Holiday Redux

Happy Birthday to my "little brother"!!! His birthday was yesterday, so I just wanted to acknowledge him. He turned the ripe old age of 26 (I vaguely remember my 20s). He's a great guy, and even bought me knitting books for Christmas. You can't get much better than that!

I also realized that in my last couple posts I never mentioned what I did over Thanksgiving. It was a lovely week of spending time with friends and relaxing. Sure, I should have been working (chapter to write, papers to grade, lectures to prep), but it was nice to ignore it all for a little while. On Thanksgiving we had a lovely meal out with a good friend and her family in San Diego. We had a wonderful time catching up and showing the hubby San Diego for the first. On Saturday, we hosted a few friends at our apartment for "Thanksgiving" dinner. We made:

12-lb turkey
mashed yukon gold potatoes
carmelized mashed sweet potatoes
sausage stuffing
pear-cranberry-jalepeno chutney
homemade cloverleaf rolls
dill-vinegar cucumber salad
pumkin cheesecake (we cheated a little and bought a Cheesecake Factory one. Yum!)

Our friends brought a delicious carrot salad, lovely flowers, and wonderful conversation.

This past weekend, I started to come down with a cold. A whole semester of fighting off various viruses and my immune system was finally worn down. So, my amusing banter for this post will have to kept to a minimum. It requires too much thought. Instead, I will show you with a progress shot of a scarf I'm making for a Christmas gift. It's made of baby Misti Alpaca Bulk and is softer than you can imagine. My husband says it's like touching clouds. The color is a lot more muted in person, more of a burnt orange.