This is just… no. Please Kraft, you make an amazing product with Macaroni & Cheese Dinners. Don’t try to add vegetables. When I want to eat delicious carbs and cheesy goodness, it shouldn’t be contaminated with other parts of the food pyramid. Just noodles, and yellow. That’s all I want. There doesn’t need to be any green text on the box.
On Christmas afternoon, we headed up to Delaware to spend some more time with family. We had breakfast for late lunch/early dinner and opened presents. One of the traditions that I’ve learned from Matt’s family is how to open one gift at a time, going around in a circle and taking turns. Growing up, it was always chaos with everyone going at once and paper flying everywhere, and then afterwards inspecting what gifts had actually been given. There is something nice about both methods, and I love the fact that we get to do it both ways now. Another tradition of theirs is eating grapefruit. Though I tried it one year, I just can’t get down with it, but it is still a comforting reminder of Christmas day for me now, regardless of the fact that I don’t eat it.
The day after Christmas, we decided to get out of the house, and went for a walk around the lake at Carousel Park with the doggies. It was windy and chilly, but it felt nice to stroll around and let Bowser and Tiki enjoy some play time.
photo credit : Val
Woweeezowweee, I can’t believe that the new year is almost here, and I only managed to post twice before now in the month of December. We are still alive! We’ve been crazy busy, but in a good way. Finishing up the semester always feels like it rolls right into the holidays without much time for a breather, and with family visits, home projects, and all the rest in between, this last month has really flown by with lots of happy times. Matt and I each put two more grad classes behind us and are now a 1.5 years (Matt) and 1 year (me) away from our Masters Degrees. Woo hoo! Will life go back to normal after that?
In early Decemeber, David and Kristy flew home from Alaska to visit until Christmas Eve. We got to see them a bunch of times, and Kristy even came up to Delaware for the day with us ladies for the annual Christmas tea. A few nights before Christmas, we had the whole family over for dinner. We exchanged gifts, ate sweet-potato-chicken chili for dinner, and played Bananagrams (best game ever). Oh, and we all ate lots of cookies and drank chocolate falvored wine. Kristy and I came up with the idea that maybe we should line the rims of our wine glasses with Nutella. Kind of like the same idea as a salt rim for a margarita. Though we didn’t actually execute our plan, I still think we were onto something brilliant that night.
our stockings
please note the awesome tuxedo shirt that Kristy is wearing while playing Quordy so quickly that her fingers are blurry.
ready to go! how perfect is that picnic basket??!
pit-stop at Paul to get some macaroons!
the view while waiting outside Paul
…
found our location
NOM NOM
incoming 1
incoming 2
It’s hard to believe that Thanksgiving has come and gone and the holiday season is truly upon us. How did this happen already? I think I am starting to understand those people that just leave the Christmas lights up all year round… seems like it’s always time for them again. But anyways, I’ll save the redneck tendencies for another blog post.
We started our long weekend enjoying a full thanksgiving dinner together with both sets of our parents, our sisters, brothers, and aunts, uncles, and cousins. It was the last Thanksgiving celebration at Ivory Road before my parents finally finish packing up and selling the house for their big move. So hard to believe. I wish that the Alaskans could have made it home, but they were busy enjoying their moose meat! And they’ll be home in almost a week, so we can wait until then. 
We did the usual football watching, nibbling on homemade chex mix, napping on and off, and then went for a good, long walk before dinner in the unseasonably warm weather. The best part of the day was all the story-telling. The worst part was the lack of table-cloth and napkins that had already been packed up — way to go, Mom. 
On Friday, we made the drive up to Delaware to spend some more time relaxing, eating, trimming the Steenhoek Christmas tree, and doing a little bit of shopping. I guess we’ve been making that drive for about 5 or 6 years now, and though I normally hate being on the road in holiday traffic, there is still something comforting about settling into the car together for 2 hours and making our way up 95. Usually we are pretty quiet as far as conversation, just Matt silently putting up with my singing along to every country song on the radio. I keep waiting for the year when he finally snaps and tells me his ear drums just can’t take it any longer. But until then, it’s just enjoying the miles going by while Bowser naps in the lap of whoever gets the passenger seat. This year, as I was belting out the Keith Urban, I was also mentally making a list of all the things I am thankful for: It goes without saying that our family and friends would be the top of that list. We are so lucky to have families nearby that we see often, and friends that we’ve known for decades, but also lots of new ones that we’ve met while living in DC. I would also add to that list our cuddly Bowser-dog (currently snoring away in the corner), who brings a smile and a slobber to my face without fail every single morning. Also on my thankful list is a house that we are working on making a home, a new business venture starting out well, bicycles to ride, lots of trips and travels both past and coming up, giant marshmellows on sweet potatoes… and… I could go on, and on. I’m thankful to have so many things to put on my list.
On Saturday, I did my bit supporting a small business in Newark with a $3 purchase. I can’t tell you what the gift is, but I will say it involves tacos and is for a very dedicated reader of this blog. Also, Matt purchased a lemonade from the local coffee shop for $1.50… so for a grand total spent of $4.50, TAKE THAT Black Friday. In the afternoon, we drove back to Maryland in time for my 10-year High School Reunion at Circle-D Farm. It was an interesting night, catching up with some old friends and trying to gauge just how much everyone has changed. Lots of new spouses, babies, jobs… Amazing how fast that time went by and suddenly we’re all almost 30 years old.
Today, Sunday, the last day of a four-day weekend is always tough. We did a fair bit of “yard”work cleaning up the leaves around our front and back this morning. We took out the Christmas boxes, and strung up red lights around the front yard. I promised that I wouldn’t turn them on until Decemeber 1st, and that I just wanted to put them up while it was so warm and beautiful out today, but I lied, and they are on tonight. Our neighbor stopped by to see what we were up to while Matt was up on the ladder, saying he was “sizing up the competition” — I can’t wait for his light display to go up now and start turning our street into a lovely Christmas wonderland. Ahhh..
This afternoon, we continued putting off schoolwork by taking a bike ride down to Gravelly Point, stopping first at Paul to pick up some treats. Matt had purchased a picnic basket awhile back at a flea market for $10, and it fit PERFECTLY into the front of his bike rack, so I made him promise me a real picnic sometime soon, and he delivered. We had croque-monsieurs and macaroons while we watched the sun set and the planes roll in overhead to Reagan National Airport. Probably more planes than ususal at the end of a travel-heavy weekend. It was pretty much the perfect end to a perfect weekend. Thanks for reading this, I hope you had a happy thanksgiving!
We finally tried Taste of Jamaica on H St the other night for dinner. While we were waiting, we were checking out all paper money from around the world that they have posted on the glass of the ordering window. There are a few coins taped on there, too. It pretty much put my dad’s foreign money collection to shame. We tried counting the number of different currencies that we had come into contact with, ie how many of the countries we had visited… I think we accounted for maybe only 6 or 7 of them. Moral of the dinner outing = we need to plan another trip!!
Travel wishes aside, we ended up getting takeout – curry chicken and jerk chicken. It came with a ton of rice and veggies, and loaded with delicious spices. It made our noses run it was so good. Next time, we could probably have split one platter, there was so much food. Highly recommend. Hmm, maybe we should go to Jamaica…
Yesterday we checked out the H Street Festival and all the eye-candy it had to offer. It was PERFECT fall festival weather – cool and comfortable. We ate some delicious street vendor food, ran into lots of friends and neighbors, and enjoyed all of the people and dog watching. Love this neighborhood!
one of the many decorated cars on display. how awesome is that paint job?
(and with “taxation without representation” tags, no less)
more car decorations
skaters!
now that is a boom box
yummmmmm
Growing up, birthday dinners* were always a big deal in our house. You could order whatever you wanted to have and mom would make it. So, for 2 siblings plus myself, all with summer birthdays at home for approximately 18 years.. if you do the math, that’s about 54 unique birthday dinners we could have had. Yet, we all always chose the same thing — steamed, spiced shrimp and a side of cantaloupe! And sometimes corn-on-the-cob. It was a pretty big faux pas the year (I think?) I tried to order roast beef for my birthday dinner. The family was secretly pissed off at me for the shrimp-deprival that July. There was another time that Jill tried to switch things up and do a bushel of crabs, and I don’t think that went over well either. Even though we’re all old now and moved out of the house, we still carry the shrimp tradition on whenever possible.
SO ANYWAYS! When Matt turned 28 this past week, I offered to make him a birthday dinner of whatever he wanted. He had class that day until 9pm, so we figured it would be better to stay in and have a special meal. He had a pretty simple request — grilled cheese and rice pudding. That would definitely have gotten the major thumbs down in our household as kids, but I was pretty glad to make him those things because the birthday person gets to choose!! And also, it didn’t hurt that they are some of my favorites too.
For the grilled cheese, I went with a combination of Sourdough bread, fontina and mozzarella cheese, prosciutto, and bartlett pear. Yeah, it was as good as it sounds like it would be. Yummy melty goodness. For dessert, the rice pudding turned out pretty good too, for something I had never made before. Instead of putting raisins in it, we sprinkled a little cinnamon on top and voila! Much easier than making a cake!
*Somewhere recently this started turning into somewhat of a foodie blog. I’m not sure how it happened. I hope you don’t mind.
…it’s just not nice.
What’s the best part about having a pastry chef for a sister? Fresh wedding cake for our one-year anniversary! Jill decided to completely spoil us by recreating our exact wedding cake, purple funfetti and all, for our first anniversary. (For those keeping track, it’s actually a little bit past one year by now since we were married in May, but we had to schedule it for a time when we were both around to meet up of course). It was a nice treat to actually sit together and eat our wedding cake, since the piece that Matt fed me that night was such a blur that I really don’t remember if it even tasted good… though I’m sure it did. Thanks Jill!
“Make No Small Plans” is a quote by American architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham. It is sometimes written as “make no little plans” but I’ve seen it both ways, with the full quote as “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.” Either way, the words were attributed to Burnham following his death, so there is no actual proof that they were ever even uttered by him anyways. Regardless, I remember reading them around the time we were wedding planning and thought they were pretty fitting for us and the life we are planning.
