Last night we celebrated new year’s eve at our friends’ the Thomsons home. We also celebrated Yasko’s birthday at the time.
We decided to do a theme night – Black and White! I don’t like to do themes half-hearted, so we had fun coming up with appetizer, cake, and gift ideas. (Actually we had ordered the gift for yasko a long time ago- I think that helped us come with the theme idea…)

Here we all are – (almost) all in black and white:

I FINALLY got to make an idea I had read a year or so ago…my friend Kris had to send colossal olives so I could do this…They’re mostly black and white (filled with Ranch-flavored cream cheese; the feet and beaks are carrots; the scarves are red peppers):

We ordered Yasko black and white plaid Sperry boots from Eddie Bauer in the US:

And we made her a “Vincent” cake- Vincent is her Boston terrier, much-adored by our kids…and luckily happens to be black and white:

The black icing helped add to the black and white effect:

All of our kids lasted till after 11 pm! We came home and got the kids in bed, except for Annie… our neighborhood temple iss lively for only night of the year…New Year’s Eve. It seemed that most of our neighbors were there, gathered around a big bonfire, waiting in line to be one of 110 people to pull the big gong in true Japanese ritual. It was loud, and Annie kept asking us to stop the big clock from gonging. She ended up sleeping in our bed until she fell asleep…
Happy New Year, my friends! Black and white is kind of fun- it might become a Takamoto New Year’s tradition…