The Game of the Year

Hello, again!  I've missed you all in my absence . . . I've been dwelling in  holiday and family (and snow!) here in Georgia.  Hope everyone else's Christmas was as beautiful as mine was.  My best gift?  Inches of snow!

on my mama's back deck on Christmas Day

excuse the poor picture quality--camera was dead!

But last night came the real excitement as the Saints took on the Falcons in the Georgia Dome.  Note that I am a major Saints fan currently in Falcon territory!  And given that I grew up in Georgia, you can imagine my facebook news feed was brimming with this kind of slander:

Hunter Willett:  I hope the aints fans are wearing protective gear cause there will be some shankin going on tonight if they want to talk that who dat BS. They will walk into the dome tonight happy and hoping for a win and they will leave with a loss and a knife in that ass.

I mean whoa, man, a little agro there, huh?  In any case, I quietly basked in giddiness and glory since my boys were the first team to take down the Falcons in their own stadium this season.  WHO DAT!

from

We had at least 20 people over to my dad & Amy's house, and I believe I was the only New Orleans fan in the room . . . but I wore my Love Dat! shirt, fleur de lis earrings, gold glitter shoes, and my Who Dat scarf, and I cheered my boys on proudly. 

I'm off to lunch with the family, but I'm eager to catch up on all of your blogs and hear about your holidays!

Three Random Pictures

hope I don't get coal!

Ignatius's elf costume 2010

William Jonathan Drayton, Jr. and Kit Kiefer

aka

Flava Flav and my daddy

Merry Christmas Eve Eve!

Ugly Sweaters + White Elephants

I didn't have an ugly sweater for the ugly sweater party.  This is why:

Thursday I taught all day and babysat till late.  When I got home around 11 pm, I started baking for the holiday party the next day.  I made cookies till 2 am, and then finally went to sleep, only to wake up at 6-something to go right back to the high school and teach 2nd period, meet with a client I did an editing job for, and then hurry off to the party.

It was all I could do to put on my dangly Santa earrings and grab my tin of cookies.  In fact, I was so exhausted that I burst into spontaneous tears while talking to a friend/co-worker at the party.  D-e-l-i-r-i-o-u-s, I tell you.

Turns out, though, that only 6 of the 40-ish folks at the Community Works holiday party actually wore ugly sweaters.  I guess everyone else was too freakin' tired, like me . . .  or else all the hipsters in Oakland scooped up the ugly Christmas sweaters from the thrift stores cause they're ironic & cool.

These were the contestants:

my boss, the E.D., is the fifth from the left in blue

but she kinda doesn't count cause her sweater isn't really ugly

the very clear winner

If only I'd had my aunt Pat ship me some of her Christmas sweaters ahead of time!  She and I were discussing this last night, and she said that the Christmas sweaters she wears now (with Santas, etc.) are more "fashionable" than the 80's ones she used to wear (poinsettia vests, etc.).  I told her that we needed to be realistic, here . . . no Christmas sweater is ever "fashionable."  

So what do y'all think about White Elephant gift exchanges?  I love the idea of them, but I've run into the same problem over the years with the whole rotating gift exchange thing: some people bring good, serious gifts, and other people bring ridiculous stuff no one wants.  Ultimately, I guess it's just important that everyone's on the same page?

I always bring a serious gift (I brought a handmade table runner, earrings, and a turquoise necklace from Guatemala), but I feel like most people bring dumb shit laying around their house (I got a wrapped up Hershey's bar, which I promptly gave to another co-worker).  And while I can condone that if it's *really* funny, most of the time I think it just becomes someone else's trash.  What's your take on white elephant exchanges?

(As a side note, I can't hear "white elephant" without thinking of Hemingway's very intense short story "Hills like White Elephants," so maybe that screws it up for me as well.  Ha).

Ornament Swap!

Many of you also participated in Micaela's annual ornament swap.  I was lucky enough to have two partners!  My original partner was Lauren Nicole, but then Micaela asked if I would also pair up with her younger sister, Madeline . . . swap ornaments with another lovely Lechuga girl?  Of course I will!

I was psyched to hunt for just the right ornaments for these girls.  Micaela gave me a couple tips for Maddie--that she loves owls, and that she'd like a San Francisco ornament since she wants to visit here one day.

I scooped up this adorable owl from Etsy shop Beets and Bernice.  If you like it, I highly recommend buying from her--she's so sweet and ships quickly!  Plus, the ornament was even more adorable in person that it was in pictures:

I wasn't willing to venture into tourist-land for an SF ornament (I imagine I would've had to go to Fisherman's Wharf or some other tourist-laden 'hood), so I made one for Maddie:

amateur, but cute-ish, right?

and wrapped 'em up like this:

and sent 'em off to Texas!

Maddie had a similar idea about what to get me: one from her home state, and one ornament representing something I  looooove.

I love this!!  Makes me think of all my Lechuga girls.

love me, love my shoes

A pretty perfect exchange, right?  I wouldn't have expected anything less from a partnership with Micaela and Marianne's sister.  :)  Merry Christmas, Maddie, and thanks for the sweet ornaments!

My exchange with Lauren Nicole was just as great.  All I knew about her was that she has impeccable taste . . . so I ordered some vintage ornaments from my sister's etsy shop, Very Fine House:

(four) turtledoves, and a partridge in a pear tree

sweet vintage deer ornament, also from my sister's shop

Aren't they darling?  But I decided to attempt to make one for Lauren, also . . . so I tore up some Vogue magazines and broke out the holiday sparkly modge podge and ended up with this (it's spherical, so I couldn't get a good picture of it! but you'll get the idea):

Lauren sent me two exquisite beauties from Anthropologie.  They're pretty much exactly what I would have picked out for myself . . . how did she know? and I quickly placed them front & center on my tree!

This delicate little bird is so pretty, and her underbelly is grayish-silver glitter!

a colorful knit K for my last name

Thank you, Lauren!  I love both my ornaments so very much, and as you can see, they went right up on my tree!  I've already yammered on and on about how in love I am with my Christmas tree, and now it has four new, special ornaments that make it all the more lovely.  

Micaela, I'm already looking forward to next year's swap. ;)

Happy as a Clam!

Last night, after my cuckoo's nest 5th period, I met my beloved friend Brady for dinner.  We went to a local, family-owned Italian place that just soothes my soul with their eggplant penne & Monte Antico red wine.  Brady and I had a long catch-up session that included some good laughs, which is doubtlessly the best antidote to a wack-o day at work.

After a delightful dinner, Brady and I went to another one of my favorite spots, Miam Miam (which I discovered thanks to my beautiful friend Diana!), for some very stylish frozen yogurt (click the link and you'll see what I mean).  Perhaps it was because the evening had been so perfect that I felt compelled to make a spontaneous stop at a Christmas tree lot on my way home.

I'd pretty much decided not to get a tree, because I go home to Georgia on the 19th and my family has trees there.  But something took over me as I passed by all the festive green trees, and I made a sharp turn and found myself parked in the lot!  Not only was there a perfect, medium sized tree waiting for me, ready to be taken home, but I ran into my friend Sarah at the lot!

After a quick stop at the drug store for lights and egg nog, I came home, dragged the tree off the top of my car and up my apartment stairs, and did this:

peep the ornies from Micaela, Faiza, and Lauren!

my living room is a bazillion times happier now

sparkly!

I sat on my couch until 2 in the morning writing Christmas cards, drinking (spiked) egg nog, and tree-gazing.  Anyone wanna come over and bask in its warm glow with me??  

All right, gotta hammer through my work day so I can go home and be with my Christmas tree. :)

a holiday wish

from the Grinchiest, most uncaring dog in the world.

(from a picture of Ignatius my dad sent the other day, and thanks to Summer's fancy picnik account!)

First Crush!

My darling friend Marisa (one of my very first friends in grad school) moved to New York this summer, which made me very sad.  But she's back here visiting, guest teaching, doing readings, etc. (cause she's a big shot and her first book was published this year! Check it out here).  Last night, we met at Union Square for a dinner date and some Christmas shopping!  Shopping at Union Square with Marisa is one of my very favorite things to do in December.

San Francisco's Union Square Christmas tree

We met at 6:30 outside the Powell St. train station and headed to First Crush, where we had a delightful (and long-overdue!) dinner date.  

cutest name for a restaurant/wine bar ever!

I promptly ordered a (delicious) cucumber gimlet, and Marisa had some sort of old-fashioned whiskey drink.  So good!  We split some appetizers and a cheese plate and caught each other up on the past 5 months.  She works at an office on 5th Avenue now--doesn't that sound straight out of a romantic comedy?

not our best shot but it's all I got!  And I promise Marisa's not a Cullen

it's just an overexposed picture.

We had roasted fall vegetables, swiss chard au gratin, and the very fancy cheese plate.  And a baudy zinfandel. :)  First Crush only serves California wines, and they create specialized flights for you based on what you're eating!  

We lingered too long over dinner to get any real shopping done, but I did get a tiny thing for this girl and a funny stocking stuffer for my sister.  Maybe I subconsciously didn't get much Christmas shopping done so that I'd have an excuse to go back to Union Square pronto . . . I loooove it there at Christmastime!  Lights and Christmas music and the big tree and coffee shops!  So festive. ♥

And for kicks, here is our favorite picture of the two of us:

Claire and Marisa, Sleepover Friends, 2005

Jingle all the way?

It's December 1st, y'all!  Which means that watching cheesy Christmas movies and listening to Christmas albums in the kitchen is totally acceptable now.  And Christmas cards!  I'm so excited.  I've already bought mine and can't wait to write them and send 'em out!

Last night I celebrated December Eve by knitting a scarf and watching Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Have I mentioned the massive crush I had on Macaulay Culkin as a kid?  My childhood BFF Susanne and I took pictures of ourselves with just a scarf wrapped around our (non) chests when we were around 11 or 12 and mailed them to Macaulay.  Ohhhhhh childhood fantasies.  Gone awry. ;)

And then my sister and I saw him in a tiny coffee shop in London once!  I stared into my latte and nervously debated saying something but just couldn't bring myself to bust out with "Hey Macaulay!  My Girl changed my life!  I am Vada Sultenfuss!"

the golden days

sometimes good things go very wrong

In any case, it seems all I want to do is rock out to Xmas tunes and watch festive movies.  And beg y'all for gift ideas since my brother-in-law and stepdad are so dang hard to shop for!

But there is one thing stopping me.  This, ladies and gentlemen, is a just-snapped picture of my desk:

And it's not even finals yet.