This week we went to a fun preschool storytime at Fred Hesse and then later we played in the playground. The storytime event was called Little Critter Afternoon Tale, it was put on by the Palos Verdes library, so sweet! It might be my new favorite picnic spot! These activities are held once a month so next month I think I will bring our picnic basket with us! There were stories (duh) and songs, a puppet and some crafts that actually held the kid’s attention. The most hilarious thing about it to me was the theme was winter – any time someone in Southern California says ‘winter’ a Canadian rolls their eyes – and since there is no sign of actual winter down here, the kids made paper snowflakes. Hilarious. This time last year, our oldest was rolling a snowball bigger than himself around the backyard to make an epic snowman – and now he’s wearing a tshirt at the park.

So today is Orthodox Christmas. Widely celebrated in Eastern Europe and Medetarrian countries, I still call it Greek Christmas for two reasons. One because I’m half Greek and that’s why I celebrate it (duh) and two because 95% of the population of Greece is Orthodox while the numbers are smaller (though still fairly high) in other area of Europe (87% in Romania for example, 80% in Ukraine, etc). So Happy Greek Christmas. Or as my mother and my aunts and uncles would say, Xronia Polla!

In Canada, we normally don’t celebrate it much at all. We’ll usually have dinner together but that’s no different from any other Sunday. Being so far from everyone right now though, I feel the need to celebrate extra the little things. Even though it doesn’t directly involve our families I think it keeps the kids engaged and remembering. So we made Amygdalota me Orange (aka Orange Scented Almond Cookies) to celebrate! Usually I make Kourabiethes or Melomakarona but I can only make those when I know there are a bunch of other people around to eat them because otherwise I am in serious danger of eating them all myself. These cookies though, they make a smaller batch and they are a little more transportable. I’ll be mailing this batch to my folks. <3 These are officially my second cookie of 2013!

Amygdalota me Orange via Cat Cora 3 cups blanched almonds 3 cups confectioners sugar 1 tablespoon orange water 1/4 cup orange juice, plus some for shaping First, process the almonds into a almond meal, and add 2 1/2 cups sugar. Then pour the mixture into a saucepan over medium high heat. Add the orange water and the orange juice and mix it until the sugar as dissolved and the liquids are all mixed in. Cool. From here, you can shape it into the traditional pear shape or you can chop it into chunks instead. Either way, roll it through icing sugar, wrap it in cellophane and leave it for three days before you serve it. In my case it’ll take about 4 days to mail to my parents so it should be perfect by the time they get it.

I’ve been a big fan of BH Cosmetics for about two years. I have big love for pops of color and even bigger love for serious lashes, so those are two qualities BH has in spades, but I also don’t want to drop $300 every time I need to refresh my makeup kit or pay $7-$16 for a pair of lashes (especially considering I wear them often). I’m not against splurging, and in the interest of full disclosure I do love me some Sephora and have a mild obsession with my pink Tarina Tarintino glitter. Having said that, I don’t shop Sephora to stock up and I don’t wear pink glitter everyday (sigh, but in a perfect world…).

So enter BH. Not only will you get way more for your dollar here than anywhere else I’ve looked, the quality is far better than the price implies. The eyeshadow pigments are long wearing and really bright! The 120 Color Palettes are usually between $30-35 but there is always some promotion or another. Right now they are actually 40% off and that’s not all that strange. I’ve never paid full price on this site and never been disappointed.

The 120 Color Palettes come in 5 editions with variations in each. I have the 1st edition and I love it. Bright, lasting colors. The shimmer palette comes in cool and tropical, I have the cool. It is very blendable and also very long lasting. I have the Earth, Blossom and Candy lip liners. I find them all to be very smooth and blendable and they are all very easy to sharpen which is a serious plus!

I will say that the $15/pair Urban Decay lashes are nicer than these $5/pair lashes from BH, but they are not 3 x nicer! I like the Come Hither lashes from Urban Decay for something a little snazzier than everyday, but not crazy fancy. I have found that BH’s China Doll lashes are very similar. I’d also compare Urban Decay’s Instaflare, Darlin’ and Babydoll to BH’s Foxy, Flare and Sassy – in that order. Using BH is a little safer for daily wear in case you get glitter on them that wont come off or you’re not as gentle as you think you are and bend them. Or you know, when you have a late night and fall asleep with your full face on. Whoops!

Today, I’m linking up with Petals to Picots, Sippy Cup Chronicles, Happy Go Lucky, and Chubby Cheeks Thinks.

I had seen a few different tutorials online for magnetic bookmarks, first over at Flipflops & Applesauce and then on Split Coast Stampers but ultimately, it was the beauties from The Southern Institute that inspired me enough to actually do it. Louise from I’m Feelin’ Crafty made an excellent tutorial for The Southern Institute that I deviated from a bit to make my own. I still struggle with my sewing, and it’s no one’s fault but my own – I just need to do it more so I can get better! They came out pretty cute though, I really like them. I will try again after more practice and we’ll see how they look then!

These were super fun to make and a great way to use up pretty and cute scraps. I know pretty much everyone reads on some kind of eReader, but I also know that pretty much every reader has a weakness for the handful of actual books they still have kicking around. A lot of my friends, plus my sister and my dad, have a serious love for used book stores. We also all have a serious love for the library. So these bookmarks were a practical project for us and I hope they are used in place of random subway transfers and bits of paper.

-scrap fabric -little magnets -scissors -thread
First I ironed down the edges of a 2″ x 6″ piece of fabric and hemmed all around.
Then I folded and ironed in half, and sewed that side down.
Next I placed a magnet circle (attracting ends up!!) on each edge, folded the fabric over and sewed it in place.
That’s it!! Then I tried it out in a couple recipe books and did it all over again five more times!

We spent New Years Day playing board games and the little ones ate way too many cookies and chocolate almond milk, but I tried to level it out with some hidden kale in dinner and I’m going to go ahead and call that a win! Two of the games we played on Tuesday were the Pinkalicious Cup Cake Party Game, super fun for Wee One #2, and the Super Why ABC Letter Preschool Game, which totally worked for both Wee Ones #2 & 3. The Pinkalicious game reminded me a lot of Partini, but for kids. You roll the dice and you draw a card from the deck that matches the icon you rolled. You’re either doing charades, drawing, rhyming or dancing. After you perform the task on the matching card you earn a cupcake and the first person to get 6 cupcakes wins! You also have the possibility of rolling two other icons (duh), one gives you a free cupcake, one takes a cupcake away. Wee One #3 wasn’t huge on the rhyming or the charades and seemed to think it was pretty lame. Yeah, my three year old was too cool for it – and that’s fine because this game was technically for Wee One #2 who loved it so much she insisted we play it again after her menacing toddler sister went to bed.

The game we picked up specifically for said menacing toddler was the Super Why game, since that is one of her favorite shows and one of the few shows that actually teaches kids something useful! The show (and the game) focus on letter sounds and early reading. My seven year old liked this game because it was easy for her, but the littlest one liked it a lot too and it’s so neat to see the connections she makes and the little spark that goes off when she finally ‘gets’ something. In this game, there is a spinner instead of dice and you move around the board and land on one of four Super Why characters. Each of the four characters has their own deck of cards and each has the kids practicing a different reading skill – either you match a lower case on your card to the upper case of the same letter on the board, find the letter that the picture on the card starts with, rhyme with the words on the card or you replace a silly word in a phrase with a word that makes sense.

This recipe is my first cookie of 2013. Technically, I made these for New Years Eve, but since they ushered in the new year I’m counting them! It shouldn’t come as a surprise at all that I am posting a Martha Stewart recipe as my first of the year since I’ve been cooking and baking my way through her books since I was a teenager at my parent’s house cooking for their friends on Friday nights!

Soft & Chewy (M&M) Chocolate Chip Cookies – via Martha Stewart

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed light-brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups semisweet and/or milk chocolate chips
1 cup plain chocolate M&Ms

My granny would dump M&Ms into her standard chocolate chip cookies sometimes if I was in the kitchen with her. It kept the grown ups from eating them all and my sister and I loved them even more this way. This is your standard sift together the dry, cream the butter and sugar, add eggs and then add dry to wet style cookie recipes.

To clarify…whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt. Cream the butter and both sugars together, then add the eggs one at a time and the vanilla. Mix the dry ingredients into the wet and then stir in the chocolate chips and M&Ms. Bake at 350 for about 11 minutes.

I may have lost count, but I’m pretty sure this is my 18th WIP, I think my last one was in October!

These socks were knit for Sockdown, month 4. They’re called Basket Case Socks and they were a pretty quick knit. I kept getting distracted by Christmas prep for the kids – first Christmas in a new country with all our stuff back home meant I needed to round up a lot of the traditional comforts for them and to be honest, that wasn’t easy. Most of November was eaten up with planning and then of course December was full of doing! I just casted on for Aramis Socks last night, so there’s not much to report on that front other than to say I’m making a dent on my first day out of the gate!

Between socks, I’m still working on my Beekeeper Quilt. I have a list of projects I really want to work on this year, but I think I will make a rule for myself that everything has to be made with sock weight yarn so I can use all my scraps for the quilt. I’m looking forward to finishing my quilt this year but I do love the look of all my hexi puffs on the table like this. When I come to the end of a scrap ball, I start up with the next in line and I love those puffs the most! Here are my favorites out of the 200+ that I have so far.

I’m nervous to admit that I want to take on another knitting challenge this year, in addition to the 12 pairs of socks for Sockdown 6 and the finishing the beautiful quilt from all these puffs – I want to do Tiny Owl Knits 13 in 2013. The Beekeeper’s Quilt is a Tiny Owl Knits project and all her (Stephanie Dosen) projects are equally adorable and full of whimsy. Dare I try it?! Someone encourage me!!

I love New Years Eve! We never really do anything epic, but it’s the traditions that make it epic for us. As a kid and teenager, I always spent it with my parents, my sister and my grandparents. My granny would make her tuna, salmon, egg and sometimes chicken bouchees. My mother always made a bunt cake and stuck a coin in it. Then she’d cut pieces and name them for people in a very specific order, whoever gets the coin is supposed to have great luck that year! Instead of a bunt cake, the traditional Greek New Year’s cake to slip a coin into is called the Vasiliopita. Interesting that the tradition itself comes from the name day (Greeks celebrate name days almost as seriously as we celebrate birthdays) that lands on Jan 1 (Saint Vasili the Great). This saint would distribute cakes with coins hidden inside them to the poor people in his parish. Ha! Snuck in a random history lesson! We always cut a piece for all the poor people in the world, and this year that’s who got the coin!

Here’s the recipe I used this year! Wee One #2 helped, it was pretty simple and despite having six eggs in it, we tried it and it was really good!!

1 cup butter 2 cups sugar 3 cups flour 6 eggs 2 teaspoons baking powder	1 cup warm milk 1/2 teaspoon baking soda 1 tablespoon lemon juice 1/4 cup chopped almonds 1/4 cup white sugar

I had a three year old ‘helper’ making this with me and it still came together quickly!

Preheat oven to 350 and grease a 10″ cake pan. Cream the butter and the sugar, then stir in the flour until the mixture looks like almond meal. Add the eggs. One. At. A. Time. Mix the baking powder and milk and then add that to the egg mixture. Now mix the lemon juice and baking soda and add that to the mixture as well. Pour into your cake pan and bake for 20 minutes. Sprinkle the top of the (half baked) cake with the chopped almonds and sugar and bake for another 45 minutes. Mine baked up so tall and grand the almond and sugar on top looked so pretty!

Anyhoo, the first couple of years after my husband and I got together we celebrated just as I had done as a kid, with my folks and after the little ones started coming, we started rotating where we’d spend Christmas and New Years. It was either laid back with my folks or his. There was one year when a few of my girlfriends came over and we knitted through the countdown. Since then I try to do that where ever I happen to be celebrating. This year we are thankful to be able to say we have made a lot of great friends here already, but when it comes to New Years they are generally divided into two groups. Those with kids that celebrate with family, and those without kids that celebrate with shots.

Both are equally fun, but we have decided to start a new tradition – settling in with fun treats for the littles, and savory treats for us. A kid’s countdown at 9pm PST was perfect because that’s midnight in Ontario, and gave me time to get the littles to bed before the actual countdown at midnight!

*I think the teeny nerds-encrusted martini glasses with dark chocolate almond milk helped make this NYE a little different, and special, for the little ones.

We had a lovely New Years Eve and plan to spend our entire New Years Day playing board games and watching Dinosaur Train. I love me some resolutions and I’ve been getting better at sticking to them so here’s my official list for 2013.

1) read 52 books

2) sew a dress for myself

3) send everyone a card for their birthday

4) make candles

5) hand write and mail (at least) 52 letters

6) knit this quilt (202/400 puffs)

7) knit 12 pairs of socks

8 ) bake one new cookie recipe every week – and blog about it

9) make a small quilt

10) start a ‘What I did today’ daily journal project (I really like the index card one)

11) participate in Craftster’s Monthly Challenge

12) go on at least one epic road trip and as many smaller ones as possible

Let’s recap how I did with my to-do of 2012, shaaaall we?
1) read 52 books (24/52) – So I fell 28 books shy of my goal. Instead of lowering it, I’m going to aim for 52 again in 2013.

2) sew a dress for myself – No excuse. I even bought a new sewing machine after leaving mine in Canada! Back on the list for 2013.

3) send everyone a card for their birthday – I came reeeeally close but I can’t cross it off because I did overlook a few and some were crazy late. Hoping to manage it in 2013 better!

4) learn to play chess – I’m not exactly losing hope on this one, but I would really rather knit than learn chess. Not adding it to the 2013 list, but if it comes up, I’m all over it.

5) make candles – This will totally happen in 2013

6) hand write & mail letters (76/52) – I nailed this one! Plan to do it again in 2013

7) learn some fashion history – I did hours of online research, poured over old Vogues from the library and read The Beautiful Fall on the recommendation of my girl Mutant Supermodel. So good!

8) watch these movies (14/100) – I totally abandoned this list in April when we moved down to LA, I have watched at least 50+ movies this year but not from that list! In 2013 I will just keep a list of what I have watched!

9) make (& use) a worm bin – We moved from our house before the ground thawed and into a garden apartment so no worm bin this year! I also don’t know if I care enough about it for it to make the 2013 list haha.

10) make soap – I did this with my friend Vanessa, her boyfriend Steve and my husband. It’s like magic! So fun too!!

11) knit this quit – I got halfway there!! It’s defo going on the 2013 list.
puff count = 202/400

12) knit 12 pairs of socks (14/12) – I rocked this challenge too! Doing it again in 2013!

Happy New Years Eve!! Tonight we’ll celebrate with the littles early and call our parents and then we’ll celebrate at midnight and call a bunch of friends on the East coast at 3am. Hehe. That means YOU, Talea! I am looking forward to tonight, but I’ll wait and show you all the silly fun tomorrow!!

In 2011 I set out to cook and bake my way through Deceptively Delicious. I made a decent dent in it, more than half of the recipes, and I kept making recipes from it this year. There are just a few I haven’t gotten to yet. It’s a fun book full of sneaky ways to add vegetable purees into everyday recipes, focused on getting your kids to eat them but it works just as well with husband and yourself! I’m not big on a lot of the healthiest veggies so I love to add them in to recipes! I know they’re there and I’m getting the benefits of them without sitting down to a plate of spinach, you know?

Here are four of the recipes I made a while ago, but just posted. All of them were simple and tasted great!

	There have been a lot of serious winners from his book in our house and a few not so well received dishes. This one though has become our oldest little one’s favorite snack. He asks fot it several times a week. Just before we moved to LA, I made this for him and a three of his friends and they inhaled it. For the record, none of those kids would ever eat squash or navy beans or even sour cream! (read)
	read)
	I am the only person in the house that isn’t a big fan of spaghetti and pasta sauce. I actually kinda hate it. If I make it for the fam and I don’t feel like coking something else, I’ll eat it. Another exception is if we are visiting someone and they make it. Otherwise, noooo thank you. This sauce though? Not bad at all. I honestly didn’t mind it at all and I think it was the addition of the sweet potato puree that made it better. (read)
	I was a little nervous to present these to the kids because they’re not big on raisins OR nuts in their cookies so these didn’t go ove too well with them, but a few of my girlfriends were over when I made these and they loved them! No one had any idea there was zucchini in them until I told them. You could add wheat bran or ground flax to these to really up the fiber without changing the taste! Or swap the raisins for dried cranberries! (read)

There was a whole lot of baking going on around here this month but most of it was so pedestrian it wasn’t worth posting recipes of! I let the kids choose what we baked every time they asked to, so we ended up with A LOT of chocolate chip cookies and we did sugar cookies over and over and of course we made gingerbread maybe half a dozen times. They teamed up and decorated a gingerbread house together and there was much decking of halls and wrapping of gifts and watching of Christmas movies while I knitted on Christmas socks (as in, gift socks for Christmas, not Christmasy socks).

When I had a little time to steal, like say after they went to bed and before they got up, I tried out these recipes and they were all winners. Usually, I make batches and batches of cookies starting in mid-November so by Christmas I have a stockpile of 6 or 7 different kinds of cookies. Then I make assorted tins and bring them around to our friends and family as gifts. This year, I didn’t do that because while I had a handful of people that I could have brought assorted homemade treat tins to, it wasn’t enough for a the amount I end up with when I bake so many different kinds.

The funny thing is, the closer it got to Christmas, the more treat tin-worthy friends we were all making and by Christmas week, I easily could have given away as many as we would have had if I had just done my Christmas baking as usual. Oh well! Next year I will make lots!!

Here is the roundup of the four recipes I used this year.

	I made these one afternoon for a ‘bring a snack’ style mini potluck with some mommy friends at Silly Goose. They went over well with both kids and parents, which surprised me because I didn’t think the kids would be into it. (read)
	These were originally intended and baked up for my father and my dear friend’s brother. The kids always get to try new cookies even if the batch is destined for someone else – they liked these cookies so much they ate almost the entire first batch and once my husband discovered them, it was game over. I didn’t have enough left to send a decent package! Hilarious but nice to know when I have a winning recipe on my hands like this one. (read)
	This is not a recipe, it’s 5 things you have on hand mashed together and rolled into balls. Oh and you can drizzle them with chocolate but I was taking them to the park and they are not very mobile once they’re covered in chocolate. This is the kind of treat I’ll whip up before bed for the next afternoon when I know I’ll have no time but the kids will be asking for something. Be careful though, the part of you that is still 6 years old will want to eat as many as you can get your hands on and if you have a 6 year old, you’re going to want to keep a close watch on these babies. (read)
	I usually only do one cookie for Christmas that involves white chocolate, but this year I was so smitten with two recipes I went for it. This is the second of the two. I’ve never used maraschino cherries in a recipe before so it was a first and it totally worked out! Definitely drain the cherries well after you chop them, too much liquid will ruin the recipe and the cookies wont hold together as well. (read)

More little pieces of our Christmas, this time, kitchen edition.

-decorating a gingerbread house in your Hello Kitty pearls and Tink costume is a must (duh)
-making fondant from scratch and letting your kids attack gingerbread people with them makes for a seriously fun afternoon
-gingerbread houses can never have too many teeth breaking candies stuck to them
-pancakes taste better when they have seasonally appropriate shapes
-everyone loves festive treat boxes (I’m glad I haven’t met anyone who hates them, anyway)
-cakes should be baked in tree pans, painstakingly decorated with homemade buttercream and handed over to the little ones for dessert
-3 year olds are seriously into baking (another duh)