Winter Treasures

Boy oh boy~an American Christmas will keep you busy.  I remember feeling the hustle and bustle of the holidays a lot through college what with final exams and papers, shopping for Christmas presents, and using that short break between semesters to see family and friends you haven't seen in ages.  Martin Luther King day is my official rest-from-the-rush-of-Christmas holiday.  Well, this year I don't really have an excuse to feel the hustle and bustle.  No school, no work, just homemaking.  What keeps us super busy?  Holiday parties galore.  Not just holidays, but birthday parties as well.   So far there have been 6 December parties, and there are two more this weekend.  How did Kyle and I fall into this after having been off the grid for a year?  In spite of it being a bit overwhelming to look at a full calendar, I have a few treasure that have come from these festivities.


1.  Kyle had a fancy Christmas party at work.  Imagine a wedding reception and then throw in jolly attitudes and a good bit of cultural diversity (as one of Kyle's coworkers said, at ADVA they are more international than the United Nations).  It wasn't like the office Christmas parties I had seen in movies (the Santa Clause, The Holiday, etc) nor like the ones on television (Arrested Development, The Office, etc) much to my chagrin.  However, it was a great environment to meet and get to know Kyle's new daily companions.  We also walked away with this goody...

You can't tell, but we were posing in a sleigh that Kyle must have found a bit uncomfortable.

2.  My birthday was on Monday, but as a family we celebrated on Sunday (it's what we call Leah's birthday observed).  I don't think I had asked for much this year; I'm really just in the mood to read a lot so there were plenty of books on the list (yes, my mom still requests our birthday/Christmas lists and this usually occurs sometime in mid-June when Christmas is the last thing on your mind).  There was one gift that was inordinately large and preposterously heavy.  This mystery gift of the behemoth persuasion turned out to be a most wonderful thing.  Behold the newest fixture in my kitchen:

Christmas cookies will be your first task...

3.  The last thing is a bit incomplete.  Tonight we are to attend an ugly sweater party.  After searching high and low, near and far, I cannot find one suitable for Kyle or me in a reasonable price range (Belk~let's be real about the value of a Christmas sweater...).  Short of a miracle, we will simply have to dress festively for the event sans tacky trimmings.  Alas, that can't dampen the joy of Christmas.  Here's to hoping our third Christmas treasure comes to fruition.

Have you had any special Christmas surprises?  I should include my favorite treasure is seeing lots of friends and spending time with people we've missed so much this year.  If only there were more parties for that!

A Christmas Tree Analogy

A few weeks ago, I set out with a shopping list and a highly caffeinated body (as many do) to Ikea.  Last Christmas, Ikea provided nearly all the ornaments and holiday trimmings for our dorm.  I thought Kyle and I were starting pretty much from scratch with our hall-decking and selected some wonderful ornaments at seriously good prices on this trip.  What I was surprised to find is that they weren't necessary.  Kyle had some really cool Georgia Tech ornaments, and I had a stash of ornaments from Christmases past (a fair number were handcrafted and featured tiny pictures of a tiny crooked toothed me).  We inherited a few strands of lights and wooden cranberry beads.  With an old fashioned star on top, our little tree was complete before we opened our Ikea ornaments (with the exception of 4 plaid orbs~I have the matching wrapping paper!  We are celebrating our first Plaidvent Season!!!)

After filling our tree, I was struck with how our home has filled with furniture, and everything has a place.  We bought a few things (bookcases~this girl dreamed of owning bookcases to fill with glorious books.  also~tables and chairs for a workspace).  Just like our Christmas tree, we have more than enough.  It's amazing to me that just a couple of months ago, I didn't know where I'd be living, how we'd furnish an apartment, and (to a lesser degree) what ornaments we'd have to decorate a tree.  It was a complete mystery, but I give God many thanks for knowing all of that ahead of time and providing us with more than we need.  It feels like a first Christmas with my husband all over again, and I love it.

If you'd like to come over and enjoy our holiday splendor, we'd love for visitors to be with us.  Merry Christmas!

Cadeau Empoisonné

The French have this expression~Cadeau Empoisonné~ which translates to poison gift in English.  We learned what a poison gift was from a very friendly Delta employee in Paris, who said our buddy passes were both a blessing and a curse.  They're a blessing because they give us discount rates on international flights, but a curse because there is no guarantee we could get on the flight we wanted.  We definitely experienced both of those things on our return from Metz.  Since then, I have found some other applications to such a useful expression (is there seriously no parallel to it in English?  Perhaps the old~don't look a gift horse in the mouth...).

Well, since being home we've found a few other good examples of the poison gift.  As (sort of) newly weds, our families helped us out with lots of home furnishings to fill the gaps in our home.  My family gave us a white microwave.... that didn't work any more.  They gave us another microwave they had stored in the garage... that also didn't work.  As it turned out we had to buy our own microwave (no biggie), but then dispose of two useless metal boxes.  Kyle's mom set us up with a really fantastic fake Christmas tree.  I know I know~fake tree?  I have serious allergies and can't always tolerate living in close quarters with conifers.  Shameful~I agree.  Anywho, on extracting said tree from it's box, we find there is no tree stand.  Do we really want to invest in a fake tree stand or just purchase another tree?  We are now the proud owners of two artificial arbors.

Do you have examples of cadeaux empoisonnés?  We're not talking something a gift you got that you didn't like or want.  Both the microwave and tree were things we really could use, and we were grateful for receiving them for free, but they turned into unexpected tasks or inconveniences.  Perhaps you have been more fortunate with your gifts.  I hope so...