Holiday Top 10

I love the holiday season. From Thanksgiving to New Year's is happy, happy, joy, joy for me. I like to think of myself as a Christmas elf eating cookies, playing holiday tunes, and watching embarrassingly terrible Hallmark and Lifetime movies non-stop. My favorite part is recruiting others to take part in all of these activities along with me! Some are more willing than others.

Our tree

 

Blah the holidays are over, except we still have New Year's Eve, which unless you live in a fabulous city or have the ability to orchestrate glamorous plans in a snap is usually disappointing (talk about a Debbie Downer).

Recapping my favorite holiday activities from 2011 provides a fun opportunity to look back and hold on to a little holiday cheer!

1. Baking cookies- Usually my mom and I get some pre-made gingerbread and sugar cookies and decorate them. A fun gig, but this year since I am home for longer than a college break I went all out. With the help of that nifty new thing, Pinterest I found an abundance of easy, quick cookie recipes.

I made some matzo toffee for Hanukkah, healthy thumbprint cookies (recipe from Shape),

Shape Thumbprint Cookie

shortbread, peppermint chocolate cookies (pre-made from Immaculate Baking Co.) and the usual sugar and gingerbread cookies.

My ultimate favorite though were the no bake nutella cookie blobs. As previously stated in my discussion of nutella banana crepes, I live for nutella. I would bathe in nutella and let it soak into my pores if I could. I didn't add the booze to the cookies as the recipe calls for, but next time I want to. I'm pretty sure everyone adored them. Victory!

Nutella cookies (in reality, blobs)

2. Michael Buble Christmas Album- Oh Michael Buble, another sexy Canadian. The Canucks are seriously starting to outnumber us: Ryan Gosling, Justin Bieber, Ryan Reynolds, Seth Rogen, Rachel McAdams, Anna Paquin, Michael Cera, Josuha Jackson, Jay Barcuhel and the list goes on. Plus any and all hockey players. Buble's Christmas has quickly jolted to the top of my favorite holiday album list, right underneath Natalie Cole's Holly & Ivy, such a classic. All the songs are great, but my top two are All I want for Christmas and Cold December Night, crooning at it's finest.

3. Christmas Vacation- It used to be 24 hours of The Christmas Story on Christmas Eve and now it is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Clark Griswold/Chevy Chase makes this movie. My brother and I are the biggest advocates of this fairly new tradition. We really look forward to it. So many parts of this movie are my favorite. One especially stands out,

 Terrible quality, but this is THE  one.


 Also this one,

I really want two people to be Todd and Margo for Halloween.

4. Hot chocolate- Mmm hot chocolate is so yummy. I've tried a lot of different ones in my long line of holiday tastings. I even went with a great friend to a gourmet hot chocolate place in NYC where they served it with a huge marshmallow. It was good and so much fun, but I still absolutely can't do better than the hot chocolate my mom makes me in the pretty Christmas mugs we have. Simple Nestle sugar free hot chocolate (that's right, sugar free!) with my mom's special touches is unbeatable (her secret recipe). I add three marshmallows and let them soak and get frothy then eat them up. There is finesse in enjoying a marshmallow and I have it mastered. 

5. White Christmas- My family has watched this movie for as a long as I can remember. When I was younger I thought it was a boring old movie and didn't appreciate it all. This year it blew me away. It was like seeing it for the first time. I fucking love Danny Kaye. If I were a 50's pinup gal, Danny Kaye would have been my main man...even though there are strong rumors that he was either gay or bi-sexual. All water under the bridge in my book because this is a dream/fantasy/timewarp thing. Rosemary Clooney as Betty is my least favorite character. Vera Ellen who plays Judy is the most beautifully, entertaining dancer I have ever laid eyes one. These are my two favorite scenes,

6. Giant Gingerbread House- Just oggle at this gingerbread house and marvel. As a donation to the CASA organization, with which my mom volunteers for, my family purchased a huge gingerbread house to decorate. My mom, sister-in-law and I decorated this bad-boy for what felt like hours. At one point nearing the end of our decorating extravaganza, when we were all in a fit of exhaustion, my mom started throwing shaved coconut that served as our fake snow onto the house. Obviously, things got crazy and hilarious.

My dad and brother transporting it.

7. My family gifts- Because I'm the baby of the family and have to admit that I like receiving gifts just a hare more than giving them, I am not the best gift-giver you've ever met. This year though, I surprised them all. I made a donation of a gardener's basket to the Heifer Foundation in my mom's honor and a gift of Honeybee's to my brother and his wife. Aha philanthropy! To my wonderful father I gave the most thoughtful gift of all. See, my old man uses my ancient Macbook I got back in the day of 2007. This thing was kaput, he had to charge it consistently to keep it alive. I trekked to the Apple Store in the mall (always a fucking zoo) and got him a new battery for the computer. Almost brand spanking new. He was thrilled! And my heart grew three sizes that day!

8. The Dicken's Village- My Hanukkah gift for many years was a piece of the Dicken's Village, one of those Christmas village collections. This may seem like a paradox; A Christmas theme for a Hanukkah gift? To this I say, yeah so what. My mom usually sets up the village while I am at school, but this year we were able to collaborate. We unveiled the village after Thanksgiving dinner. There was a drum roll.

9. The Holiday and Bridget Jones- Every year my mom and I watch The Holiday and Bridget Jones' Diary. And every year I cry at Kate Winslet's (Iris) unrequited love story and her story with the old man Arthur. Every year we also laugh at Bridget's drunk scenes and her falling down the fire station ladder (a falling bottom!!!!!!!)

And when Mark Darcy says "I like you just the way you are" to Bridget I shed a tear as well. Then I always say, "I should read the book." and never do. Maybe this year will be the year.

10. Hanukkah Pandora Station- The joys of modern media. Pandora was such a treat for me at work. The holiday stations were festive, duh. Amid all of the Christmas stations, there was an especially innovative one. The Hanukkah Station! I am lucky enough to be able to celebrate both Hanukkah and Christmas and lately have wanted to learn more about this Jewish holiday. Most of the Hanukkah songs are very historical in nature so I ended up learning much about the Maccabees and all that jazz, kinda. The Barenaked Ladies Hanukkah album was the best one on the station I found.

And that's my personal top 10 of this past holiday season. 'Twas a great one.

As a note I should include that The Santa Clause has been my favorite Christmas movie since I was like 10. Therefore, I watch it every year and love it. Could have been in the top 10 list, but probably would have consisted of why Tim Allen is the man. And how many people want to read about Tim 'the tool man' Taylor besides me?

Happy Hanukkah!

I love Adam Sandler because of classics like Happy Gilmore and Billy Madison, also because he reminds me of my older brother.

His Hanukkah song will live in infamy and tis the season to listen to it! I plan to tonight as my family and I feast on latkes and the matzo toffee I made.

This song has been playing on the radio lately...

This song has been playing on the radio lately and I get pretty into it. I play the story out in my mind and kind of want to cry. Is it cheesy? Yeah... but still holiday rock out worthy.

Chicago

As a Midwestern gal, Chicago is the approachable near by big city and visiting there is always barrels of fun. Chicago is the creator of the deep dish pizza, which involves copious amounts of cheese. In a word, heaven.

I went to school on the North Shore at Lake Forest College and visited "the city" often (the city is a term for so many cities and everyone's "the city" is better than the other person's "the city", for instance, New Yorkers or Washingtonian's refer to NYC or D.C. as "the city" and to them, that really is THE CITY, but we all just say it because it sounds cool and cosmopolitan).

Anyway, visiting Chicago was and is always amazing. I would visit my best friend who attended Loyola and who lived at their Water Tower Campus frequently while at school. She knew the city (eat that New York) well and I was lucky to follow her around on adventures, mostly eating. Nom nom nom.

Chicago is especially entertaining around the holidays. Full of pretty twinkly lighted trees and festive window decorations at all the department stores. My mom and I like to make a trip to Chitown around this time and that we did about a week ago just for a quick overnight stay. What follows is an overview of our visit!

On Monday morning we arrive at the Hotel Palomar with our room ready because we smartly chose early check in. Yeehee hotel bathroom break! We are starved because we have done nothing but travel for a few hours, ha. So we stop by the Sable Kitchen & Bar located in the hotel. It is like the new place in Chicago and it lived up to all the hype. Plus Gwyneth, (why is this name so  hard to spell? I spell it different every time and it is never right) mentioned it on GOOP. We were living the high life and our waitress was a sweetheart.

The hotel itself is beautiful in a modern way. Our room was pretty spacious with really cute decorations. The bed was comfy and the bathroom was clean. It was perfect for a mother/daughter combo. And to showcase some attitude, instead of the plain old white fluffy robes hotel rooms always have, the Hotel Palomar had zebra and leopard print robes! My mom got the zebra because she said the leopard would go better with my hair?


The first stop on our 24 hours in Chicago was to head to the Art Institute to fill our cups with a little culture. Although the steps at museums are always HUGE and hard to walk up, I love art museums. We had a great time UNTIL I SAW THIS LITTLE GUY,

Wah!

When I came to this painting I knew it was meant to be,

Bottom! And the title is The Three Graces, Grace is my middle name.


From there we walked to the Christkindlmarket, a happy outdoor holiday market with crafts and food and beer.

And then there were crepes. I'm pretty sure everyone and their mother has heard me talk about the banana and nutella crepes I had while visiting Paris. When I sank my teeth into one of those babies outside of the Notre Dame, it was done for. I feel like I'm a dog that has a finely attuned senses to pick up the scent or sight of banana nutella crepes. Credit to my mom though because she found the crepe stand at the market.

Excitement! The crepes were nothing like the ones I had in Paris and the french men were chuckling at my mom and I speaking French under their breath for who knows what reason. But I was about to get chocolately, hazelnut goodness it didn't matter that those guys could have been saying "Ha ha these fools." among other more exciting things. Maybe like "And they think that this is nutella." It was nutella as best I could tell.

Is that a burrito? Sort of. That was my crepe. It was ok. I dare not say I was disappointed though because it was all just so exhilarating. 

After we pick at the burrito crepe and look at the market, we head back to the hotel to rest for a bit because we have a big night ahead of us.

To the complimentary wine tasting at the hotel! The Hotel Palomar does this great thing where for an hour every night they host a nice little wine tasting (which really means drink as much as you can of the selected wines in the allotted hour, and go! Not for us though, we were responsible).

Where the wine tasting was held.

We drank and dashed because we had high priority dinner plans at The Purple Pig. Now this place is the newest, coolest, bee's knees restaurant in Chicago. Oh yeah and I have a friend working there, this fact shoots my cool factor up tenfold.

My mom and I went there at 6 o'clock on a Monday night and it was PACKED. My superstar connections got us seated in 15 minutes with about an hour wait for mere mortals. High off of how fucking awesome we were for being seated right away, with help from of the wine and bottle of Preseco we ordered (it was a celebration!), we indulged into the food of The Purple Pig. Oh my god was it good. You just need to go there and experience the culinary joys. But as my friend Gabie who works there said, you aren't going to find anything low fat on the menu.

The restaurant is tapas style. We ordered: the beets, the artichokes, the scallops and the roasted bone marrow. The beets were my favorite. I think I may actually have eaten the whole serving...sorry mom.

The preseco!

The food!

 Me!

 The menu!

I owe her my life, Gabie, my close friend and purple pig hookup!

Our night is not over yet. From The Purple Pig we travel to The Second City to laugh. I had only been to the Second City once and loved it, so I had been wanting to go back. My mom and I had the best time and both of us agreed our mouths hurt from laughing so hard. I also love the thought that Tina Fey once preformed at the very theatre I was at. Have I mentioned I love Tina Fey?

We are so smiley at The Second City.

After laughing for an hour we finally head back to the hotel and just collapse into this,

Everything about this Chicago trip was happy. I had the best time and it felt good to go there and not  just shop the whole time, although we did some damage.

That being said within those 24 hours I must have overindulged a tinsy bit because I awoke the next morning and had many frantic questions and thoughts running through my mind like,

Is my stomach going to explode?
Why did I eat all that goat cheese last night?
I command that no one ever speak of goat cheese in front me again, or beets.
When will this end?
Why?
Damn you magician chefs at The Purple Pig luring me into your food.
Do I have to get out of bed?
I HATE FOOD AND WINE.

Obviously given my state I was the life of the party traveling back home that day.

And that concludes my trip to Chicago. I would recommend every place my mom and I visited to anyone looking for tips on where to stay, what to eat and what to see while in "the city."

The best picture, ever.

This picture is on a constant rotation on my computer and iPhone background. I am obsessed/in love/admire/want to be/need to meet/want her to be my best friend, mom, girlfriend with Tina Fey. 30 Rock is my favorite television show blah blah blah.

Kristin Wiig is hilarious. She is the best on SNL: Gilly, Penelope, Michelle Bachmann, Target lady. Need I mention Bridesmaids? Pure excellence, really what more is there to say?

And Maya Rudolph, I haven't seen as much of her as I have the other two. But I can say that she's great as an Oprah-esque diva in Up All Night.

This picture just makes me happy. The question at the top is ludicrous and shouldn't even be a thing, but it is. Duh women are funny, obviously. 

Beautiful Liar

Remember this song?

This was my jam once upon a time. I thought I'd give it a little love, one because it is a great song and two because it has Beyonce and Shakira, some very bad-ass females. I mean who doesn't think Beyonce really should rule the world and who doesn't want to have Shakira's fly dance moves in their back pocket?

Also, I want to dance in the rain like that someday, preferably with Beyonce and or Shakira. Where is Shakira? She made like a she-wolf and just disappeared I guess. Hopefully she'll pop up soon to wow the universe and dance in oil again.

Embarrassing confessions

Ugh, sometimes I feel like my life is a constant state of confusion full of corrections. And that I am like totally some like dumb blonde, but this is false! I am a fake blonde (for the record, I don't think blondes are dumb at all) and not dumb, except I do have stupid embarrassing confessions.

1. Today I asked my mom if tin foil could go in the microwave. As soon as it came out of my mouth I knew it couldn't. Even that moment of tin foil questioning is embarrassing though.

2. Until like a year ago I thought guys pulled their pants down all the way to their ankles when they used urinals. What are those long zipper holes for in their pants you ask? My thought process obviously never got that far.

3. Remember those Chevy "like a rock" commercials with that catchy jingle? Their catch phrase is LIKE A ROCK, the song mentions being strong...LIKE A ROCK. Nay nay I say because I sang the song as "lagarah." And when I say sing, I mean I jammed out to this fucking commercial. I would hum it around the house and just be in the zone. Then one fateful day my brother heard me singing and was flummoxed by my lyrics. He kindly corrected me (not) that it was not lagarah, but like a rock. I sort of stand by my lyrics because I do not think the singers enunciate very well.

Some of you may well agree with me until the zinger at the very end of the commercial. Cue to the lower left hand corner of the screen where the Chevy emblem appears with LIKE A ROCK clearly written underneath. There are few to no words that can be used to defend this hiccup.

And that is all for today.

The Albert Memorial

As I've mentioned before, I spent a semester abroad in London during my junior year in college. It was absolutely, without a doubt the grandest adventure of my life. My decision to go to London was the best choice I've made to date.

I am not embellishing when I say I think about London and getting back there somehow everyday of my life.

These are my most recent ideas:
1. Marry Prince Harry

2. Become a professional scone connoisseur/taster, obviously a mecca to London would be imperative to this career track.

Yumo! Scones with clotted cream and jam from The Muffin Man in Kensington. Every bite there is deliciousness.

3. Get a job with Gwyneth at the GOOP office in London

4. Marry Henry Cavill (My friend and I walked past him once in London! What a day. He was in his long hair phase for The Tudors.)

Two out of four of my ideas center on marriage and while Prince Harry and Henry Cavill are both magnificent candidates for my future husband, I can not base my path back to London on a man. Can I get a hoora ladies? 

Looks like I have to make the most difficult choice between devoting my life to pastries or working for Madonna's bff and Chris Martin's wifey. What a choice!

...I think my safest bet is to continue brainstorming.

Today was an especially reminiscent London day because I listened to Adele's Live at the Royal Albert Hall album. Oh. My. God. Well played Adele, you have a voice like butta baby. So there I am sitting in my bed listening to Adele singing her heart out about love and I can hear the audience cheering and doing happy "I'm at an Adele concert" dances. I'm feeling bad for myself. I am wanting to be back in London. Then I got over it and decided to blog about Londy.

I was lucky enough to be located in the oh so posh Kensington area of London while studying at Richmond University. About a block away from my dorm room was Kensington Palace and gardens. This quickly turned into my place. I walked there pretty much everyday I was in London.

You  know how in books and stuff the main character goes on a walk and her feet takes her somewhere without consciously deciding to walk to Dairy Queen per say? Well when I read or heard that I was always like "Bullshit, that doesn't happen." But it does!

Every time I went to Kensington Gardens, I would find myself at the Albert Memorial (right across from the Royal Albert Hall, hey Adele). This monument is breathtaking. It was created by the late Queen Victoria (have you seen The Young Victoria with Emily Blunt? If not, do. I cry from lovey happiness it's so wonderful) for her husband Albert who died of typhoid. She installed a number of monuments around London to showcase her love for her husband.

Sadly, I HAVE NO GOOD PICTURES OF THE MEMORIAL, but google does.

Gasp! Right? To anyone who asks, I say that the Albert Memorial, The National Gallery and The Globe are my top picks in London, in that order.

I remember going to the Albert Memorial on Valentine's Day, let's just say not in the most romantic mood, and I looked at that statue and thought "Blah screw you Valentine's Day. But, at least I am in this most amazing city sitting in a beautiful spot." The Albert Memorial just had that calming effect on me. Then I went out to an Italian dinner with my lovely, gorgeous friends. Aha all was right in the world.

Another yumo

And my London thoughts for today all started with this song: