A Merry Little Christmas

When I pictured my first Christmas in the South, I thought about gracious Southern hospitality, amazing food, and beautifully decorated front porches.  The one thing I really didn't factor in...

...was snow!  You can imagine how excited Sam and I were to wake up at the farm to find a winter wonderland.  

This is the acceptable version of Sam and I enjoying the snow.  We had to have many tries because one of us wasn't cooperating with my vision for Christmas morning joy:

Sam's mom is known for spoiling us with ridiculously lovely breakfasts, but for Christmas she outdid herself.

We had a lovely time together.

Growing up, I always thought I was a little too cool for Christmas morning pictures.  My mom wanted to capture every present that I opened for posterity, and I thought that wasn't totally necessary.  I think history will show that my mom has documented our Christmas mornings with such an outstanding level of excellence that were we to view those pictures quickly it would be a stilted video of the actual day.  But in this as in many other things, it turns out that I am (proudly) my mother's daughter.  So when Sam and I opened our presents, I was all over it.  

Not to be too braggy, but I thought I really caught the energy of that paper ripping

For our first Christmas together, Sam and I pretended we were snowed in and made a gorgeous dinner of steak, lobster, and of course, Fanta (who could get by without their Christmas Fanta)?  

  

It was a very, very  happy day.  Hope everyone else had a wonderful Christmas!

New York

Sam and I recently went for a weekend in New York City as a Christmas present to ourselves.  As always when you travel, you learn a few things.  Along with this picture of the Hershey store in Times Square, here's what I got out of it.

1.  The Flavored Americano
This may be the most important thing I learned, and I believe it is absolutely crucial to impart it to you.  How many of us (and by us, I mean coffee addicts), when we go to Starbucks (if we drink corporate coffee), really want the Pumpkin Spice Latte, but feel like we are getting a punch in the wallet every time we cave in and order it instead of something more responsible?  When I was in line at the airport, the man in front of me ordered a Gingerbread Americano with room for cream.  Call me shallow, but my world exploded.  How could I not have thought of this before?  It saves you over a dollar a cup, and it tastes really good.  I don't know if I can make a case for it being significantly less calories, but in my heart I tell myself there are less.  Seriously, try it.


2.  Tourists are crazy...

This is a picture of me being superior to tourists

...and we are tourists.

Sam pointing out the Statue of Liberty

Me with the Statue of Liberty in my mouth

3.  Guidebooks are back
I have always liked guidebooks, but in my twenties I tried to hide it.  All the cool kids were going places flying by the seat of their pants, just experiencing life.  Lately I have come to accept about myself that it scares me half to death to fly by the seat of my pants, and that I'd rather just have the guidebook.  For me, just getting there is the adventurous part, and at last I'm okay with it.

Thanks to our NYC guidebook we found this little gem--the Hotel 17.  Not only did Woody Allen make a horror movie there (which is something I always look for in a hotel), but it is really cheap for New York--under $200.  It was clean, we didn't get bed bugs, and we even had a flat screen t.v. with 15 channels.

As an extra bonus, it was the narrowest hotel room I ever stayed in.

4.  Go with your gut
Have you ever walked into a restaurant and thought to yourself, this just isn't a good idea.  Sam and I experienced that sensation on our honeymoon when we went into a restaurant we just didn't have a great feeling about.  Things were moving VERY slowly, and yet we plowed on.  Three hours later, we had finally received our overpriced dinner.  It wasn't some European leisure thing with it taking three hours for us to eat, it was more that no one cared whether or not we starved or died of boredom.  Since that experience, we now just leave if things aren't going well.  So in the big city, when we had sat at our table for twenty minutes in an almost empty restaurant and no one had taken our order, we left for greener pastures.  It is such a good feeling!

Anyway, there is really too much good food and not enough time in New York City.  For instance, there are places like the Mac Bar, which serves twelve different kinds of macaroni and cheese and is shaped like a macaroni noodle to boot.

Lobster Macaroni and Chipotle Macaroni

Here we are trying to blend as world weary New Yorkers

5.  Stay street smart
Since I lived adjacent to Boston for a couple of years and I live in Atlanta now, I like to think that I am an aware person who approaches the big city with a good balance of caution and hipness.  This image of myself was a little battered, however, when I went out one morning while Sam was still sleeping to get us some coffee by myself.  My wallet was in my coat pocket, which really didn't seem like a safety first option for me, so I decided that I was probably going to get mugged.  I made it successfully to the coffee shop and because of a slight debacle with making our drinks I left carrying two cups of a coffee and an open cup of cream.  A man who looked a little sketchy began to approach and immediately I shifted into being hyper alert, like the city girl I am.  He suddenly stepped a little too far into my personal bubble and I jumped, completely covering myself in cream.  Because I'm always cool under pressure, I left my cup on the sidewalk (please don't tell, I usually never littler!) and ran away.  What I learned from this was that doing harm to yourself may startle your would be bubble burster, but it doesn't really seem like a good form of self defense.  In the event of a real emergency, I would try to throw the cream at him.

Briefly achieving my hip and cautious stance

Christmas is Here

I had grand ambitions to blog every day in December.   I was so excited to write all about the holidays at our house and what we were doing for our first Christmas together.  You can imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning and realized that it is three days to Christmas and if we can trust what appears on my blog, I apparently haven't written a word.  Disaster!  This is like that recurring nightmare that I used to have that it was Christmas Eve and I hadn't bought anyone any presents and all that was left at the store were Jabba the Hut Pez dispensers.  Friends, we will just have to do our best with the time that remains to us. 

Let's start with the tree.  As you can see, I am a real curmudgeon at tree time.





Sam practically had to drag me to the lot to get one.  Like most of you, I decided that there was really only one way for a busy youngish couple who is going to be out of town every weekend in December to go with decor--completely hand made origami lights and ornaments.

We started off strong.  During slow days at the store I was able to make about a hundred little boxes to cover our Christmas lights.  And Sam made five or six while he was watching t.v. so we were in good shape.

 

I have to say, I LOVE the way the lights turned out.

I believe that Christmas should be a meaningful time of year.  When I began the paper ornaments crusade, I had visions of us sitting down every evening and cutting out a paper ornament (paper because it will be our paper anniversary) with a crackling fire in the background (in my imagination we have a beautiful fireplace).  Sam and I would stare lovingly into each others eyes and write on our paper ornaments the things we were thankful for and our hopes for the year.  We each wrote one, and it was nice.  Then we completely lost steam.  About halfway through December I decided that if I didn't do something soon, our tree would remain half decorated so I had to make a very hard decision.

I hope that when my imaginary daughters grow up living with me will have taught them that sometimes in life a woman just has to cowgirl up, admit defeat and go to Target to buy plastic ornaments.  

I would like to say that I learned my lesson from the ornament debacle.  But I don't know if that is the case because I have to leave this blog and go bake five dozen meaningful cookies for friends and family...  I leave you with a few scenes from the Chalkboard house in December.