Weekend Wrap Up

I hope everyone had as nice of a Thanksgiving as I did. We had a nice, relaxing day and I ate so many mashed potatoes that I couldn't even finish my wine. I literally walked around with one glass of wine from dinner time until I finished it right before I went to bed, and if you know me, you know that's pretty drastic. Here are some photos I snapped throughout the day.

And some links for weekend browsing:

• How to Talk About Food Without Sounding Like a Snob
• Another amazing round of Celebrities Reading Mean Tweets About Themselves. Kills me every time.
• I made these whipped sweet potatoes from Tyler Florence for Thanksgiving, and they were DEEELISH. I hate when sweet potatoes taste like baby food, and these had just the right amount of savory...ness? to them. Don't leave out the orange zest, it makes the whole dish!
• How lovely is this DIY advent calendar?
• And this Scandinavian Christmas decor!
• And this framed holiday art!!! (I want the Donkey!)
• Thanksgiving is over, so I'm ready to go all in on Christmas everything (can you tell?) This year I'm all about fresh evergreen garland everywhere. Isn't this beautiful? (Scroll down to the last picture.)
• The perfect classic navy sweater, on my Christmas list. And if you order during Black Friday, they're donating 100% of profits back to the factory that produces their clothing. How stinkin' awesome is that?

Have a great weekend...I'm having trouble holding off on buying our tree since we're getting a real one this year, and we don't want it to die before Christmas gets here! My friend told me that her family has always dumped a 20 oz Pepsi (HAS to be Pepsi...no coke!) into their tree water, and it's made their trees last forever. Worth a shot!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Every year on Thanksgiving I get a tiny bit bummed that I can't be with my family for most holidays, but I'm immediately reminded of how lucky I am to have been welcomed into such a warm and accepting (and hilarious!) family right here. Jeff's family has treated me as one of their own since the first time I walked into his mom's house and she greeted me by saying she wasn't going to bother to learn my name. But I stuck around, and even though she told me repeatedly to get out while I could, six Thanksgivings have passed and now it seems as though I'm stuck with these lunatics. And I couldn't be happier.

I really am so incredibly lucky to be where I'm at in life right now, and even though I don't tend to yap all over social media about what I'm thankful for every day of November, I'm constantly asking myself how I ended up so fortunate. I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving and enjoys and appreciates the time with their loved ones. I'm pumped for a nice loud day filled with laughs and tons (seriously, A LOT) of mashed potatoes.

Thanks to you, too, for reading!

Dinner Music?

During my weekend blog perusing, there were of course tons of articles about Thanksgiving and suggestions on how to properly host, or etiquette on how to be a gracious guest, etc. One theme I noticed was the suggestion that there needs to be background music on during dinner. Which make me think...

I'm a huge advocate to have music playing - well, pretty much all the time. I think that some laid back music really improves the mood of pretty much anything you happen to be doing (except, of course, watching TV or a movie or something). But I had never thought to play music during family gatherings, though I would never think to have friends over without setting a playlist.

Well, last mother's day, I had Jeff's family over for brunch. I had been playing music in the kitchen while I cooked (as I always do), and in the rush to get everything on the table, I forgot to turn it off and it continued to play for the duration of the time everyone was here. I didn't really even notice until Jeff's mom made a comment on how nice the music was - it was my "Easy Like Sunday Morning" playlist, which is a pretty eclectic mix of laid back music. I made it after I had friends over for brunch one day and put my main Spotify playlist on shuffle, and it kept playing loud, jarring music. It was kind of funny, but it was pretty annoying; so I pretty much immediately whipped up a chill playlist for that exact kind of occasion. Now the playlist is my favorite to listen to as background music regardless of what I'm doing.

So all of this has convinced me to try playing some soft background music during Thanksgiving dinner this year. I was always hesitant, because people have such opposing views on music; especially when you have a large range of ages. I put together a playlist that I feel is very neutral and includes music that everyone usually likes from various time periods, so hopefully no one will feel alienated. And I can always turn it off if it's bothering anyone. Am I the only weirdo who DOESN'T usually play music at holiday gatherings? I always assume the things I do are the norm, but I realize that that's definitely not necessarily the case, ha!

Do You Watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade?

 

When I was little, my Gramma would always have the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (which my family just called 'The Macy's Day Parade' - did everyone else do that, too?) on in the background, but I don't think we ever really paid that much attention to it. As an adult, I hadn't watched it in years, until last year. Of course, I had to get up at the crack of dawn to get my turkey roasting, so I put the parade on and it was the nicest morning, drinking coffee, puttering around, and watching the parade before anyone else arrived or woke up. I'm excited to watch it again this year.

On a related note, what about football? Regardless of who I've celebrated Thanksgiving with, it's never felt very hardcore in my family. I know when I was young, my grandfather and dad and my uncles would definitely watch, but it always felt more like background noise, and we definitely didn't have it on during dinner. Luckily, you can't even see my TV from my dining room, but I would definitely never allow football watching during dinner at my house. It would drive me nuts. I know that it's a big part of a lot of families' tradition, though. 

And now THAT got me thinking - what time do you guys eat on holidays? We've always been early dinner people - like, the time we eat dinner on holidays is around the time you'd normally eat lunch. Both my family and Jeff's family are that way. Why is this? It would feel weird to eat later, I think, but I've been thinking about that this year - why do holidays call to eat dinner at 1 PM? It doesn't really make sense. I don't think I'd mind pushing it back to 4:00 or so. This is very important, I need to know everyone's opinion! Ha, I'm so nosy. 

Today's pie crust day. Surprisingly, given my history, I've never attempted my own crust. I always used the excuse that my kitchen was too small, and last year I used the excuse that it was my first Thanksgiving and I'd be stressed enough without having to worry about crust making. This year, I have no excuses. I'm doing it myself. Wish me luck!

How Big is Your Family?

With the holidays just around the corner, there's been a lot of talk about holiday celebrations, and tips on seating arrangements, decor, and cooking for a crowd. I've noticed that a lot of people I talk to (and a lot of writers whose blogs I read) host huge gatherings, oftentimes for 20-plus people! Which makes me think...

My family gatherings have always been on the small side. With the exception of my dad's family (which is huge and Italian), most of the time our celebrations would be under 10 people - sometimes WELL under 10. These days, when Jeff and I host any sort of family celebration (such as Thanksgiving, which we'll be hosting again this year) it's just his mother's parents, his mom, and us. Having a smaller group certainly makes things easier - I don't have to worry about cooking actual VATS of food, and the cleanup is a snap. Not to mention, we physically don't have anywhere to put a group much larger than the one we've got. But sometimes I think about how fun a big, rowdy group would be. Our intimate little holidays are relaxing and (relatively) stress-free, and it's nice to be able to have one-on-one time without a ton of chaos, but sometimes it can feel just a tad bit lonesome.

What do you think? Do you have a huge family and love spending time with the whole gang? Does your family have some kind of a fun tradition, like a group football game before dinner (I was always SUPER jealous whenever I'd watch the Thanksgiving episodes of Friends)? Or do you get a headache even thinking about the approaching holidays, and wish that you could get away from the clan? Is anyone like me, and a small group for the holidays is your norm? I feel like I'm definitely in the minority!

Making Traditions

As I've mentioned (excessively), I'm a season freak. This is never truer than Thanksgiving through Christmas. I love everything about the Holiday season, and I try to take full advantage of the festivities  every year. Of course, a big part of being a holiday nut is establishing and maintaining traditions. Growing up, every year on Christmas Eve we'd go to my Aunt Terry's house for a big party with my dad's side of the family, and then we'd come home, set out cookies for Santa and open one present each (I think - I may have been the only one doing any opening). The next morning, the living room was always transformed into a magical wonderland of gifts by my mom, who stayed up into the wee hours of the night, taking care to wrap the "Santa" gifts in different paper than the "mom and dad" gifts, and to disguise her writing into scroll-y Santa writing. She'd always leave a note hand-written by Santa, and of course the cookies would be replaced by a trail of crumbs. After we finished opening our gifts to and from each other and from Santa, we'd travel about 45 minutes to my grandparents' house and spend the rest of the holiday with my mom's side of the family. That's the way it was for as long as I can remember, and even after my parents separated, my mom would usually come over on Christmas morning and open presents with us, and we'd still all travel together to my grandparents', at least until I was into my teens.

This year will be mine and Jeff's 7th Christmas together (holy moses!). Over the years, we've established our own holiday traditions. Ever since our first Christmas together, we've spent Christmas Eve with his family (who has a party, similar to my father's family), and Christmas Day with my family. Since my mom lives about five hours north of Delaware, we spend our Christmas morning in the car, which echoes my previous tradition of traveling (though not as far) on Christmas. I don't think it would feel like Christmas without a lengthy car ride and my trusty "Jeffsi's Christmas Extravaganza!" playlist (shut. it.) We've also developed some other traditions - every year while putting up our tree, we watch "Bad Santa" (which we've discussed that we'll probably have to switch to "Elf" or something when we have kids - ha!) and we also open one gift each on Christmas Eve - we get to choose which gift the other opens. Last year was our first year in our house, and we picked up hosting duties for Thanksgiving. The evening before Thanksgiving I was buried deep in casserole making and veggie chopping, and Jeff picked up hoagies from a local shop. We're hosting again this year, and I plan on the same Thanksgiving-eve hoagie run. And we ALWAYS stop at Wawa for Coffee and breakfast on Christmas morning, which may sound depressing, but it's one of the things I look forward to every year. One of the things that excites me the most about having kids is making new holiday traditions as a family. What are some of your holiday traditions? Does anyone do anything out of the ordinary?

Pictures From the Weekend

Over the weekend, Jeff and I took a trip to my hometown, Jamestown, NY. I try to get up at least once a year, and being the big corny freak that I am, I planned this particular trip around a fall festival I used to attend every year as a child: The Busti Apple Festival (pronounced BUS-ty, you perv). I didn't want to inundate Facebook and Instagram with every single photo I took, so I thought I'd share some on the old blogeroonie.

Jeff and I both took an extra long weekend (Friday through Monday for him and Friday through Tuesday for myself) so we could get a nice visit in without most of our trip being driving. As we always do, we started our weekend with a visit to my mom in PA - the trip to Jamestown is about six hours long, which is doable, but we usually use the trip as an excuse to stop overnight at my mom's, which is about three quarters of the way there. We had a nice dinner outdoors at a local golf course with incredible views of the course as well as some playful dogs and kiddos running around, and that evening I had planned to meet up with some old friends. We went and got drinks with my friend (another) Jeff, and my old roommate, Brandon. It was great to catch up with them, as I hadn't seen either in several years and they're two of my favorite people.

The next morning, we headed off to Jamestown, and the first thing we did after we checked in to our hotel was pay a visit to my favorite place in the world, Southern Tier Brewery (and you know I NEVER exaggerate...ahem). I don't know if you're familiar with Southern Tier (and if you're not, get in the know), but they're one of the best craft breweries out there and they're based right in Lakewood, NY, which is Jamestown's next door neighbor. Not only do they have great beer (and what seems like pretty tasty food, though I haven't tried it), but the brewery itself is beautiful and rustic, and has a great outdoor space with a little amphitheater where they have live music in the summer. AND of course it's autumn, so they have Pumpking on tap which the only the best pumpkin beer ever ever EVER. They also do tours on Saturday afternoons, but they fill up fast and we tend to get there on the late side to make it in. Next time!

After our stop at Southern Tier, we had a nice dinner at a new Japanese Steakhouse in town with my dad and (big) little brother, followed by some ice cream. I'm terrible at remembering to take pictures, and didn't get any with them, unfortunately.

After a stop at Tim Horton's (I have to honor my practically Canadian roots) the next morning, we headed off to the old Fest. Not having been in YEARS, I wasn't really sure what to expect. I remember it usually being freezing cold and windy, and frequently raining (in Western New York it's literally snowing by Halloween a good half of the time), but this weekend the weather was PERFECT, if not almost a little TOO hot. Being that I'm stubborn and mildly idiotic, I had checked the weather, saw that it was going to be 75+ degrees all weekend, and STILL packed mostly sweaters and long pants, including a pair of riding boots. When we left the hotel, it was still a little brisk outside, and I figured I'd wear the boots since the Festival is held basically in a big field and I figured it might be muddy. Welp, what it was was HOT. Very hot. And sunny. So sunny. But we toughed it out, and I was just glad that it wasn't drastically the other way around. The Festival itself was pretty much just as I remembered it - SUPER crowded, but there was a lot of cool stuff to see. Tons of crafts, delicious food, live music, and demonstrations (the pictures are of - I think - flour being made?). I passed up the crafts as most of them - while beautiful - were a tad bit country for my taste, and I didn't bring home any apples because I didn't want to lug them around and I plan on visiting an apple orchard here in the next couple of weeks. I did treat myself to some delicious tiny donuts, and I brought home some local maple cream, which I'm pretty jazzed to swirl into my oatmeal.

We followed the Festival with some relaxation - a nap for me (shocker), and some reading for Jeffrey (SHOCKER!). We had planned to go out to dinner at one of my favorite restaurants in town, Forte, but I was surprised to learn that NOTHING is open in Jamestown on Sunday evenings. I don't remember this from when I lived there - I mean, it's been about eight years, but I lived there for 22 years of my life! When I say nothing is open, I mean NOTHING. The place is like a ghost town! After learning that Forte was closed (which wasn't THAT surprising, as it's right downtown and a lot of cities are kind of dead on Sundays), I started searching online for somewhere else to go, and almost literally every restaurant in town was either completely closed or closed by 7 pm. I thought I had hit the jackpot with an irish pub, but when we drove past all of their signs were off. Mind. Blown. Jamestown isn't an unusually religious town, nor is it a dry town; in fact, the liquor laws in New York are way looser than they are here in Delaware. And there's a pretty big sports following there (as with everywhere else), so I was dumbfounded that there weren't even any bars open for people to go watch football. Trying to avoid chain restaurants (though we were briefly tempted by endless shrimp at Red Lobster. I mean, c'mon. Endless shrimp!), we eventually settled on this really cool place that I used to go to all the time with my parents, Ashville General Store. It's an old timey store with penny candy and all sorts of neat little knicknacks and a really awesome, unique menu of subs and pizza. After dinner I had planned on meeting my high school best friend Sarah out for drinks, but again ran into the whole "NOTHING IS OPEN" dilemma. We ended up giving in an going to Applebees for drinks (I think they may have literally been the only place in town that was still open at that point), and Jeff was happy because he got to drink a Mucho Mudslide. So all in all, the weekend was a success.

Crazy Love

Even though I don't like Valentine's Day, if you know me, you know that I am a ridiculously festive person. So even though I think it's stupid, it's hard for me to go into stores and restaurants and pretty much anywhere and see all of the Valentine's themed stuff and not get in the spirit. So, I've decided to do a little post about a few of the biggest loves in my life. (I was going to do this as a series at first, but who am I joking? I'm a terrible blogger, that shit would never happen.) Okay, so here goes.

Macgruber Strongbad Raum

 

 My sweet pup. I highly recommend keeping dogs as pets; they're highly enjoyable. Seriously though, this little fella has brought so much joy into our life. He's obviously the most handsome dog on the planet, but he also has so much weird personality. He's super neurotic and tightly wound, which makes him pretty entertaining, but he's also one of the loviest dogs I've ever met. We'll try to take one of his toys or we'll do something else to get him super worked up and excited, and you just KNOW he wants to bite us so badly it's killing him, but he just licks us to death instead. And even though I'm home alone a lot since Jeff and I have pretty opposite work schedules, I'm never lonely because Grooby is such great company. I love my fluffy white guy.

My Boo

My Jeffrey. He's put up with me for 4 and a half years. And I know that people say "oh, my significant other puts up with me" all the time, but he really is a champ at dealing with  my moody tendencies and my stress induced freakouts. He supports everything I do, even if it means picking up my slack. He sings me a sweet little sleepy song every morning. He says cute things when he's drunk. He makes up songs about Grooby and sings to him every day, and I assume he'll someday do the same for our potential children. I'm lucky to have such a great guy.

My Mama

I already did a whole post last mother's day about how great my mom is, but I can't say enough how lucky I am to have such a loving mother. She would literally do anything for me. She loves more fiercely than anyone I have ever met, and would go to the end of the Earth to care for the people she loves. And even though she's so sweet, I somehow got my sick sense of humor from her. She's also one of the best pranksters I've ever met, and I can't even attempt to live up to her sick, bizarre prank legacy. I just know to avoid her come April 1st. 

My Blankie

I have absolutely no idea why I've become so attached to this blanket. I bought it on a whim at I believe TJ Maxx two Christmases ago. But after Christmas ended, I never put it away, and it's now a permanent fixture on our couch. It's SUPER soft and cozy, and it's the perfect size to snuggle up with on the couch or on a chair. Jeff tried to replace it this Christmas with a nicer blanket from Brookstone that magically keeps you both warm AND cool, depending on the side of the blanket that you use, but no dice. The new blanket IS really nice and cozy, and I've added it for extra warmth on our bed, but I still use my trusty blankie everywhere else. I just washed it for the first time ever yesterday (I know, that's really really gross), and I'm kinda bummed that instead of smelling faintly of Grooby, it just now smells like laundry detergent. But, by some miracle, it didn't pill up after I washed it, and it's as soft as ever. I'm snuggled up with it as I type this very post.

 

 

There you have it. That will be about the extent of my Valentine's Day celebration this year (probably). Although, there are these really cute dachshund mugs at Target that they have set out with the V-Day decorations that I have my eye on. They're already pretty cheap, but I'm waiting for them to go on clearance so I can snag a couple up. I'll report back on that later. Love is in the air, and such!

I Love My Mom.

So, Mothers' Day is one of those holidays that's kind of messed up and redundant...your mom has has to put up with your dumb ass for at least whatever 365 times 18 days of her life equals; you should probably appreciate her more than one day out of the year. Some gloppy half-raw pancakes and a weak ass grocery store bouquet of flowers mayyyybe don't quite cut it.

But I digress.

I wanted to post a picture of my mom, but I'm writing this (with moderate difficulty) on my iPhone, and couldn't figure out how. So instead, I'll just talk about some of the cool things she's done for me. When I was little, my mom used to play this game with me that we referred to as "taste test". This basically consisted of me (and sometimes my friends) gathering the grossest stuff we could find in our house, mixing it up, blindfolding my mom, and making her eat it. She allowed this relatively frequently for several years.

She also took the Santa and Easter Bunny gig to the extreme. On Christmas Eve, she would literally stay up all night, not only wrapping presents "from Santa", but wrapping them in completely different paper from her own, disguising her handwriting, and writing me a lengthy letter from Mr. Claus gushing about how great I am. For Easter, she'd search all over the county for the most unique, fanciest candies and chocolate items, and arrange them just so, and then went to great lengths to find a totally new hiding spot every single year, even after I knew it was her hiding the basket.

One year, I had a slumber party around Halloween. My mom made individual carved jack o'lanterns filled with candy for all 8 or something of my guests. Who DOES that??

Now that I'm older, my mom and I occasionally go out for drinks together. When I was single, she was dead set on finding me an attractive, sensitive, funny, (preferably rich) man. In doing so, she inadvertently set me up with a jealous sociopath, but she certainly meant well. Thanks, mom!

My mom is also VERY supportive of anything I endeavor to do (as most good moms are), and is also wildly out of touch with reality. For example, upon reading this very blog, she immediately called me to suggest I become a professional writer. Comical, but sweet. My mom has done countless wonderful things for me, and she is the largest reason I am who I am today. So if you're reading this mom, happy Mother's day, I love you, and I'll be searching for an agent post haste.

Ps. I apologize for what I assume are numerous typos; there is no convenient way to proofread this on my phone, so obviously I'm just not going to. I just viewed this, and apparently iPhones don't automatically insert line breaks, and I forget how to do them using HTML (nor do I have any idea of that would work with a phone), so I'm just leaving it for now. I'll go back and fix it later. Just imagine separate paragraphs where appropriate, mmkay? (I have now fixed the major issues; however, I was half asleep and literally in bed when I wrote this, and recognize that this whole post is horrendous and choppy. I'm not fixing that mess. Deal with it.)