It’s time for our annual batch of Christmas photos, this time in our new home!  We managed to find an excellent tree this year, and Netflix had an excellent ‘Fireplace movie’ that I played the hell out of.  Sad, I know.  But I put our space heater under the TV and it was almost like the real thing!

Mom had brought us some photo ball ornaments last year, so we used our family portrait from last year as a pretty good option.  The reverse was a photo of Pepsi of course.

Christmas morning and Pepsi was right in there looking for his gifts. We’re pretty lucky he’s still with us after his big surgery back in October and his on-going chemotherapy. He’s pretty tough for a cat well into his 17th year.

And here is this year’s family portrait. For the first time since our wedding it was just the two of us together for Christmas, so it was a nice, quiet evening and we dragged Pepsi into the photos this year.

Hope you all had a brilliant holidays! There are some more images in the gallery here.

This post is mainly here as a showcase for the the amazing Christmas Goose that we cooked this year.  I don’t want to waste any time, so here it is!

Not to toot my own horn, but does that not look like it’s right out of a magazine?  We were all incredibly pleased with how it turned out, especially as most of us had never even eaten a goose let alone cooked one.  How did it taste?  Well, the flavour was really lovely with all of the citrus fruit and spices we rammed into it while cooking, but if I’m honest it was a bit dry.  And there isn’t much meat on one of these guys compared to a turkey.  The estimate was for 5-6 people with this goose, but only one of us had any leftovers the next day before it was all gone.

The sides didn’t turn out to terribly either.  I got my sweet potatoes smothered in marshmallows and I added enough bacon and butter to the brussels sprouts to make them palatable for everyone.  The ‘roasted potatoes’ where more like ‘soft boiled in goose fat’.  Not was I was aiming for, but if I were to write a cook book my secret for everything would be to soak it in goose fat. Instant deliciousness!

I’m making myself hungry again, so I’ll end on this photo of one of the cute new ornaments mom hauled over from the mother land.  There are a few more images of our Christmas day in the gallery!

For the past couple of years we’ve been doing Christmas portraits and this year was no different.  We had mom visiting so it was another special year, though the photos were a bit trickier to do in our tiny flat.  Still, we’re happy with the results and very happy to have been able to share the holidays with my mom (who, by the way, is a terrible cheater when playing any type of board/card/dice game.  That’s right mom, it’s on the Internet so it must be true!).

I realize now that I probably shouldn’t have posted the link to our 2010 Christmas photos.  The keen viewers out there might have realized that I’m wearing the same sweater/jumper.  I seem to only have two that are suitable and just rotate them out each year.  Look out for the return of the purple one in 2013!

Here is my lovely (London based) family for the holidays.

I didn’t want to bore you with too many photos of the same three people over and over again, so here’s some of the snacks we had that night.  I don’t know about you, but it makes me painfully hungry just looking at that photo.  I don’t know why I save mini-burgers for special occasions.  They really should be an everyday affair.

There’s a few more family style images in the gallery.

Another year has come and gone, with several fun photo meetups taking place throughout 2011 thanks to the fine folks at POTN.  This year, for a bit of a change we met up at the Winter Wonderland for a few drinks instead of the usual ‘photo-shoot come drinking fest’ that we’ve done in years past.

That’s not to say there weren’t a few camera’s on hand to capture the evening anyway.

It was a fairly relaxed evening with quite a lot of beer consumed.  We managed to stick around till the bitter end and were escorted out of the establishment by a team of security guards at the end of the evening.

Who says Beer & Photography don’t mix.  Looks like a perfect match if you ask me!

Few more images in the gallery.

It’s that time of the year again and I’ve just realized I never got around to making a Christmas post last year.  I may have to add that in retroactively once I’m finished with this one.

Having gone home and experienced Canadian winters last year, I was more than happy to stay in London where the thermometer rarely dips below 0°C.  Also, it was to be my first official Christmas with Danni so taking off and leaving her on her own didn’t seem like the thing to do for the festive season.

We spent Christmas eve together eating way too much and watching several Christmas movies (you can’t go wrong with Elf).  Sleep came easily after a few pints, a trick I’m willing to bet my mom would have paid good money to learn when I was an over-excitable child waiting for Santa.  There’s probably something to be said about giving children beer, but I’m sure there’s a balance to be struck there.

Danni was up shortly before 6am Christmas morning, but I made her sleep for another hour and she was content to open her stocking (sound familiar mom?) while I collapsed back into a coma.

After the gifts were opened (the winning gift being my new kindle!) it was time to get our Christmas dinner rolling.  We’d done a bit of prep work the day before but I’d never made a turkey myself so it was all a bit overwhelming.  Undaunted, and with the support of a few trips to youtube, some emails and phone calls home I was on my way.

Nothing says Christmas like a bacon wrapped turkey!  While it was in the oven doing it’s thing, we took the time to set up a mini photography studio in the living room to do some holiday portraits.  I love playing with the lights, but Danni tends to get impatient so it was just a simple 2 light setup on either side of the camera.  Large shoot through on camera right as the main light, small silver bounced umbrella on the far left.

After the portraits, I spent an hour or so getting the side dishes ready and did quite well getting everything out in time.  We used the fancy upstairs dinning table for the first time since moving into this flat (as well as the dumbwaiter, which every flat should have) and it all turned out really nicely.

There are quite a few more photos in the gallery.

I thought I’d also make a quick mention of the project I’m going to attempt in 2011.  A photo a day for the entire year.  I’ve set up a separate website specifically for this endeavor, but the photos will be posted in the usual gallery and can also be accessed here.  I’ll likely post a monthly round-up at the end of each month with my favourite images from the previous few weeks here, just as a little reminder more than anything.

Wish me luck!