More Christmas

Merry Christmas from our front door!

Since we spent Thanksgiving with my family in New Jersey this year, I didn't get quite my fill of Thanksgiving leftovers, which are my absolute favorite. So, I decided we'd have a turkey for Christmas, since we stayed at home. And stuffing, corn casserole, cranberry sauce, etc. So I've cooked a bunch on Christmas Eve, and then we cooked some more on Christmas. After we had all of this planned, though, some friends who live in our neighborhood called on Christmas Eve and invited us to Christmas lunch at their house. Well, lunch turned into a "I-can't-eat-anymore-or-I'll-burst" kind of lunch, and by the time we got home, neither of us were very hungry for anything at all. So, after all of the cooking and baking, we just put it all in the fridge, and hung around the house. We had a bowl of cereal around 9 or 10, but that was about it. Pictured are Brie and Egg Strata (for breakfast), Zinfandel Spiced Cranberry Sauce (which I am positive came from Cooking Light; not sure why I can't find it on their website), the corn casserole (corn + creamed corn + sour cream + corn meal; this was a new one and I haven't tried it yet), the pretzel rollos (put rollo on pretzel. put in oven. press on m&m. easy as pie! well, not the pie where you make your own crust. it's easier than that.), and Lemon Cream Cheese bars (a recipe from Greg's family). We also had Fennel and Oat Stuffing that Greg made after I declared myself sick of looking at food. On, and we made turkey. :)

So, are they still leftovers if we didn't eat them the first time?

On Christmas Eve, we mostly just had a quiet day, with cooking and then a last minute Starbucks run. We stayed in for the night and watched "Shakespeare in Love" which we've had from Netflix for, easily, 4 months. And we ordered pizza. It was a great Christmas Eve. :) We watched the movie up in the bonus room over the garage, which I have slowly but surely been cleaning out, down to the point where we can both hang out together in there now, which is just so great. We've got a futon in there, and all of my scrapbooking stuff, plus the tv. Even if Greg just brings the laptop in, we can hang out together but separately.

Speaking of the laptop (my 5 or 6 year old s l o w Mac), we went to CompUSA this morning, as they are closing all of their stores. They had one new Macbook left (not a Pro, just a regular Macbook with the slighly faster processor), but it was only 5% off. With buying all of the new flooring for downstairs in the very near future, we decided it probably wasn't worth it right now. Plus, SC has sales tax "holidays" a couple of times throughout the year, and zero sales tax is the same as a 5% (or is it 6) discount.

Christmas itself was pretty quiet here. We decided back in the spring that our trip to England and Scotland back in March was going to be our birthday/Christmas/anniversary presents for the year. I'll have to say, it was totally worth it. We got a couple of small things for each other (most that we had explicitly asked each other for, or had outright picked out together), and opened the gifts from family. We were so thankful for all that we received, and all that we got to do this year. (And the cats were thankful for the bags and wrapping paper. I know the photos a little blurry, but I love the picture of the tail and face sticking out of the bag.)

My favorite little surprise was this little chopstick holder, since I am chopstick challenged. :) I will let you know how it works. Heck, I just found out they have a whole website dedicated to the things.

Off to try some turkey leftovers with chopsticks...