Union Square
This is going to be mostly a pictoral because my wireless keyboard has gone on strike. And why, pray tell, is it near impossible to find a regular mouse and keyboard rather than a wireless one. I really don’t need it to be wireless and the batteries are forever going out on me.
Anyway……Spent an absolutely lovely afternoon in San Francisco today. First shopping in Union Square, then having a late lunch of sushi before heading over to the Geary Theatre to see A.C.T.’s performance of A Christmas Carol.
The windows at Saks were just magical. I can’t even make sense of this picture and I was there!
Looking out the 2nd story window of Saks towards Macys.
Wonder how many lights are on that tree.
How’s that for a gingerbread house? It’s something like 1300 lbs. of edible architecture. Taken at the Saint Francis hotel. Their pastry chef does one every year and its entirely edible. I couldn’t get a good picture of the base of it but here was an entire gingerbread village below the castle.
It’s on to the show! Geary Theatre (which I think has actually been renamed the A.C.T. Theatre). We saw a wonderful performance of A Christmas Carol. My first time ever seeing ANY performance of that play.
Back in my early 20’s I had a friend that used to work for A.C.T. We could go to performance and if it wasn’t sold out we could see it for free. We couldn’t always sit together but for free who cares. I saw "A Midsummer Night’s Dream" with a relatively unknown (except to San Francisco theater goers) actress playing the part of Titania ~ Annette Bening. We actually got to go to the cast party afterwards and I met her. She was very much aware of her rising star. She was also gorgeous, with waist length blond hair.
Look! A cable car!
This is about a close to snow as we get in the Bay Area. It was very twinkly.
The whole day and evening was very twinkly and sparkly.
O Tannenbaum
We got one of our trees up and decorated. And by ‘we’ I really mean me:
Next weekend we’ll put the live tree up (well, cut tree – as opposed to the faux tree above). I didn’t decorate last year because we were in the throes of remodeling our kitchen and the place was rather a disaster. So I haven’t seen my decorations in two years.
I’m always amazed at how carefully I packed everything up the year before. Generally the day after Christmas I am so through with holiday decorations it’s a miracle that I don’t bag them all up in black garbage bags and put them out on the curb.
Last year I went to a local home decor store called Pottery World* that has fabulous Christmas decorations and displays. They were having a 40% off sale on their Mark Roberts fairies and I bought five of the smaller ones. They are my theme in my auxillary tree (the one above, in the entry way) this year.
Rick and I went to Pottery World today just to look around. I found my themes for the next four years. They had the most adorable silver tree, about three feet tall that I really really really wanted only it was $300. Maybe I’ll see what it’s going for after Christmas this year.
They had one room all done in black, white and silver and, while not exactly my style, it was stunning. They also had a tree done in the richest purples, turquoises and greens – very Arabian nights looking. I was kicking myself for not bringing my camera along.
Tomorrow we go see A Christmas Carol at the Geary Theatre in San Francisco. Feeling very festive these days!
*miserable website – I hate all flash sites.
Three posts in one day!
Will the madness never end?
I just made the world’s easiest cookies. I’m almost embarrassed to post about them because they have all of four ingredients. But I figure there are other busy people out there that may appreciate a less than gourmet cookie recipe so what the heck.
Maida Heatter I am not.
Basically you take any boxed cake mix, add 1/2 cup of vegetable oil and two eggs. Mix together. Roll into 1 inch balls, roll in powdered sugar. Bake at 350 for 10 minutes. That’s it. Makes 3 doz.
Chocolate cake mix works really well. So does lemon cake mix. You can add things like nuts or chocolate chips but then you are just thoroughly complicating things and it ruins the austere simplicity of the cookie. Or add the nuts, who cares about austere?
I actually like to add about a 1/4 tsp. of lemon extract to my lemon ones to make them lemon-ier.
I’m not the most accomplished baker if you haven’t already figured that out. I’m better at recipes where I don’t have to be so precise. Although I do make a killer cheese cake. I actually made a tiered cheese cake for my sister in law’s wedding. And had six back up cheese cakes to serve the masses. It took me about three years to get over that and make it again.
Here’s a little secret – this is what my kitchen really looks like when I’m cooking. I’m not a clean up as you go kind of cook.
Two posts in one day
I can’t decide if I want to go with the tone on tone, pastel route. Or…
A more retro red and green route. I love that color green. It looks a little blueish in the picture but in reality it’s a lovely green.
Decisions decisions. I do have these pre-printed gift tags I can use that go perfectly with the retro look.
Okay I think retro it is.
Teaser
Click on image to view full size
This is just a teaser post while I wait for the light to get better so I can take some pictures. What I really want to post about is Christmas wrap. So stay tuned for that.
I want to make some tags for my gifts. Last year I bought a set of CDs of Vintage Images and I’m going through them to try to find a Christmas image to use. It’s a very nice collection of images broken up into categories. There are over 8,000 images on the three CDs.
Most are what you would expect from a collection of Victorian and Edwardian images – children romping with puppies, cigar labels, vintage postcards and greeting cards. A lot look like they were scanned from fairy tale books. Most I can identify but the above image has me stumped. Is it from a story? Is is just a piece of artwork? It’s very detailed. I mean look at it – it looks like a battle between good and evil maybe?
This is just the sort of picture that would have fascinated me when I was a child. What am I saying ~ it fascinates me now. I may have to make up a story to go with it if I can’t figure out where it is from.