it's monday {after christmas} by the sea!

Gorgeous gorgeous photo by Sarah Maingott via the fabulous A Thing For

Good morning! Hoping that you had a very Merry Christmas! Please come in for a nice steaming cup of coffee and some toast with plum jam {my favorite!}. Let's get comfy because I am sooo feeling like it's still the weekend...and I want to hear all about what you've been doing and where you've been!

I have been a busy bee these last few days working on something new {can't wait to tell you more soon!} but Christmas itself was fairly quiet here by the sea. We snuck out for a glass of wine on the balcony at the Ritz Carleton Laguna Niguel at sunset, which was a really fun and relaxing thing to do on Christmas eve, and then had friends over for dinner.

By the way, before I forget, there's still time to enter my Organic Glam give-away. Because of the holidays, I'm going to extend entries until Thursday, so be sure and scroll down for the details and enter. p.s. Win an extra entry by following me on twitter, networked blogs on facebook, and now {finally!} google friends! All the buttons are on the right side of this page.

So back to the holidays--I snapped a few photos to show you what Christmas by the sea looked like this year.




I set the table with my favorite Tord Boontje Christmas plates, a few sprigs of rosemary from the garden, bamboo silverware, and a little crystal. {I was too lazy to sew the burlap runner I wanted, so I just used a white one I already had and used a few yards of burlap to make a table cloth}.


Each guest got a jar of my homemade Bittersweet chocolate/coffee sauce.


This was the buffet table before the food came out. For some strange reason I love this 70s walnut buffet I inherited from my parents that's almost {but not quite} hip. The top pieces fold out and are covered with black {formica?} so you can put hot dishes on them. And yes, pre-food it's my little shrine to Christopher Rico. That's his new book {I was honored to write the forward} and those are some of his sketches that he painted much larger versions of.


Finally, Pasha and my diy Christmas tree. And just like that, in a flick of a cat's tail, Christmas is over for another year.

I look forward to stopping by your blogs and reading about your holiday very soon! Christmas may be over, but I'm still sending you peace, love, harmony!

xo Mary Jo