Weekend Festivities and Good Food

The last couple weekends have been full of fun stuff. Here is an overview:

The Saturday before last, Jenn and Scott had us over for another wine and cheese tasting and fabulous dinner. We had French white wines, along with some brie and gruyere cheese.

Dinner was pumkpin ravioli (and Jenn even made the ravioli herself!) with cubed chicken and a garlicy sauce on top. Here are some of the raviolis before being boiled:

To die for. They also served bread, brussel sprouts with turkey bacon, and mashed sweet potatoes. What I wouldn't give to be eating that again for dinner tonight! After stuffing ourselves with all that food, we got in the hot tub. Wine tasting, great dinner, and hot tub are becoming a ritual for us over there!

This past weekend was Christmas-come-early. I'm not sure what happened to Thanksgiving, but Friday I helped Jenn put up her Christmas tree in the basement...

...and Scott and I sat in front of the fire and watched as her and Mikey (a friend of Jenn and Scott's) put up her Christmas village around the mantle (Scott says he did his part by building the fire and I did my part with the tree :)). We were rewarded for our hard work with the yummiest semi-homemade pizza ever!

I say semi-homemade because Jenn bought a freshly-made veggie pizza from Whole Foods, then added hamburger, chili peppers, kalamata olives, and lots of cheese herself.

Saturday afternoon I went to my cousin Amanda's house for a Christmas gift party, where I bought this awesome jewelry that Amanda makes and sells to raise money for her and her husband's adoption:

Her stuff is really cute and inexpensive! Sorry gals, I bought all this jewelry for myself. But if you're interested, you can purchase it on her website, http://www.wix.com/amandamay24/jewelry.

The next night, I went over to Jenn and Scott's again for "Godfather Night" in which they had a bunch of friends over to watch The Godfather and to eat lasagna, spaghetti and meatballs, and cannoli ("leave the gun, take the cannoli"). Had to get a picture of this cute little wine charm:

I got there late so didn't see the beginning of the movie. I'll have to watch it again someday since I've never seen it all before. After dinner, everyone watched The Godfather II, but I went home since Ben was getting off work.

Today after church, Ben and I went to lunch with Mom, Dad and Wes (Leslie is visiting a friend in Seattle). We ate at Ichiban, one of those Japanese restaurants where you sit at a table with a bunch of people and they grill all the food right in front of you. I happened to snag a shot of the "onion volcano".

The people on the other side of the table are actually parents of 2 coworkers of mine. They go to Southeast as well, so we run into them there a lot since it's really close to church and a good Sunday lunch place.

I hate to see another weekend come to an end...but looking forward to only working 3 days this week and lots more good food for Thanksgiving!!