Christmastime

A pretty, cold winter sky



All I could think about this Christmas was making gingerbread men, so make gingerbread men I did!



Getting together with friends at Christmas is probably the best part

Actually, seeing Hey Rosetta (My favorite band!) at their Christmas concert might have been the best part. There were mummers and it snowed and every song was amazing, as usual. You should give them a listen if you haven't before!

Oh, and there's me holding onto a few of the men I made.

This is where my pup can usually be found, napping in her cupboard in the kitchen. My parents are redoing the kitchen this winter and I'm not sure what she's going to think of it when she doesn't have a little corner with a blanket to nap in.

I ordered these silly sweaters for my brother, sister and I to wear Christmastime. It ended up being quite an ordeal getting us all in the same room to wear them, but they're so ridiculous that I'm glad we did.

Another one of my favorite things about Christmas - cracking nuts! (Is that weird?)



When we went visiting my Nan and Pop on Christmas eve, they had out a bunch of old photos. I fell in love with this one of the two of them in front of their Christmas tree when they were so young - isn't it dreamy?



My friend Heather made us all the cutest cards this year, look at those little buttons!



It has been unusually cold for December here in central Newfoundland this month, which I am one hundred percent not a fan of. However, when I went out to my car and saw this frost constellation on the windshield, I couldn't help but think it was pretty.



One of my nans gave me instax film for Christmas, so now I'm all stocked up to snap pictures of my adventures in England!

My cousin Robyn and I at the little outdoor Christmas Market my town had this year. It was bitter cold out so I warmed up with a latte, and naturally when my ten year old cousin decided she wanted a chocolate marshmallow I had to have one too. What? It was delicious.

How were your Christmasses? I hope everyone had a lovely time with family and friends and lots of holiday cheer. It was so nice spending loads of time with everyone in my hometown before I move. Everyone was all in one place which is a rare occasion.

Next up: The New Year and my move to the UK. I couldn't be more excited for both.

Happy New Year, dolls! See you in 2014.

Infinity Rooms

While wandering around the internet last weekend, I came across an article on Yayoi Kusama's solo show, I Who Have Arrived in Heaven, which is currently at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York. The show's infinity room's are mesmerizing, even in pictures. I can only imagine how amazing they are in real life. Wouldn't you feel so lost in the best possible way in there?

the article, via a cup of jo

Journals

Keeping a journal has been something I've done since I learned to write. I'll write anything in my notebook of the moment - what I did that day, why I'm mad at the world (a frequent topic from age 14-16), what I want to do with my life, where I want to travel, a nice song I heard on the radio, a moment of nostalgia - pretty much anything and everything goes into the pages.
Every so often I like to look at my journals. Flipping through them is a lot of things - humbling, embarassing (most of the time), laugh-inducing - realizing how ridiculous I can be and how I blow things out of proportion so often. I think keeping journals is one of the best ways to grow as a person, not to mention it's a good way to keep track of moments in your life you might otherwise forget! You're not likely to forget the big things like graduation, huge trips, new crushes, breakups.. but you might forget what you did one random Thursday afternoon in 2005. It's nice to have something to remind you of the little things you experienced and went through!
As you can see, my first journal is from 1996, I was just a tiny smidge of a six year old. I desperately wanted to be able to write like an adult, and the entries from that little red and black journal are full of hilarious attempts at doing this. I'd put random quotation marks around letters and use semi-colons in the middle of words. My friend Felicia moved away when I was in the eighth grade and for ages we sent journals back and forth to each other every few weeks. The green one down on the bottom is one of the ones we sent. I love that one because it has some of me and some of her in it, and we were ridiculously funny at the time (I might be a bit biased but I still laugh at some of the things we wrote).
Every so often I forget to write in my journal for a period of time, and I know how cliche it sounds but when I start up again I feel so much better. It is, like everyone says, therapeutic to write down all your thoughts and ideas, the things that have happened to you and the things you hope and want to happen. Do you guys keep journals? I'm not sure I'll ever stop writing in one.

Recipe: Cranberry White Chocolate Biscotti

And so the Christmas baking begins!
Well.. if we're being real here, my mom started about a week ago. We take Christmas very seriously in this house.
I decided on a cranberry white chocolate biscotti. I love biscotti. I mean, there's not many baked goods I don't like. I'm kind of a sweet fanatic, if you haven't gotten that from my blog yet. A few years back (a good few.. I think I might have been in high school? Oi..) my mom and I found a recipe for something like this and I remember loving it and feeling so sophisticated eating biscotti and then for some reason we never made it again after.
Side note: Why does blogger want to correct biscotti to Scottish? Don't they know what a biscotti is?Anyways, while in the grocery store today on a whim I decided that's what I wanted to bake today. So my mom and I went on the mad hunt for the dried cranberries which were oh-so-conveniently located beneath the oranges and lemons (what?).
I'm not going to lie, I didn't drink that hot chocolate up there. I used it solely for taking pictures because the biscotti looked a bit sad on it's own on the napkin. (I did, however, eat all of the marshmallows off the top because they were melty gooey perfection.)
Anyways, would you like me to stop rambling and give you the recipe? Here you go:

Cranberry White Chocolate Biscotti
Originally from The Globe and Mail

Ingredients:

1/4 cup (57g) unsalted butter at room temperature
2/3 cup (140g) granulated sugar
1/2 tsp 
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 eggs
2 cups (285g) flour
1/2 cup (60g) chopped dried cranberries
1/2 cup (55g) chopped pecans (I omitted these)
2 tsp milk
1/2 cup (95g) white chocolate chips (I used about 3/4 of a cup - 1/2 in the dough and 1/4 to drizzle on top)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350F. Cover a cookie sheet in parchment paper.
Cream together butter and sugar until fluffy. Add salt, baking powder and almond extract and mix until combined. Beat in the eggs one at a time, scrape down the sides and beat until combined well.
Stir in the flour until most has been worked into the wet ingredients, then fold in the cranberries and white chocolate chips.
Form the dough into a ball and lay onto your cookie sheet. Press into a 35cm long/8cm wide log.
Bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes, until slightly golden around the edges.
Turn the oven down to 325F. Remove the biscotti log from pan and cool on wire rack for 20 minutes.
If you are impatient like me you may want to read some of a Christmas book at this point to pass the time. I highly suggest The House of Wooden Santas, by Kevin Major.
When it has cooled, transfer to a cutting board and with a bread knife cut the log at an angle into 2cm wide slices. Place the biscotti upright on the cookie sheet with about 3cm of space between each piece. Bake at 325F for 20-25 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown.
Once the biscotti has cooled, melt the remainder of the white chocolate in the microwave. Place the biscotti on parchment paper and drizzle the melted chocolate over with a spoon.
Store in a tin or at room temperature for up to a month.
If your house is anything like mine at Christmas, these definitely won't be around for a month.

Happy baking!