Traditions!

I've been tagged by JenP! So...on to our Christmas traditions.



This will be the 3rd Christmas for Michael and me. We've been trying to set some traditions of our own this year- especially since it's our first year married. Growing up, my family always celebrated Christmas Eve with my dad's side. We'd all go over there after 4:00 mass and eventually Santa would show up and pass out presents. Sadly, that tradition ended a long time ago because my dad's side is so big and my aunts and uncles became grandparents themselves and started their own traditions. After that, we'd still get together at my parents' house with the family that still chose to celebrate together.

Christmas Day was always reserved for waking up WAY to early to open presents, go to mass if we hadn't already, and then we'd head out to my grandma and grandpa's to celebrate with my mom's side. The location has since changed, as it does every year now but we still get together. That's always been one of my favorite parts about Christmas. Every place we go, no matter what, there is always an extreme amount of food! I love it.

This year we will be doing things differently. Michael and I are going to start our own family traditions. We will go to my parents house on Christmas Eve. On Christmas morning, we'll wake up, I'll make coffee while we exchange our gifts and then we'll head over to his parents for their annual eggs Benedict brunch. We will spend the remainder of the day there and if we have time and aren't feeling rushed, we'll make it to Christmas with my mom's side of the family since it usually goes really late.

It will be kind of weird to possibly not see my family on Christmas Day but it sure beats watching the clock. I hate that. This year we'll get some real quality family time in and I'm very excited about that.

I'm tagging Kelly, Sarah Gone Wild, Katie and Maria!

Happy Holidays!

Rough Night?

Yeah... Him too.

Hmpf...

As most of you already know, I’m just now catching on the all of this Twilight madness. I finished Twilight and thought it was incredible! I was totally hooked! Then I learned of Midnight Sun- Twilight from Edward’s prospective. It was amazing. (By the way though… did anyone else catch the difference? In Twilight he drives a “shiny Volvo” and in Midnight Sun he suddenly has an Aston Martin Vanquish… What’s up with that?) I saw the movie. I wasn’t disappointed but (as most cases are) I found the books better than the movie and eagerly jumped into the second book of the series, New Moon.

Hmpf… I really don’t want to give anything away just in case I’m not the last person on the planet to read the series but I am a little miffed. The book was thicker than the first and I’d say that over half of it seemed to drag on for as long as Edward’s been alive. It was endless. I was even compelled to skim and possibly jump to a later chapter. I was too afraid that I’d miss something important so I made my husband read the plot summaries on Wikipedia so that he could tell me how much more I had to endure before the story returned to my liking. Thanks goodness I didn’t have far to go, trudged on and completed the book around three this morning. I have so many unanswered questions. I feel like nothing was resolved. I feel like it trudged on and on, drastically changed course (thankfully) and then it was over. I will read Eclipse next but unlike others, I don’t feel the rush. I just don’t get it… Twilight and Midnight Sun were like crack cocaine! New Moon has left me slightly disappointed but my husband told me that Eclipse will restore my faith in the series. I hope he’s right.

In the meantime, let’s just swoon over the guy playing a 107 yr-old vampire claiming to be a high schooler.

Bread & Butter

As mentioned before, Teresa and I made bread and butter. (Does that sound weird to anyone else?) Anyway, this is my version of the night in pictures.

As any good session in the kitchen goes, everything starts with some wine. Thankfully, Teresa found a nice sized bottle of Riesling. No... this picture isn't out of proportion. That bottle was HUGE!



Doesn't it resemble a TeeBall bat? I'm pretty sure my little brother had a red, plastic version of this as a toddler.



The ingredients for the butter. (Salt not pictured.) Seems simple enough.



Shake, Shake, Shake, Shake, Shake IT! Four minutes down, sixteen to go!



The bread was done before I got there and now the butter was done. We sat down to watch the Britney documentary- which sucked- and 40 minutes after that, the wine was done too! (Her husband drank some too- I swear!)



Here's a picture of our spread complete with two types of bread, two types of butter, cheese, pumpkin spread and the wine. Not bad.

Random Friday

#1 - Teresa helped me make butter a few nights ago! She said it was fun and she actually enjoyed the finished product. (I think she was lying about the fun part.) I have plenty of pics to document the occasion and when I'm not feeling as lazy, I will post them.

#2 - My husband's brother and his wife gave us our wedding gift a few days ago.
I LOVE it! It is crazy timing because I saw something eerily similar online and tried to recreate it in Photoshop.... not smart. How would I display it? Anyway- his wife started talking about how she wishes he could find a way to sell them. He is a wonderful artist, this is handmade.... are you thinking what I'm thinking? I told him about Etsy.com and now he has a shop! Peruse it. tell your friends!

#3 - When loading the dishasher, how do you load untensils and servingware? The end that goes into your mouth is down, right? I think it should be for a multitude of reasons: when the dishes are clean, why would you grab that end with your grubby hands? Also, if another person has loaded the dishwasher (say... at work) and a different person unloads it, the second person might not notice the knife pointing up and cut herself. I know this because it happend to me! Be careful, folks.

#4 - I have been hearing all these commercials on the radio about the "cleanse/detox" drinks. I think this is the new fad. My concerns are this: not only will the products dehydrate you if you don't drink enough water but also wouldn't a laxative essentially do the same thing?

#5 - I love that our office still has free coffee in the kitchen area. I hope that doesn't change.

#6 - If the economy isn't on the upswing soon, my husband is going to develop an ulcer. Please cross your fingers that something changes soon!

#7 - Speaking of my husband, usually my first call of the day is to him because I've forgotten to tell him something like, "My garage door remote is broken so don't drive away until you close it." Anyway, just for giggles I usually hit the redial button. I love it when the last call of the day before was to him because when I do hit redial, I don't have to type out his whole number. 9 (to dial out)-area code- blah- blah. As stated in Random thought #1, I can be (but am not always) pretty lazy- mentally and physically.

I think that's all for now. I'm a pretty random person so I'm actually surprised I don't have more posts like this... it's probably for the better. Have a great weekend!

*Edited for spelling and typing errors... I hope no one caught them before I was able to correct myself.