MERRY CHRISTMAS, HAPPY NEW YEAR, AND ALL THAT JAZZ!

Hi friends! I've been on a mini-vacation from daily life (even though we didn't actually travel anywhere) since just before Christmas, and missed posting in a timely manner for various reasons. I wanted to let everyone know that we hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas/holiday and New Year! After Christmas Eve Children's Mass, where they put on this really adorable homily skit that combined the story of Olive, The Other Reindeer and the Nativity Story, Caroline got a quick-moving stomach bug at about 4 in the morning on Christmas Day, so it was a bit less climactic for her than I had hoped - such is life with a toddler (sigh). We only actually opened a few presents with her that morning, and truthfully are still opening a gift or two each day (the kid is going to begin to think that Christmas never ends and that she gets presents every day - wouldn't that be awesome?). My family came for brunch, Caroline took a big nap, and woke up well and a completely new person, so we did end up heading to my relatives' house for dinner on Christmas Night.



Our New Year's Eve was pretty low-key - Caroline stayed home with my parents and Steve and I headed to our good friends' house for cocktails and apps! So much nicer than having to try to wedge my big pregnant belly into something fabulous to impress the masses! The rest of our week has been pretty uneventful, too. I'll update you on some other specific goings-on in other posts, but in the meantime, Happy New Year!

HOLIDAY PREPARATIONS AND CELEBRATIONS...

We've been up to alot in the past few weeks as we've been getting ready for Christmas and Hanukkah! Caroline has had fun getting into the spirit of the season with lots of fun activities, most of which involve treats and sweets (her favorite things!). Here are some pictures from cookie baking with JoJo, a Christmas party at pre-school, gingerbread house building with Granddad, and lighting the Hanukkah candles on the second night of Hanukkah with Mommy and Daddy (we lit them on the first night at our good friends' Marc and Emily's house). We hope you are having as much fun as we are - and Happy Hanukkah to our friends who began celebrating last night!

COOKIE BAKING WITH JOJO

DECORATING CAROLINE'S OWN MINI-TREE WITH GRANDDAD

CHRISTMAS SHOW AND PARTY AT PRE-SCHOOL

GINGERBREAD HOUSE BUILDING WITH GRANDDAD

LIGHTING THE HANUKKAH CANDLES

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE???

I got an email from Pottery Barn Kids this afternoon, advertising a pre-holiday toy sale. When I went to the site to look around, I saw this:

DECKING THE HALLS...

It's taken me a whole week to post about this, but life's kind of busy these days, isn't it?! We had a busy weekend last weekend getting things together for the holidays. After picking out our tree last Saturday, Steve and I were supposed to head to his company's party and then on to an open house at some friends of ours who live near us, but I wasn't feeling great and so we decided to make it a low-key evening at home, getting out the Christmas decorations and beginning to set things up.

A quick snapshot from the treestand

After a dinner of Chinese food, we trimmed the tree and put out some of our other table toppers, vase fillers, and garland, as well as Steve's ever-growing (and utterly annoying) collection of singing, jingling animatronic animals and snowmen - most of which found a really nice home in the rec room in the basement :) . We also took our menorah out of storage and put it in a place where it will be easy to find when the time comes to light the first candle! Although we are raising Caroline Catholic like her Mommy, we want to make sure that she understands where Daddy and his family came from, too.

Here's Caroline, hanging her first decoration and ornament!

Playing with some decorations - the fabulous animatronic animals are in the background...

Decorating was so much fun this year. Over the past several years, we've often rushed through the process, treating it like something we had to check off our holiday to-do list. This year was so different - mainly because of Caroline's enthusiasm. It was awesome that she could finally participate in some of the set-up, even as she hung thirty ornaments on the same branch and spent a good deal of the time undoing what we had just done. This has been something I've been looking forward to since she was born, and makes me even more excited at the prospect of having another little one to help get into the spirit, understand some of the religion behind it all, learn our extended family's old traditions, and begin new ones with our own young family.

Last Sunday, after dinner with Steve's parents and sister, we decided to drive around our neighborhood for a bit to look at the lights on the houses - just like my parents did with us when we were little. Over and over Caroline exclaimed, "We make Mommy's house Kiss-mas, too?!" and "Oh, gosh! Another lights!" It was too adorable. I have a feeling that we'll be driving around quite a bit over the next few weeks! And, as she has requested, we will be working on getting our own lights and garland up soon...

OH, (PINK) CHRISTMAS TREE!

While we were in the bathroom at Noodles and Company after her class at Kidville today, Caroline informed me that she wants a pink Christmas tree this year. Upon hearing this, some moms might have gotten excited at the prospect of decking a traditional tree out in all its Lilly Pulitzer-esque glory, with cute ornaments and grosgrain ribbons like this to go along with the theme, but I knew better. My daughter was, I am certain, literally referring to this:

When we arrived at the tree stand after lunch, just picture her initial disappointment when she saw a plain, old sea of green. Thank goodness she got over that quickly when she realized she not only could play hide-and-seek amongst the stands, but that they also sold hot apple cider and popcorn. Maybe it'll be just the pink fix she needs when she sees that we indeed have a few fabulous Lilly ornaments to hang up on our beautiful new frasier fir!

RANDOM THOUGHTS...

So I am sitting here in my den, and it's 12:30 in the morning. I'm working to print a stationery order for my best friend and business partner Christy, who just had her third adorable baby. She and I timed this whole pregnancy thing perfectly, didn't we? Our newest kids will be close enough in age to hopefully be the best of friends like their mommies, while at the same time there's one of us available to hold down the fort with our company while the other gives birth/recovers. I'm really excited about how her announcement/Christmas card has turned out (I mean, they are such a cute family that coming up with a design and layout was easy):

I want to be able to get these to her tomorrow so that she could send them out ASAP - she's the friend who literally times it so that her card arrives before anyone else's on the first day of December, so it's practically killing her that they are not out yet. She pays no mind that she had a c-section literally nine days ago. I, on the other hand, typically get my act together around the second week in December and have the audacity to print our names on the card rather than sign them myself - even though totally I agree with all those people (like Christy - who made a concession for just this once) who say it's tacky and sends the message that you couldn't be bothered to take the time to write your own name. The truth is, I would do it if I could, but these days the whole idea of finding any more time to put towards Christmas cards could scare me away from sending them at all. Hopefully the recipients can forgive me for this minor indisgretion. But I digress...

Being up so late at night has my mind wandering a bit. I've finished the other designs and layouts I had in the works for this evening, so here's what seems to be helping to keep me up until the printer stops:

1) I really need to get my act together and start thinking about this new baby's room. I have a few ideas, but the poor thing is definitely ranking as "sloppy seconds" on our priority list, which is just plain wrong. Her room is full of boxes from our move that have yet to be emptied or at least relocated, I have no idea what kind of furniture I am going to pick up, and the obsession with which I pursued Caroline's bedding when she was on her way is no longer in existence. I am waiting for an epiphany. As my doctor said at my 28-week appointment on Tuesday, if you have a diaper, a onesie, and a bassinet, you are pretty much set for the first little bit. I know he is right, but I am still determined to not let #2 turn into an afterthought...

2) I am pissed at my Shu Uemura eyelash curler. It has inexplicably broken, a fact that I discovered when I pried it off of my lashes the other day and found them crimped like a bad 80's hairdo. I tried to pick up a new one at Neiman Marcus when I went to my salon nearby to get my hair cut and highlighted yesterday, but they don't sell them there (unbelievably). My eyelash curler is one of my top three items in my make-up case, and the Shu Uemura one really is the best (I have tried them all). Sometimes, I don't agree with the beauty critics when they rave about a certain tool or product (i.e. - What is the BFD with Mabelline Great Lash mascara? I have tried it many times and still don't understand the obsession...), but they are spot-on about this one. My curler is kind of a staple to my morning routine, even when I don't even have time to shower, so it goes without saying that it needs to be replaced - like, yesterday.

See? Even Jodie Foster isn't excited about crimped hair...

3) I'm excited to decorate our house for the holidays. When we bought it, even my Jewish husband Steve thought it had the perfect spot for a Christmas tree (right in the front window of our living room), and couldn't wait to put lights up (even then, the neighborhood just felt like the kind of place where people get into the spirit of things). We buy a real tree, and it's from a stand run by a really nice family at the Catholic church where I grew up and went to grade school. Caroline is getting into the holiday for the first time, which is really cute. I'm trying to temper the whole Santa-which-gets-out-of-hand thing by explaining that it's really a birthday party for a baby named Jesus, but as one of my other best friends Kristy mentioned, she'll probably still miss the meaning and focus on the fact that she might get cake at said party. She knows my two-year-old so well...

Okay, so my printing is done. Now my mind is wandering towards thoughts of sleep. Thanks for staying up with me!

HAPPY (BELATED) THANKSGIVING!

Things have finally calmed around here and I'm getting on my computer for the first time in several days. I hope everyone's Thanksgiving was relaxing, enjoyable, and filled with good food, family, and friends!

Steve, Caroline, and I hosted our families for Thanksgiving this year. We usually have to split our time between the two (luckily everyone lives in the area) - having dinner with Steve's family and then dessert with mine. As Steve observed, this year was the first in fifteen years (we dated for 8 and have been married for over 6) that we haven't had to drive from house to house. I have to say, hosting almost 40 people while having the luxury of staying put in our own home was well worth the effort!

Our menu was pretty extensive, as we were so lucky that so many people brought delicious contributions to the table. In addition to the standard fare of stuffing, mashed potatoes, and gravy, we had a buffet that included marinated filet, different vegetable casseroles, eggplant parmesean, cornbread, homemade cranberry sauce, steamed asparagus, and butternut squash, to name just a few of the dishes - all of which came after some fabulous appetizers and preceded some amazing desserts.

For the first time ever, Steve and I brined, rubbed, and cooked the main turkey. I used a basic brining recipe of sugar, salt, and water, as well as The Barefoot Contessa's turkey breast rub (I doubled it to compensate for the whole turkey) prior to cooking. Although the cooking time lasted for about 45 minutes pasted my estimations (I'm still getting to know the oven at my new house and have decided I am DEFINITELY a fan of my old house's gas oven rather than my new home's electric one...), we had dinner on the table by 6:15. My cousins Mike and Bill marinated and fried two more in a deep fryer out back - I know it sounds like a heart attack on a plate, but trust me, they were DEVINE.

We also used the holiday as an excuse to get our butts in gear and finish up as much of the house and decorating as we will be doing for a bit (aside from the new baby's room), so that occupied our time too. I have always been a proponent of planning an event in order to motivate myself to hang up more pictures and pull another room together. Add to that a stubborn-double-ear-infected toddler and we had the makings of a busy week! It all came together though and we had a wonderful time. Hopefully, our guests did, too! The one regret I have is that I didn't really take any pictures of the event, as I was too busy hovering over the unmotivated turkey to get any really good shots. Oh well - mental note for next time, right? Now on to the next phase of the holiday season... :)

HAPPY EASTER!

We had a wonderful Easter Sunday, and we hope you did, too! Since I'm Catholic and Steve is Jewish, I have to give him some pretty big props for pulling it together to not only help get things set for our day, but also to be in the car so early this morning. After 7:30 am mass, we had a nice breakfast for just the three of us, followed by a dinner at our house for 40+ (thankfully with some help from all our guests)! That's how we roll around here... Even though it was 53 degrees outside, it was a gloriously sunny, clear day and the heaters on our deck kept us warm so that it didn't feel too claustrophobic inside (or so we hear...). We also had a quick Easter egg hunt on our lawn for our littlest guests and neighbors - here are some pics from that portion of our day:

Steve starts the hunt with a head-start for the little kids, and cousin Josh finds an egg...

Cousin Camryn and our neighbor Charlie are on the hunt!

The best part about having sisters: cousins Camryn and Morgan pose in their matching dresses!

"Uncle" Marc gives Caroline a ride around the hunt.

Caroline, as always, is on the move - I tried to get a cute pic in her

Tiffany blue and brown dress, but to no avail.

A blue egg for her blue dress... and her "Bunnies by the Bay" coat from Aunt Suzy!

We tried to take a picture of all the kids together, but no such luck. Oh well - there's always next year! No matter what holiday you celebrate, we hope it's as memorable as our was. Happy Easter, and Happy Spring!

PARTY-PLANNING MADE EASY...

Here's Caroline on her first birthday this past Summer -

a seemingly small event to plan. Wait until she gets older

and she actually knows what's going on...

This morning, I got my daily newsletter in my inbox from Urban Baby. They had an article about planning the perfect Easter party for kids, with a great link I wanted to share with you. It's for a party-planning site called Peppers and Pollywogs, which is a place to get all kinds of really fabulous ideas for different kinds of parties - from birthdays for kids of all ages, to christenings, to holiday parties for everyone. The site is particularly great because it's sorted into sections that include "goodie bags," "invitations," and "music suggestions." You also can browse vendors by city (if you are interested in hiring one), or email a request for help to come up with an invitation rhyme (albeit for a fee...). As stationery designers and co-owners of Penny-Bear Printing, my partner Christy and I deal regularly with parents who are planning events for their kids. I think Peppers and Pollywogs is an awesome resource for all of us!

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY!

THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE (GREEN) THINGS...

It's St. Patrick's Day, and whether you have a some Irish blood in you (like me) or are an honorary member just for the day, one sure-fire way to avoid getting pinched is to have a little green on you. Here are some fabulous green recommendations from The Pink Totebag...

At J Crew: cafe' capris or a polished cotton baby-doll top

At Vineyard Vines: seersucker shamrock tie or shamrock flip-flops

At Old Navy: Embellished patent t-strap sandals

At Tervis: Insulated tumblers with a shamrock patch (for all that green beer you'll be drinking)

ERIN GO BRAGH!