every christmas, my mom would make sugar cookies. every christmas.
she would use cookie cutters & make fun christmas-y shapes, and my cousins & i would get to decorate them. it is one of the things i associate most with my christmas traditions growing up. poor lady probably spent hours getting green icing off the counter & walls (and who knows where else) and vacuuming sprinkles and those silver sugar balls out of the carpet, but we always had fun!
rob & i have been huge slackers when it comes to christmas traditions. we've never gotten a tree. we've collected maybe 5 ornaments during the 5 years we've been married. i guess, you could say we're still finding our traditions. i may have found one to start with this year.
this year, i found a recipe for "chesapeake bay chex mix"
which is like normal chex mix, that gives homage to the chesapeake bay region by using old bay seasoning & oyster crackers.
http://www.marthastewart.com/334803/chesapeake-bay-snack-mix
thanks martha stewart!
and, i also took my first crack at candy making. i made a few batches of peppermint bark.
it's super simple, but i had to figure out how to temper chocolate.
http://candy.about.com/od/specialoccasions/r/pepbark.htm
what do you remember your mom making at christmas??
and what do you now make every year?
Tuesday, January 08, 2013
National ... wait for it ... christmas tree lighting
Happy New Year!
It's been a while & I should have posted some stuff as it occurred, but alas, December is super crazy busy y'all! Without further ado, here is the national christmas tree lighting ceremony story.
It's been almost exactly a year since I've been in Maryland now. Yikes, time flies. And, one of my first orders of business when I arrived was to find out if there were any DC holiday traditions/events/whatnot that we could go to. And, while I missed it last year, one of the big things in DC is the national christmas tree on the ellipse as well as the ceremony they have to light the tree for the first time each season. Last year Rob & I did go into the city to see the tree - and I was very perplexed when I saw it (you can see my post from last December). The tree was not at all what I expected it to look like. It was smaller than I expected and less stately looking in general. Rob, my mom & I all walked away saying "was that really it??"
Fast forward one year, I'm still googling. I found out that the National Park Service gives out tickets to the nat'l tree lighting ceremony via a lottery - so I put a note in my calendar & on October 25th, I applied for a group of seats. And crazy enough, we got em - it was the 90th anniversary of this tradition too! So, Rob & I invite a few friends & we go to work that day having no idea what to expect.
On the way to work, the radio tells me that none other than BARNEY FREAKING STINSON is mc-ing the event. BARNEY! So, I am now past excited. We meet at the metro at 345, thinking that an hour is enough time to get through security. in hindsight - that was a bad call. the line to get to the security check was about 1.5 hours!!! however, we did manage to find 4 seats together, and we didn't miss any of the good stuff, so it worked out.
it was quite the production. there was an ensemble from the US Navy band playing jazzy christmas tunes and singing groups, blah blah. it was pretty awesome.
and
then
there
was
neil patrick harris. :)
there was also the short kid from modern family - manny delgado. and performances by colbie callait, james taylor, and some other people i totally didn't know.
all in all, a fun time. i don't know that i would do it again, but i'm really glad we got to do it this year.
here are some pics, courtesy of rob's droid and the washington post.
merry belated national christmas
It's been a while & I should have posted some stuff as it occurred, but alas, December is super crazy busy y'all! Without further ado, here is the national christmas tree lighting ceremony story.
It's been almost exactly a year since I've been in Maryland now. Yikes, time flies. And, one of my first orders of business when I arrived was to find out if there were any DC holiday traditions/events/whatnot that we could go to. And, while I missed it last year, one of the big things in DC is the national christmas tree on the ellipse as well as the ceremony they have to light the tree for the first time each season. Last year Rob & I did go into the city to see the tree - and I was very perplexed when I saw it (you can see my post from last December). The tree was not at all what I expected it to look like. It was smaller than I expected and less stately looking in general. Rob, my mom & I all walked away saying "was that really it??"
Fast forward one year, I'm still googling. I found out that the National Park Service gives out tickets to the nat'l tree lighting ceremony via a lottery - so I put a note in my calendar & on October 25th, I applied for a group of seats. And crazy enough, we got em - it was the 90th anniversary of this tradition too! So, Rob & I invite a few friends & we go to work that day having no idea what to expect.
On the way to work, the radio tells me that none other than BARNEY FREAKING STINSON is mc-ing the event. BARNEY! So, I am now past excited. We meet at the metro at 345, thinking that an hour is enough time to get through security. in hindsight - that was a bad call. the line to get to the security check was about 1.5 hours!!! however, we did manage to find 4 seats together, and we didn't miss any of the good stuff, so it worked out.
it was quite the production. there was an ensemble from the US Navy band playing jazzy christmas tunes and singing groups, blah blah. it was pretty awesome.
and
then
there
was
neil patrick harris. :)
there was also the short kid from modern family - manny delgado. and performances by colbie callait, james taylor, and some other people i totally didn't know.
all in all, a fun time. i don't know that i would do it again, but i'm really glad we got to do it this year.
here are some pics, courtesy of rob's droid and the washington post.
merry belated national christmas
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