Ideas? Holiday Cards!!

This is the 2nd Christmas for Sean and I as a married couple:) Being from a family of 6 with 20 aunts/uncles and even more cousins (at least on my side...), greeting cards have overrun the entrance to our apartment this year. I have an envelope in our Christmas tub from last year's Christmas.

It makes me wonder, how can I save those Christmas cards in a way that's inexpensive yet beautiful to look at? I was debating an album, but the problem would be that I couldn't read the backs/insides of cards and pictures.

So my question is.....How do or would YOU organize Christmas cards and photos? :)

Post-Christmas Date: The Nutcracker!

When I was little, my homeschooled family would drive or Metro down to the Kennedy Center in
Washington, DC, to see different plays throughout the year. I remember being fascinated by the different shows that my brothers and I were
introduced to through this! My mom coordinated it for a number of years, arranging tickets, carpools, and discounts.

(One of Clara's gifts: Toy Soldiers! Realistic dance moves, too!)

One of my favorite shows that we watched every year was The Nutcracker Ballet! Actually, it was always a working dress rehearsal, but we didn't care! I remember staring at the dancers,

memorizing their movements, and trying to replay it back to my mom when I got back home. I loved the years I was in ballet classes AND went to the rehearsal; I always had a great story for my dancing friends before class began ;)

(Snowflakes, Snow Queen, and Snow Prince dancing through the Snow!)

This year I looked for Kennedy Center tickets to the real showing of The Nutcracker, but either they were sold out or way outside my conceived ticket budget. Nope, no way, not this year.

Later, I was talking to Sean about it, and realized that we have a ballet company here in

Northern VA that puts on The Nutcracker every year. I sped through websites and found out that shows were AFTER Christmas...perfect! Sean bought us 2 tickets to the show and we dressed up to go out:)

(Can you believe this auditorium is on the campus of my first college here in Northern VA??)

The ballet company only did 3 acts of the original ballet, but I still enjoyed the costumes, the acting, and the dancing. I took over 150 pictures for a 2 hour (including 2 intermissions) show! It also reminded me of how different Sean and I are; while I was bubbling with excitement/information, he calmly sits and enjoys the play like a "proper adult" ;) What can I say...I miss ballet!

(Dozens of children and adults dancing at the Christmas Party; Clara being woken by an angel as the (Snow Queen?) dances)

I have many more pictures that thankfully came out well despite the "no flash" rule! Many of the pictures have already been sent to Walgreens in hopes of completing our 2011 album that I decided to make...more on that (possibly) later =)

Christmas Dinner

So I unfortunately thought about Christmas dinner for about 5 minutes on Friday and didn't do anything about it. I wanted to make a meal with the Cornish hens I bought, but I didn't even go so far as to thaw them...oops! As you read in one of my earlier posts, we had Chinese food instead, which was great, but I really wanted to do some cooking while on my break from work:)

I found this amazing recipe to make my Cornish hens, and since the stores were open again, I ran out and picked up the rest of the ingredients. I paired it with some squash that I cut up, steamed, and added a pat of butter and salt to it...amazing! Here's the recipe for you to try it out - you won't be disappointed!!

Rosemary-Lemon Cornish Hens with Roasted Potatoes

Ingredients:
2 teaspoons crushed dried rosemary
1/2 teaspoon salt, divided
1/4 teaspoon black pepper, divided
2 (1 1/4-pound) Cornish hens
1/2 lemon, halved and divided
Cooking spray
2 cups cubed Yukon gold or red potato
2 teaspoons olive oil

Preparation:
Preheat oven to 375°.

Combine crushed dried rosemary, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/8 teaspoon pepper.

Remove and discard giblets from hens. Rinse hens with cold water; pat dry. Remove skin; trim excess fat. Working with 1 hen at a time, place 1 lemon piece in the cavity of hen; tie ends of legs together with twine. Lift wing tips up and over back; tuck under hen. Repeat procedure with remaining hen and lemon piece. Rub hens with rosemary mixture. Place hens, breast sides up, on a broiler pan coated with cooking spray.

Toss potato with oil; sprinkle with 1/4 teaspoon salt and 1/8 teaspoon pepper. Arrange the potato around hens.

Insert a meat thermometer into meaty part of a thigh, making sure not to touch bone. Bake at 375° for 1 hour or until thermometer registers 180°. Remove twine.

Jean Kressy, Cooking Light

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas 2011! Wow it's been a while since I've been on here. I'm hoping to change that, but we'll see what the new year brings!

This Christmas flew in so quickly, I got behind 100% of the time:( However, I did find some enjoyable moments this December!
I was able to spend some time with my dear friend Jiye before she headed back to Korea to be with her family. She won't be back to the states for at least 5 months!!



We made snickerdoodles and no-bake oatmeal candies (pictured). It was fun to get together and make some treats that I used to make with my mom and brothers when I was younger:)





My students have been VERY excited about the holidays, and frankly, so have I! Working in a daycare means that I only have a day or 2 off for the holidays, but I enjoy my job more than 90% of the time, so it's worth it, right? ;) Anyway, several of my students went out of town until next year! This past Friday, I only had 9 of my 20 kids come to the daycare...awesome!

I've finally remembered to bring my camera to work and, while I can't post pictures online of my kiddos, I can share with you their artwork. Here is one of my kids' "Christmas Tree" made out of plastic nuts and blots! What a cutie :)

They've also made things like candy canes with glitter on them, cups of "hot cocoa" to decorate the office, and winter hats, but I have yet to remember to take those pictures!

Our living room finally looked like Christmas this month - Sean and I spent a lot of time debating if we wanted a real tree or not, and he was sent back to night shift for 2 weeks, so ornaments weren't actually hung up until the 19th or so? It took a while, but it looks beautiful! I plan on

keeping it up as long as possible! :)

Sean actually did a lot of the organizing and decorating for Christmas. He strung lights up on the screens decorating the entrance area to our apartment. He even put up my sign from high school that says "Some of my best friends are flakes" and the snowman that goes with it :)




It being Christmas, I thought I'd have a decent chance at doing some elaborate meal with my husband. Nope, like I said, it's been a rough time trying to stay on top of things! We ended up running to Safeway (poor things were open today!) and getting breakfast foods. We skipped lunch for the most part. Dinner was supposed to be cornish hens, but unfortunately 6 hours wasn't enough to thaw the little guys! So we had Chinese food, as did apparently 40+ other people in Fairfax....at the same time. Thank goodness ours was takeout! Later, I found a recipe for kettle corn that I've been dying to try. It was awesome - I'll post about it later tonight!

I pray that everyone had a wonderful Christmas celebrating Jesus' birth in your own special way! :)

Christmas Movies

After being at Sean's house in NY for a few hours, we discovered how few original Christmas movies I've seen. So, we have a list of many, many movies for us to watch, including "It's a Wonderful Life," during this holiday season :)

So far we've seen:
- White Christmas (with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye)
- A Christmas Carol (1951, also called "Scrooge")
- A Christmas Wish
- Elf

Later this week we're going to watch "It's a Wonderful Life" among many, many other movies. We've been watching at least one a night, but we might have to up it to 3 or 4 a day in order to watch them all before Sean and I head back to Lynchburg :-P

In other news, I have created about 4 scarves and have about 3 more projects to finish. Right now I'm still working on trying to figure out what one of the projects will be. I used a Q-sized crochet hook and chained about 100 chains, so it takes a while to get from one end to the other. I'm debating between a blanket, a shawl, or a really thick short scarf. We'll see:)

I'm also hoping to do a needlepoint project. I have 2 people in mind that I'd like to give it to, so we'll see when I finish it and that will decide who gets it :-P

Alright, on to the movie :-)