This year I participated (or rather, was bullied into participating) in an ornament exchange online, and in some crazy random happenstance, I ended up getting assigned to a girl I’ve been e-friends with for years and years. Originally I wanted to get her a vintage Russian ornament but I was worried about shipping delays so I ended up sewing her a little felt Santa Claus instead. I’ve been holding off posting a picture until she received it but he arrived at her house today.
Elina’s Santa Claus
Obviously, this would be my husband Taylor (of Taylor’s Holiday Nog Shake fame).
For those of you who don’t know, we have been together for just over three years after being introduced by a mutual friend, and have been married eight and a half months. We were married March 21st on Paipu Beach in Wailea, Maui, after a three month wedding delay (a snowstorm cancelled our flight and trip and postponed our elopement in December 2008).
This is just after the ceremony, when we discovered that at a certain point n the service we’d both thought “And so say we all” (a Battlestar Galactica reference for all you non-nerds out there).
Sometimes he has a beard…
And sometimes he doesn’t…
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But to me is is always A+ handsome, not to mention funny and generous and kind and patient and good at video games and all things my husband should be. GO TEAM HUSBAND!
Our Christmas tree, with red, green, silver and black ornaments. It’s just under 6 feet tall and it’s starting to get pretty old and shabby. To fill in the gaps left by missing branches and make it look fuller, after I put on the mini lights (200 on white cord, I think white corded lights are essential for white trees) I wrapped 100 feet of white garland around it. Tree skirts aren’t suitable in my house (too much pet hair!) so instead I stood the tree inside a green nesting cube placed on its side. The ends of the lights and their power strip are tucked inside the cube as well.
I left the tree plain with just lights and garlands for a week so that the daycare kids wouldn’t bug out when they saw the ornaments and tear the whole thing down. It seems like every year there is a different toddler here experiencing their first mobile Christmas and you never know how they are going to react yo a decorated tree! Luckily I’ve never had any kids do anything worse than take off a couple ornaments, and all the ones near the bottom of the tree are pretty indestructible. Taylor, Symphony and I decorated it last Friday night, and as usually I was hoping it would be a fun family event but in reality it was kind of a drag. It’s mostly my fault- everyone knows that after they put anything on it I’ll end up rearranging the whole thing myself later. I can’t help it- I’m a Christmas tree control freak!
Every year I buy a few more ornaments, and this year they were mostly silver, including this super-sparkly deer, great big diamond and 4 of these glittery birds.
Usually I put tons of lights in all the windows, but this year I didn’t want to deal with the child-safety issues and constant plugging and unplugging every day. Instead, I decorated my light fixtures!
In the living room I tied red and green balls onto the track light with white curling ribbon- I didn’t want to use ornament hooks because I was worried they might touch the metal track and burn my house down or something. The green balls are some of the most delicate ones I own and last year I barely used any of them, so it was nice to find a place for them this year.
In the dining room and kitchen I used the blue ornaments that I used to put on the tree when my ex and I were together (Taylor and I spent our first Christmas together in 2007 and we bought all new ornaments in the red and green colour scheme). They’ve been sitting unloved in boxes for three years and I’m happy I could use them.
The rope light chandelier in the dining room (I posted a sneak peek last week) has some of my favorite ornaments on it including the second most ridiculously oversized ball I own, blue and silver glitter icicles and these “blobsicles”
The kitchen light. I also wrapped blue and silver star garland around this and hung the most ridiculously oversized ball (it’s the size of a honeydew melon, no exaggeration) over the island where it wouldn’t bonk anyone in the head.
I’m not religious at all but we always had a nativity scene at Christmas when I was little- my mom handmade all the little figures and animals out of felt and faux fur and embroidered tons of detail into them and I always loved it. I bought my own Playmobil nativity scene on post-Christmas super clearance at Urban Outfitters last year for $9.50 so this is the first year it’s being displayed. It found a home in the “library” on top of my ugly old piano, well out of reach of little children, and accessorized with some multi-coloured mini lights.
I might put up more decorations after I’m finished work for the year (one more week!) and don’t have to worry about the little kids anymore. I have a lot of unused lights, and Symphony has her own mini-tree for her room. We were going to put up on Wednesday but unfortunately she was overtired and had a meltdown instead. It’s lilac and has pink, purple and Disney princess-themed ornaments, and a silver glitter snowflake for the top. So cute!
Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)”
I listen to this whole album (A Christmas Gift For you from Phil Spector) on repeat for the whole of December, but this is by far my favorite track.
This one will also always have a special place in my heart. What are your favorite songs for the holiday season?
Unrelated to Christmas songs but the adorable Danielle from Sometimes Sweet is doing a super cute giveaway right now. You still have a couple days left to enter!
My daughter Symphony is an amazing person. Just look at this fine artwork she created for me this weekend:
Uggs, beer, skinny jeans, unicorns, my favorite colours, my husband and Symmie herself- all things that are good. She just gets me. I can’t even really begin to explain how truly wonderful she is and how happy she’s made me for the last eight years, so I’ll just give you this quote and her smiling face.
Excerpted from her 1st grade report card:
“Symphony lives up to her name, as an orchestra brings musicians together to bring music to the audience so Symphony strives to bring people together to provide harmony in her world.”
Symphony’s school portraits through the years:
I’m almost done with my holiday decorating, and when I am I’ll have Taylor take lots of nice pictures of everything, but in the meantime here is a sneak peek of my dining room chandelier all dressed up for Christmas.
Tiny things are cute, everyone knows that. Puppies, kittens, babies (after they’re finished looking like Winston Churchill). I’m as much of a sucker for tiny cuteness as anyone, and one tiny cute thing I’m obsessed with is tiny food. Wee burgers! Not just cupcakes but their tiny cousin, mini cupcakes! Little sandwiches cut out with cookie cutters! But something that’s even better than tiny food you make is tiny food that’s already tiny. Imagine my delight when I found all these little items this week:
Tiny Mandarin Oranges
Mandarin oranges are already smaller and cuter than regular oranges, but these mini honey mandarins are about 1/3 the size of regular mandarins. Normally I buy these loose so I can search out the wee-est ones (I’ve gotten them the size of grapes before), but I couldn’t resist the mini-version of the classic cardboard box these came in. I just wish they’d also been wrapped in tiny green papers!
Tiny Watermelon
This one is about the size of a large grapefruit, although usually they’re similar in size to cantaloupes or honeydew melons. I actually buy these all the time, regular watermelons are too heavy for me to carry home from the store with my bony girl arms. The most amazing one I ever found was a mini yellow watermelon, which also worked with my obsession for unusually coloured foods.
Tiny Pineapple
I almost had a fit when I saw these apple-sized pineapples in the store. My daughter invented a word for things that are enormously tiny- tinormous. We call this a tinormous tineapple. It cost almost as much as a full-sized one, but we never use a whole pineapple up before it gets all brown and gross, and wasting food is bad and something I’m trying to cut back on. Or so I’ve rationalized.
Tiny Oreo Cakesters
Okay, these aren’t a fruit, but they are too cute and delicious to pass up. In fact, I bought originals first but they were all eaten before they could be photographed, and when I went to buy more they were sold out except for one box of goldens. They’re part of the Thinsations line, and each box has five 100 calorie three-packs of toonie-sized cakesters (for non-Canadians, a toonie is just over an inch across).
Way back when, someone posted a cheesy myspace glitter graphic in a general discussion community I belong to. They did it as a joke; the image was all sparkly and stupid, and it said “Stay Posi!” How dumb. But somehow, slowly, it’s kind of become my life philosophy. Looking on the bright side of things, not letting life get me down, making happiness my goal and working towards it. Here are some my favorite tips for staying posi:
1. Don’t be mad.
Back in 2006, I’d just ended a seven-year relationship with my fiancé/babydaddy. He immediately started a new, serious relationship and I was hurt and mad. My anger ate me up inside and started to take over my life, and I couldn’t move on. One day I thought to myself “I’m never going to be happy if I’m so mad all the time. I have to let this go.” So I did. It sounds crazy but it was just that simple, I made the conscious decision to let go of my anger and as soon as I did I felt a huge weight being lifted off my shoulders. Letting go of that anger allowed me to be friendly and courteous with my ex, but more importantly it allowed me to open myself up to the new relationship I was starting with the wonderful, wonderful man who would become my husband.
2. Don’t be sad.
2008 was the first year my daughter spent Christmas with her father instead of with me. I figured I had two options: sit at home in my empty apartment feeling sorry for myself, or get the heck out of there! I went with the latter, and my boyfriend and I booked ourselves a week in Maui. A few weeks later we came up with another idea: while we were there we’d secretly get married! We had it all planned out perfectly, but when we got up on the morning of December 22nd and checked our flight status online we found our flight had been canceled. There’d been a snowstorm for the past week and our airline had run out of de-icer for their planes. We tried to find an alternate way to meet up with our connecting flight in Seattle, we tried to get on a different flight altogether, we stood in endless lines at the airport and finally after hours it was over. There was nothing we could do, the whole trip was off and the wedding was not happening.
I sat myself down on the floor in the middle of the international departures food court and bawled my eyes out. Then I went home and bawled my eyes out some more. Then I slept, and when I woke up at 9:30 that night, I had a new plan: Maui in March. I booked new flights that very night, and a few days later I booked us into the cheapest hotel on the island for a whirlwind four-day elopement adventure. I could have wallowed for weeks about my ruined Christmas and my ruined wedding and done nothing, but instead I got over it and did something. We ended up having an amazing trip and a beautiful wedding, and the postponement gave me the opportunity to go to the gym six days a week for three months and get into the best shape of my life, get my dream dress and shoes in time, and secretly book us a suite at the gorgeous (and expensive!) Fairmont Kea Lani in Wailea for our wedding night, none of which would have happened if we’d gone when we’d originally planned.
3. Don’t let other dictate what you can and can’t do.
For some reason, people seem to think that because I’m a woman, I can’t do certain things. A couple years ago I had the idea to put in a little brick mini-patio beside my stairs. I had to cut some of the bricks to make them fit, so I got a big chisel and a hammer and went at it. First though, I had to hear all about how you can’t cut bricks with a chisel and I’d have to rent a special saw, and then when I was actually out doing it, all my neighbors asked me “Why isn’t your boyfriend doing this for you?” Oh right, because he’s a man. Other things I’ve wanted to do that people have told me I couldn’t have been: mount a flat screen tv on the wall (done, with some tv-lifting assistance), mount two big, heavy bookshelves up on the wall (done by myself), stain a table (done mostly by myself), and change out light fixtures (done 4 times, 3 by myself). Now when people try and naysay at me I just brush them off because I know myself and I know I can do anything.
4. Don’t spread negativity.
Quick- check your facebook or twitter feed. How many posts can you see where people are complaining about their day? And how many of those people complain about their day every day? With the same complaints every day? Are you one of those people? I used to be- I would only update my twitter when I was really angry or upset, but then I thought to myself “Is this really the public face I want to present to the whole internet? ‘My life is terrible, everything in it is terrible and I just complain complain complain?'” Admittedly I do still post angry and whiny tweets, but I try not to do it so often. On facebook I recently decided to just post non-specific compliments for status updates (You’re so funny! You look great today! You have the best ideas!) and I think people are mostly confused but who knows, maybe someone on my friends list will read it and think “huh, I do look great today.”
Obviously it isn’t possible to be cheerful all the time, and “If you were happy every day of your life you wouldn’t be a human being. You’d be a game-show host.” (Heathers). Still, I keep trying to stay posi and it must be working, because I keep getting happier!
Taylor and I went to see Fantastic Mr Fox on Saturday night. We both really liked it- it was cute and clever and I thought the changes to the plot added nicely to the story rather than detracting from it. It was a book I read over and over when I was young and I’m happy that Wes Anderson didn’t ruin it the way Hayao Miyazaki ruined my all-time favorite childhood book, Howl’s Moving Castle.
The movie was playing at the Fifth Avenue Cinema, where we’ve had a lot of Date Nights. Normally we walk there but it was raining pretty hard and we were running a little late so we took a cab over, but after the movie the rain seemed to have slowed down so being the super-genius that I am I decided that we should walk back downtown. Over the bridge. For half an hour. Did I mention it was raining?
Clearly this was not the best decision I’ve made in my life. Once we got onto the bridge it was so windy and cold! There was no cover and all the cars were sending up huge clouds of fine spray, and I was wearing my duffel coat with a hood that doesn’t stay on very well and non-waterproof boots. Water was pouring down my face and dripping off my nose and seeping into my socks, but I had to laugh because I’d really brought it on myself. About three-quarters of the way across I asked Taylor if he minded going home so I could change- we had plans to go to The Templeton for dinner and I didn’t feel like sitting in a restaurant in my own personal puddle.
Once we got home though, I didn’t really want to go back out. It was cold and wet out there but inside was warm and cozy, with fuzzy animals that wanted to cuddle and the Christmas tree full of twinkly lights that I’d just put up that afternoon. After changing into dry clothes we got as far as the front gate before I asked “Do you think maybe we should just stay home instead?” A quick trip to the market for some food and twenty minutes later we were curled up on the couch in our pajamas with the cat and the dog and some books and another movie to watch. Just two posts ago I said “it’s very important to spend quality date time with your husband”, but sometimes it’s just as important to spend quality regular time too.
The ingredients: non-fat milk, egg nog ice cream, some rum from last Christmas’s nog and my brand new, never before used blender.
In the blender, mix four to five generous scoops of ice cream, half a cup of milk and what he claims was only 2 ounces of rum. Pour it into a glass and sprinkle a little nutmeg on top. We didn’t have nutmeg though; this is cinnamon, which Taylor says “will do in a pinch.”
I asked him how it tasted and he said “… Confusing? Like a thicker than normal rum & eggnog? And you can definitely taste the booze, I mean, the nog does a good job of masking the rum but it’s still very boozy.” That does sound confusing. He also said he could have done without the milk as it made it too runny, and he already added plenty of liquid in the form of rum (I knew it was more than two ounces!).