Pre NYE dinner and some more gifts

With the bad weather on the east coast of the US just before the holidays, our mail deliveries on the island were delayed.  In fact, the entire week before Christmas there was no incoming mail, and things did not arrive until the Monday after Christmas.  As a result, I still had some presents to open.

My mother-in-law is very artistic and crafty and makes amazing things.  We usually get handmade items for holidays and birthdays.  She made me this bracelet, but the colors are hard to see here. 

She also made me the gorgeous scarf.  When Ryan's mother and her twin sister (Aunt Sandy) were visiting us last in Baltimore before we moved overseas, we took them to Lovelyarns in Hampden, MD.  They had been here once before with us, and they knit all kinds of stuff, so when they were with us again, we made sure to take them back.  I had mentioned that I liked this scarf while we were in there, and she made a mental note, bought the yarn and pattern and knitted this for me.  Ryan saw a hat he liked that day, and she picked up that pattern too...so Ryan got a crazy knitted hat this year.

She also made me these earrings.

These flowers are so adorable.  She is so creative.

Then there were some gifts from Ryan.  This was a fun surprise.  I can't wait to give this one a try.

Too bad, I planned on using this outside!!!  Thanks for the warning...

For Hanukkah my Aunt Sherie ordered us the next 12 movies that were on our list of Academy Award winning best pictures.  This finished up the 40's and got us through the 50's.  We have some great movie watching ahead of us.  Now we are starting to get into color movies.  So far it has been black and white, well except for Gone with the Wind.  We watched Casablanca the other night.  I am telling you, these are some great movies we have here.

These pictures are from the meal we had on the night before New Year's Eve.  We knew we weren;t going out for NYE so we did the night before.  It had been a while since we went to O Pescador, so we headed down to Praia for dinner.  As always, bread to start...

with some delicious cheese...

Bruscheta with Pico cheese and banana chutney underneath.

I knew I didn't want to order a big dish because I wasn't that hungry and I didn't want to waste any food.  I went with seafood chowder and a mixed salad.

Ryan ordered the steak on the rock.  It seems to be hit or miss with the steak around here and the cut of meat you will be served.  The steak he said was good, but not as good as the first time he ordered it.  I think he said it got better as it cooked more on the sizzling rock.

This picture shows it a little closer up...

and as always, here is a meia da leite to end the meal (even though it is a morning drink and I should be drinking espresso to end the meal, I am SO American!).

Oh, if you are wonding what we ended up doing for NYE this year, it was raining and windy, and we were unsure what was going on, so we stayed home, watched movies, and enjoyed this bottle of wine.  This was made at the winery on the island.  We checked for fireworks over the marina at the beach at midnight, but there were none.  At about 12:25 we heard BOOM noises and ran to the upstairs window to find they were actually setting of fireworks despite the rain and wind.  They were beautiful and we had a great view right from our house.

QUESTION: Do you know how to knit?  Are you artistic or creative?  Into scrapbooking?