Holidays...

So, last year Mi Cariño and I did a gingerbread house to celebrate the holidays. This year she came up with the idea for us to do our own ornaments.

We met after work in Queens, and the setting this time was cozier. We made the ornaments with pieces of cloth, needle and thread. It was easy, since I've done similar things with manualidades  growing up, but I'm just not really good at combining colors and what not. We were there with Mi Cariño's friend/coworker Becky, who chose some really nice colors, as did Mi Cariño. Ah well, everyone has their own strengths. Here's the finished product:

Mine is in the bottom left, the one with the crazy colors. Mi Cariño's is the beautiful one up top.

Afterward we were all ready for dinner, and so we walked to Wave, a Thai place we've been to several times now, but it's quite tasty. In an effort for something different, I went with Tofu Cashew Nut: onions, mushroom, carrots, baby corn and peppers. Couple that with some white rice:

YUM! I quite enjoyed it. Hopefully we'll be able to continue coming up with fun Holiday things to do in the years to come.

Merry Christmas, Baby

Last night, Cariño and I ventured into Restaurant Row to partake of a tradition neither one of us had been a part of before: making Gingerbread Houses.

It's one of those things I'd read about as a child, or that always makes an appearance in Christmas magazines or specials, "fun things to do with your kids!" type of thing. I'm sure that gingerbread house making happens all over the place, but I always saw it as the quintessential American activity.

Anyway, it couldn't happen in a more incongruous place: the upstairs alcove at the Village Pourhouse, which really is just Joshua Tree with another name. They provided us with super cute house making kits, that included almost everything we'd need to make our house, namely gingerbread, icing, lots and lots of candy.

You begin by pouring an icing foundation, and then it's just a matter of sticking pieces together. Of course, its more time consuming than that. All in all, it took about two hours, and that's without making the thing from scratch. Our finished decorated product is courtesy of Cariño, since I probably would've just stuck candy on to the thing all nilly willy. And I did, on the little tree outside the house. We would've done a better job if we had extra tools, since the kit only comes with plain bags of icing. Our building neighbours were pros at it, and borrowed knives and forks to make a masterpiece of a house: they left a side open so that you could look inside the house. They even made an icing snowman! It was amazing.

But ours came out pretty nice for first timers, I think. Hopefully Cariño's third graders will enjoy it. I know I enjoyed putting it together!

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