Family brunch

Hello, my lovelies! I just got back from a wonderful brunch with the women in my family. (And when I say "just got back" I mean "got back two hours ago and have been napping since then".) It's been a tradition for years for the women in my family to get together on a Sunday in December for brunch at the fancy-schmancy Benson Hotel in Portland. For various reasons (living in other countries, having to play the piano at church), I've never been able to attend the brunch until today. I've definitely been missing out, because the food was exquisite. Also, there was unlimited champagne. That alone made the $40 cost worthwhile. (Not that I paid for myself. I have a lovely, generous grandma who likes to take care of her poor granddaughter.) I tried to take a picture of every course I ate. Let's start off with all my drinks: coffee, champagne, water, and orange juice. It's possible that I drank four glasses of champagne during the course of the brunch...

This was course one: the best yogurt ever, mixed with berries and granola, with a cinnamon donut on the side....

Course two was where I failed to take a picture. I think at that point I was really excited to be on my second glass of champagne. But I will tell you that it involved a cheese blintz, four pieces of bacon, two sausages, and about two cups of some cheesy potatoes.

Course three involved all the other random things I wanted to eat that didn't necessarily go together, like caesar salad and waffles...


Course four was desserts. I'm not the classiest person in the world, and I was really full at this point, which is why I may or may not have taken most of my desserts home with me in a plastic baggie...

My Aunt Jan brought some gorgeous holiday decorations for everyone, which she made herself. Sorry for the bad lighting, but aren't they lovely? They're two glass vases glued together, filled with clear marbles and silver bells, with roses inside.

Sorry for the dark quality of the pictures. We got to dine in the wine cellar, which was pretty rad, seeing as how we were surrounded by thousands of bottles of wine, but that made for bad lighting. Maybe I'll find the energy to doctor them up in Photoshop later.

And of course, no photo-taking session would be complete without a (blurry) self-portrait. Yep, that's a mimosa in my hand....

It was a fun afternoon! Now that I know how awesome the annual Benson brunch is, I'll make sure to clear my calendar for next year!