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?