Decorating for my Favorite Holiday

We’re back from our drive to California for Thanksgiving.  It was great to see our family and friends but so nice to be back home. The fun has started with Christmas right around the corner.  I already have my shopping done, just need to wrap what’s here and wait a couple more days for the remainder to arrive. I hope the kids enjoy the gifts from their wish lists this year.

On Sunday we went to the farm to get our tree and we normally get a 6-7 foot tree but not this year.  This year we picked out a HUGE 9-10 foot tree and cut the top and base.  It was extremely full with no holes in the foliage.  We just couldn't pass it up even knowing my angel tree topper wouldn't be going on top of the tree this year.  I even had to go out and buy more LED lights for the tree.

Decorating the house and tree make the holiday for me. Don moves the tree in and sets it up then leaves me to start decorating it. I can’t wait to share the decorating with our child.

 I love the smell of a natural tree in the house and the ornaments that bring back memories or new ones that I buy to remind me of the year. 

The year we moved to Washington we spent Christmas in our apartment with his parent’s visiting. We had a small tree with few ornaments but Don did get me the M & M lights I really wanted and they still work to this day over 20 years later.  Christmas day would stick in my mind forever as he left the room after we opened gifts, only to get down on his knee and propose.  We've never looked back from that day on and it makes Christmas ever more special to me.

I’m still putting out the decorations this year and hope to get the outside lights done on Sunday.  We have rain slated for the next couple days, tapering off on Saturday so it should melt the ice on the roof so we can safely put the lights up. Saturday night we hope to go to Zoo Lights at Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. I’m super excited about the light displays this year and can’t wait to make new memories with our future child.

I need to finish the decorating and get down to our Christmas cards this week.  We got our first one in the mail today. It can be hard to sum up the year for the cards, especially when adopting and having no new news to share. Some folks are great with the year in review family newsletters and it just hasn't ever been my strong point.  I like adding just a small personal note to each card but may try the newsletter approach again. Time will tell which approach wins out this year.

Here are a few favorites to leave you with as I get back to decorating and listening to Christmas music.

Movies: White Christmas, Elf, Miracle on 34^th St (original), A Christmas Carol (Patrick Stewart) and A Nightmare before Christmas

Music: A Merry Affair CD with Various artists singing new and classic songs, White Christmas, Now that’s what I call Christmas! vol. 1

Holiday Traditions

As the holidays are fast approaching some of our Holiday Traditions begin with when we’ll be visiting family in California.  This year it’s for Thanksgiving.  Since we drive down I actually prefer going in November because there is a lot less snow and ice. I love taking the dogs to the beach to run and play and the warmer temps make it more enjoyable for us all.

Our drive down typically has us stopping to visit long time friends in the Sacramento area before heading south to spend the holiday week with our families. While we get to visit with them the dogs have a blast in the large fenced yard playing with our friend’s son. I think besides the beach it’s what they look forward to every year.  They get super excited as we pull into the driveway and literally pull us to the house. The other must is In n Out burger. I've actually made a list of where they are for the drive down this year.

Once we get to our hotel we break up the week with a day to visit each family cluster with Thanksgiving Day with Don’s family. Usually after Thanksgiving we will stop at Don’s parents for breakfast before we head out to drive home.  We once again stop in at our friend’s place for the night and head out early the next day for the longest portion of the drive home – 12 hours.  I drink lots of coffee that day.

Once we get home the real fun for me begins.  After unpacking I get to drag out all the Christmas decorations and begin decorating while I listen to Christmas music or watching my favorite holiday movies. Christmas is my favorite holiday by far.  I will probably pull the boxes out and put them upstairs before we leave this year since Thanksgiving is so late in the month. On years when we’re home we go to the farm and get our tree the day after Thanksgiving and I spend the day decorating it. Then over the next few days, as the tree settles, I will move things around. I can’t wait to share getting the tree and the decorating with our little one.

Colin loves to play with the trains around the tree

Once the weekend hits we move outside to put out the lights. I love just sitting outside with nothing but the shine from the Christmas lights. I enjoy seeing all the decorations as I drive down the streets; we have some spectacularly decorated homes on our street.  We go with the basics though, Santa in a sleigh on the roof and lights around the house and garage.

I love cooking and baking for my family during the holidays and can’t wait to share that with our future child.  I remember doing that with my mom and aunts every year and can’t wait to pass it in. So we host Christmas most years sometimes for my whole extended family and others just my immediate family. When it’s just a small gathering rather than use china, I always have fun bringing out the Looney Tunes Fiesta Ware for Christmas dinner.  Other people use china and I go with a fun approach more than a formal one.  It’s always fun asking the nephews what character they want and setting it all up on the table. This year will just be us, my mom and her husband and my nephew and it’ll be Christmas Eve dinner instead of Christmas day. I don’t mind though as we want to spend time with my nephew and with his mom having Christmas off this year, Christmas Eve is the day.

wish they still made these

My mom no longer eats meat so I called to ask about certain dishes this year for the Christmas dinner and our nephew yelled out I want ham! Well OK I guess we’re having ham and lots of Veggie dishes. Don will be on board with that since he’d rather not eat 2 week’s worth of turkey in a 4 week span. This seems to be a new tradition we’re forming after I made ham for Colin last year.

We will wind down the holidays on New Year’s Eve by watching the movie of the same name, playing games and then watching the ball drop in Times Square or watch the Space Needle fireworks. We don’t like going out unless it’s to our friend’s place earlier in the day and then we just stay the night.  We don’t want to be out on the road.

Baking, Cooking, Cooking, Baking I'm in Love!

 

I have always loved cooking, started making scrambled eggs at age 2 and moving up to grilled cheese and many other things by age 4. I began making cookies and candy with my mom and aunts for holidays around then as well, a tradition I hope to pass on to our little one.  Outside baking I never really used cookbooks to cook.  I'd just see what was on hand and throw something together.  Some of our favorite meals came about that way.

 I bought my first cookbook when Don and I started dating and boy was it a horrible one.  We still laugh about one meal I made exactly as the book said and it was hideous! That book went bye-bye but thankfully I didn't stop there and have many books now from vegetarian meals and ethnic cuisines to basic all encompassing books to baking.  I even gathered yummy recipes from the internet, long before Pinterest was around but they've made it easier to find way too many things to try.

My favorite time of year has arrived and the baking and making of good comfort food has begun.  I enjoy cooking anyway but I rarely bake unless the holidays are upon us or we can get fresh pumpkins.  I steamed some pumpkins and made a pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting yesterday and in the oven now is pumpkin bread.  I’m keeping a loaf and taking the other plus the cake to my grandparents.

I also made lasagna yesterday to take to my grandparent's tomorrow. Grandma was super-excited to hear all the goodies I would be bringing down for them.  Her response is why I love to cook.  It makes my heart smile when people enjoy my food or shared recipes.  I can't wait to share my Love of cooking and baking with our son or daughter. I can only hope they'll love it half as much as I do.

Family and pumpkins

My Uncle is coming up from California to visit soon and I really want to share some pumpkin recipes while they are in town.  So I went and got some pumpkins to cook and plan to make some homemade pumpkin bread, some Curry Pumpkin soup and a handmade pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting.  My grandparents house is where we all meet up together and play games, eat, and enjoy each others company.  We always look forward to it.

I'll also be bringing my mom and grandparents some of the homemade apple butter I made. My love of canning comes from my grandma so I like to show what a good job she did teaching me as I grew up and all the canning books, recipes, and jars have gone to good use.

As Fall tries to approach

It's been unseasonably warm for this time of year but Fall is just around the corner. The leaves have been falling for a couple weeks now but you'd never know it from looking at the trees. That means an almost winter leaf clean-up.
It's also time to dig up the Iris, divide them and get them replanted.

One of the many types of Iris in the yard

I also need to start pulling out the vegetable garden.  I'm hoping our eggplant and tomatoes make it another couple weeks but that'll depend on the weather forecasts. The pumpkins are still growing and I can't wait for them to ripen so I can make fresh pumpkin bread and curried pumpkin soup. Two of our fall favorites. The dogs also eat pumpkin with their dinner every night so they benefit from our garden too. I can't wait to share my love of gardening with our child.  It'll be so much fun to watch them plant their first garden with me.

One of the heirloom sugar pie pumpkins 

 A few of our ripe heirloom tomatoes and a wee eggplant emerging.

Things we enjoy

Some facts:

We both love to travel and have gone so many fun places. We routinely travel to California as we both have family and friends there so drive down at least once a year. Looking at our pictures on Facebook, iHeart, or Adoptimist you'll see a lot of travel pictures from The Grand Canyon, St Croix, New York, Atlanta, Hawaii, Paris, London, Ghana and Texas.  We can't wait to share trips with our little one so they can see the differences and beauty around the US and the world.

Don in his classroom in Ghana

the Grand Canyon

We both enjoy reading and Don loves History, Biography, Science Fiction, and Fantasy.  I like Fantasy, Mystery, Science Fiction and Anne Rice. I'm currently reading a book I picked up from the author at Dragon Con. It's a mystery set in a historical setting with a fantasy element to it.  I just started it but so far it's pretty good at getting you straight into the story.

We love going to the Theater and when we're in New York we try to make at least one show while we're there.  I love seeing Phantom of the Opera, Rent, Chicago, Avenue Q, Wicked and so many others.  Funny thing is I've seen Wicked in Chicago, Alabama and New York but every time it comes to Seattle we miss it.

When it comes to movies and music we're eclectic.  From Nine Inch Nails to Dream Theater to BB King and Johnny Cash we listen to most everything. Movies are just as varied.  I'd say we watch a lot of comedies, Sci-fi/fantasy, musicals, life stories and animation.  We also like Golden age of Hollywood movies but will watch any movie at least once.

Some favorites movies and TV Shows:

Don:

• Never cry Wolf
• Gladiator
• The Big Lebowski
• Star Trek the search for Spock
• Last Samurai
• King Kong (1933)
• I'm Not There
• Blade Runner
• Grand Canyon
• Life of Pi
• Glengarry GlenRoss
• Up in the Air
• Sideways
• The Right Stuff
• Across The Universe
• Arrested Development
• Star Trek the original series
• Wall-E
• Firefly
• Babylon 5
• Doctor Who
• MASH
• Deadwood
• Mad Men

Nicole:

• Nightmare Before Christmas
• Alice in Wonderland (either Tim Burton or Disney version)
• Phantom of the Opera
• Rock of Ages
• Pitch Perfect
• Dark Shadows
• For Love of the Game
• Across The Universe
• A League of Their Own
• Fried Green Tomatoes
• Steel Magnolias
• Wreck it Ralph
• Despicable Me 2
• Toy Story
• White Christmas
• Elf
• The Breakfast Club
• Castle
• Poirot
• Firefly
• Star Trek
• Babylon 5
• Sherlock
• Looney Tunes
• Scooby Doo
• Doctor Who
• Torchwood
• Downton Abbey
• MASH
• Friends
• Dancing with the Stars