Above is a picture of the disastrously oozy (but very good with champagne) strawberries and whipped cream cake I improvised for the evening. I hope your evening is as joyously cozy or wildly strange or happily drunken or adventurously lost as you wish it to be!

I've seen the book Free-Range Chickens by Simon Rich recommended twice in the last few days -- first by Dooce and then by The Stranger. I have not read it yet but I was really happy to discover that it's currently being offered as a free e-book though the Random House Free Library that I access on my iPhone through the Stanza e-reader. I'm not sure how long it will be offered so if you have an iPhone grab it if you're curious. Also download The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death, I've loved Laurie Notaro for a while now and having this book during the Great Big Snow Storm has saved a bit of my sanity with all the hilarious.

We had a very good Christmas here despite still being mostly snowed in. I hope your Christmas was great, and that you are not experiencing the madness of cabin fever quite to the degree we are.

I got the bag I talked about previously, the Chelsea Buckle Tote, in black, from at Delight.com. Thank you, Scott! (Ok, I knew this one was coming because I made sure he bought one before they sold out again.)

I also got the Crumpler Four Million Dollar Home bag for my camera, the Canon Rebel XSi, which fits inside snuggly but with enough room to get it in and out easily. It's smaller than I expected, which is a nice surprise and will make it very easy to bring my camera along with me.

We also received a Whirley Pop popcorn maker which will allow us to retire the pot with the burned bottom that we had been using.

I also got a set of Fred's ABC cookie cutters, which make me laugh.

A game of Bendomino has proven to be a nice, short distraction while we're waiting for things to bake. It has us considering buying a nice set of regular dominoes.

And last minute a present I got for myself from Amazon, who managed to get it here on the 24th!, the Griffin PowerJolt SE, a very basic car charger for my iPhone. I realized that if our power was knocked out during the Big Winter Storm we just had I would have no way to charge my iPhone and that was a scary idea (no email access! aaah!). This charger is nice and compact and I can easily store it in my change container and out of sight when I'm not using it.

Scott approved of the musical related gifts I got him. I got the Planet Waves guitar string winder and wire cutter for guitar, and one for his bass. I also got the guitar headstand supporter to help prop up his instruments while he is restringing them. I was glad to find out that Scott calls Planet Waves the OXO of the instrument world. And for his gig bag I got the Farley's Guitar Tool which has a wire cutter, several sizes of screwdriver and hex wrenches and a tool to pull fret pins.

Being stuck inside I had lots of time to cook. I made more of the molasses cookies and some peanut brittle. We had a lot of fun piping out peppermint meringues (though we didn't have a star piping tip so it looked a bit like dabs of toothpaste) but the real winner was when we finally broke out the Berndes crepe pan we inherited from some friends who were moving away. We used the crepe recipe from How to Cook Everything and filled them with leftover Trader Joe's Christmas ham and cheddar cheese. We made them again for dinner the next day, and, uh, again this morning. So yummy.

Here is a picture of the snow kitty that Scott made for me to look at when I was too sick to play outside in the snow: