First, we put up our tree.
It's teeny tiny and pretty silly. Courtesy of a friend whose cat kept trying to eat it, so she gave it to me.
Then we put up some lights in the windows.
Chris scoured Portsmouth to find lights. I wanted to see if the star-shaped covers on this strand would come off. While holding one of the bulbs in my fingers and pulling ever so gently, I crushed the bulb and gave myself the worst shock of my life. A fine example of Dominican quality products.
We then fixed the circuit with duct tape.
Chris made the fireplace out of construction paper.
During this photo shoot my cats decided my "marshmallow on a stick" would be a good toy.
Also check out how much lighter the front of my hair is than the back. Comes from pulling my hair back every day. I need to start wearing it down when I'm at the pool.
So those were our few little decorations. The other part of our Christmas celebration was making a totally absurd amount of food for two people.
We began with desserts on Christmas Eve.
Marshmallow wreaths, Rice Krispies treats, frosted sugar cookies, peppermint candy cane cookies, Chex puppy chow, and a chocolate bourbon pie.
Then on Christmas, I made a large meal.
Chicken with apple barbecue sauce, baked mac and cheese, broccoli casserole, and roasted garlic and pumpkin mashed potatoes. And some red moscato... we don't have wine glasses.
I like how the broccoli is totally dominating my plate. It was the best broccoli casserole I ever made. Yep.
So on Christmas we opened a few gifts in the morning. And by morning, I mean around noon or so. Then I cooked all afternoon to produce this feast. After stuffing ourselves silly we watched A Christmas Story. That was about it... we were contemplating going to the beach, but I spent all our daylight on dinner, plus Chris was suffering from the same cold/flu combo I just got over.
Chris' birthday was on the 28th. There is really no place on the island to buy a decent gift, and I didn't want to make him a cake because we still had 90 pounds of other desserts, so I told him I'd make anything he wanted for dinner.
Chicken margherita pizza, garlic bread I was too lazy to cut up, and a salad with homemade garlic dressing. We're both kind of obsessed with garlic, if you couldn't already tell.
That's about all we've gotten up to lately. Our break has been pretty boring. Chris found this Battlestar Galactica game and he's been playing it 24/7 for the last week or two, and I'm reading the Game of Thrones series at warp speed. We did watch all of the Star Wars movies (the originals) because I had never seen them and Chris I guess is just feeling space-y lately. I thought they were pretty boring and I kept daydreaming instead of paying attention. Not my kind of entertainment.
I'll be busy over the next few days with this:
I have to cook up ALL these noodles and then feed them to incoming first semester students when they arrive from the airport. So. Many. Noodles.
I wanted to arrange them all on the floor around me, grabbing my hair in a dramatic fashion and yelling, but I didn't. So just imagine that.
We're going on three school-sponsored trips before the semester starts, so look for the return of the pretty nature shots, AKA the whole reason you read this blog to begin with.
