A lesser babka

Kevin & I put up our tree this evening. I haven't posted in a while, so I figured this is as good an occasion as any. Over the two weeks before Christmas every year, the people in my wing at work coordinate to provide an abundance of sweets and snacks in a constant stream. Like, enough to make you feel like complete and total crap in time for the holidays. I feel like making babka, but I'm not sure I want to commit. It would be my first babka. Last year I brought in homemade tapenade on toasted french bread, which was great, I thought. I just found an email that I'd sent to Kevin on that day. It's a collection of verbal reactions to my tapenade from various concerned coworkers:

"What is this stuff? Why does it look like chocolate pudding?"
"When I eat anything crunchy my filling always pops out & it's 1/2 of the tooth... so I have to be careful."
"This might be a little too exotic for this group."
"Did you talk to Fern about this?" (Fern said the first 2 ones)
"People usually get this sort of thing in jars."

Gosh, I don't know what to bring. Anyway, I did finish my hobo gloves, as Kevin calls them. Here they are.































And also, here's a buttload of snow on our balcony. And just for the hell of it, our little tree. I just figured out how to work with exposure time on my digital camera, so bear with me. I kind of love it.