Deck the Halls and Walls and Tables and Windows...

I am a Christmas junkie. I tried to warn Mike that I love--nay, am obsessed with--Christmas, but until we hauled in boxes upon boxes of Christmas decorations from the garage Sunday night, I don't think he understood the depth of my passion for all things yule-related.

I've been collecting Christmas decorations since I was a teenager. I was so excited when I got my own place in Hawaii, because I got to get out the decorations for the first time. (That is, I was busy being a pediatrics intern, so Mom visited a month before Christmas and got out all the decorations for me.) I didn't realize how many knickknacks and whatnot I had accumulated over the years, and putting them away was such a daunting task that the decorations were not taken down and boxed up until I moved from Hawaii two and a half years later.

Last year, I went for round two and spent days carting boxes from the garage up the stairs to decorate my little apartment. Worth it? Absolutely! How long did it take to put away? Too long! But apparently I have no learning curve so all the boxes came out again this year.

We laid out our North Pole Village:

And put out 100 nativities.

OK, I exaggerate, but it was a lot. So that brings up a good question: How do you know you have too many nativities?


Answer: You open a box from nativity storage and you don't recognize the nativity. The box was opened but the figures had never been unwrapped. I swear I have never seen this one before. I don't know where it came from. I don't know if it was a gift or if I bought it or if the Magic Nativity Elves made it one night when I was sleeping. Regardless, I love it and so I put it out this year. (BTW, if I received it as a gift from someone reading this, I'm sorry I didn't remember the wonderful gesture. It's one of my favorite gifts ever. Thank you.)

This one is added to the collection courtesy of Mike's parents, who made it for him:

This one I bought as a gift for someone else but I loved it so much I kept it for myself rather than exemplify the true meaning of the season. Merry Christmas to me.

I think one of the reasons that I love decorating for Christmas so much is that every decoration brings back a flood of memories. This one I got last year when Mom and Dad visited me over Dad's birthday:
We found it at a cute little Christmas store overlooking Puget Sound in Gig Harbor. It was such a fun weekend and I loved that they would drive up to see me for just a weekend.


I'm excited to see what memories will be associated with these decorations in the future. It's one of the many reasons that I love the Christmas season.

A Veteran's Day Limerick

A young couple from Washington state

Felt they needed to go paint a plate.

They left it to glaze for the next several days

Then went home for a hot chocolate date!

A Message from the Thanksgiving Grinch

We had a pre-Thanksgiving potluck at work today and as I was eating a lucious chocolate chip cookie that I will definitely need to get the recipe for, it occured to me that I'm actually excited for Thanksiving this year. This completely surprises me, as I haven't looked forward to that particular holiday since around the time I graduated from college. Even before then, I kind of saw Thanksgiving as a mere "filler holiday" to pass the time between Halloween and Christmas.

Here's been my perspective for the last 10 years: People spend hours—nay, days—of preparation for what will turn out to be a 30-minute meal. Sure, the food is good, (except for the green jello salad I’ve nicknamed the TND: Too Nasty to Digest) but it’s hard for me to get excited about the cooking and the eating knowing that a massive clean up awaits. (As everyone knows, the height of the mountain of dishes is directly proportional to the amount of time spent in preparation of the meal.) And it’s not just the food where the preparation exceeds what you get out of the finished product. My Thanksgiving memories revolve around making individual nut cups and carefully-calligraphied name cards, only to have them admired for the length of time it takes to eat the candy before being crumpled into a massive ball and thrown away.

I appreciate that Thanksgiving is a time of gratitude, but when I think of what I’m most grateful for, though food is somewhere on the list, family gets the top spot. I’d rather nuke a frozen pizza, have a few PB M&Ms for dessert (or go to a buffet at a restaurant), and then spend all day with family. No nut cups. No calligraphied name cards. No mountain of dishes. Oh--and NO pumpkin pie. I paraphrase Garrison Keillor's quote: “Pumpkin pie is the symbol of mediocrity. The best pumpkin pie you ever ate? Not much better than your worst. It’s just a big gloppy thing invented by the nutmeg company as an excuse for using their spice.” I can’t say it any better than that. It kind of captures what Thanksgiving has been for me: a holiday that embodies the Law of Diminishing Returns.

That is why I'm bordering shocked that I'm looking forward to Thanksgiving. We'll get to spend it with Richard (my brother) and his family and Bonnie (Mike's sister) and her family and Mike's mom. My feelings have changed partly, I think, because Mike loves Thanksgiving, but mostly because this year it feels like the emphasis is less on the food and more on the family.

Or maybe my heart has just grown three sizes over the last year.

Creepy Cooking, Festive Feasting, and Eerie Eyeballs

What makes holidays so fun is the traditions that go along with them. For example, what would Halloween be like without Mom's sugar cookies? Boring! I always looked forward to the pumpkin, ghost, and black cat cookies she made. Not being quite so ambitious as her, I stuck with pumpkins. They're the easiest to decorate. Mike helped. He did the bottom two.

Halloween Eve was our Autumn Feast. We had Harvest Moon Macaroni and Cheese and Pumpkin Parfaits. (Recipes available upon request.) Note the look of anticipation on Mike's face. It reassures me that 15 years of nuking Lean Cuisine as a single person has not ruined me and I can cook after all.

When I asked Mike what he wanted for Halloween dinner on Sunday, the first thing he said was "bloodshot eyeballs." So this is what I came up with. I call them Creepy Monster Peepers.

Next on the menu was Witches Brew. Being a doctor comes in handy (no pun intended) because I could pilfer the glove to make it.

And last but not least, our snake calzone. We had a lot of fun making this one.

This is Mike in the moment of discovery that calzone cheese had leaked out of the snake through the olive eyeballs and it totally looked like pus. It was fascinating and disgusting at the same time, but it tasted really good.
And grossed us out.

I can't remember the last time I had so much fun carving jack-o-lanterns. Mike and I put on "The Addams Family" while we carved our pumpkins. Mike's is on the left, mine's on the right. (The flowers in the middle are Mike's surprise for me today after work. Isn't he the best? The picture just can't do them justice.) As good as the pumpkins looked just sitting there on the table...

...they looked even better when the lights were out! We noticed when we took the pictures that the light from the jack-o-lanters was reflected off the table.

And so we took this hauntingly, wonderfully creepy one of Mike's. Between the gorgeous flowers Mike surprised me with and the perfect pumpkin carving night, I've made this discovery: holidays are better when you're married!

Mike vs. the Terrible Barn Kitten

Mike and I have started a fun Halloween tradition. Every night, we've watched a different Halloween-themed movie. We started with "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and have moved on to "Young Frankenstein," "Monster House," "Monsters Inc," "How to Train Your Dragon," and "Pirates of the Caribbean." And of course, the quintessential Halloween show: "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown."

Mike hadn't seen GPCB before and was a little disappointed (spoiler alert!) that the Great Pumpkin never appeared. So we found our own sincere, hypocrisy-free pumpkin patch so that we can wait for the Great Pumpkin on our own this Saturday.

Not really. We were just there to pick our own pumpkins so that we could carve them for Halloween.

Before we wandered out to pick our pumpkins, a fuzzy barn kitten latched onto Mike. Literally. It seriously melted my heart, it was so cute.

It wasn't so cute to Mike when the kitty refused to budge.

You know that spot in your back that when it itches it's impossible to reach? The kitten knew about that spot, too, and nestled in there for the long haul.

Supportive wife that I am, I sat back and laughed and took pictures until it was apparent that Mike was going to dislocate a shoulder trying to get that kitten off. Mike was a really good sport about it, though. The kitten was, after all, very cute. (Incidentally, for those of you who know my feelings about pets, this has in no way changed them.)

After fending off the fearsome kitty (which continued to taunt us with its cuteness), we wandered into the pumpkin patch. Mike posed as the Singing Scarecrow...

...while I blew him some pumpkin kisses.

As for the patch, it may or may not be full of sincerity, but it was full of mud. I doubt we'll be back on Halloween Eve with a blanket and a heart full of hope to see the Great Pumpkin.