my christmas

my christmas

• 12.30.2013

Christmas is by far one of my favorite seasons of the year. Sometimes I'm surprised by that fact since I might just give up bacon if I got to live in the sweet spot of May to September year-round. As a family, we've been known to keep our trees up perhaps way longer than deemed socially acceptable... but we don't care. Is there anything better than lounging on your couch with a view of the ornaments and lights? Not really.

If you knew me last year, you might feel like my tree this year looked a lot like Abe from 2012 ... and you'd be right. But the ornaments made it through storage and who am I to turn down an ornaments chance to shine bright like a diamond? I have some ideas already in my head for next years tree and I'm excited about it. This year's tree was named Mark ... in honor of a spider that lived with my sister respectfully until he broke one of her rules (moving out of the kitchen) and she had to take care of business.

For me, Christmas is a bit split between how I experience it in my apartment and at my parents' house. This year in my apartment there was a fair bit of baking per usual and a lot more of watching Giligans Island with the tree all lit up. This year I made: gingerbread madeleines, gingerbread pancakes, stout gingerbread loaf and lastly eggnog cinnamon rolls. I also tried something new and planted these adorable paper white flowers that bloomed right in season. Spoiler alert guys? Its a million times easier to keep bulb plants alive than a basil plant. (Was this the year of me trying to keep plants alive?)

I also spent a week at my parents in the burbs by the ocean. If I was to summarize what we did in that week, I'd say puzzles, leggings, and savoring Christmas. My Jawbone will tell you that I didn't walk nearly enough and it would be right. I did a fair bit of cooking some old favorites while I was home. We finished off a batch of my 2013 chili, baked french toast casserole, and my little brother requested a repeat of his calzone birthday dinner from last year. It's so much easier to cook in a kitchen with a dishwasher.

I was going through my pictures from the holiday and deemed myself a bit of a failure. I pretty much only have pictures of the family pets and slim to none of people. But here are a few of the snaps to close out the Christmas season...