Happy New Year- 2008!

We did New Years at our place this year. We had a really nice evening with good friends, great food and some fabulous wines (of course).


Becky and Aaron are back from visiting their families for Christmas and it was good to see them. They brought over some wonderful bubbly, delicious home-made bruscetta and a variety of fabulous desserts.

Mikey brought the adorable and very well behaved Daisey & David made his famous Caesar salad and steak.

We ate pigs in blankets (of course), sipped fabulous cocktails, watched a little bit of Dick Clark and rang in 2008 with great friends!

Before and After

I promised before-and-after pictures of our place and now I’ve got ‘em.

Thing is, we painted white over white in most of the rooms- so unless you are physically in our place (hint: come visit!) you really cant see the difference. I’ve included side-by-side pics of the bedroom and a few from around the house.

Bedroom (before)

Bedroom (after)

Kitchen (before) Kitchen (after)

Living Room (before)

Living Room (after)

The Ketubah is up- we’re still re-hanging the rest of our art and pictures.

I heart Texas- Part II

We were lucky enough to be invited over for dinner at Liz and Tommy’s place again last night.

David has been very excited to cook with Chuck since we met him last month, and was hoping pick up some new techniques and dishes and to hear some more of his great stories. Expectations were high and the evening certainly did not disappoint.

The men got to work in the kitchen while the ladies enjoyed an aperitif.

Our tapas-style dinner featured:

A yummy salmon carpaccio with caviar, onions, cream cheese,capers, and boiled eggs on toasted rounds of Italian bread.

A rustic bruschetta with sliced tomatoes with mozzarella cheese, fresh basil,black and green Greek olives, sun dried tomatoes and olive oil.

Poached shrimp with a zesty and wonderful New Orleans red sauce and a southern Louisiana remoulade sauce.

We also had grilled shrimp in a delicious and rich garlic butter sauce.

Our amazing hosts

Our decadent dessert was strawberries Romanoff with Ameretto Cream

deeeee-lish!

Even Abbey wanted a taste of the fun!

We did indeed hear some more great stories and had so much fun. The food, wine and company were amazing and we feel really lucky to have had the opportunity to see Chuck again before he went back to Texas. We hope to have him over the next time he is in the area.

Thanks so much to Liz and Tommy for hosting us again!

cool art

I recently got an e-mail forwarded to me containing pictures of artwork done by Julian Beever. I’m sure many of you have already seen these- but I thought they were worth posting here.

Julian Beever is an English chalk artist who has been creating trompe-l'œil drawings on pavement surfaces since the mid-1990s. His works are created using a projection called anamorphosis, and create the illusion of three dimensions when viewed from the correct angle.

Trompe-l'œil is an art technique involving extremely realistic imagery in order to create the optical illusion that the depicted objects really exist, instead of actually being a two-dimensional painting. The name is derived from French for "trick the eye", from tromper - to deceive and l'œil - the eye

Below are some of my favorite pavement drawings of his. He has worked in the UK, Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Spain, the U.S., Australia and Brazil.

Taking the plunge

Swimming-Pool In The High Street

White water rafting

The illusion of the Politicians Meeting Their End was drawn outside The Bank of England and was commissioned by Channel 4's Midnight Special for the night of the 1997 General Election.

Rembrandts with Rembrandts.

Push the boat out

Beneath every street ...

Meeting Mr Frog

Beneath every carpark...

Pre-modernist and post-modernist

Beever also paints murals and replicas of the works of masters and oil paintings, and creates collages which can be found on his website: http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/

Anyway...I hope you enjoy.

Last post about Hannukah 2007

I had been kinda bummed about Hanukkah falling so early this year- it was like a week after Thanksgiving- but I have to admit that it’s kind of nice to have all of my shopping and gift giving done before the malls got too crowded this year.

I really love this picture of the White House menorah

For the last night of Hanukkah, David surprised me with gorgeous flowers and champagne, a dinner of all my favorite things and some new sweaters. I hope everyone had a fabulous Hanukkah and has a very Merry Christmas!

In other news…The painter started working on our place yesterday. He should be done by the end of the week or early next week. Before-and-after pics to follow.

Trip to the Grandparents & the Sunshine state

We went to Florida this weekend to visit the grandparents and escape the snow. I’m totally loving Southwest’s new boarding pass system with numbers and letters- no more standing in line behind the giant “B” for an hour before you board. They were also exactly on time for both flights- a rare gem- good times, happy passengers.

We arrived Friday night and drove to G&G Ehrlich. On Saturday, Grandma Sara made latkes for us (ps, never try to help out in her kitchen- it won’t work) while David and Grandpa Joe played around online for a bit.

Grating potatoes for latkes

almost ready...

done! Perfect and oily and delicious!

yum!

Saturday evening we went to G&G Felder for some Hanukkah celebrating and dinner. G&G Koles came over for a bit and my friend Jason came over as well. It was so good to see him and for him to (finally) meet David. Then we lit candles and had a really nice dinner.


David and Paul- enjoying a scotch

It was great to see Jason!

lighting candles together

On Sunday we went to G&G Koles for brunch. That is one tasty buffet they have. Later, I showed grandma what Craigslist is- we decided that folks in West Palm sell a lot of junk.

Then it was back to G&G Ehrlich for a while before returning the car and heading home to Baltimore. It was a really fun visit and we hope every has a great time on their respective cruises. We promise to come back soon!