Oh Mitchmas Tree. . .

My favorite thing about Mitchmas isn't the cookies or the music or the presents or even Elf. Okay, well my actual favorite thing about Mitchmas is that I get two weeks off of school. But my second favorite thing is the tree. I LOVE CHRISTMAS TREES.

Love love love love love.

I love the lights and the ornaments and the lights and the smell and the lights. I love my tree skirt. I love the lights. (In college we had so many Christmas lights in our hallways that the fire marshall came; the next year we proclaimed that you could see our suite from space because of all of the Christmas lights.)

If I had my druthers, I'd have a Christmas tree all year. But I don't think Matt would go for it.

Here's this year's tree.

I'm really anal when I decorate the tree, too. This comes from my mother, who was anal about the tree because her mother was anal about the tree. Oh, family tradition!

When I was a kid, we would decorate the tree as a family, and Jordan and I would hang our favorite ornaments.

***(This decorating only came after an always-grueling hunt for the perfect tree, and the subsequent fight my parents would have about whether or not the tree was standing straight. Our trees weren't always glamorous--especially the year my dad went and chopped down two trees and tied them together to form one--but they were always nicely decorated.)***

Anyway, we would have wonderful family moments decorating the tree, selecting the perfect spot for each ornament, and then, when Jordan and I returned from school the following day, the tree would be completely different. My mom would spend the entire next day rearranging the ornaments to make the tree perfect. She has passed on this neurosis to me.

The key is that the ornaments MUST HANG. No resting on branches. That's just sloppy.

Here are some of my favorite ornaments. This glass glitter penguin was a gift from Tanya, and it's always one of the first ones I put on. It illuminates with the lights. Ahhhhhhhhh. . .
There are some handmade ornaments, like this one I made when I was six. (There's part of a very old toilet paper roll in there!)
Or this one that Chloe made a few years back.
And then there are a bunch of ornaments that just look like they are handmade, but are really from Target or World Market.



We've got old ornaments. This one's from my grandmother. This is my "Baby's First Christmas" ornament. It used to have wheels, but when I was a kid I would steal it off the tree and play with it. The wheels didn't survive.
These bells are from my parents first Christmas together.

And this one is from the first Christmas Matt and I were married.
This is one I kept from a first-grade fundraiser. My mom hated this ornament and would always put it in the back of the tree. We would battle throughout the month because I insisted that it needed to be front and center. In reality, it's pretty ugly. But that ornament and I have history.
And then I have some awesome random ornaments. Like this one from Caitie. (I used to eat bowls of chickpeas with ranch in the dining hall freshman year.)
And this one from Tanya. It'd be a blue Mitchmas without this baby.
And this one from Collin. It's paying homage to my country roots.
Or this one from Matt's first year at JMU.
Or this one, his little Buffalo Bills man.
What you might notice about the tree is that a certain jolly fat man is nowhere to be found. I'm just not a fan. My parents never told me that Santa was real because my mom believed that, since you could rearrange the letters of his name to spell SATAN, Santa must be evil. (She put the "fun" in fundamentalist Christian parents. . .) But it was okay; I just told everyone in my first grade class that Santa was a fake.

Mitchmas Gift for Myself

I bought these slipper booties for Matt's mom for Christmas. But I wasn't convinced that she'd like them. She gets creeped out by some soft textures, and the [luxurious] inside of the booties is soft like a little lamb.

I decided that she would hate the gift. Back to square one.

(The silver lining, though, is that the booties are in my size. Merry Mitchmas to Mandy!)

But now what to get for Matt's mom? I'm doing everything I can to avoid giving her a gift card. While I love to receive gift cards as gifts, I hate to give them. They seem so impersonal!

Do you give gift cards? Any amazing gift ideas for Matt's mom?

Top Chef Finale!

Woooo-hoooooo, Top Chef finale tonight! I'm pretty pumped about it, and to celebrate the gourmet deliciousness the Matt and I will be making turkey tacos! (We can't watch Top Chef while hungry; it's torture.)

Right after the introductions on the first episode of each season, Matt and I each choose our three favorites. We're getting pretty good at this game, too, because the final three are all people we selected!

I only have one in the final three: Bryan Voltaggio (the smart, reasonable brother). He's got a restaurant in Frederick, Maryland, and I'm happy to cheer for the home town boy.

My second favorite is Kevin, who's Matt's favorite. Kevin's restaurant is in Atlanta, and Kevin is a complete badass. (Even if he does resemble Yukon Cornelius from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.)

I don't want Michael Voltaggio to win. He's arrogant and not as good as the other two.

Go Bryan! Make Maryland proud!

Christmas Card Photo Hell

I got a bug up my ass the other day that we needed to take a good Christmas card picture. I had a great idea to do one with us wearing Snuggies, complete with Mitch in a Snuggie for Dogs, on some bleachers cheering.

But that was too much work, and would require me buying two more Snuggies. Plus, Matt doesn't have a lot of patience for a Christmas card photo session.

So I searched online for ideas. It did not go well.

First, there were the little angels.

Now, we did share some laughs picturing ourselves dressed as angels, with a swaddled dog in a manger. But we don't have angel costumes or a manger, and we didn't think Mitch would be wild about being swaddled.

Then there was the "us surrounded by Christmas icons" picture. I thought this was pretty fun, but I don't have Photoshop, so it was a no go.

I REALLY liked this idea, but we don't have any human children.

And this one was just a little too punny. Plus, it'd be hard to fit either Mitch or Matt into one of my mixing bowls.

And so I sat us down in the house for a little photo session, but it was a bust. It ended with me getting frustrated, determined to buy a new camera, new face, and new body. I pouted on the couch for an hour afterward.

So today I turned to my #1 photo subject, Mitch. And while he was "less than enthusiastic" (that's how Cassie described their cat's reaction to the new puppy, and I thought it was hilarious) about it, he cooperated more than his father does.

Of course, I think this is the "stink eye" to which Juno referred.

And he was bored.

He gave me much more to work with.

Yeah, and I took Christ out of Christmas and replaced it with Mitch. Take that, Baptist school!

I'm Dreaming of a White. . .

. . .cockroach?

No, that's the stuff that nightmares are made of. And that's exactly what I saw today at school, in the bathroom, crawling all over the paper towels.

With the help of another teacher, we smashed it and then sprayed it with bleach. Not the most humane approach, sure, but what else is one to do when confronted with such a clear case of good v. evil?

(This isn't ours, just one I found on the interwebs.)

At first I believed this roach to be an albino, and I really hate albinos. (I think it's leftover emotional baggage from watching The Firm as a kid.) Of course, I did see an albino alligator at a zoo once, and that was pretty cool.

But then I read this tidbit that I thought was interesting.

"Every once in a while, you might find a white cockroach. If you do, you're seeing one in transition. As cockroaches mature, they discard their skin and grow a new, bigger skin. In the nearly 12 hours it takes to shed and then grow new skin, the roach is white."

Now you know.

And just think, those of you whom I envy because of your wintry wonderlands, these babies wouldn't show up in snow.

Christmas Gift Idea

Matt, here's what I want for Christmas. You may need to order it very soon so that it gets here on time.

A bag with Mitch on it!

Everyone else, I know you'll probably have feelings of envy when you see me strut by carrying my dingo digesting a baby tote, so you should just buy one for yourself. Early Christmas present!

Madison for Keeps

Oh, JMU alumni!

In case you haven't heard about this already:



This is how they sucked me in.

"Remember the campus tradition of holding doors for others entering a building behind you? Giving to Madison for Keeps continues that tradition. Please hold open the opportunity for students who want to stay at Madison. This program will run through December 31st, but don't wait — make your gift today."

And if that doesn't pull your heart strings, maybe this will.

Go Slipper Booties!

At what age is one too old to enjoy the slipper bootie?

(The nice, quality slipper booties. Not the crap ones. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Old Navy!)

Hey, UPS Man!

Here's something you might not know about me.

I love the UPS guy on the commercials.


And I love what he does with a brown dry-erase marker.

He is an artist! A long-haired Leonardo if you ask me!

(Or was it Donatello? Or Michelangelo? Or Raphael? I always get my Ninja Turtle artist names mixed up. Did I ever tell you that Jordan and I watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Secret of the Oooze approximately one billion times in our youth?)

Today was weird. It was all about death and tears and bad weather and margaritas. Weird.

Marital Bliss

Matt: Wait, did you see last week's episodes of The Hills and The City?

Me: Ummmmmm, hmmmmm, I think so.

Matt: [reading the info] Justin Bobby follows Kristin to Las Vegas!

Me: Oh, no! I haven't seen that one yet!

Matt: Well, you have it, because I recorded it for you.

Me: Oh, thank you! I have the best husband.

Matt: Yes you do. Now go make me some f'*&^ing pasta.

(He was joking. If he wasn't, I'll poison his pasta.)

Grandpa B.

One of the greatest parts of Thanksgiving was that I got to spend time with my grandparents. In Grandpa B., I found my second-favorite picture subject, too. (Mitch is my favorite.)

Grandpa B. has always been one of my favorites. He is kind and gentle and has the patience of a saint. (He married my grandma when she already had 5 very bad children.)

Grandpa B. is childlike, is curious and fascinated by the world around him. He is the reason I love the smell of someone smoking a pipe.

He's also frank. Grandpa's not afraid to tell you when he's unhappy with something. Often, his facial expressions say everything.

When I was a kid, Grandpa B. was the best. He balanced perfectly my grandma's disdain for children. I remember visiting them when I was about eight. They lived in an apartment building that wasn't very kid-friendly, but Grandpa made sure that Jordan and I were entertained. He had Tinker Toys, and would build elaborate structures with them and then hook them up to a steam engine. The one I remember best was a ferris wheel. Then he helped us build our own structures and put them in motion.

And even after all these years, Grandpa is willing to try new things. On Saturday, he ate oysters for the first time. (I won't go near an oyster. I think they look like snot.)

And you know what? He loved them.

Grandpa is the sweetest man. On Saturday night, he and I were looking at the pictures we'd taken that day. We got to this one of Grandma Carol. . .

. . .and Grandpa turned to me and said, "You know, even after all these years, I still think she's just the prettiest lady. . .She's got the best hair."

Does it get any better than that?