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!

week fifty

Oh yes, there's more. I'm up to week 50!

That Saturday was a busy one. Steve and I met Pei for brunch at Foreign Cinema, where we (Pei and I) pointed cameras at our food. Then, after Elsa's second nap, I headed to the Presidio with Dan and Carmen's gang to take some Christmas card pictures. When trying to determine the perfect location for holiday portraits in not-so-snowy San Francisco, I thought somewhere foresty would be ideal. I don't know that many woodsy places in SF, but I remembered seeing pictures of the Wood Line in the Presidio. We managed to find it and took advantage of the quickly fading sunlight, despite the chill. It was challenging to get a shot with all three of them looking pleasant, though, especially when Enzo was added in. He and Elsa were easily distracted. We also had to keep putting Elsa's shoes (and occasionally socks) back on; she kept kicking them off. In the end, Dan and Carmen went with this shot for their Christmas cards. I, however, had trouble getting past the fact that that picture's focus was a little soft, so I went with the one below for my picture of the day.

344/365 family portraits

On our way back from brunch on Saturday, Steve and I stopped by Sun Fat for a couple dungeness crabs. It was time to take advantage of crab season, since we've been bad about that in the past. Steve used one of the crabs on top of carrot soup that night, and he used the other for crab cakes on Sunday. We had to choose between a couple styles/recipes for crab cakes, but Steve decided to try out the one from Ad Hoc at Home—a crab cake of the panko-coated persuasion. I was happy that, unlike a few weeks before, I had time to spend on plating the thing for my picture. The greens are little sparse in the back, but I liked this frame better than the ones I took after tinkering with it. Oh, and the crab cakes were tasty. Steve made them again for our Christmas Eve dinner with Dan and Carmen.

345/365 crab cake

Monday was devoted to baking several dozen snickerdoodles for a cookie party that I attended that evening. I spent about an hour in the morning throwing the dough together, and then it had to rest in the fridge for a while. The whole afternoon was spent doing the cookie shuffle: scoop, sprinkle, bake, rotate, bake, rest, transfer, repeat. I had chosen snickerdoodles, because they were the easiest I could think of. But using the small cookie scoop, the doubled recipe made way more than the necessary 6 dozen. I actually baked the last few dozen the next day, because I was running out of time and had plenty of cookies already. For the picture of the day, I shot some ranunculus flowers on the table with snickerdoodles cooling in the background. Coincidentally, I took a picture of snickerdoodles and ranunculus the year before too. 'Tis the season, I guess.

346/365 snickerdoodle production

After baking the rest of the cookies on Tuesday, I went downstairs to work with Carmen on a Blurb book of Elsa's first 6 months. The good thing about being so behind in blogging is that I can admit that that's what I was doing that day. :) The book was a Christmas present for the in-laws, as well as for Carmen's parents. And since it was all about Elsa, my picture for the day was her new stocking.

347/365 elsa's stocking

Wednesday was the continuation of the Elsa Blurb book work. This time, I took a quick picture of her toy bag on the kitchen counter.

348/365 toy bag

And Thursday was the day that our Christmas cards finally arrived. (Cutting it close...) I would have liked to take a picture of them for that day, but Steve was bringing the box home from work that evening. So I did the next best (easy) thing and taped up some of the other Christmas cards that had come in the mail. These are the people that were more on top of things than I was this year.

349/365 christmas cards

Carmen and I did a bit more work on the Blurb book on Friday afternoon, but I also went for a walk down Valencia Street to look for birthday and Christmas presents for Carmen. Unfortunately, I was too busy with the present finding mission and didn't take many pictures. One of the few I got was from the window of The Curiosity Shoppe. Apparently bears ♥ SF... Curious, indeed.

350/365 bears <3 sf

beginning to look a lot like...

Well, you know the rest. Early December tends to be pretty nice for the 365 project, as I finally allow myself to take pictures of the Christmas decorations that I've been seeing around since, I don't know, Halloween. During my first project in 2009, I stayed with the Christmas theme from December 1st through the 25th so I could participate in the 24 Days of Christmas group on Flickr. I had lots of ornaments at home that I hadn't photographed before, and it made for a more cohesive mosaic at the end of the month. But of course, it was also a little limiting, when there were better non-Christmas pictures I might have used otherwise, e.g. my first macarons.

So on the third day of December, I decided to let the Christmas theme slide this time. We had made a dinner reservation at Local Mission Eatery after seeing some very tempting new dishes that they had posted on Twitter, and the pictures I took there ended up being my only ones from that day. We ended up really liking the place: fun decor, mismatched china, and interesting seasonal food. They even offer half-sized portions of most dishes—perfect for those of us who like to share things and try more. The only thing I didn't like as much? It was rather dark for pictures in there. I guess we'll just have to come back for lunch or after the daylight savings time shift and hope for a seat near the windows.

337/365 local mission eatery

We had to babysit Elsa on Sunday evening, and I left my picture of the day until then. Luckily, I had lots of time to work on it after giving Elsa her bath, feeding her, and putting her to bed. Dan and Carmen had warned us that we might have to listen to a whole lot of crying, since they had just started sleep training with Elsa the night before, but she was asleep before I even put her in her crib. After that, I took pictures of some of my ornaments on the Christmas tree, including this elf that belonged to my grandparents. It's like the ones people use for "Elf on the Shelf," but way better.

338/365 elf on the tree

Noe Valley seemed like a good place to go on Monday. I probably had to go to the bank or maybe Whole Foods that day, so I kept an eye out for photogenic store windows. Urban Nest won this time with its nesting babushka glasses.

339/365 babushka glasses

I think I was starting to run out of steam around this time of the month/year, because I spent Tuesday procrastinating and leaving my picture-taking until after dark again. Steve and I ended up having burgers at SouthEnd for dinner, passing this tree on the way to and from the restaurant.

340/365 lantern & lights

Wednesday was a little better, though not much. I hadn't taken a picture of my little snowman in a few years, so I built a shot around that on the bathroom window sill.

341/365 big snow, little snow

The next afternoon was spent baking with Carmen and Elsa. We made the sweet & salty brownies from Baked Explorations, which had been on my to-do list since last Christmas. It was my first time making caramel myself, and it turned out really well! Definitely a good addition to the brownies, although the brownies ended up being pretty intense. Unfortunately, by the time the brownies were finished and ready, the daylight was gone. I shot a few pictures of the pot of caramel on Carmen's stove, but I thought it was pretty uninteresting. Then, on the way out, I noticed Elsa's mobile and shot that. Good enough!

342/365 mobile command center

Friday was easier. Carmen and I did part one of her Christmas card photo shoot: just Elsa, in my homemade portrait studio. I've posted shots taken this way before, but I don't think I've mentioned how I set them up. I use the box window in my bedroom, open all the curtains, drape a white bed sheet from the side of the bed to the floor, and cover Dan & Carmen's oversized bean bag with another sheet. The bean bag has worked pretty well to hold up the baby, especially since she's still working on the whole sitting-up-on-her-own thing. The challenge by the end of this session was that she can now roll, so she doesn't necessarily stay in one place for very long.

Anyway, we did pictures using just the bean bag under her, covering her Bumbo chair with the sheet, balancing a Santa hat on her head, wearing Enzo's antlers, and with her clutching some of the fake snowballs I got from CB2 last year. We even tried to get Enzo in on it, but that proved to be rather more challenging. Nevertheless we got a few keepers, including this one.

343/365 elf-sa

Part two of the Christmas card shoot came the next day, but that's another post.