Feliz Navidad

Me: Can you guys do a 30-second Noche Buena commercial spot?

Them:  Umm. . . Duh!  Watch this . . .

I want to wish all of you my very faithful blog visitors (whom I totally consider my Big, Fat, Extended

Why we do what we do.

We eat roast pig (lechon asado) on Christmas Eve, which we call Noche Buena.
We have yuca with a garlic mojo on the side.
We fight over the fried, ripe plantains.
We hold hands and give thanks to God for his generous provision.
We draw names for a gift exchange, but end up getting little gifts (we call those "regalos de arbol" - or "tree gifts") for most everyone anyway.  ;-)
We put stockings up on our fireplaces.
We each have a collection of Christmas potholders we hang in our kitchens every year.
My mom used to get Chicken McNuggets for the little kids thinking they wouldn't want to eat the traditional lechon - they all laugh about what a sweet (but ridiculous!) gesture it was.
We make and give and drink gallons of Creme de Vie. =D
Our desserts include flan, apple pie, turrones, and guava pastries.
We set elaborate tables for Noche Buena.
We make a Christmas video every year. (We're really proud of that.)
There is always a kids table.
On Christmas day we eat Arroz con Pollo.

Why?

I can answer that in one word:

TRADITION.

Here we celebrate our Cuban Christmas traditions.
Sometimes I think there's nothing better than being Cuban at this time of year. ;-)

(BTW, I think Amy really outdid herself with this segment - with a nod to Chevy Chase and Christmas Vacation. =D)

Feliz Navidad!

Christmas Greetings

We were all dressed up that day.  It was the day of Heather's wedding. 

"Perfect Christmas card photo op!" (at least that's what I thought. . .)

We had tons of pictures taken that day, all dressed up and shiny and smiling pretty, but this is my very favorite.

The one where Eric extends the camera with his left hand and we all try to squeeze together to fit in the frame.

And I know it's not a postcard perfect portrait or anything. . .

. . . but it's so "us."   =D

[Creative Notes: I created this in Adobe Photoshop Elements using the Old Time Christmas Kit from Designer Digitals.  The typeface is Santa's Sleigh from www.dafont.com. The squiggle under our names is the numbers from the typeface Splendid Ornamenty from www.myfonts.com.]

A Wonderful Christmastime

One week til Christmas and this right here is the very best part of it all for me: The preparations. The houseful of busy Christmas preparations. 
The crossing stuff off lists.  The anticipation of the happy and surprised looks.   Christmas music playing and busy people in the house.
The girls call out for us to look at a particular clip they're working on.
We call them into the kitchen to taste the batch with the dark rum.

Adam is making Creme de Vie for everyone we know -  my job is tagging and bottle decorating, which suits me just fine right now. The cookies were labored over earlier by Lucy and Jonathan and their cousin, Cody, at Grandma's House.

Lucy is a goddess when it comes to wrapping. Red & gold paper. Red and golden bows.
We're all kind of working on our own contribution to Christmas, separate, yet together.

And then. . . that bouncy Paul McCartney Christmas song comes on and Adam yells out something about the Bunny Hop and the next thing we know we're all bouncing around the living room.  Bunny Hop.  You know.  Step twice to the right.  Step twice to the left.  Jump forward, then backward. Then Hop, Hop, Hop.  In a kind of conga-line formation.  We were just doubled over with laughter and could barely breathe, but just kept right on bunny hopping in our formation and I didn't want to interrupt the Bunny Hopping to take pictures.  You'll just have to trust me on this. 

It was the most perfect Christmas moment.   And it wasn't staged or choreographed.  But it was like a really great scene out of a really great Christmas movie. 

I love it when life just happens.  I am so damn lucky. ;-)

We used that song for one of our videos a few years ago.  It shows Christmas through the years. Please enjoy. (kudos to my Amazing Amy, once again.)

Yes, that's Andy Garcia in our family home movie. =D

It's a week before Christmas and I find this taped to my studio door.  What on earth. . .?

Oh yes, it's crunch time.

You see we (Amy, Lucy and I) make a Christmas film every year.  We take all our home movies and set them to music and cut the clips together and give it a fun title and ta-da! it becomes a family keepsake.  Okay, so the process is a bit more complicated than that.

The movie making branch of our family is Cucufate Pictures. (it's just us, but it sounds cool, doesn't it?)  And really Amy is the glue that holds this movie crew together.  She's just amazing at taking home movies and turning them into a thing of beauty.  Lucy is her loyal sidekick hero support.  I just try to push my weight around and get them to employ my suggestions - for that they let me call myself the Director. (I like that. It makes me sound taller, somehow. . .)

We're in full Christmas video making mode now.  Yes, we're ready for Christmas otherwise, but we Must. Have. The. Video.  The rest of my big fat Cuban family is expecting it and we don't want to disappoint.

So the girls have been working feverishly on this year's production and it's going to be amazing (as usual).

I thought it would be fun to add a few of the segments to my blog this week for your holiday blog viewing pleasure.  (and so you can ooh and aah about how talented my girls are and how fun my family is. =D)

Amy cut together this sweet piece showing the men in our family at various ages and the title of the home movie they appeared in.  It's just an extra added bonus that Andy Garcia just happens to be a part of this clip. (Yes, I had to lean on her a little.  You'll find that under my job description as The Director. ;-)

Enjoy!

There are four basic food groups: milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, and chocolate truffles

Hershey's Chocolate is celebrating 100 years of chocolaty happiness. 

How do I know this? (umm . . . maybe because I'm not supposed to be eating chocolate and am therefore obsessed with it, but that's not important right now. =D)

Okay.  So, the other day, Lucy and I are cruising through Target and we came upon a big ole Hershey's Chocolate display.  Of course, we stopped and reverently stood in silence while taking in all the cool stuff we could potentially buy to celebrate the blessed event.  After all, 100 years of making chocolate is no small feat.

Did I mention that I'm not supposed to be having chocolate, and so, seriously, that's all I can think about?? (It's just so wrong.)

Anyway, there was this adorable ceramic fondue pot shaped like a Hershey's Kiss and I thought it would be fun to do that for dessert one night.  I think the last time I fondued was sometime in the 80's and maybe it was in Switzerland and it involved cheese and can we just say, "lactose intolerant?"  But that's not important right now either. =D

So, we cut up some apples and bananas and strawberries and it was lovely and wonderful . . .

And then Adam showed up . . .

Yes. That's pound cake.
And pretzels.
And caramels.
And marshmallows.
And graham crackers.
And potato chips.  (potato chips?? OH. YEAH.)

Ay Dios Mio!

"Toma chocolate. Paga lo que debes."
                                               ~El Bodeguero.    ;-)

This magic moment (or Wow. I really love my Christmas tree.)

We put our Christmas tree up over the weekend and I am completely enamored.
Seriously.

As Amy posted a few days ago, my kids all have small trees they put up in their bedrooms with their own ornaments (yes, artificial - I'm really over that whole vacuuming-pine-needles-for-months thing =D).  I'm not being a cool mom or anything by letting them have their own trees.  It's just that I like to decorate the big tree differently each year.  See? Completely mercenary.  So this year it's all red and white and gold and I am in love. (sigh)

I put on some instrumental Christmas music and was just sitting and staring and drinking in the beauty.  (Okay, so maybe the whole sitting and staring thing has more to do with my exhaustion level, but that's not important right now. =D)

Can it get any better than this?

Well, actually it did.

The kids were baking while I was in my little I-love-my-Christmas-tree cocoon.  And . . . this is the really great part . . . they wouldn't even let me in the kitchen!  (Shut. up. I know.)

So, in addition to my I'm-drunk-with-Christmas-beauty moment.  The house smells like fresh cookies!  I totally got a preview of what heaven will be like.  I swear.

They baked my favorite Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies, and even though I don't like nuts and I really don't like peanut butter, I could eat these all day long because they are amazing.  And okay, I'm not really supposed to be eating chocolate, but c'mon!

Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 cup butter - softened
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 egg - slightly beaten
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 bags Hershey's kisses

DIRECTIONS:
1) Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
2) Cream together the butter, peanut butter and sugar. Beat in egg. Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt; gradually stir into the peanut butter mixture.
3) Make small balls of dough. Really small. Like less than an inch in diameter.
4) Bake for 10-12 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the cookies look cracked. 
5) While the cookies are baking, unwrap the number of kisses you need to match the number of cookies baking. 
6) When the cookies come out of the oven, quickly push a kiss into the center of each.
7) Remove from baking sheets to cool on wire racks.
8) The chocolate will melt completely when it comes in contact with the hot cookie, even though the kiss maintains its shape, but don't worry, they will harden again when they're completely cool.

However, it's really important that you try at least one hot cookie with the melted chocolate. Just trust me on this. ;-)

Meanwhile back to my idyllic I'm-so-in-love-with-my-Christmas-tree moment:

Kenny G on the stereo (don't judge me).  Plate of my favorite freshly baked cookies in front of me.  Bustelo in my cup.  My oh-so-incredibly-beautiful tree before me.  Magical.  ;-)

"Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree.  In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall."

~ Larry Wilde, The Merry Book of Christmas

The Faces of MBFCF

Invitations just went out for our traditional Cuban Christmas Eve celebration.

The faces belong to my big, fat Cuban family. Yep. The very same people who have been a most important part of my life for years and years. And yet, I think it's important to make everyone feel wanted and welcomed.  Hence the personalized invitations.

(I think I did a really cool job on these. Created them in Photoshop Elements using digital papers from Designer Digitals. I especially like the dimensional gift wrap bow. I am sooo using that again. =D)

But I have to give credit to Amy who came up with the present concept and who suggested the line:
". . . it wouldn't be Christmas without your PRESENCE."

I like that.
And it's so appropriate because I consider my family a total GIFT.  ;-)

My own Advent-ure

Feliz Navidad everyone!  It's me, Amy!

If you've been reading recently, you know that Mom has been keeping us busy.  We've been making all these memories TOGETHER.  There's the whole Advent calendar thing and it's been a blast. 

But . . .

"Put up personal trees.  Decorate rooms.  Play Christmas Music."

Personal trees?  Yay!  I LOVE it.

Here's how it all got started:

A few years ago, I was working ALL THE TIME and couldn't be present for most of the Advent-ures (pun totally intended!) happening before Christmas. 

So my amazing Mami found a way to make me feel included.

One particularly late night, I came home to find a little arbolito decorated with all the ornaments I'd been given since birth.  (Since birth!!)

Mom and Lucy had snuck into my house and set it up.  Those sneaks!

Anyway, every year since then, I get to decorate my mini-tree on my own.  And it's a really nice moment.  In between all the CHAOS that can come from being in this big, fat Cuban family (during Christmas no less.  Did I mention I also make a Christmas video every year?)  I get this one quiet moment.

My friends have even offered to come over and "help decorate" and I always say NO, because decorating my little tree is such a personal thing.

I like my tacita ornament that reminds me of my grandmother.

I like the "Baby's First Christmas. 1983."

I like the deck of cards ornament that reminds me of trips to Vegas with Mom.

I like the little mini-ball ornaments in jewel tones.

I like that it's so ME.

I like that it's so small.

And . . .

I like that it's so MINE.  ;-)

Now playing: Gloria Estefan - Arbolito De Navidad
via FoxyTunes   

Cucufate Pictures Presents . . .

An explanation.

My mom was in Miami last year visiting her big brother (she's almost 93 - what are these people made of??).

She was helping him clean out closets and things and found an old box full of old 8mm and Super 8 film reels.  There was footage of my parents back in 1950. There we were as small children playing in the sand in Varadero in 1956. There was Christmas, 1956 with my uncle dressed as Santa Claus riding in on horseback. 

It's such beautiful stuff. We are working hard at preserving these old films and creating timeless family heirlooms. This is super important to me. And it just so happens that my daughter is an amazing film editor. (Tomorrow's Memories is her film editing business)

In this stash, we found some footage of Christmas on our farm in Cuba, but the film had been double-exposed. Amy was really loving the artsy effect and so she created the same feel with more recent family films.  The babies are all adults now. There are new members to the family. The song she chose is poignant and sweet.  The feel is timeless.

Did I mention she is an amazing editor?

This is the just the 2 minute opening of our family Christmas film this year.
And yes, we realize we're violating some major copyright laws here, but I really wanted to share. =D

Enjoy.