Then One Foggy Christmas Eve

Julietta's first Christmastime.  Darling girl.  ♥  While family eats and watches a Christmas movie together back home, Mike, Stuffed, and I are cozy in our little apartment, our cards all taped to the door, our favorite movies playing one after the other, and Stuffed napping here, there, and everywhere around us.  'A strangely foggy Christmas Eve here too, so much so that we can hardly see our neighbors' apartment next door, and the fog after a day with temperatures in the forties and our windows open most of the day while holiday baking was in full-swing.   My favorite day of the year, this.  ♥

It's been an easy-peasy day here, and this entire season's been the most-organized of every holiday season so far for me.  We have been washing dishes as we go all day, so we're even caught up in the kitchen, and unlike every past year, I have the cinnamon rolls baked and waiting to be frosted and it's earlier than midnight!  ;)

Yay for progress!  

Mom reminded me this past weekend that Mike and I did Sloppy Joes for Christmas Eve a few years back, and yes, that sounded good this time too, so after baking sugar cookies and cinnamon rolls today, supper was an easy affair.  Mom, of course, with big meals for more than ten both tonight and tomorrow, has been much busier, and it's been sweet to be able to cheer each other on today.

Happy holidays to you all.  Tonight and all the days ahead, may you find sweetness, love, and wonder.  

♥

Merry Christmas Eve

'Two new-old Christmas pillowcases added to our bedding here tonight.  Chinese food takeout, homemade sugar cookies, and dear Emmet Otter are up next in this little apartment.  I wish you all a sweet and cozy holiday season.  ♥

My Favorite Night of the Year

The pastel heart, star, and tree cookies are now tradition, but the green gingham towel from Aunt Laurie and the pink gingham pot holder Mom made for me are new this year and at least as sweet.  Happy holidays and love to you all tonight.  ♥

Merry Christmas Eve

My favorite day of the year.  This Christmas Eve feels strange both because of my sleep/work schedule and because of the weather:  I just woke up a little after 4 pm after having worked last night, and it is still 51° outside as I write this at 7:30 pm.  We have a fan on in here and all the windows  wide open and I have yet to turn on the stove or oven for supper-cooking and cookie-baking.  Odd day.  Mike and I both got to see our families this past week although each visit was too brief.  And yes, Mom and Dad loved their "Alice Otter."  Mom squealed and squealed while pulling the white tissue paper away from it as she opened the package, and she was as tickled with Alice's doily-cap as I was.  :)  Mike and I also made her and Dad a cd of "their" songs from 1968 when they finally met for the first time when he was on leave from the service and a few others of their favorite songs--"Wichita Lineman" by Glen Campbell, "Crimson and Clover" by Tommy James and the Shondells,  "Both Sides Now" by Judy Collins, "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" by Marvin Gaye, "For Once in My Life" by Stevie Wonder, "Heart of Gold" by Neil Young, "Cherish" by Kool and the Gang, and a few more--and that was a big hit with them too.  ♥  I managed to get tomorrow off work, as well, so it will be a late and happy night of cooking, baking, Emmet Otter-watching, and gift-wrapping here.  I eagerly await the moment it will suddenly--just like that!--feel like Christmas.  So far tonight, it feels more like just a happy and festive night off from work, but the moment is coming. . . .A merry Christmas to everyone celebrating, and a peaceful night and weekend to you all.  ♥

This Year's Christmas Baking

These pseudo Christmas pudding cakes are my favorite things that I've made this holiday.  They're simply inverted chocolate cupcakes topped with buttercream, cinnamon candies, and mint leaves, but oh!  ♥  They're so darling, I'll likely make them every year now.  Last year at this time, I was lamenting that I spent so much time baking every Christmas and never made anything that I liked:  Everything was sugar cookies and peanut butter-filled treats for Mike.  I don't like either, really,  although I love making and decorating the sugar cookies, and I really don't like all that slaving away with no treats around for myself, so this year, I wised up and baked a few of these tiny chocolate cakes. 

I also bought myself a couple Russell Stover-brand chocolate marshmallow snowmen.  I'd never had them before this month but treated myself to one a few weeks ago and have treated myself to a few more since.  ;)  The marshmallow inside is a chocolate-flavored marshmallow, thank you very much.  There are a couple "Val desserts" in our home this year, then, and I'm a happy camper. 

The chocolate Rice Krispie balls above were a (gluten-free) treat I made for Mom while home last week.  Jessica at Such Pretty Things (a gorgeous blog if ever there was one) posted a similar recipe awhile back, and I adjusted it to suit Mom more by using chocolate cereal and drizzling them with melted chocolate chips. 

She loved them, which is always a great feeling for a cook or baker, and they looked cute in their gingham loaf pan packaging too.  If these would survive being mailed--and it seems like they would--they would be cute in care packages.  ♥ 

I made my brothers the now-traditional gift of our grandmother's fudge.  A seller on etsy created these adorable A Christmas Story-themed ornaments, and since the movie is also part of our family holiday, they worked perfectly as the fudge's package decorations.  :)

Sugar cookies have been baked--

and now decorated, as well.  

Dish-washing, gift-wrapping, and Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas-watching are next.  The night is young.  My favorite night!  ♥  

It is currently a balmy 58° here--almost unheard of in this region at this time of year--and all our windows are open.  There is no worrying over family driving on icy roads as they travel to my parents' house tonight for Christmas Eve dinner, at least, and maybe this odd weather will ultimately make this winter feel shorter.  And it will make it easier for me to get out and walk off all the marshmallow snowmen and Christmas pudding cakes in the days ahead, yes?  Yes.  :)  As I do every Christmas Eve, I have been happily imagining what you all are up to today, much like the hostess of the old "Romper Room" show looking into her magic mirror and seeing what all the children were up to at that moment.  "I see Lisa:  She's listening to Christmas carols with her cat!  I see Lorraine now!  Look, she's taking a stroll through her Florida garden!  There's Alyssa!  She's keeping an eye on the Elf on a Shelf!"  I have been like this all day, with all my loved ones coming to mind.  I hope my "magic mirror" is correct and that you are each as happy and safe and cozy as I'm envisioning you.  Happiest of holidays to you all.  ♥ 

I say to myself that I shall try to make my life like an open fireplace, so that people may be warmed and cheered by it and so go out themselves to warm and cheer. ~ George Matthew Adams

Christmas Eve!  My favorite day of the whole year.  ♥  It's our first Christmas with the mantel, and while the new-old (vintage, from eBay a couple months ago) tree turned out a bit busier-looking than the one I'd had in mind--I'd wanted just a string of little clip-on candle lights, gingerbread men, and pink hearts, simple and pink and sweet--it all came together.  I took some time a few weeks ago to re-sew my pink gingham stocking since it had never been really stocking-shaped and its size hadn't matched Mike's Yankees one.  'Better now.  'Had to boost the supposed-to-be-five-feet-tall tree up onto a tray table to make it taller than the mantel.  Then had to secure the tree to the table with a ten-pound weight so it would stop pitching forward.  And most of the time, the lowest branches are covered with grocery store bags because a certain four-legged someone keeps trying to chew them.  It's always something with our Christmas trees--the last two years saw our old one tethered to the wall with a bungee cord--but again, it came together. 

That's the still-unfinished wing chair in the foreground.  I stopped working on it this fall so my money would go toward Christmas and not toward fabric and upholstery trims for awhile, but soon, I'll start it again.  When it's done, it will be sitting where the tree is now.  ♥  When I first decorated the tree and mantel, I added the little wreath (below) between our stockings, but I took it down last night.  It seems too busy with it up.  A string of heart-shaped lights is still on my list for the mantel, but that didn't happen in time for Christmas.  And now that I look at these pictures, I see that the little "love" sign inside the wreath would likely be perfect on its own between the stockings. The little Garfield under the tree is actually Stuffed's stocking.  Garfield is holding a tiny stocking labeled "Stuff it!" and we fill it with cat treats and/or a toy.  This year, a toy.  (My mom sent him a little pouch of treats.)  ♥ 

And the faux fire is one I painted a few weeks ago.  I had been meaning to do this for awhile, and finally, on a day off, I set up bowls of acrylic paints, gold glitter nail polish left over from a Pirates game, brushes, and a big square of oilcloth cut from the roll I'd used for the cupboards, turned on About a Boy to play in the background while I painted, and began building a fire. 

I used two thumbtacks to hang it inside the mantel.  I might prefer the way the painting looked about six photos into the project--a much simpler log fire at that point--but I'm not sure.  It will do for this year. 

The angel that serves as our tree-topper was a gift from my best friend Sommer's mom eighteen years ago toward the end of my first semester of college.  The flowers that had been in its arms were getting droopy, so this Christmas, it's holding a big heart instead. This angel touches me even more now than when I first received it.  Betty had sent it to my dorm address along with a note and another little gift in a prettily-decorated shoebox.  That was around/right before Christmas 1995, about nine months after Sommer had died.  The Christmas before that, Christmas 1994, Sommer was alive and well--she would die in a car accident a few months later--and it was actually a joke between us that everyone was giving me angel-related gifts that year.  That Christmas, I received a cassette tape of "music of the angels" from my aunt Laurie, an angel poster from my parents, angel ornaments, angel figurines, etc. and Sommer and I laughed between ourselves about it because angels actually scared me--or at least, they kind of freaked me out a bit.  They always look like they're standing (or floating) stock-still, they usually appear expressionless and neither male nor female,  something about their wings. . . .They just creeped me out.  No one else knew that, I guess, so it was angel-after-angel that Christmas, but it was strange to receive sooooooo many and from soooooo many different people all during one holiday.  Over Christmas vacation from high school that year, surrounded in my bedroom by all these angel gifts, I made myself a mix tape.  For reasons I didn't even understand, I labeled one side of the tape "Songs to Comfort Me" and made an instrumental piece from my new "music of the angels" gift the first song on it.  Nine weeks later, Sommer died--and that tape was the only music I listened to those first couple months, and the angels all suddenly made sense, like they were part of a small army that had been sent ahead of time to help lift me up.  (In a way, of course, that only made all these angels even stranger and more mysterious to me, but a good-strange and a comforting-mysterious now, at least.)  Betty didn't know any of that when she made me my "Sommer angel" later that year, though, which made it all the more meaningful.  ♥ 

 Mike's Spider-Man holds the tiny sign my friend Madai sent years ago.  Love is all around. 

'Now off to bake sugar cookies for today, peanut butter fudge for tonight, cinnamon rolls for tomorrow, and to re-do my to-do list one last time pre-holiday.  And to call my parents.  ♥  I love imagining what everyone's up to today, and images of you guys and my other loved ones keep coming to mind.  Merry Christmas to you all.  ♥

Christmas Eve 2012

Beloved new Christmas sheets.  

Simple holiday decorating this year.  The wreath and tree are long-ago gifts from Mike's mom, and the little snow-covered church was a gift to us from my sweet Aunt Laurie this Christmas.  

Our Christmas tree is tethered to the wall with a bungee cord this year, and onto the curb it will go in a few weeks, so no matter.  It is filled with love and color, like Christmas trees and life should be, and it makes me happy.  The "Deck the Halls" sign was passed along by my sweet friend Madai.  The hearts are salt-dough ornaments I made last year.  And the angel at the top was made for me by Sommer's mom the first Christmas after Som died.  Love, love, love.  

And a heart-shaped bowl of buttercream-frosted sugar cookies for Santa (who I think will be wrapping my presents and filling my stocking tonight in the living room while I finish his and Stuffed's gifts back in the bedroom).  A phone call to my parents earlier this afternoon.  New Batman pajamas for Mike today and a not-quite-right holiday haircut from last week that's now in pigtails for me.  Emmet Otter-movie-watching and supper-that-Mike's-making-eating in awhile here.  Fancy Feast-enjoying soon for the kit-kat.  Breakfast cinnamon roll-baking later.  Much love to you all tonight and always.

~  Val ♥

One Christmas Eve

Now that I'm decades older than I was in this photo, I better understand how much effort it took my parents to make the kind of Christmas for me and my brothers that's pictured here.  In the mid-1980s, my parents were in their thirties, my brothers and I were all under the age of twelve, and only my dad worked outside the home. Although Christmas Eve dinners at my parents' house for a number of years now has meant a shrimp tray, oyster stew (or clam chowder?  I skip it and don't remember), a pot roast, and various sides and desserts, Christmas Eve's supper was not that elaborate when my brothers and I were kids.  I don't remember what we ate in those days, and whatever it was, I'm sure my mom made it special for us, but she and Dad are certainly living more comfortably now than they were in the mid-1980s.  

Awhile after we'd finished eating supper one Christmas Eve, there was a knock at the front door.  Our nearest family was my grandparents half an hour away, and we knew it wouldn't be them, so none of us could think of anyone who would be visiting us at such an hour the night before Christmas.  Dad roused himself from his blue slipcovered chair and stepped out onto the front porch, while Mom and my brothers and I waited and wondered.  After a few moments, Dad called out  a Goodnight and Merry Christmas to whoever he'd been listening to and walked back into the living room carrying with a large pizza box.  "From Marv and Debbie!" he declared, explaining that the delivery person had said that our neighbors across the street had ordered it for us and wished our family a happy holiday.  Our neighbors!  A pizza!  A second supper of anything--and on Christmas Eve!  Mom quickly cleared a space for the box on the coffee table that always served as our snack table back then, and soon we were laughing at the surprise and novelty of it as we ate our slices.  I remember that we all agreed how nice it was of our neighbors, and I remember too that that pizza was loaded:  I'd never seen so many toppings before and probably wasn't even aware that pizzas could be topped with all the ingredients our neighbors has ordered for ours.  Green peppers?!  Black olives?!  Sausage?!  Wow!  Ours was an especially happy--and especially full--family when we went to bed that night. 

I only remember a few moments from a few other childhood Christmas Eves, and that is the only Christmas Eve meal I remember at all.  I'm sure Mom and Dad thanked the neighbors, and if we hadn't done so already, I'm sure we kids decorated sugar cookies for Marv and Debbie later or colored a winter coloring book page for their refrigerator.  Marv was a walrus-mustached older man with glasses who I remember as always wearing a white t-shirt that showed off his arm tattoos.  Debbie was also older than my parents, and her bleached-blonde hair contrasted memorably with her year-round tan.  If Marv is remembered as sporting Fonzie-esque t-shirts, Debbie always comes to mind wearing a tank top.  Surely, this isn't what they wore in cold weather, but this is the only picture that ever comes to mind of them.  Their home reeked of cigarettes.  Their motor-home remained parked outside their garage the three or so years they lived across from us.  They gave me and my younger brother a giant stuffed dog that had belonged to Marv's now-grown son.  When Marv's high school-age daughter visited him one summer week, she and I were allowed to camp out overnight in their trailer and then go back-to-school clothes-shopping together at the mall the next afternoon.  "Don't show me what you bought.  Try it on for me so I can see you wearing it," Debbie chided us as she mashed her cigarettes into one of the many ash trays around the house when we returned.  "If I wanted to see clothes on hangers, I'd just go to the store myself."  I still hear her saying that every time I show Mike or my mom any item of clothing I've bought.  The Christmas Eve Pizza remains their most memorable kindness to our young family, though.  It speaks to the sweetness of surprise and the comfort in discovering that someone has been paying attention and is looking out for you.  Angels tend to be depicted in flowing gowns and gossamer wings, but in the mid-1980s, two chain-smoking ultra-tanned and multi-tattooed ones visited our home in the guise of a pizza delivery driver, and their act of kindness gave us not just unexpectedly full bellies but also delightfully full hearts.  

♥ Our First Christmas Together ♥

This Christmas was one of my favorite ones ever:  After four and a half years as a couple, my first Christmas Eve and Christmas with Mike. 

Many hugs and kisses, our new apartment shining brighter than usual, Stuffed looking like a kitten under the 6' tree, 

phone calls to and from our parents, and cinnamon and ginger in the air. Emmet Otter's Jug Band Christmas and Love, Actually, the Festivus episode of "Seinfeld," A Christmas Story, Scrooged--and all the Christmas specials I watched (and am still watching) on YouTube and amazon after Mike goes to bed. Mike's Yankees stocking beside my pink gingham one, 

pink snowman sheets and matching pillowcases on our bed Christmas Eve. Cards strung along a ball-trim garland beside our tree. A surprise package mailed to a friend and a surprise package for us from Aunt Laurie. Watching The Bishop's Wife while painting salt dough ornaments. Mike and I wrapping gifts in separate rooms while sugar cookie dough chilled in the fridge. Christmas carols. A funny Christmas memory shared with my younger brother over email, and his reply: "Soooooo so funny you said that because I was just thinking this morning about [that]!" A wreath around the bathroom nightlight, a sprig of holly over our "Welcome!" cross stitch, and a candle in the bedroom window. "Phone calls from Santa" for my niece and nephew on Christmas Eve. 

I was tearing up over something Christmas afternoon, and Mike asked if I was wishing I was with my family. "No. It would be nice to be there, but I'm glad we're here. I'm just crying because I'm happy."

In the kitchen window:  Green gingham stockings my mom sewed for us last Christmas, a year before we would have this green gingham kitchen in our new home. :) She always looks for the vintage village houses for me at flea markets. The red heart is from my friend Madai. 

The little trees on the coffee table between our chairs were going to be our only Christmas trees this year, but I wanted us to have a big tree too and walked to the drugstore Christmas Eve morning to buy one.  I moved the heavy old coat rack that is usually in that corner, put the tree together, lit it, and decorated it while Mike slept, so he woke up to a colorful surprise in our front door corner Saturday morning. His addition of SpiderMan was the finishing touch. :)

We have yet to see any real snow this winter--just flurries a couple mornings--so I transformed our biggest window into a snow scene with paper snowflakes, pulled cotton, and white trees. 

It looks prettiest at night, and surprisingly, after an initial sniffing of it, Stuffed has left it alone. :)

Christmas Day's breakfast was a simple but pretty little feast of cinnamon rolls and an egg casserole, with the usual coffee and orange juice for Mike and iced tea for me. Aqua felt right this Christmas morning, and I had just enough aqua things to doll up our table for the meal. 

My younger brother gave me the lace snowflake tablecloth for Christmas last year. 

The aqua heart dish is a wedding present from my dear friend Vickie; Sunday it contained a love note for Mike. 

Mom found us the aqua knit-looking "Warm Wishes" mugs last year. 

(Ah! And you can also finally see how I've fixed up the little Hoosier cabinet-top I found on craigslist last fall. The base of the "new" hutch was the bottom-part of a bookshelf I took apart with a saw before we moved out of our old apartment in July, and the two pieces fit together just the way I'd envisioned. I keep all my baking supplies and spices in the top and pots and pans in the bottom. We will soon be adding our just-received-for-Christmas Trivial Pursuit, Pictionary, and "Seinfeld" Trivia games to our stack of games on the very top. It's not "done" yet, but I love this little corner of the apartment.) :)

Christmas night's meal was the traditional red and green, and after eating, we managed to watch a couple Christmas shows and read a little before fatigue caught up with us and we went to bed.

The more sleep-deprived of the two of us, I spent most of today napping in the bedroom and then falling asleep reading while Mike watched movies in the living room, but it was another relaxing night at home with him and Stuffed tonight. 'Back to work for Mike tomorrow, but I have a couple more days off, so we still have a lot more time together this week than we usually do. A sweet and happy first Christmas together.   ♥