Holiday Party

With being out of town to Japan, New York and New Orleans this month I'm not going to be able to host a holiday party this year but I thought I'd share my Christmas decorations and food from my party last year.

For decorations I made table runners out of teal and white fabric. I also made pillows out of coordinating fabric and used white felt to add a snowflake motif on one of the pillows.

I kept things simple for my tree decorations with white lights, teal and silver ornament balls, pinecones that I spray painted silver and teal, and silver pipe cleaners that I twisted into spirals.

For the tables I filled vases with extra ornaments and some extra branches I trimmed from my tree. I also put some of the painted pinecones and ornaments in a wooden bowl on my serving table. 

I like to try to make some food ahead for my parties so I made three different cheese balls a few days before that just required garnishing before serving.  The lemon-parsley gougeres can be made ahead and then baked right before the guests come. I also made individual shrimp cocktails by putting a little bit of cocktail sauce in the bottom of a small glass with shrimp and a slice of lemon.  For something sweet I made honey-poached pears with marscapone drizzled with chocolate. I used whole small pears and cored them from underneath to keep the pear intact for presentation. I was happy that with so much I could make ahead everything was stress free for me at the party and I could spend my time enjoying the food with my guests instead of in the kitchen cooking.

At Home in the Kandacho Corporus

Everytime I come back to Japan I take a walk by my old apartment building, the Kandacho Corporus.  It's a non-descript greyish-brown apartment building that could be anywhere but it was the place that I called home for a little over a year. It had a great location close to a train station, shops and restaurants and was very spacious for a Japanese apartment.

I didn't ship much over since I wanted to buy things in Japan and have space in my shipment home to bring everything back. I had fun furnishing my place and it ended up being an ecclectic mix of Japanese and Western that worked well for me.

For my living room I bought two couches at Nittori (kind of like a Japanese Ikea) and found some Japanese chests at recycle shops (Japanese second hand stores for home goods).  I hung up some of my travel photos and displayed some of the items I picked up during my travels to make things homey.

I had a galley kitchen without too much storage space so I bought an open shelf storage unit for easy access to things that I used often.  For storing food items I picked up the large jars at recycle shops and the small ones at a hyaku-en store (Japanese version of a Dollar Store).  I bought my dishes in Seto, which is a Japanese town famous for ceramics and pottery. One of my favorite things in my whole apartment was my Nisshin Flour Milling sign which I picked up at the To-ji flea market in Kyoto. I have it hanging in my kitchen back in the US now.

I didn't want to buy a Western mattress so I decided to try sleeping on a Japanese futon and loved it.  I read before bed most nights so when I found this little table at a flea market in Kakuozan I knew it would be perfect for a "futon-side" table.

Since I had extra space of course I had to have a craft room.  I bought the table at a recycle shop for ¥1000 (about $10 at the time) and it was great for spreading out lots of projects.  I had started collecting old globes when I would stumble across them in the US so when I found these two old Japanese globes I had to have them.

Back home in the US, I have several of the items from my Japanese apartment incorporated throughout my house.  They are full of great memories of the time I spent at the Kandacho Corporus and seeing them everyday brings a smile to my face.

Thanksgiving Flowers

Happy Thanksgiving! Today I thought I'd share an easy flower arrangement I made for Thanksgiving using a pumpkin as a vase.  To start I bought a sugar pumpkin and some zinnias at the grocery store. To hold the water I used a half pint jelly jar that I already had, but any glass or plastic jar smaller than the pumpkin would work.  I traced the rim of the jar onto the pumpkin and using a knife cut out the opening.  After scooping out the seeds (and saving them for toasting) I inserted the jar into the pumpkin.  To finish it off I added some water to the jar and then arranged the zinnias for a simple and festive arrangement.