almost christmas

One week before Christmas Eve, Steve and I went shopping downtown. Certainly not my favorite time to be out and about in the city, but luckily we only had a few stops to make. We went to Anthropologie first to grab a present for Carmen and select our new Christmas ornaments for 2011. Then, we walked to the Ferry Building. We needed sunchokes, squab, and mushrooms; and Steve had to order our standing rib roast for Christmas dinner. We also fought our way through the crowds at Recchiuti and Miette for a couple more presents. While Steve was ordering the meat, I occupied myself at the Heath Ceramics store, drooling over the dishes and vases and linens.

351/365 a heath christmas

We decided that Steve would make the squab with sunchoke puree and mushrooms for lunch the next day. Usually we would eat it for dinner, but this way I was able to take a picture of it. Not our best food styling work, but it was tasty anyway.

352/365 squab & sunchokes

On Monday, I was inspired to take a picture of one of the ornaments we had bought at Anthropologie on Saturday. (Actually, I got the idea on Sunday, but I waited until a day when I didn't already have a picture to take.) While we were at Anthropologie, I saw a book of animal prints by Sharon Montrose. I had come across her work last spring and pinned it to Pinterest, but seeing the book reminded me of how much I liked it. So that was my inspiration for photographing the owl ornament. I just had to set up the appropriate white/neutral backdrop.

353/365 little owl

I watched Elsa on Tuesday morning, and since she was napping for the first half of it, I took pictures of Enzo. He was napping too, so I posed his snowman toy with him. He's been playing with that thing for a long time: long enough for Christmas to come back around and make it seasonally appropriate again.

354/365 a long winter's nap

I spent some of Wednesday afternoon wrapping Christmas presents with our two roles of wrapping paper. We also went to see Bring It On: The Musical that evening, and I took pictures of the fairytale-themed Christmas windows at Shreve & Co. Those were cute, but I thought the present pile picture worked better with the rest of the December pictures.

355/365 present pile

Thursday was Carmen's birthday, celebrated with an especially good dinner at Contigo and an impromptu visit to Tom & Jerry's Christmas Tree. (It's a house in the neighborhood with a huge tree and tons of decorations.) Then, we returned to our house and did cake and presents for Carmen downstairs.

356/365 tom & jerry's christmas tree

Finally, Friday was the day before Christmas Eve. My main outing was for some last minute stocking stuffers from a kids store on Valencia, so my picture of the day ended up being one of the star decorations in the window of nearby Casa Bonampek.

357/365 colorful star

Christmas is coming next!