Christmas party catch up

Oh my word, so much has happened to keep me busy lately!

Well, it's the same old 40 hour work week of clinical training (plus travel time there and back!) and same old stress of school work, but as a change (that came with a large dose of crisis), my mom is in the hospital. She had semi-unexpected quadruple bypass surgery!! Needless to say, things of this magnitude ripple throughout the family and pull the rug out right from everyone's feet.

She is doing better now but will still be in the hospital for about another week. I've been spending as much time as I can there, therefore this blog has been neglected. And rightly so.

However, I have missed what has become such an important outlet for me. It is usually cathartic even though it's mostly laa-di-daa stuff about the day to day here. 

So let me finally catch up  (beware, this has all the potential of being a long post!).

Last Saturday was the Christmas Party/Class Reunion that I have been planning since October. We had a really great time, a lot of people showed up and every one was grateful for the opportunity to see people that meant so much at that particular wonderful and horrible time called high school. At least, that is how I felt!

I wasn't really in the mood for partying, I actually found out about my mom's bypass surgery as the party was starting, therefore the pictures are rather unimaginative and completely lack focus (literally and figuratively). I was so grateful for the party to take my mind off things, it would have been a very different night if I had no distraction from my own thoughts.

The menu was:

Green salad (in Christmas colors): lettuce, bell peppers, tomato, cucumber

with feta cheese on the side 

Ham-leek-bell pepper quiche

Herbed popcorn

Nutella meringues

Regular meringues

Gingerbread cookies

Vanilla cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting (hazelnut garnish)

Taco sour cream dip

Garlic sour cream dip

Carrot sticks

Chips

Glögi (concentrate) with almond slices (I forgot to buy raisins, too!)

And a guest brought a delicious apple bake with vanilla sauce, unfortunately I forgot to get a picture of it!! 

(Many thanks to J for lending us her electric kettle!)

I was really pleased with how things turned out, how it came together that morning and afternoon (thanks to the hubby for being a HUGE help with cleaning!) and I was happy to get good feedback. I love hosting parties, I hope the guests always notice! 

So that was the party, I have been working on my last Christmas present (crochet gift) that is going out in the mail on Monday. I have a few other handmade gifts in that package that I would love to share now, but they will have to wait till Christmas! 

Until then, there is a lot of using this new electric kettle we got as an early Christmas present (our beautiful Hackman stove top kettle is no longer due to an accident by my husband!). I love this kettle, I can tell we are going to be using it a lot this winter! 

Thanks Isä!

Thanks for reading! Go give your mothers a hug and have a happy weekend!