Yesterday was like Christmas Junior, mostly because we started putting Christmas presents away and enjoying said presents.  It was pretty fun.  I don’t even mind washing dishes when they’re new glasses and things that need to find a spot in the kitchen.

One of the happy post-Christmas changes included a bathroom cabinet face-lift thanks to some new hardware.

Old hardware:

New hardware: And of course, there had to be some celebratory cooking.  We went with our new-found Chinese Dumplings recipe.  Turns out we still have some practice to do with that recipe.  I’ll adjust it just as soon as I know where we went wrong.  But at this point (the point of ingredients on the island), everything was right in the world:And here at the “put stuff in the dumpling wrappers” step, things were still going well: Then things fell apart somewhere in the pan-frying phase.  Hmm.  On the bright side, our second batch was about 10 times better than the first batch.  So we’re learning.  That’s a happy way to start the year, right?  I thought so.