Merry Christmas!

Here's our 2012 Christmas Holiday Card!


I only have access to Photoshop Elements at this time in my life :)

Here are a few past cards in case you're new to us.

2011 - Our last Christmas in New York City.

I drew this myself.

2010. Bonnie could have photoshopped this herself!

My Christmas Spirit is rocking full tilt

I don't know if it's because I've got a lot more time on my hands this year, but my Christmas Spirit is mighty and plentiful. Here's the spirit of the day in IG's.

I am thrilled to have the White House Christmas card featuring Bo! Bonnie is not so impressed.


Here's the Clinton Library Santa. I'm pretty obsessed with him. When I first laid eyes on him back in the summer, I just knew he was a santa. (He's also a volunteer.)


I'm also pretty fascinated with the Santa career, because you don't know you'll grow up to grow old and be a beautiful, spot-on Santa Claus. His wife manages his gigs, he has four suits and he can barely go out in public right now even in plain clothes, because he is so Santa. He has a rosy button nose all year long.

Me and one of my best-friend volunteers getting in on the Santa action!

I can't shut up about the xmas tree farm

Now that we live in the country (Arkansas) we're doing some down-home-y things. We thought it would be cute and novel to go to the Christmas Tree Farm and boy, was it terrific!

We drove to the outskirts of town (we had no idea where we were or where it is- you would have to GPS this for yourself) We drove past some of those yards with rusty cars on blocks in the front yard and arrived at this fabulous place - Motley's Christmas Tree Farm.

We went on a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning. They have gardens of different kinds of trees and trees in pots that you can re-plant. The awesome kick in the pants was the petting zoo! They have a jazzy little petting zoo.




We were overwhelmed with our choices and walked around for quite a while to choose the right one for ourselves. Then we decided on a bushy, tall, skinny, wild one and Matt sawed him down.





They had tractors with hay-ride-ready trailers attached to carry us and our tree to the entrance.


Matt looks so funny to me with his huge beard these days. I forget the beard is there and it's like he's in disguise and he's like Why are you laughing!?
I was also impressed with how fast he sawed down the tree with that little saw.


They put him in a tree shaker and wiped needles off of him with a toilet bowl brush :)


They wrapped it in ropes and loaded it into the back of Matt's truck. This tree was also less than $30 which we thought was an amazing deal compared to buying 3' tall trees in NYC for more than that.

We left before the pig races started, but I heard they wear sweaters sometimes.


Then we got home and remembered that it had to fit into the elevator.

Calm, Delicious Christmas

Christmas morning I got crazy and made spiced pear french toast.
Recipe found at the end of this ramble.

Matt made chili and I had the brilliant idea to make it into Frito chili pies. Bonnie lost her mind trying to get into this. He loosely used this recipe. We love Jimmy.

The heart-shaped pans are filled with Cracker Barrel's Hashbrown Casserole knockoff recipe.
It's hard to resist eating a whole pan. 

My sweet babes.


Our massive live tree. I hope she can survive.

Christmas Eve Times

We were Domestic as Heck this Christmas Eve. We quickly picked-out some recipes and got groceries on Friday night since I had zero plans for us this Christmas weekend. It's really nice to not have any plans sometimes as that's not our norm. We also couldn't agree on a restaurant to make a reservation. We forget we can fix food ourselves. 

Getting groceries meant the fridge couldn't hold it all and some beer went out on the terrace. We don't have a fully-normal sized refrigerator in our tiny apartment.

Matt made the first 2 meals of Christmas Eve. He started it off with some steel-cut oats with cherries then for lunch he made grilled cheese with apples. I made a tortilla soup for dinner. I also made my old family recipe Jell-o salad - It's a strawberry/pear/cool-whip/cream cheese/marshmallow dessert.

When we walked Bonnie this afternoon we stopped to get Kahlua to make Soy Milk White Russians. Me and Bonnie waited out on the sidewalk.

We watched Jackass3 and Pecker and now it's time for bed.

Our soy milk white russians were great and I found a recipe online to use equal parts soy milk, kahlua and vodka. We like Tito's handmade vodka. I love how much ad space they buy in BUST magazine.

I used a Martha tortilla soup recipe.

Matt freestyled his oats and grilled cheeses. Though not dairy-free, it happened to be a meat-free day.
Tomorrow is going to be a different story of the wild game variety. 

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from New York City!
This is our Christmas Card that we mailed out this year.  I really don't like when people show the photo of the card you're going to get on their blog or facebook before they mail it. If you are going to use postage, I think you need to give your mailing list a surprise. Otherwise, it's like Oh, thanks for mailing me this picture I already saw online.

Back in August on that night me and Bonnie walked around the Met and saw the Red Tailed Hawk, I saw the sidewalk portrait artists and I knew Bonnie's card had to be one of those portraits.

My first sketch-


I took her to Times Square and I had two different street artists draw her.


They were Chinese dudes who were uncertain of "Christmas Man" and I had to perform Google image searches on my phone. That was a red flag. 

I went home with these 2 funny, but disappointing drawings.


I knew I had to draw this myself. 

I sketched out how I wanted Bonnie to look but ran out of paper so I just pieced these scrap pieces together.


I scanned-in the 3 parts then stitched it together in Photoshop. Then I turned the levels/curves way up/down to make it really black and contrasty.


Passion for the project helped me prepare the whole thing and upload to WinkFlash with cards ordered in about 2 hours.


Even though we didn't use the street artists drawings, we had fun going to Times Square and checking out the windows on the way!

Here's her card from last year


And yes, someday I will photoshop my human baby.  :)
When I have one.

The Fun will wear you out

I'm exhausted. I've been having too much fun. I've stayed out late the past three nights and the past three nights have been school nights. Bad! I'm exhausted. But it was fun.

Sunday afternoon, I finally got to meet cute Sharon of NYC Taught Me. It's a Mommy Blog that teaches me things. She's very small and sweet. We met at The Guggenheim to listen to Isaac Mizrahi read us Peter and the Wolf. The Julliard Ensemble plays the music. We had great front-row seats. There were really neat-o balloon sculptures by Jason Hackenwerth hanging overhead and we got a good exercise in stretching our imaginations. It was a neat experience.
We were both polite and didn't take pictures.

I think they wanted all the little chillin's in attendance to vacate the premises after the Isaac show, but I knew how we could shimmy on up to the rotunda to take in more of the Cattellan exhibit.

We killed some time so that we could enjoy the Christmas music program that started after-hours. While we were in line, the curly-haired, teenage son from Big Love was in line near us and that was exciting because I watched every single episode from day one.

The Christmas music was special. The choir/ensemble started singing from opposite sides way up on the rotunda. They walked down... it was great.

See the song books? They started up high and moseyed down.


It was free and it's over til' next year, but you can go ahead and pencil it in on your Google calendar and be happy with yourself when you discover it next year :) It's an annual event in about it's 10th year.

After all that Guggenheim goodness I made Matt come and pick me up so we could meet our friends on the west side for a late dinner. It was THE COLDEST WEATHER HE'S EVER BIKED IN. It was really really cold! We stiffly rode our bicycles across town and met Al & El for dinner.

 He's burrowing his face at a stop light. He was cursing me into his coat. 

He just made some comment about how much warmer it feels when you stop. Poor baby.

I was bundled up and it was still really cold. It was in the twenties. Ouch. I put on a brave face because this it was all my fault. 



 Staying out til almost midnite on Sunday is a recipe for disaster.
 Monday night I had my work holiday party. It was a karaoke party and I hid in the corner then sneaked out. I hate karaoke. 

Tuesday night I had a really special reunion. Sarah was my segment producer when I was on Martha Stewart. She spent the day with me, getting me ready, keeping me from stealing things, etc. I've kept in touch with her all these years - Almost 5 years!

She agreed to be my date to the John Waters Christmas special after Matt bailed on me for one of his many work holiday functions. (He actually won a pretty big award last night at his party - resident of the year.)

Sarah met me at the Sanrio (Hello Kitty) store in Times Square I love that freaking store. It's open til midnight. I got an amazing t-shirt- Hello Kitty is eating a HAMBURGER on an American Flag. It's way too tiny for me, but I'm going to cut it and wear it. The magic is in the message.

Me and Sarah had a hard time finding a proper dinner at BB King's.
The bulk of our dinner came from this bucket.
 

The Show was fantastic! John Waters was much more rehearsed, I felt, than when I saw this special 2 years ago.
 

After the program, we walked to Sarah's office. She needed to collect some things and I wanted to keep talking.






































We stopped and showed this nerd suit gentleman some love. We had a lot of questions for him. He has a business degree and a website that I just can't remember. Dressing up in a crazy get-up is a career in New York City. 

He said he went to business school and we believed him because he had those prop-glasses to share with his patrons. 




It was super-fun to sit in her office and catch up! Times like this make me glad I'm so dedicated with keeping up with people I really enjoy.

Sarah gave me this little green guy and I was happy to put him on my bike.
I hope he stays for a while!

Merrrrrry Christmas!

The Craftiest Time of the Year

Saturday I went to the Martha Stewart Craft Sale at MSLO HQ and then I went to see Amy Sedaris again- this time at SpaceCraft in Brooklyn. Amy said she's seen me "Three times already" this week but this was only two. She's bad at math, or I have an imposter.

Sidenote:  I made a new friend and saved her from going to a dreaded basketball game in the ultra-dreaded Dirty Jerz with my husband, her boyfriend and other Duke alumni. New lovely friend is along for this whole crafty Saturday ride... She is a dermatologist and she blew my doors off by reminding me to use SPF on the backs of my hands! They're gonna show my age, so I need to put SPF on the hands. I often find myself hanging out with doctors but never the kind that tell me anything remotely useful. I love this girl!

OK- Now were at Martha's- I fall hard for Mixed-Media Christmas Trees. I like spice.
So cutest use of puff balls and screws on this tiny baby Christmas tree-

Those sharp, silver ornaments are freaking screws - I guess they are hotglued together. So cute! But sharp as shit. Moving on.

This flat tree is a great idea for New York City crazies just like me who live in teeny-tiny apartments and can't spare the space for a 3-D tree.


Martha Stewart's Head Quarter is really sleek and pretty and I've been there and written about it before but it's still fun special to go where she goes. To be in her space and try to sneak a peek at the work areas and her old modeling photos. Martha was a fashion/beauty model before she took over the world. It's true.

This is really bad to say, but my friend and I weren't tempted enough by the offerings to purchase anything, but we both stepped out of there with some fantastic ideas. There's a necklace that I can't wait to try to make myself. By myself. For myself.

Ooh! I also saw the make-up artist who did my make-up that time I was on Martha and I told my friend - because this was day 2 of her knowing me, "I'm about to possibly have a strange interaction with this woman" and then I went up to the make-up lady and geeked out! Like "You did my make-up when I was on Martha and it was one of the best experiences of my whole life. Not just being on Martha, I mean- just the make-up part was one of the best times of my life." And she did not remember me at all, and she was honest about that, but she was happy that I had such a good time and she wrote down her number in case I need her freelance services. Could happen.

And this is her from that day in 2007. I told her she explained her whole spread to me, and that I have a picture of it.


I realized it was getting close to time to get ourselves to Brooklyn to post up for the Amy Sedaris event at SpaceCraft. We took the train and showed up around 4:30 and they told us we couldn't come in til' 5. Dang! So we went across the street and ate kick-ass sandwiches at Papa Lima. OMG.



Emily joined us and we got in line but after sammich time, the line was a little scary because SpaceCraft is small, but we were behind a gang and a NY1 camera. Amy stood on a chair and did a quick demo.


During the Q & A - the questions from the audience weren't that great, in my opinion. It was more exciting when I asked her what she plans to sell at the BUST Craftacular Sunday and she busted me out for stalking her, listed what she's going to sell, then said I can only buy 1 thing. Liar!

Oh! She also said she wore a diff. dress because she knew I'd be there.

The Q & A wasn't going anywhere so she asked Paul Dinello a question about what he dressed up as for Halloween and he joined her in standing on a chair. He was beyond adorable/precious and that's the NY1 camera that's filming her for an upcoming special.


I have horrible photos because I want to be discrete and not be an asshole.

That NY1 Special better be an hour long, and they should have interviewed me.

My gang didn't buy books. Amy was signing at the other end of the big SpaceCraft craft table and they had a glitter-toothpick-marshmallow ornament crafting station set-up opposite Amy. We sat down and worked some magic.


We tricked Amy into posing with Emily. Har har!


The basketball slumber-party broke up and I had this hot new glitter marshmallow ornament from the Amy event so I was hot to put my my tree. My massive 3' tall tree with trashy but festive, fiber-optic tips.



I love these plastic flower light covers.


Oohs & Aaahhhhs!