Happy Boxing Day

I hope all of you celebrating yesterday had a very merry Christmas.  Thanksgiving is my favorite, but this year's Christmas was pretty sweet too.  Santa brought me a dress-maker mannequin, meaning it's about to be like Project Runway errday at my apartment.

This year, my Mom decided to try out a new tradition, and bought materials for ginger-bread house making.  It was a contest of course, because in my family everything is, and at first I was thoroughly put out because it meant I would be competing against my architect-major sister in a house building contest, and my Mom wouldn't let me hire her to build my house instead of building it myself.  My Dad opted out of building and declared himself judge.  So, armed with half an hour, tubs of frosting, and a limited supply of graham crackers, we got to work.

My Mom, based her design on our actual house, complete with a pretzel fence and everything.

I decided to go for a more dramatic approach, and built my ginger bread house inspired by St. Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna.

See?  Spitting image basically.

The real Christmas miracle here was that the roof actually stayed up like that.

My sister, the Future Architect, got all modern and Frank Lloyd Wright on us.

Then I asked my Dad to take a picture of all of us since he copped out from his judging responsibilities and named the contest a 3-way tie.  He instead got a candid shot of us all clearly hard at work during the construction of the houses.

My Mom told me to clear the table before taking a picture, but I told her this was more authentic.  Then she moved my beer out of the picture.

The proud builders with their master pieces.

Today, in case you haven't heard, the NorthEast is besieged with blizzard like conditions, so boxing day has been celebrated with a fire, snacks and movies.  I'm making my parent's rent Inception on On-Demand, but first my Mom is insisting that we watch the weather channel so that we can make fun of the meteorologists freaking out over...wait for it... 6 INCHES OF SNOW GOD HELP US!!!!!

Happy Holidays. (even if it is what terrorists say).

I'm such a Scrooge.

I'm sure that as a little kid Christmas was my favorite holiday, but as I've gotten older, that title now goes to Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is only one day, and in comparison to Christmas, takes very little preparation.

I still really do like Christmas, however this year, December has been such a blur that I'm still registering the fact that it's the "Christmas Season". Even in College, with all the finals craziness, I would still find time to decorate, buy and wrap presents, and get sick of christmas music. One year The Artist, even made us a tree out of empty Splenda wrappers. (we were drinking a lot of coffee that year).

This time around however, the thought of putting up stuff, that I would have to take down in a mere 3 weeks at this point caused me so much stress I just decided I wasn't doing it, and am instead attending holiday parties every week, surrounding myself with other people's decorating. Planning events that are taking place in January, February, March, and April makes Christmas feel rather ill-timed. Memo to myself.

Last night I was at my neighbors house for Chanukah dinner. Not only did she serve homemade brisket, some of the best matzoh ball soup I've ever had, and 2 kinds of latkes, but her house was totally decked out for Chanukah. She even had "make your own dreidel" craft kits. I want to be her when I grow up.

Tonight I'm going to listen to Mariah Carey's "All I want for Christmas is You" and think about the presents I'll buy for people on December 23 on my way home from the airport, because Amazon keeps sending me threatening emails about how December 17 is the latest you can have gifts delivered by Christmas, and I just don't think I'll have my act together by then. Maybe I'll just show up for my flight early and shop at the airport. The Pittsburgh airport mall has a Gap...