Christmas music

What I’m listening to today (in no particular order):

Caz Christmas: The Brothers Cazimero

Kohala Christmas: Kohala

Holidays: Hapa

The Beach Boys Ultimate Christmas: The Beach Boys

Christmas Then & Now: The Lowe Family

Canon of Praise: The Kidmans

Christmas Time: Jean Frye Sidwell

Christmas Gift II: Na Leo Pilimehana

Joy to the World: Honolulu Madrigal Quartet

A Merry Christmas with Bing Crosby & The Andrews Sisters

My choices remind me of Christmas’s in Hawaii, musical friends, visiting art festivals in Arizona and the good musicians we met there, our present life and Christmases in California, and the Christmas films I grew up with.

Merry Christmas/Mele Kalikimaka to you all.

Light Fantastic

One of the must-do's in the run-up to Christmas for me is the Dana Point Boat Parade. This year's theme was 'Hollywood' and as usual some boat owners pulled out all the stops to come up with creative decorations.

I was unsuccessful in uploading a video directly into this post but you can see it here.

That Takes the Cake

Every year I make an English Christmas cake. This is a fruit cake covered by a layer of marzipan followed by a layer of royal icing. 

I start the cake the night before cooking by mixing the dried fruit with a few tablespoons of orange juice. The next day the rest of the ingredients are added and the cake is baked for four hours. Only this year I decided to forget about it and it baked for an additional 90 minutes. But it looks alright.

I leave the cake packed in a container to rest for a while before starting the next layer.

When I visit England I always buy several packs of marzipan. You can buy it in the States where it is called almond paste but the packages are too small. In England it is sold in a package large enough to cover an eight inch cake (with just enough left over for a little treat.

This isn't my neatest job but it will be covered up so it doesn't really matter.

Next I leave the cake out for three days so the marzipan will dry out otherwise the oils in the marzipan can seep into and colour the icing.

The final layer is the royal icing. This is made from icing sugar (powdered sugar) and egg whites. The sugar is slowly added to the egg whites until it becomes very thick and then the mixture is whipped with an electric mixer. Finally it is spread over the cake and left out for the icing to harden.

There are various ways to decorate a cake. I go for the easy option of roughing it up on top to stimulate snow. I then use different decorations to create a little winter scene. Thanks to my friend Nicola for sending me these ornaments.

Once the icing has hardened, all that's left is to put the cake away some where cold and dry until the evening of Christmas Day when it is traditional to cut the cake. I love Christmas cake so I can't wait.

Cake and icing recipe and instructions courtesy of Delia Smith's Christmas Cook Book.

Ho Ho Ho

Keeping in the Christmas spirit this is another post from my visit to Roger's Garden. As well as having an array of Christmas trees, the shop also has a myriad of olde worlde Santas' or Father Christmas as we call him in England.

I love this beach-inspired Santa.

Not a Santa but I couldn't resist including it.

Christmas Garden

Although I have generally been too busy to blog lately, I did want to share these pictures from a recent visit to Roger's Gardens in Newport Beach.
It has become a tradition with hubby and I to visit their beautifully decorated Christmas shop and enjoy all the sparkling, colourful decorations. It helps get me in the mood for the festive season ahead.

In this post I'm just focusing on their many Christmas trees which are decorated according to colour or theme (or both).

Most of the ornaments come from Germany and they remind me of decorations from my childhood Christmas's in England.

End of the Day

It's been a while since I have posted anything...quite a while. It's been a busy summer making art and looking at other people's work at the Laguna Beach art festivals. I've also spent a lot of time at the beach. 

I love sunsets and there have been some beautiful ones this summer as you can see below.

Sign of the Times

This is my last post about my trip to England last month.


Something I love to do is visit artist's homes or studios. In Provence, a few years back, I was able to visit Renoir's home/studio and Cezanne's studio.
In London I visited the home of the artist Frederic Lord Leighton.

I last visited about 16 years ago and I wanted to see it again on this trip. A bonus was that the friend I stay with in London had never been there and that the house was exhibiting Victorian Visions: Pre-Raphaelite and Nineteenth-Century Art from the John Schaeffer Collection. I missed seeing this in America a few years ago so it was a happy coincidence to get another opportunity to see it.


Go here to see a picture and also a virtual tour of the magnificent Arab Hall at Leighton House which is my favourite room there.

One of the things I like to happen upon when I walk around London are the blue plaques. These are blue plaques placed on buildings associated with 'notable figures of the past'. See more about the scheme here. Some are people I've heard of and some not which can spark some research. Some of these buildings, like Leighton House, are museums and open to the public but many are private homes.


In the same area where my friend lives is a plaque for another artist.

I don't know much about Walter Sickert although I saw some of his work on my visit to Tate britain. He was a member of the Camden Town group. I want to learn more about this group in the coming months.

Underground Art

One of the must dos for me on any trip to England is a visit to Tate Britain. In particular, I love the Pre-Raphaelite paintings there. While there, I also attended the 'Picasso and Modern British Art' show.
Picasso is an artist I have mixed feelings about but he had a tremendous impact on art overall and, as this shows, a very clear influence on British art in the early 20th Century.


If you travel to Tate Britain via the Underground train system ('the Tube'), you can get a foretaste of some of the wonderful artworks on show there as you exit Pimlico Station.

Some Tube underpasses are not the most delightful places to walk through but this one bring a jolt of colour to those using it.

City beach

When it's sunny and warm and you're dreaming of the beach but you live in a big city away from the coast you have to improvise.

Here are some resourceful Londoners taking advantage of low tide.

This and That

Some random images from my trip to England.

A London street tucked away from the hustle and bustle. 

On the fringes of Hyde Park in London.

Daffodils and Bluebells in a friend's garden.

Stained Glass window at St Michael's Mount in Cornwall.

Interesting angle at St. Michael's Mount.

We came over to St Michael's Mount by boat but this picture shows the causeway that is accessible at low tide. To demonstrate the nature of the tidal changes, we embarked from the rock to the left of the causeway which was not fully surrounded by water at the time. When it came time to leave we had to disembark at a small quay to the right of the causeway.

St Michael's Mount from a distance.