McCarthy Christmas

Tonight we hosted Christmas for the McCarthy's.  Unfortunately only Russell's parents and brother live in the state, so it was just a small family dinner, no other relatives.  I was excited to host it and put all my cooking skills, and wedding gifts to the test!  I think I used every pot/pan I had, and all my serving pieces.  I made candied pecans and sausage balls for appitizers, along with M&Ms and herseys minitures.  Which I am glad I made appitizers because Russell's mom locked her keys in her car when she was in Clearlake for a work Christmas party earlier, so she was running late.  However, we were still waiting me to finish cooking.... I was 20 minutes over my ETE (estimated time of eating).  I made a honey glazed ham, roasted carrots (with the ham), mashed potatoes (that took forever to boil, hence the 20 minutes late), pineapple cheddar casserole, and Kathy brought her broccoli cauliflower casserole, and crescent rolls.  For dessert we had brownies and pineapple jello "salad".  I also had made some apple cider, but lets face it nobody wanted it because it was freaking 80* outside.

you can kind of see in the picture we had cloth napkins with "M" monogrammed in them.  I saw those at Bed Bath Beyond when I was doing some Christmas shopping, and for $15 (minus 20% with my coupon- because that's how I roll- lol) I couldn't pass it up.

My first ever attempts at making a ham were actually pretty good.  I bought a hald ham that was pre cooked, and Russell said you definitely need more than that.  So I bought another half, and guess what we had a whole half plus some left over.  No worries I sent a bunch home with Tony, now that he has moved out, and some with Kathy and Max.

After dinner we opened presents.  I felt kind of bad.  We (Russell, Tony, and I) gave his parents a new grill.  However, we didn't have it with us because we don't have a truck to go get it from Lowes yet.  So they had no presents to open.  And Tony is going over to their house Christmas morning, so he only had a present from us. We had gifts from them, and also we exchanged most of our gifts from each other.  So it was pretty one sided present opening.  But still fun.  Russell got Bear Grylls survior pants, a knife, and some dvds.  I got lots of jewelry, a new hair dryer (I decided when hotels have nicer ones, then its time to upgrade-lol plus mine is about 10 years old, and was $10 new, and takes about 10 times longer to fry my hair than need be). 

Russell also got these cool beer glasses.  They say McCarthy's pub on them!

Here is a picture of our outside lights this year.  We added the lights down into the yard.  We have several boxes of more lights in the garage, but didn't put them up.  For the longest time we were "that house" that had random sections out.  Apparently the box doesn't lie when it says only plug in 2 strand of the big light at a time, we kept blowing fuses, and then needing more extension cords.  So next year we will have red and white rope lights around all of the columns, lights down on the other side of the yard, and red lights around the garage. 

Here is the front door, looks the same from last year, but this year I got a poinsettia. 

I LOVE our entry table, it is the perfect place to decorate for the holidays.  The natity scene found its place here this year.

I found this cute "JOY" sign at target, it was too small to go outside and be seen, so we put it over the fireplace, I think it looks nice... though it's kinda hard to tell in this picture.

Russell being artsy with our new camera!