a few weeks ago, some of my friends and i hosted a bridal shower for mary, whose wedding is in june. we decided the theme should be musicals — just for fun.

i illustrated the table cards to explain how the food all tied in to the theme. at the end of the party, those table cards went into a book that also had additional illustrated pages of special quotes each of the hostesses chose (signed with personal well wishes for the happy couple). i chose hairspray — “without love, life is like the seasons with no summer. without love, life is rock ‘n’ roll without a drummer.”

nina’s house was filled with gorgeous tulips, too. it was such a fun, colorful day (just a few days after a big snowfall, too).

after everyone had a chance to enjoy some of the food, we launched into the first game. the objective was to try to pronounce a character’s name from a couple of mary’s favorite musicals — with a giant marshmallow stuffed into your mouth!

katie developed a “chipmunking” technique.

i had no idea how difficult it actually was until i tried it, but luckily i was too busy taking photos and only had to attempt it once.

then, to the next game…

i’m not sure where jane found this one but it was both hilarious and completely inappropriate. yes, there is video. no, i’m not posting it (i promised everyone [and myself] that i wouldn’t embarrass us all like that).

michelle’s coconut cake with coconut ice cream was ohmygodyum. i wish i had some right now.

and then it was time for gifts!

nina was the purveyor of gifts.

katie explains why its very important to have at least one nice, big serving tray. and she sure picked a lovely one for mary!

this was so cute – mother of the groom put together a whole picnic kit, complete with rainy day substitution!

custom apron for mary, who loves aprons.

and, finally, the hostesses presented the book that includes the table cards, our well wishes, and…

a ticket for her and her future husband to see the musical of their choice. (judging by her face, i think she was surprised and very pleased!)

i’m so excited for her wedding! it will be at her family’s farm in south dakota and guaranteed to be a super fun time.

the weather in the twin cities and a-maz-ing today. we have had the windows open since about 10:30am. the breeze is cool, the sun is bright. it’s awesome. i totally should’ve planned for a visit to a winery today, but, since i’m supposed to be taking it easy this weekend (i had a tooth pulled on thursday for my second — and final — tooth implant), i will relive the memories of a recent visit to a couple wineries with a few good girlfriends.

winehaven, in chisago city, is the second oldest winery in minnesota. it is also the fourth winery that we crossed off of our three rivers wine trail passports.

the tasting was free and pretty delicious! i enjoyed their deer garden blush quite a bit.

i’m a sucker for a cool label!

i wanted to buy more, but i resisted for now and just brought home a bottle of mead to enjoy sometime with jason.

kristi, bertine, vani, and i were heading to one more winery for our winery adventure day. we stopped at romayne’s on main in taylors falls for lunch — and there was a chili cook off (and tasting) going on. we all felt a little overwhelmed and distracted by the chaos here, but the bloody marys and burgers were pretty delicious.

they had a really lovely-looking patio out front that would be awesome to visit in the summer, by the way.

the gals and i headed across the river to chateau st. croix (in wisconsin!) to spend a crowd cut coupon i had purchased (tour/cheese/tastings).

jason and i have visited before, so kristi and vani took the tour (and were in charge of getting the cheese) while bertine and i started tasting wine.

we were actually a little bit late for the tour reservation i had made, so it turned out that vani and kristi had snuck into a completely different tour organized through living social. and they almost had them fooled until it was discovered that there two more people than there were chairs for their reception.

this reminded me of a christmas gift i got from jason’s aunt, renee — a diy wine cork trivet. i am currently saving every wine cork (including the plastic ones) for it, since it could maybe be something decorative for the house instead of just something on which we put hot things. (the majority of the corks i have so far are from apothic red. have you tried that wine? i love it. looking forward to trying the recently released apothic white, too.)

good girlfriends + good wine + mini road trip = an excellent day

Brenda from The A to B of Cooking came over the other night, when I had no idea what to make for dinner. She proposed trading her cooking for my photography… um, yeah, of course I’ll take that trade!

Lucky for her, it’s pretty rare that I feel like making dinner — but I’m always up for taking photos.

I’m looking forward to your next visit, B! Yum!!

it’s not quite over yet, because i haven’t posted my millions of photos here.

(this is chocolate-covered bacon, courtesy of aunt kim.)

during the actual christmas weekend, jason and i went to south dakota to celebrate with my family. we hung out with a bunch of my hometown friends on friday night (and mostly had the karaoke stage to ourselves), celebrated with my mom’s family on saturday (christmas eve), and celebrated with my dad’s family on sunday (christmas day).

other long-overdue posts on the way: the monday after christmas was for celebrating bertine and zach’s wedding. last weekend, we drove down to des moines to celebrate christmas (and nephew jaxon’s second birthday) with jason’s family.

that’s a lot of celebrating!

this is the face that hannie makes when she is excited but shy. she’s a pretty adorable kid!

have i mentioned the four shih tzus that accompany my mom’s side of the family?

we have been doing a white elephant-style gift exchange for quite a few years now. the premise is that you roll the dice and if you get a pair (or two pair), you can pick a gift (or two gifts) from either the pile in the middle or you can steal from someone who has two or more gifts. this year, dad tried to steal a gift from hannie and you know what she did?

she cried. of course. don’t steal gifts from the baby of the family!

jeremy got a jar of preserved lemons. what would you do with that?

pretty much all of jason’s gifts were for me (zebra-print snuggie, bubble bath, fondue set for two — i suppose maybe i’ll share that one with him).

i like this sequence of photos. dog in box — kid petting dog in box — kid in box.

these desserts may look the same but one was pistachio and the other was chocolate. i tried both, both were awesome.

later on christmas eve, after returning to my parents’ house, we had our own little christmas. hannie is very good at opening presents!

i gave bryan coffee and sausage for christmas. he claimed it was exactly what he wanted.

dad got a giant box of chocolate and a donut maker.

jason got a domo calendar and many home depot gift cards (and we got a joint home depot gift card) — time to get crackin’ on those home projects!

this face is for ryan, the sender of the “unicorn meat” for bryan.

actual bits of “meat” inside! too funny.

a couple of my christmas gifts. (have i mentioned i’m in love with my iphone? last night it kept me up 30 minutes after i meant to go to bed — this happens too often now.)

hannie would later tell me not to mess up her piggies.

can you guess what this gift from pop-pop is?

hannie’s first fishing pole! we all had to make sure she didn’t swing it into our heads for the rest of the night. and the next morning.

(playing with the bokeh kit, which has all kinds of fun shapes.)

i wish i looked less tired in this photo, but as joyful and exciting as it had been, it had also been a long christmas eve day.

bryan and jason helped mom frost christmas cookies before we all wound down and went to bed. (visions of sugar-plums dancing in our heads…)

we went to grandma d’s house for christmas day. bryan and dad made homemade ice cream, yum!

three kinds of soup for lunch: zuppe toscana, chili, and chicken noodle.

homemade vanilla ice cream and jason’s egg nog cookies for dessert. yum x 2!

we all watched with excitement as hannie opened her gifts from “owl grandma.”

this is the view from grandma’s house, so we also watched the sheep graze all day.

hannie and i played with my iphone. she wanted me to try on aunt deb’s glasses, too.

jason and i drove home to minneapolis from grandma d’s house. on the way, i introduced him to the jolly green giant in blue earth, minnesota.

and when we got home, the kitties got to enjoy their christmas gift from hannie:

i’m finding that my iphone isn’t quick enough to properly capture playful cats!

The Prairie Fire Lady Choir is on haitus until March or April, so instead of getting together to sing, we got together to make tamales!

Valerie hosted us, with the husks and sangria prepared.

There may have still been some singing and piano playing while we were together.

Molly made masa all day long. Masa for meaty tamales, masa for veggie tamales, and sweet corn masa for plain tamales.

Valerie (and her husband) have beautiful cats and Buddha alters.

Adding lard!

These cookies were homemade and covered in edible glitter. Me = impressed.

Valerie showed us a few example tamales to get started, then we let ‘er rip!

We were putting our tamales into the big silver kettle for steaming.

We made so many! They took much longer to steam than anticipated.

Annette decided to grab my camera while I was making tamales. Proof that I helped!

Ready for eating!!

Yum! I can’t wait to do this again!