It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!

Now repeat that in a sing-songy voice and you'll have an idea of what it's like to be me during the holiday season. I freaking LOVE it! I seriously can't get enough. It usually starts for me the week of Thanksgiving, which this year coincided with the return from our honeymoon, so I was already in a crazy-good mood. I guess I've taken my cheery-ness a bit too far this year though, because I've been accused by my friend Andrea of hitting the holiday crack pipe a little too hard. Love her :)

Disclaimer: although I was super happy that the holidays had arrived, I was secretly a little peeved that I didn't give myself a bit more time in between the return from honeymoon and the holidays to lose the wedding/honeymoon weight. Ugh. Guess I'll dive head-first into the eggnog and just wait till January 1, like I do every year ;)

Back to the topic at hand... since this is truly the most wonderful time of the year (go ahead, try to tell there's better time... you won't win) I thought I'd share a few of the things that make it so wonderful for me.

Drumroll please...

Here are Carolyn's favorite holiday, um, things:

SNOW!!!! I love love love it. Thank God I live in upstate NY. I love watching it fall and rest so serenely on my grass. I love seeing it rest peacefully on rooftops and tree branches. I love how cute my dogs look pushing through it with their noses. Now if only we could get the plow trucks to stop coming along and turning it brown. There truly is something to be said for a white Christmas.

Peanut brittle. Need I say more? Someone so thoughtfully assumed that a few extra inches on my waistline would be the perfect Christmas gift and left a huge bag of the stuff at my office. I'm not supposed to share with coworkers, right?

Ahh, Christmas lights. I wish I could tell you that our house resembles Clark Griswold's but hanging one strand along our roofline proved time-consuming enough. Maybe next year.

A warm fire. And yes, this is our fireplace. And no, we didn't douse the logs in kerosene. The house did get so hot, though, that we had to turn the heat off for fear the dogs would pass out. Isn't it so nice to relax in front of a fire, with all the lights off in the house except for the Christmas tree? Ahh, Christmas time... how I love thee. What makes Christmas the most wonderful time of the year for you?

Did you forget me?

'Cause I didn't forget you. Well, maybe I did. But it was only temporary. I've been busy, people (er, my one faithful follower)!



Truthfully, the reason for my blogging-hiatus was wedding related... that can only account for about 2 of the 5 weeks I've missed though... the other 3 can be attributed to the daunting task of doing a ginormous wedding/honeymoon post. I started it last week and haven't touched it since. Maybe by our first anniversary I'll have it done.



Anyway, to prove to you that this is really me, here's a lovely picture of yours truly (in a gorgeous dress that the husband picked out all by himself!) enjoying one of the many holiday parties I've been to so far this year.

Thank You New York Yankees...

for winning the World Series and giving me my fiance's full attention back ;)

Patience and a Date Night.

To everyone who told me that this week (the week before my eagerly anticipated wedding) would fly by, I thank you for lying to me.

Seriously. This week is drraaaaginnnngggggg. Or maybe I just need to work on my patience...

Now let me tell you all about my wonderful little date-night with the boy last night. About 2 weeks ago, he asked me if I'd like to have dinner with him - just him - one night the week of the wedding. Of course I agreed. And what a fantastic idea it turned out to be.


We had dinner at Yono's, complete with champagne and a lovely tasting menu. The food and drinks were (of course) fantastic but the real treat
was getting an evening alone (with only a few small interruptions from the Yankees... damn World Series) with my almost-husband. He's always been very sentimental and romantic but he pulled out all the stops last night with stories of how he felt and what he thought when we first met. I melted. I mean, c'mon, who doesn't like to hear about awesome they are? Kidding... it was very sweet.


And speaking of sweet, below is the dessert that was delivered to us (after 4 other insanely filling courses). If you can't read the writing on the plates, it says "Two Halves... That Fit Together"... we each had a half of two different pieces of cake. Isn't that a total "makes me want to gag" kinda cute? ;)





Now back to the search for some patience...

Table.

Table. Does that look weird to you? It does to me. I've been sitting at my computer typing out escort cards for about an hour now, seeing the word 'TABLE' repeated over and over and over again...


You know, when you look a particular word SO much that it starts to look like it's spelled incorrectly??? Happens to me fairly frequently...


Just thought I'd share ;)

Happy(?) Halloween.

So I'm not a huge fan of Halloween. I couldn't tell you the last time I dressed up. It's probably because I never do anything fun for it though. Or maybe it's the fact that I'm a complete wuss and am way too easily startled. I prefer to just sit at home trying ignore the doorbell.

We did see some pretty cute little monkeys and chickies at Peter & Stacey's earlier today though. It was the first Halloween for several of our friends' babies so they had a little get-together. Aren't they adorable?

After the party, I made the HUGEST Halloween mistake ever. I went to the mall. Who knew that parents are allowed to parade their children through the mall to get candy from every. single. store. They were everywhere. At first it was kind of cute, but it got a little annoying having to compete with 14 costumed seven year olds to get a salesperson's attention. And to make matters worse, I was not having a good shopping day. Why is it that whenever I'm intentionally looking for something (more honeymoon clothes!!) I strike out big-time but when I'm just wandering through and don't want to spend money I find all of these wonderful items that I just HAVE to have? Ugh.

Do I sound complainy today? I should probably mention that I'm REALLY good at complaining. My New Year's resolution (I hate those) last year was to not complain so much. I really did make a concerted effort and feel like I don't do it nearly as much... unfortunately I seem to be the only one who's noticed...

Enough about that... let's get back to Halloween.

So I obviously missed the brunt of trick-or-treaters this year because I had to go the mall. The boy convinced me to leave a bowl of candy on the front porch though, so our house wouldn't get egged. His words, not mine ;) I even left a note on it: "Please take some candy but leave some for other trick-or-treaters". When I got home I was shocked to find about half of the candy still remaining. Kids in this neighborhood must have manners.

Figuring it was well past time for anymore kiddies to be ringing my doorbell, I pulled the remaining candy inside and turned off the outside lights. (It was past 8:30 people. And really dark. We have no street lights on our street.) I was proved sorely wrong. Isn't turning out your lights the universal symbol for "I have no more candy" or whatever?? At about 9:15, a very large group of teenage girls walked up my pitch-black driveway and rang the bell. No big deal. I gave them candy and they left.

Now I'm really figuring I won't have anymore visitors, so I decide to change into my usual nighttime attire of fun pants and a tank top. Wrong once again. This time though, I was lucky enough to be in the back of the house where they couldn't see me through the front window and make me open the door. I stayed put long enough to assume they'd moved onto the next house.

At 10:00, I settled in on my couch for a movie. Then at 10:24 (I wish I was kidding) my doorbell rang once again. 10:24! Seriously??? Who rings a stranger's doorbell that late? At this point, I had already put the leftover candy away so I just went to the door and shooed them off. Then I watched them walk across the street to my neighbor's house. haha. Sorry, neighbor.

Maybe next year I'll play nice ;)

Countdown to Mrs. P...

At this time next week, I'll be walking down the aisle. Well, practicing anyway.

The wedding rehearsal kicks off our jammed-packed weekend of wedding fun! I'm so excited I can hardly stand it!! Agreeing to marry this guy is hands down the best decision I ever made :)