You'll like this. We opened presents on Christmas morning, ate some yummy scones made by my mom for breakfast, and then some of us ... well, we were a little sleepy.
That's me and the cat, Huggles, apparently having had ourselves a little too much Christmas cheer. Apparently, I was out for a couple hours. You have Hubby to thank for the lovely cellphone picture. (He took some pictures with the regular camera, too, so these can go in the Christmas scrapbook.)
Wow.
But just in case...
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!
Thanks for all your comments and e-mails this year. I love hearing from all of you, and I love how my family has started to keep up with our lives through the blog. It's great!
On Sunday, we put up the last of our Christmas trees - the one for my daughter's room. Despite a setback in which we found out that last year's lights wouldn't light (and a run by Hubby to CVS to get another pack), we got it up and trimmed all in a little more than an hour.
Sarah's tree is great because almost all the ornaments are unbreakable, so she can trim it all by herself (though Hubby and I had fun helping), and even cooler, most of the ornaments are things she's made.
Yes, I am aware that she is holding a lightsaber. Hey, at least it's red for Christmas.
I prefer this one, minus the Star Wars weaponry.
So this brings our grand total to three trees for this year. Once our basement remodel is finished, we'll plan to put our fourth and final tree up down there in future years.
Last Friday, my daughter Sarah's school had a big event where all the third-graders got to make and decorate a "gingerbread" (OK, graham cracker) house.
I went to help her, and we had a lot of fun. She really gets excited when I take pictures and tell her I'm going to put them on my blog. (At home, she walks around with an old, nonworking cellphone and says she's taking pictures for her "fake blog.")
This is the girl with the start of her masterpiece. We didn't go into this with a "theme" or a decorating plan. We basically, um, stuck stuff on the graham crackers and the foil base, wherever it looked appropriate. It's like modern art.
Here's a closeup. The two pretzel sticks toward the front right were my creation - it's a tent. Don't laugh. Sarah said that was her favorite part of the house.
Another close-up of Sarah's house. That's her friend "Q" in the pink shirt in the background.
One sad note... our dog LOVES sweets. And the day we brought the gingerbread house home, Mom and Sarah ran an errand and inadvertently left the house on the counter, then came home to Dog having a feast. Thankfully, he hadn't gotten too far into it (and we had some spare graham crackers), so Mom and Sarah spent Friday evening patching it up. Boy, was she mad, though!
So Hubby and I had to go to Weis today to mail a package... and while there, we decided to pick up lunch.
Motivated by my awesome workout and fitness talk with a trainer last night, I opted for this:
It's a little hard to see, but it's a salad with chicken breast, olives, green and red peppers, radishes, and just a little bit of grated cheese and bacon. Dressing is canola/olive oil mix, and a little bit of vinegar. Yummy and healthy, right? (A little pricey, though, at $3.94.)
Well, Hubby decided that "thrifty" was going to be his lunch's buzzword. Here's what he got.
It's, supposedly, "heat and eat" meatloaf in sauce. You can't see it too well, but its color is not what I'd call the ideal color for meat. And the sauce looked like it had dried to the top of it. All that, though isn't as bad as my favorite part - the "special" label on top. He got clearance meat. Sale meat. Now, I know from my sister the grocery-store manager that there's nothing wrong with this... it's just getting close to its sell-by date, so the price is reduced. But I'm sorry, I just can't support "clearance meat" for lunch. The good news, though? It only cost $1.99.
Hubby, for what it's worth, said he would buy meat at yard sales if it saved him money. In fact, he said if he started a band, he'd call it "Yard Sale Meat."
Greeeeaaaaaat...
As I hinted at before, we're kind of crazy about Christmas decorations in our family. We don't do any outdoor lights, but we've been known to have four (or more) Christmas trees, fully decorated, and we collect Christmas things like nativities, Nutcrackers, music boxes, little houses, etc.
We're not 100 percent done with the decorating yet (for instance, the tree for my daughter's bedroom will go up Wednesday, and she'll trim it later this week), but we're close.
So here's a look at the Concilio-Otto house this Christmas:
This is our gingerbread tree, which stands in our dining room. The dining room and kitchen are pretty much gingerbread-themed.
Our fireplace is home to our Nutcracker and nativity collection. At one time I had more than 50 Nutcrackers and more than 20 Nativities. I'm not sure I have quite as many now, but it's close. (Oh, and do you like how many stockings we have? This is actually the FEWEST stockings we've ever hung on this mantle. Our first Christmas at this house, we had two roommates. The following two Christmases, we had an extra cat and a different roommate. This Christmas, no roommates, and unfortunately, one of our cats had to be put to sleep this year.)
This is our main living room tree. It's Irish-themed. No wrapped gifts under it yet, but that'll come very soon. In the foreground, you can just see the tops of our music box collection; there's 15 or so of those on our "window ledge" that separates our living room from the hallway.
And what would Christmas be without COOKIES? I was not the chef on these; Hubby spent yesterday (his birthday) turning our dining room into cookie factory central, making something like 30 dozen cookies of various flavors to use as gifts for our staffs here at work, and as our contribution to the office potlucks. This is just some of them!
OK, I know at least Buffy will answer this... what's your favorite Christmas decoration?
Of course, it's Christmas, so it's time for presents.
This year, I'm super-excited about two "sets" of presents. They're both joint gifts for my husband and my daughter - one I bought, the other I made.
I can't tell you what they are, because Hubby has been known to occasionally read the blog, but suffice it to say I think they'll REALLY like them. And I'm a super-rushy giver; once I have a gift for someone, I really hate waiting more than a couple days to give it to them.
But I will. Because these will be worth the wait (I hope.)
So here's my question for today. What's the best gift you ever gave someone else?
Finally, finally, finally today, the house began to look like Christmas is coming (instead of looking like a tornado had already come, HAH).
I'll post some pictures Monday, featuring my multiple trees, nativity collection, music box collection, Nutcracker collection... let's just say when we decorate, we go all out.
But for now, here's a photo of a local woman who's really got the decorating thing down:
Her name is Marie Urich. Read her story here.
I just had to post, though. I found through the album web site an embeddable player that lets you listen to David Byrne's entire new album.
For the two of you who might like that sort of thing, here you go!
It's officially Christmas - our department has decorated at work.
Yep, that's our tree. And our snowman-on-a-sled. Grand total height of tree? 4 inches.
That's our Christmas spirit, right there.
At home, the boxes have been hauled up from the basement (thanks, Hubby) and we put a wreath on the front door.
Yeah, that's it so far.
I'm a big everything slacker, it seems. I haven't seen either of my best friends since my birthday (that's 10 days and counting), I haven't bought nearly enough of my holiday presents, and I haven't even gotten my Christmas tree up yet!
Today was catch-up-on-everything-else day at work, and I'm off tomorrow for a secret Christmas-shopping expedition. But when I come back Thursday, it's full-force into blogging again.
Don't say I didn't warn you!
First of all, I'm just about speechless at how good the David Byrne concert was. The biggest thing I'm kicking myself for is not taking my camera. I assumed the Strand wouldn't allow photography during the show, but everybody had cameras, either regular or cell. I did get a couple of pictures with my cell camera, but they're pretty blurry.
Everyone - David, the backup singers and dancers, the musicians - was dressed head to toe in white. Hence the almost painful glow!
Onto the music: I knew almost all the songs he sang, except a couple off the new collaboration album with Brian Eno. (The tour was all songs that Byrne and Eno worked on together, but many of them were off old Talking Heads albums, like Remain in Light.)
Here's one of my favorite all-time songs, "Houses in Motion." This is live from another stop on this concert tour, so you can see the great backup dancers.
And here's the title song from the new album, "Everything that happens (will happen today)." This is just the music, so no backup dancers. :)
I think my favorite thing about the whole show is that David, who's 56, is just a CRAZY good singer and dancer still! I should be so lucky when I'm 56!
