Henry and Gracie 2015

Each year, I order a box of Dog Biscuit Mix, and make dog biscuits for all of the neighbor dogs and for Polly.  They are fun to make, and are filled with healthy ingredients such as carrots and flax seed.  The dogs love them!

Here is Alison opening up the jar of treats on Christmas Eve for Henry and Gracie.  Isn't this a cute picture?

Birthday Girl

Ah, how I love my birthday!  I've been celebrating for weeks with my various friends and neighbors, and I enjoy every minute of the festivities.

Don and I had a birthday dinner for me last week at our favorite Thai Restaurant, my friend Janet took me to Molbak's Cafe for lunch, and the Maltby Neighbor Girls went to Preservation Kitchen.  We went to the Matlby Cafe for my birthday breakfast, and next week, I'll celebrate with my Starbucks friends!

Poulsbo Bakery

Last weekend, Don and I took Christmas to Uncle Rex in Silverdale, WA.  It's always fun to take the ferry from Edmonds to Kingston, and then stop on the way to Silverdale in Poulsbo and visit the Scandinavian bakery there. We loaded up on Christmas goodies, and soon we were on our way to Crista Shores, where Rex lives.

We had a good visit, exchanged our gifts, and headed home in the rainy afternoon.  Merry Christmas, Rex!

My Mother's Sister

My mother is 86 years old, and her sister Thelma is 90 years old.  They do not live very close together, but several times a year, I pick up my mom and drive her to the group home where Thelma lives.  It's good for them to have a couple of hours together to visit and see each other.  They have so much history after leaving North Dakota in the late 1940's and coming to Seattle to work and start new lives.

Last weekend (before Christmas), they had a joyful reunion, and exchanged their Christmas gifts, cookies and all the news they could think of.  It's good to see the love they have for each other.

Coquito

One of my students, Alexis, made us a bottle of coquito, a holiday drink from his native Puerto Rico.  It's made with rum, coconut milk, sweet condensed milk, egg yolks, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.  It's a cold, sweet, refreshing drink during the Christmas holidays.  We enjoyed it so much this year!

Don and Susan Christmas Picture

Here is our Christmas 'selfie' just in time for the holidays!

Stollen and Krumkake

Each year, we make stollen (German) and krumkake (Norwegian) bread and cookies for Christmas.  The stollen represents Don's heritage, and the krumkake represents mine.  They both take a while to make, but the wait is always worth it.

Here is this year's batches of each.

Santa Baby

I've been looking for an old vintage Santa made from plywood for about five years now.  Each year, I scour the antique stores, looking for one.  This year I got lucky--I found exactly what I was looking for.

I positioned him on my white picket fence, next to my Maltby Piano Studio Parking sign.  Doesn't he look welcoming?

A Pedicure for Christmas

I love to have manicures and pedicures, and in the winter, I don't normally have the pedicurists paint flowers on my toes.  However, this year, I did let my favorite spa worker paint holly on my toes on top of my Christmas Red polish.

How festive is this?

Santa Polly

Here's my girl all dressed up for the season!  She's the best thing under the tree this year, as always!

Maltby Girls

For the last four years, four of us neighbors meet each Christmas at the Preservation Kitchen in Bothell to get caught up and celebrate this wonderful season. Kelly, Mary and Roberta and I live on the same street, and share each other's lives in many ways.  In the spring and summer, we are constantly outside, visiting over the fence and sharing each other's gardens and flowers and summer activities.  In the fall, we are outside, decorating the neighborhood with pumpkins, raking leaves, and savoring the last warm and sunny days before winter arrives.  With darkness now at 4:30 p.m. and sunrise at 7:30 a.m., our days are so abbreviated that we don't see each other often.  Our Christmas lunch is a good way to cover the gap that winter creates.

We had a wonderful lunch, and we laugh until we cry, share our victories and funny stories, and I leave that place and time so grateful to have found a wonderful place to live near these very special people.

Aunt Elsie's Christmas Treasures

My Aunt Elsie left me these handmade decorations before she left us in 2008, and I had a chance this season to get them out of the attic and take a look at each one.  She made most of them, and some were from school craft activities, and others were from students.

I arranged them all on a shelf in my home office, and I'm enjoying each one of them this Christmas season.

Three Christmas Trees!

Wow--this is my year for multiple Christmas trees!  We have our large artificial tree in the living room, adorned with over 200 Shiny Brite vintage ornaments.  We also have a cut outdoor tree with garlands and decorations on it (I can't have a real tree in the house, as I am allergic, so Don found me a cute little one that I can have outside).  At the recital, one of my students gave me a tiny little tree that is now in the piano studio downstairs.  It's decorated with tiny little ornaments, and looks so festive!

Indoor Tree

Studio Tree

Outdoor Tree

Maltby Piano Studio Piano Party

Each December, we have a "Piano Party" (not a recital, as there is no audience--only students!).  Saturday, December 12 dawned cool and fairly dry, so we were in luck.  With around 20 students attending the event, I was hoping for decent weather as they traveled from various parts of the area to downtown Bothell and the Music and Arts Auditorium.

I rented the venue early so each student would have time before the event to try out the lovely baby grand piano.  From 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., we had a wonderful time together sharing our favorite holiday and non-holiday songs.  There are no words to describe an event such as this--new musicians testing out their skills in front of others and sharing something intensely personal with their peers.

After the event, we walked across the street to Pen Thai Restaurant for a catered lunch in our own special dining room.  It was a lovely time of conversation and getting to know each of my students better.

Only six months until our Spring Recital!

Lovely baby grand piano

My advanced student Alexis!

One of my younger students

Audience of students

Lunch with Krithika's Family

Alex

My Little Sister Alex is all grown up now, and I don't see her as often anymore.  But we are still in touch, and the 8 years we spent together as Big Sister/Little Sister has changed us both for the better.  It's so much fun to hear about her life and all that is going on in it.

17 years old!

Trip to Molbak's with Janet

My friend Janet and I have known each other since 1986 when we worked together at Roffe Skiwear in downtown Seattle.  She was pregnant with her first child (Trisha) at the time, and we love to get together these days over a cup of coffee and recount old times.  Boy, do we have the stories!  And since they recently razed the old Roffe building at 8th and Howell, we raised a glass (coffee) to that old Seattle icon and all that happened within its walls.

We met at Molbak's one day last week, and we fought our way through the customary crowds to find a good lunch spot to get caught up on life events (and it was my birthday lunch, too!).  We had so much fun looking at all of the beautiful poinsettias and eating kringle.  Here's to friends from one's youth!

Stollen

Well, you definitely know Christmas is coming when Don bakes his first batch of stollen, a German sweet bread. Here is the dough as it's rising, and then the finished product.  My job is to decorate the cooled loaves with icing and candied fruit.  It was yummy!

Decorating for Christmas

My favorite time of the year is Christmas!  The day after Thanksgiving, we get down our many boxes of Christmas ornaments and start transforming the house from an autumn theme to a Christmas Wonderland!  I put on my iPod Christmas playlists, make a chai tea latte, and munch on sugar cookies from Hillcrest Bakery as I take out each ornament and recall the history behind it.  Needless to say, this takes a lot of time and a lot of cookies!

Travel Trailer Snow Village

Coffee, anyone?

Poinsettia from Flower World

Arrangement on oak cabinet

Polly and her Christmas Dog

An Autumn Hike After Thanksgiving

After the intensity of the holiday week and all of the cooking and cleaning we did, we escaped to Duvall the weekend after Thanksgiving for a hike along the Snoqualmie River Trail.  It was an incredibly beautiful day after all of the gloomy weather of the past weeks, and we enjoyed the lovely area.  Polly the Dog always gets a good workout with hundreds of new sniffs and miles of trail to walk.

Dave's 41st Birthday

Since Dave was born a few days before Thanksgiving in 1974, his birthday is always on or near the holiday.  It's a great time to celebrate with all of our friends and family, and he enjoys his gifts and special treats.

Here's Dave and Kaila--Kai seems to be enjoying her caramel apple! I'm sure her dentist won't approve.  :(

Thanksgiving Scavenger Hunt

After our Thanksgiving dinner (and before the 'turkey coma' kicked in), we all took our official Scavenger Hunt List and went outside to see who could get all of the items on the list first.  It was wild, running around the neighborhood, trying to find some elusive items.  But we all made it!  Matt and Kaila tied for First Place!  Nice work!

You could see Kaila's tonsils!

Super girls!

Getting the Pies Ready for our Customers

Maltby Pie Company was busy around Thanksgiving this year!  We baked 10 pies in all, delivered some of them, and had the remainder ready for pickup!

Here's the assembly line of boxed goods ready to meet their owners.  It was so much fun making these for our friends and family.

Giving Thanks 2015

We decided this year to make Thanksgiving truly a time of giving thanks and giving back in any way we could.  Our first task was to cook a memorable Thanksgiving dinner for our family and spend the day together, talking and laughing and getting caught up on the details of each other's lives.  This included lots of pie and whipped cream and an outdoor scavenger hunt this year.

It was so nice to sit around our big pine table and linger over dinner and dessert and be face to face with our loved ones.  We have so much to be thankful for.

Carving the Turkey

The Whole Family

Pies, pies!