A new year.

Welcome 2014! I hope you all had a great New Year's eve and you all got your midnight kiss. I spent the night with Brianna, Jeremy, my Mom and Mommom. We had appetizers and dinner, then we watched my hour and fifteen minute long end of the year video. To keep ourselves awake until midnight my sister and I had a Lady Gaga dance party. She told me not to play what she called "old fogey" music so Lady Gaga was the most modern thing I had.

Ginger was all dressed for the celebration. I got him this little bow tie for parties. 

Brianna enjoys sneaking into photos. Here she is photo bombing our family portrait. 

The dress I wore was from "Twice Loved Treasures" in Vineland. It's by Leslie J and it's from the 70s. The dress comes with a black sweater that I kept putting on and taking off since the temperature fluctuated. 

Ginger wanted me to take off his bow tie later on. He looked so dapper in it. I also don't like to leave him alone with things around his neck since he tries to rip them off himself and he can end up injuring himself.

I made a bûche de chocolat for dessert. It's a rich french cake that you roll up like a jelly roll. Here's the recipe I use. 

2/3 cup sugar
6 eggs (separated)
6 oz. dark sweet chocolate
3 tablespoons cold strong coffee
1 1/3 cups heavy cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 350. Beat 1/2 cup sugar into egg yolks and beat until light and creamy. Get out your double boiler and start to melt the chocolate and coffee mixture. After the chocolate is melted let it cool a bit and then mix it with the egg yolk mixture. Then beat the egg whites until they're stiff and add that to the chocolate/egg yolk mix. 

Put wax paper on a cookie sheet and grease it heavily then pour the batter on the wax papered cookie sheet. Make sure everything dispersed evenly and then bake it for 15 minutes. After it's finished baking let it sit out with a damp cold cloth on it for 45 minutes. Now it's time to make the whipped cream (my favorite part)
Put the heavy cream, vanilla and a little bit of powdered sugar to a bowl and beat it until it forms whipped cream. After the whipped cream is made and the cake has cooled spread the whipped cream on the cake and roll it into a log shape. Sometimes the cake will crack in places but that's okay, I just add more whipped cream. 


Later on that night Brianna and I had a dance party. Jeremy doesn't dance so he watched us jump around like weirdos. We aren't dancers either and usually our "dancing" is nothing but jumping and flailing our arms. Brianna and I usually have little dance parties at home, we're not fans of going out so we make our own fun.

Jeremy and Ginger watched us dance from the safety of the couch.

New Year's day is one of my favorite days of the year. We always go to my Mommom's house for a polenta and codfish dinner. My Mommom's birthday is the week after New Year's day and she said that the tradition of this dinner started when she was around 12 years old. Her mother would celebrate the new year and her birthday in one day and my Mommom would always request polenta and codfish. When she was little the fish used to be quite expensive and you would have to soak it for awhile before eating it. We also eat stewed tomatoes and everyone but me eats sausage, it's a great dinner!

It was really cold yesterday. 

But I  wanted to get an outfit shot. My Mommom wore this dress to a wedding in 1977. I love the print. 

My Mom and Mommom stirring the polenta. 

 This is before we lapsed into a food coma. This is a special dinner that we only eat once a year. After we recovered we posed for photos in front of the tree.

 Clyde(Mommom's cat) got in the family photo. 

I set the timer so we could get a complete family photo. 

For most people January 1st is not a special holiday. It's usually the day they begin with their rigid resolutions but I start the new year on January 2nd. What traditions do you have for New Year's eve and New Year's day?