It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas

A couple of days ago, a lovely elf delivered a beautiful package to my house…

I couldn’t wait till Christmas to see what was inside…

A beautiful plate designed and created by Oded & Pam Ravek, the amazingly talented couple behind OR DESIGN glassworks.

A huge thank you to Oded, Pam, and Ariela the delivery elf for this fabulous Christmas gift :-) I’ll treasure it always!

Oded & Pam recently traveled to Arad, Israel where their work is now on display at the Glass Art Museum Arad. One of the pieces is this charming platter called Winter Wonder. It was inspired by their daughter’s love of elephants and the magical moment of a child’s first snowfall.

  Wheeeeeee!

To learn about the creative process behind Oded & Pam’s glasswork and see more of their amazing pieces, click here to read the interview I did with them last spring. And be sure to check out their website and blog for even more pictures and information about their work.

Just a few more sleeps till Christmas… I can’t show you too many pictures of my decorations because I’m in the midst of a makeover that I’m going to share with you in the new year. But here are a few, starting with the snowflake tree in the family room (it has a few non-snowflake ornaments too)…

A few close-ups from last year…

The treasure tree in the loft…

And the white tree in the dining room…

Each tree has a ceramic Santa that my mom and I made years ago…

And I decorated the white tree with lots of the glitter balls I made, as well as some handmade ornaments I bought in Budapest last Christmas.

   

You can read about my trip here, here, here, here, here, and here. If you’ve never been to Budapest, I highly recommend adding it to your list of places to see. The architecture is beautiful, the food is delicious (be prepared to gain about 10 pounds!), and even though Hungarian is impossible to understand, it’s relatively easy to find your way around because lots of Hungarians in Budapest speak English.

The dining room dressed up for Christmas…

One of my mini trees has a coastal flair this Christmas…

Balls from the dollar store hung from a curtain rod…

I love these snowmen – the colours change from red to green to blue to purple.

My take on a peacock wreath…

Outdoor tree decorated with dollar store ornaments…

And a little more Christmas baking – we went to a friend’s Christmas party last weekend. She’s gluten free, so rather than making the trifle I usually bring to her parties, I found this recipe for a flourless chocolate cake. One thing I’ve discovered about flourless food – gluten free doesn’t mean calorie free! There’s a whack of butter and sugar and chocolate in this baby, but it’s totally worth it because it’s soooooooooo good! It’s uber-rich & decadent, so you just need a small piece to get big chocolate flavour.

And that, my blog friends, is all for now – I’m taking a blog break over the holidays. I’ll be back in January with more makeovers, more DIY projects, and maybe a surprise or two :-)

From my family to yours, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanza, and everything else festive…

See you in 2012!

Budapest: Day 6

I’m actually back from Budapest now, but seeing as I’ve posted about days 1 to 5, I have to include day 6 too! So let’s just pretend that today is Thursday…

Whoever comes up with the forecasts at The Weather Network was SO wrong about Budapest weather this week, especially today. So much for –4 and sunny – it was more like –15 and cloudy. But that didn’t stop us from putting in another full day of exploring!

We started off with a Segway tour at 10:00AM. I totally didn’t think to get pics of us on our Segways, and the tour covered pretty much the same area we’ve already covered, so there wasn’t anything new to take pics of. Riding a Segway is a total blast, and we learned some really interesting info from our tour guide, though. Here`s something you might not know – in the movie Evita, the scene where Madonna sings “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina”, she was standing on the balcony of the Opera House in Budapest.

We popped inside the Opera House after the Segway tour to warm up a bit. This is the ceiling in the lobby:

Then we set off to look for a restaurant that I wanted to try out in the Jewish Quarter. It took forever to find the restaurant, and when we did finally find it, it was closed. ARGH! The Jewish Quarter is kind of run down, but it’s probably a colourful and vibrant area of the city when the weather is better. There used to be a large Jewish population in Budapest, but many were killed or died trying to leave Hungary during World War II. These are a couple of buildings in the Jewish Quarter…

Budapest has the second-largest Jewish Synagogue in the world (after New York City). I didn’t think we`d seen it, but I just googled it and realized that I took a picture of it without even realizing it!

After lunch, we took the subway up to the end of Andrassy utca to Szechenyi Baths, City Park, and Heroes Square. Budapest has a number of baths around the city, and Szechenyi is probably the most popular one.

We didn’t have our bathing suits with us, so we just walked around the outside of the building…

…and took a peek inside. The ceiling is beautiful.

Across the street from the baths is Vajdahunyad Castle. It was designed by Ignác Alpár and was built between 1896 and 1908. It was originally made from cardboard and wood for Hungary`s millennial exhibition in 1896, but it became so popular that it was rebuilt with stone and brick. Today it houses the Agricultural Museum.

And then we went to Hosok Ter (Heroes Square). It`s a huge square at the top of Andrassy utca. Millennium Memorial (also known as Millennium Monument or Millenary Monument) is in the center of the square and includes statues of the leaders of the seven tribes that founded Hungary in the 9th century and other outstanding figures of Hungarian history. The construction of the memorial was started when the 1000th anniversary of Hungary was celebrated in 1896, but it wasn’t finished until 1900.

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If you read my previous posts about Budapest, you know that St. Stephen is an important figure in Hungary`s history. So of course his statue is in Heroes Square:

After Heroes Square, it was back on the subway to the hotel, and then out to wander around the market, which still had a bunch of booths…

I bought a huge purple pencil for my office :-)

Budapest has the prettiest manhole covers I’ve seen.

Shop windows along Vaci utca…

I had to buy one of these purple, white, and copper ornaments:

I wanted to buy one of these ceramic paper bags too, but sadly my willpower kicked in ;-)

A couple more shops near Vorosmoty ter…

Then we went to Gerbaud to buy some cake…

…and to Menza for dinner. I was totally planning to have the Hungarian cottage cheese dumplings for dessert, but I was absolutely stuffed with creamy garlic soup, a mini langos, pig`s knuckle, potatoes, a hot apple pie drink, and a sour cherry pie drink! Hey, it was our last night in Budapest, we had to live it up a bit! ;-) After dinner, we walked back to the hotel and packed for our trip back home. Good-bye Budapest, we had a great time getting to know you!

And now we`re back in Ottawa. But unfortunately, our luggage is in Germany. We barely made our connection in Frankfurt, and our luggage didn`t. When it shows up (hopefully later today), Canada Customs is going to confiscate my salami. I`m SO ticked off about that. We walked really far to buy authentic Hungarian Pick`s Salami, and now we find out we aren`t allowed to bring it into Canada. Grrrrr…. At least I get some form of payback – our luggage is filled with all our dirty clothes, so they`ll have to deal with my skanky underwear if they want my salami!

Happy 2011 everyone!