New Year's Festivities

Hosting Christmas Eve last week wasn't enough to satisfy my party throwing needs. We opted to host a New Year's Eve gathering at our house. Though, I find that hosting you don't take advantage of the fact that you are not driving...you keep losing your glass in between door bell rings and refilling the nuts.

What was wonderful about this New Year's Eve? It was great to have many of our "hockey family" at the party. The Ice Monkeys have been playing together for almost 7 years. My husband and I are part of the original team that truly looked like monkeys on skates for the first couple of seasons. This season hasn't been one of our best, but it doesn't matter. It's one of those finest group of people I know, and it's absolute joy to share the ice with them week after week. We don't play to win at all costs. It's about enjoying the game--and the beers after it.

Speaking of games, the Winter Classic is now a tradition in our house. Thank you NHL for bringing hockey into the limelight. I am hoping that one day it will be played in San Jose. However, it might be a decade or two before it happens. I can promise that we will see one in person this coming decade. It doesn't matter how many layers this native Californian will need. Ideally, it would be played in Minnesota where my in-laws are. One of the best parts of today's game was afterwards when the 2010 USA hockey team was announced. Tim Thomas must have had one of the best days of his career--playing at Fenway and being nominated on the same day. Truly an incredible moment for him. I am certainly hoping that 2010 will be about incredible moments--they may not be Olympic in proportion, but I want them to be ones that I treasure, like be surrounded by friends at the stroke of midnight.

Speaking of midnight, my big food project yesterday was taking Martha Stewart's Cupcake clock to a new level. My decorating techniques aren't up to her standards yet, but thank goodness I have an engineer in the house who actually made it a working clock. We didn't eat the cupcakes until the clock struck 12. I made her brown sugar pound cake cupcakes for the base and cheated with Betty Crocker's Buttercream frosting.

All in all I am very happy about the start of 2010, I have a good feeling about this year.