Bringing in the New Year

I want to start by wishing all of you my very best wishes for 2012. May health, happiness, and fulfilment outline your days and may 2012 be the year all your dreams come true!

I always ring in the new year the same way: the Ellyson New Years Eve Extravaganza. Ever New Years Eve, my sisters and I always plan a great dinner party for our parents as well as close friends of the family. Here’s a little glimpse as to what we cooked up this year!

Here I am, apron and all, preparing the table right before it is revealed to all of our guests!  

It’s a little tradition that we have. Every year, the table is kept hidden away from our guest until the last moment, when everyone is invited to join us at the table for the last meal of the year.

Our meal consisted of two courses plus the desert. Each courses is compossed of different elements that are placed on the table so that the guests are free to try what and as much (or as little) as they like!

Here goes for the first course:

Winter crunch salad with warm dipping sauce

Oyster platter (3 varieties)

Potato salad with smoked salmon and horseradish crème fraîche

Fresh mozzarella baked lemon

Lobster salad with avocado on endives

For the second course:

Pan-fried scallops with lentils, asparagus and lemon crème fraîche

Warn squash, arugula and parmesan salad

Braised short rib, stout and potato potpie

And for dessert:

Walnut, caramel and chocolate ganache min-tart

Thanks to my two wonderful sisters for helping me make this happen!

My stocking are hung by the radiator with care!

Hello everyone! I just thought that I’d get one more post in before Christmas.

Even though I spend Christmas at my parent’s home every year, I always make myself a small tree in my apartment.  So here it is: my very own 2011 Christmas Tree! I also always put out my tiny nativity scene… it just wouldn’t be Christmas without it.  

Here’s also a glimpse at this year’s gift wrapping color scheme. As usual I use plain craft paper as my base. This year I chose accents of grey with these 2 snowflake papers and to top everything off, grey yarn and rough cotton name tags!

I want to take the time to offer everyone my warmest wishes for the Holiday season. May your days be filled with joyous moments sent with friends and family!

One gift a day, to feel the Holiday way!

This year I decided to make a very special Holiday gift to my sisters and my parents. I saw in a magazine this great idea from an Advent Gift Chain, with one small gift to open every day of December leading up to Christmas. 

For each day from December 1^st to the 24^th , I wrapped up a little surprise and tied them one to the other forming a little gift chain. Each day, all you have to do is snip off the present of the day and voila!

I made my sisters each their own Advent Gift Chain, but for my parents I decided to alternate. So day one, a gift for mom. Day two, a gift for dad and so on. They take a long time to put together but I think I can say that everyone was very excited with this special Holiday gift. I think it might just have to become a new tradition of mine!

Let there be light!

Are you all in the Christmas mood yet?

6 days before Christmas, we may not have snow yet, but at least we have lights!

Here are the exterior decorations that we put up at our family home (by family home I mean my parent’s house, the home in which I was raised). This is actually where my sisters and I will be celebrating Christmas with our parents so it’s important that the house is extra well decorated.

The front door gets a special treatment! Welcome home to everyone!

White lights, green wreaths with crisp red bows and a sneaky Santa help to make the decor complete.  

When the sun sets and night-time comes around, that’s when the best part can be seen. White lights twinkling in the dark!

Spreading Christmas Cheer!

I LOVE receiving things in the mail (other than bills… yikes). Since I seldom receive envelopes of joy in my mailbox, I make it a point of sending to others what I would love to receive myself. Every Christmas, I make it a personal mission to make and send out Christmas glee to my loved ones by the mail.

This is actually last year’s Christmas card but I thought I would share it with you all anyways!

I decided to make cards using stamps that I would create myself. This was actually my very first attempt at the technique and it turned out quite simple and fun to do. 

You basically have to carve out the design that you want from a rubber block (it actually really looks and feels like an eraser) with a carving tool. It’s a bit tricky at first but I found that I got into the beat of things pretty quickly.

Then, select some ink pads in the colors of your choice and away you go!

I was rather pleased with the final results and my friends and family did enjoy this treat in the mail!

My Christmas countdown!

Happy December to all! Is everyone as excited as I am for a full month of celebrations and good cozy moments with loved ones? I sure hope so!

The advent calendar has always been an important part of my Christmas celebration count-down. For as far as I can remember, my mom has always bought my dad, my sisters and I a chocolate advent calendar. Oh the joy of starting each day with a tiny chocolate that you have to find amongst the scrambles dates. 

This year, I came across a very special, adultish version of my beloved advent calendar. There is this great tea company called David’s Teas, who specialize in loose tea and tea accessories (and who started out in Montreal, Yeah!!!). This Christmas, they came up with this lovely 24 Days of Tea concept. 

I couldn’t help but treat myself to this great calendar that lets you discover a new tea ever day in December up to Christmas.

24 different teas are described along with brewing instructions so each day you can have the joy savouring a new hot cup of happiness.

I guarantee that this 24 Days of Tea is something that every tea lover would be ecstatic to receive and a fantastic to  introduce tea to those who don’t love it yet!

Enjoy!

Ukrainian Eggs

Pysanky is the traditional Ukrainian art of dying eggs for Easter. 

You have to pick what colors you want to use for your eggs. Virtually every color is available from fuchsia to turquoise to lime green to black!

You draw patterns on the eggs using a kistka, a tool that uses melted bee's wax.

You start with the lightest color, usually white. Everything that you want to remain white, you cover with wax, using the kistka. 

Once the design is done, you dye the egg in the next lightest color. In this case yellow. Wherever there is wax, the yellow dye will not be able to stain the egg. This preserves the white part of the design, whatever is under the first wax drawing.

On your yellow egg, you draw in wax all the parts of the design that you want to remain yellow. You then dye your egg in the next darker color, in this case turquoise. You continue like this until you obtain the designs you want in the colors that you want. 

When you are done all of the dying steps, you will end up with an egg that has a large amount of wax on it. Using the flame of a candle, you carefully melt away the wax, revealing the different layers of colors that were protected underneath.

The result is quite stunning!

This is a great relaxing crafty activity to do around Easter time. I defiantly count on making it a tradition in my family!

The Ellyson New Years Eve Extravaganza

I am now 27 years old and I have to say that not once have I celebrated New Years Eve away from my family. My sisters and I consider ourselves a dying breed because we always skip out on all the big parties with friends to celebrate amongst our family and oldest family friends.

New Years Eve is my time to shine and I thank my parents for always giving me carte blanche as far as what food I want to cook up and how I want everything to be set-up. I actually came to the realisation that this is my 11th year organizing and preparing the celebrations.

Yikes…. Time flies when you’re having fun!

Every year I like to think of different dishes to cook up and different ways to spend a nice long meal together around the table. One difficulty though is always figuring out what to cook in order to please all of our different guests, who each have different tastes and eating restrictions.

This year, my recent trip to Morroco inspired me in the way of presenting the food. In Moroccan culture, everyone sits around the table and eats out of the same dish. I really like the sharing aspect and the way that everyone around the table gets involved. It’s very inclusive and really bring everyone together. I truly find that this is a great way of sharing a meal and I wanted to transpose that idea for this supper.

 I decided to prepare different dishes (a variety of different thing to suite everyone’s taste buds) that would be served in two different waves and placed in the center of the table (in 3 different groupings since we were 14 guestscand the table was quite long). This way everyone can eat what they want as we all share the dishes together.

Here is what the menu was composed of.

First wave:
-    Oyster platter with dad’s secret sauce (for as long as I can remember my Dad has always made this  oyster sauce… what a classic)
-    Lobster salade with avocado on endive scoops
-    Shrimp cocktail with 2 dipping sauces
-    Chicken skewers with fresh mint dipping sauce
-    Herb and tomato salad

Second wave:
-    Seared scallops on basil whipped cream
-    Blue cheese and walnut salad with marinated onions
-    Beef Wellingtons with a cream mushroom sauce
-    Slow roasted balsamic tomatoes

For dessert:
    - Pear caramel pots

The super was a real hit! Everyone had a great time and we brought in the new year on a really good note! I must admit that the whole shared dishes idea turned out great in the sense that it brings everyone together but at the same time everyone is really comfortable in eating what they want. Everyone insisted on being invited next year… so the traditional continues!

Here is the dream team! My sister Anne, myself and my sister Elizabeth. We pulled all of this off on our own! Hooray for teamwork!

I’ll share some of the recipes from this dinner party in later posts!