Trader Joe’s Everything Bagel Chips.
The boys went with ugly Christmas sweater theme for Mac Christmas:
And here is the whole crew:
it was basically your standard McNamara Christmas, with Irish dancing demonstrations, the cousins grab bag, and the children gathered around:
one kid playing Minecraft on an iPhone, while the rest of the family gathered around the traditional…
Danimals tree. Yep, your basic Christmas celebration.
I hope you’ve all made a dent in your shopping and will have time to relax and enjoy the rest of the month I just finished making the 5th batch of Chex Mix to create teacher gifts today, will move on to cookies next weekend.
Happy Middle Christmas everyone.
