Category Archives: Christmas

It’s beginning to look a lot like

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

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We went to Home Depot yesterday to get our tree! (This has become our tradition.)

From that blog post:

“Three years ago my sister Leslie was visiting and we decided to decorate the tree with her (Leslie and I enjoy it much more than Chris does.)  We went to Home Depot for the tree, and as the man finished loading it on top of the car, Chris tried to tip him.  He backed away, wildly, saying loudly, “no thank you, sir!  no thank you!”  We realized that it must be against store policy and he must not have wanted to get in trouble, but joked about it for awhile, ultimately having the story end with the man yelling, very politely, “SCREW YOU SIR!”

Well.  Yesterday for the first time since we’ve moved here, that dear man wasn’t working.  Home Depot was a bit understaffed (the staff was great and polite and helpful, there just weren’t very many of them so we had to wait.)  And the funniest/worst part was at the end, after tying our car on the tree, the man went to shake Chris’s hand, and I could tell he thought Chris was going to tip him.  And of course Chris WASN’T because of our previous experience—in fact, we had come from a three  mile run and neither of us even had any cash!  We felt bad.

So who knows the deal: do you tip Home Depot employees?  Or did I misinterpret the man’s actions yesterday and he wasn’t hoping for a tip?  Did we just get a particularly virtuous employee that first time?

Nonetheless, our tree looks wonderful.  It’s huge and smells terrific.  We are just letting it settle for now and we will decorate later today and tomorrow. 

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Since we now have a bit of railing to decorate, I picked up a nice “pre-lit” garland from Target.  Chris surprised me by putting it up while I was teaching the other day.

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Kitty loves the tree skirt.  “Finally you put a soft blanket down in this corner!”

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Have you been watching “Hobbit Week” on the Colbert Report?  We’ve been doing so obsessively.  In one week we will have already seen the movie (midnight showing, baby!).  I thought I’d reread it so I started the other night after I finished “Wings of the Divided.”  I’m more than a third way in so I’m ready for the first movie already 😉

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Another toe picture.  The other week I bought these amazing black running/workout capris at Target.  I absolutely love them and would wear them all the time, but I hate to rewear pants after a workout, so I really only wear them once or twice a week.  I finally figured, hey, it would be smart of me to get another pair.  Of course they didn’t have them, but they did have a very similar pair in grey, so I bought those (sorry, Tyra!).  I noticed that they matched my big toe.  Gross and awesome, right?  And that baby is still attached.  I tried to make Chris tell me if he thought it would come off but he didn’t want to humor me and look at my toe too closely.  I guess I should try to maintain more mystique in our relationship?

Last but not least:  Tomorrow is our hilarious and ridiculous Metro Link “Concert.”  There is a great write up in the Post-Dispatch about the show.

edited to add:  The St Louis Beacon had a nice article about Chamber Project St Louis as well.

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I promise I won’t use that graphic again, but not everybody reads everyday! 

So, should we have tried to tip at the Home Depot?  Personal experiences to share?

Holiday entertaining is delightful

The past few years I’ve been hosting a “Cookie Swap Party” but this year I figured, you know, I’ve got enough on my plate with Thanksgiving, I don’t think I’m going to host a party.  Plus I shouldn’t have all those cookies around the house anyway, what with my constant complaining of wanting to lose 10 (now 20) pounds. 

But yet…

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This was so much fun.

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And I love making these guys to snack on…

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Tri-color cookies.  I made these last year for Chris…I may make them again because I think I’m starting to love them as much as he does and my mouth is watering just looking at them.

I like making cookies.  And more to the point, Chris and I LOVE eating cookies.  I can also be fairly reasonable with cookies, and just because I’ll have some on hand this year, it doesn’t mean I have to eat a whole bunch of them everyday.  I am an adult and I have self control.

Besides, I’ve finally jumped on the “Pinterest” bandwagon, and I was pinning recipes and holiday party ideas like a madman last night (Come follow me!!!) 

That’s right, I’ve definitely decided to throw the Cookie Swap Party in about two weeks.  After all, it’s not hard to throw together (for someone awesome like me who really does love entertaining even with all the stress) and I know I’m going to make cookies ANYWAY so I might as well do the swap and get a bunch of great cookies from friends. 

After all, Thanksgiving is over, and I’ve finally caught up on my sleep. (I may have been having trouble sleeping for a few days due to the stress.) There’s four more weeks till Christmas (give or take) and that seems like a long time.  Plus this year I finally have a great house for entertaining and I want to show it off.

Here’s one of my favorite Christmas cookies recipes.  In case you didn’t get enough butter on Thanksgiving.  (Oh, and yes, of course, the fridge is still packed full of leftovers.)

Jam Filled Butter Cookies (from allrecipes.com, modified), pictured in the background behind the Hershey Kiss Cookies.

Ingredients:

1 ½ cup butter, softened

1 cup white sugar

4 egg yolks

3 ½ cups all-purpose flour

1 cup fruit preserves, any flavor

1 teaspoon almond extract

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F

In a medium bowl, cream together the butter, white sugar, and egg yolks. Mix in flour a little bit at a time until a soft dough forms. Roll dough into 1 inch balls. If dough is too soft, refrigerate for 15 to 20 minutes. Place balls 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheets. Use your finger or an instrument of similar size to make a well in the center of each cookie. Fill the hole with ½ teaspoon of preserves (I usually use a ziploc bag and cut off the corner to make this easier).

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until golden brown on the bottom. Remove from cookie sheets to cool on wire racks.

(If you make these, you are welcome to send me a batch for Christmas.)

What’s your favorite cookie to make?

Did you enter my giveaway for a free book?  I think you’ll enjoy it—go sign up!

Christmas fails and wins

Fail: Remember my reservation I made for Eau Bistro?  Evidently they made it for Cafe Eau when I called.  We showed up at noon, and no record of our reservation.  I was flipping out, and they said, oh, did you make it for Cafe Eau by accident?  Well, I know that I didn’t…but that doesn’t mean that whatever idiot I spoke to on the phone didn’t.  Considering we are having our rehearsal dinner at Eau Bistro, I’m pretty sure I know the difference between the two restaurants.  Yup.  Luckily while we were making a fuss to the hostess (I hate doing this but I also knew I was in the right here) the manager happened to overhear (one hour wait, we were told, and then maybe we’d get a table…when we made a reservation weeks ago!) and we were squeezed in.  The food was great though, and we enjoyed the meal after our initial fiasco.  Lesson learned:  double check reservations!

Fail:  we decided to go see a 2:30 showing of Sherlock Holmes.  Oops.  Sold out right before we had a chance to buy tickets.  And then there wasn’t another decent movie showing for 2 more hours, so we just went home.  I don’t understand why a movie theater would have no showings between 2:30 and 4:30 when it has tons of screens.  Seems weird.

Win:  We did a ton of cleaning.  Went through a closet, found stuff we had totally forgotten even owning, and managed to make enough room to put some stuff in there we needed to store!  Now the middle room has LESS boxes of wedding gifts.  Sometimes I feel like we have too much stuff, but I think really we just need more cupboards.  Or need to get rid of the crappy stuff. 

Win:  Lots of good movies on television:  Home Alone, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and later, Elf.  We also got the Hangover II on demand for later tonight. 

Win:  Dinner will be salad and cookies!  Salad to feel healthy, and cookies because there are tons on hand.  Our next door neighbors gave us a plate of cookies this morning!  We might open up a bottle of wine too.

Win:  Not having to travel!  And getting a whole day to relax with Chris.  We ended up doing quite a bit of cleaning, but overall it has been fabulously relaxing. 

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Fail:  Not having anybody else around to take our picture!  Or asking anyone at the restaurant. 

Win:  We’ll have plenty of pictures taken of us next weekend.  In case you are new, I am getting married in ONE WEEK.  If you are not new, I’m sorry.  I’m just really excited (as I should be, so please don’t mind.)  We’ve been making lists of everything left to do!

Win:  Family and friends start arriving Thursday for the wedding.  I am so excited to see the out of town people!  Of course I’m excited to see the in town people as well, but I see them more often 😉

How has your Christmas been?

Here’s a "wordle" I made today from my blog.

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Merry Christmas!

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I hope you have a wonderful day with your loved ones, no matter what you celebrate! 

We are going to a lovely brunch and then to see either Mission Impossible or the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. 

I’m writing this the night before, though.  It’s 8:23 pm and we are watching Forrest Gump, Rocky III and A Christmas Story (yes, all three, Chris keeps switching back and forth) while I am catching up on my blog reading.  In about an hour I’m off to work—11 pm service for Christmas Eve with 10:30 prelude.  I invited Chris to come but he is probably in for the night.  Hopefully we can relax on Christmas Day and not worry about wedding planning until Monday…hahahahahaha!

Christmas Traditions

I thought I’d write a post about Christmas Traditions to put myself more in the Christmas spirit.  Unfortunately, I realized that for me, the tradition seems to be to be a bit maudlin on Christmas.  I wrote for a bit, and then I looked for last year’s blog entries, and now my happy mood has turned bittersweet. I think that’s how I am at Christmas time.  I work hard to make everything happy and fun and delightful to cover up the fact that really it’s a bittersweet time of year.  You miss your grandparents…you miss your childhood…you miss your family…that’s growing up, isn’t it?

You might miss your cat too!  Growing up isn’t so great after all.

When I was little, we (myself and my immediate family) would open our Christmas gifts the night before we were going to leave for visiting relatives.  We lived in South Carolina, but my mom’s parents and family lived in Pennsylvania and my dad’s in Ohio, so we would set out for one side of the family, spend a few days, drive to the other side, spend a few days, and drive home.  We did this every year until Carrie was almost born.  I loved visiting my grandparents and cousins.

Note to readers:  I never believed in Santa.  After all, we opened our Christmas gifts 5 to 7 days early.  That would hardly fit the story!  For me, as I grew older the surprise was that other kids actually DID.  I thought nobody believed in Santa!

Last year I wrote the parts in italics:

Feeling a wee bit maudlin this evening…

I’m not visiting my family over Christmas at all.  This is the first time ever that I haven’t seen my family over Christmas at all.

I grew up in South Carolina, and my Dad’s family lived in western Ohio, and my Mom’s family in eastern Pennsylvania.  We would set out for one or the other the day after school let out (usually PA first), spend a few days, drive to the other, spend a few days, drive home.  In between we’d eat lunch at my great-aunt Wilma’s house near the border of Ohio and PA.  She would always make us hot ham sandwiches, oyster crackers with ranch seasoning, and whatever cookies were on hand, which were often not very good.

Wilma passed away this year.

Pennsylvania:  Memories of weirdly bad cookies, playing with cousins, the apartment in the basement, lots of Amish people, church, ice, snow, “Trade hands sight unseen”, riding in the huge front seat of the car with Grandpa driving, Christmas lights, taking forever to get to the exit from the Interstate, singing in the car on the way there.  Ham loaf, Grandma trying to get us to clean our plates, Mom trying to stop us from cleaning our plates, eating in the cold sunroom, playing in the backyard, that steep steep driveway, Grandma watching cable tv, the two chairs in the family room, Grandma saying “ay, ay, AY, ay, ay” and sleeping on the floor.  Matching outfits, sledding, playing piano duets, scrapple, Mom wearing knee-high boots to church, Grandma trying to send sandwiches along on the trip, Grandpa’s pointy ended glasses and saying it was “Christmas Eve Eve” (that’s today, btw—and for some reason that is the memory that sticks most in my head…I believe by the following Christmas he had had his stroke).

I would add singing the 12 days of Christmas, and my uncle Ed’s Christmas tree and the trains in the basement.

It’s hard to believe how long it has been since I have been to my family in that area.  After my grandparents passed away I really haven’t been back.  I miss them…I wish I could have known them longer.

I have many more recent memories of Ohio, since I lived just 2 1/2 hours away for many years.  However, I also have some memories as a child:

Ohio:  Eating so many homemade cookies I threw up, playing in the snow with my cousins, PONG, ping-pong in the garage, the kitties, ice skating on the pond, singing a cappella at church, sleeping in the parlor, fancy dinners, date pudding, mince pie, the cuckoo clock, playing games, snow, wanting to play outside when it was actually 20 below zero and not understanding why, white bread toast, orange juice, “let me get my socks on!”, sitting around just visiting…I actually seem to have less specific memories of Ohio—I think it’s because we did more varied things in PA since it was more of a city-type of place, and more of the same thing repeatedly (i.e. playing with cousins) in Ohio.  But I loved visiting both so much!

I will always have those memories Smile

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Oh, and I guess I played the violin a lot too!  Look at those KNEES.

1991 changed things:  My mom was pregnant with Carrie (who was born on January 19) and didn’t want to travel.  We hosted Christmas in South Carolina!  After that point, we just stopped doing the two family Christmas as much.  My brother was in college, then I went to college, and well, it just changed a bit.  We started having more traditions in South Carolina—we would play at our church’s Christmas Eve service, and before that we’d have a cheese ball with crackers and shrimp with cocktail sauce.  On Christmas morning we’d have an elaborate brunch, involving cheese grits and cinnamon rolls, before opening our presents.

2004 Carrie folding napkins

2005 Christmas Dinner.  It’s hard to get a good picture of everyone.

One thing that never changed in our family was how we’d open the presents.  Always one at a time, to really savor the moment.  We’d go around the family and each person would open one gift, then the next, then we’d go around again until everybody had opened all their presents.  No mad rush, we would take our time and really appreciate what we received.  (Well, except Leslie, who, as a child, tended to cry a lot during present opening…)

My first Christmas tree on my own—in Charlotte, North Carolina.  That’s a TON of presents I have! 2002, I think.

Then we started to grow up and attend other family’s Christmas gatherings instead of our own.  A few times my parents and siblings came up to Cleveland (it was easy since my grandparents only lived 2 1/2 hours away from) for Christmas, or we’d meet at a retreat in Laurelville, Pennsylvania.

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Christmas last year in New York.

This year Chris and I are spending Christmas alone.  It’s our first time ever doing this, and the reason is because we didn’t want to add to the wedding stress by traveling.  I’ve made reservations for Christmas brunch in addition to a fancy dinner two nights before.  I’m also playing a Christmas Eve service the night before.  I think it will be a wonderful weekend!  We have a huge tree that is decorated, and though we don’t have any gifts for each other under it (not doing that this year either) we do have some wrapped gifts under it (for our wedding party!).  I will be sad that we aren’t spending Christmas with our family, but the following weekend will MORE than make up for it, I think.

2005, the year I evidently had curly hair.  Weird.

It’s really nice not traveling over the holidays though.  I look forward to a wonderful relaxing Christmas, my last Christmas as a single lady.

(the last time we were all together at Christmas!)

I wrote this caption for the picture last year on Christmas:

My family the last time we spent Christmas together.  Leslie didn’t have her boyfriend with her at the time, but it’s just as well as she has a new one now Winking smile  Maybe in a year or two we’ll get another group photo!  (serious alert!—) It’s amazing we were all together—later that day my dad left to go up to Ohio to say his goodbyes to my Grandpa, and then the rest of us drove up the next day.

That’s Christmas for you—sad for those who are no longer with you or cannot be together, but happy to be with those whom you can.

 

Getting back home

So the one thing I didn’t mention yet:  getting HOME from Long Island. 

We were scheduled to fly out on Monday evening.  Well, Sunday (as you may know) there was a gigantic storm—about 2 feet of snow dumped in less than 24 hours.  Flights into and out of the NYC area were all canceled.  Including ours on Monday night.

The airline said they could rebook us for Friday.  Or we could get to the airport and try standby.  In fact, the woman said, if we could get on the 7:15 am flight to Chicago we could likely get a flight from there to St. Louis!

IF.  I thought about it.  First:  the flight was likely already totally full.  Second: two days of flights had been canceled…and this was one of only three flights to Chicago that day (thanks, Southwest!).  Our chances:  LOW.  Especially as I’m sure some folks would get priority with frequent flyer type status plus perhaps sleeping in the airport.

So I though, let’s drive—it’s only 17 hours or so.  Chris got on the phone with rental car companies.  Nada.  No one had a car, at least, no one had a car available to drive one way to St. Louis.  Finally we got somebody who did.  Hertz.  They quoted $750 for one way on Monday afternoon to St. Louis.  Um…I don’t think so.  Then they quoted $350 for Tuesday afternoon.  Okay!  We made a reservation.  If the standby flights failed, we’d drive home starting Tuesday afternoon.

Then we found out our friends’ (who were visiting family 15 minutes away) flight also got canceled.  Boo!  I offered to share the rental car.

Then they called:  his parents were willing to lend one of their cars for the drive and would pick it up later (in a month or so).  SCORE!  Super super generous. 

A Honda Fit.

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Yes, I look like a crazy person.  I don’t know why!

For some unknown reason, we left Monday night.  (We had heard there might be ice).

We drove through the night.  Again, for some unknown reason.  I think we forgot we were in our 30’s…not spring chickens anymore Winking smile I didn’t drive.  I was SO sick, and on tons of cold medicine, I didn’t think I should.  Instead, I stayed up a lot to entertain the drivers. 

We stopped a lot—starbucks, waffle house, gas stations.  We complained a lot.  We all had trouble sleeping in the back seat of a very cramped Honda Fit. But somehow we made it home by 1:00 on Tuesday!  Good times!  I was so exhausted, I slept for three hours that afternoon.

But it was great to be home Smile

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(the boys, asleep in the back seat)