It's the day after Thanksgiving...

so naturally, I'm ready for Christmas! The husband and I went out and chopped down our Christmas tree.... fake, prelit, and on sale from Target. Then we got some other gifts for people and ornaments for the tree. Black Friday is really not that scary if you do it right. Look, even the husband got into the Holiday Spirit!

I was so excited I put up the rest of the decorations I have saved from previous years and put up the tree, all while listening to Pandora's Rocking Christmas station. It would be the perfect Christmas season scene if it wasn't about 50 degrees out and raining. But we enjoyed it none the less. I sprayed my Williams Sonoma Winter Forrest spray around and breathed in deep. Mmmm smells like a real holiday home. Soon I will be baking gingerbread and pumpkin ice cream. And you will all be jealous... or over here enjoying it. Depending how much I like you.

In case you were wondering, Benny spent the majority of the day staring at the tree and tilting his head in confusion. But he has not attacked it... yet.

Thanksgiving Fun

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Tomorrow the husband and I go to his sister's house where his family will gather around a rather large table for Thanksgiving dinner. I am excited but there will be something missing that I will never have with dinner unless I do something about it myself... stuffing. Not just any stuffing. My family's stuffing. Made from crackers, mozzarella, celery, and cooked in a turkey or alone. I never tried making it myself and so last year I resorted to stopping by my aunt's house after dinner to get "dessert" and left over stuff. With my mom's family, it's always a wonder if there is any stuffing left over. We WILL claw your eyes out over this stuff. Especially if it was made in the turkey. Oh man...

Ah hem... anyway, G and I are bringing canned cranberry jelly and pumpkin pie to his sister's. I wish we could bring Benny. He will be so lonely at home without us. But we also plan on giving him a Thanksgiving treat. A nice piece of turkey with his kibble... maaaybe a little gravy. He's a spoiled pup, but we're pretty rigid about the no people food unless it's an egg on Sunday or something special, but it is always in his bowl.

Right now I can hear the heartwarming sounds of Fall... the leaves rustling, Benny playing with an empty can on the bricks, a lawnmower? maybe? or a garbage truck? Who knows, but doesn't it just make you feel all cozy inside?

In other holiday news, I may have started decorating for Christmas. It's the first time I've lived in a house for this time of year in 3 years. Filling a house with decorations I used to fill an apartment did not come out as in-your-face Christmas as I would have liked. We are hopefully getting tree this weekend. I also don't have a lot of ornaments, but those come over time. I think I want to take a picture of the tree and this way every year I can see how it has progressed decorations-wise.

I bought gingerbread bread mix and pumpkin ice cream mix to make some delicious seasonal treats. I also got brownie mix with mint and chocolate chips. I really hope I actually make this stuff instead of letting it sit around. I tend to do things like that. Especially with holiday desserts. I want to make them because I know they would be delicious, then I hesitate because I want to share them, yet I also want to eat the entire creation myself. So I go back and forth on whether or not I should make it for event A because then everyone will eat it and I will have none or should I make it another day for myself and share as I like. OK FINE, I am crazy dessert hoarding lady.. deal with it!

And on that magical note, I am off....

So hoooooow's married life?

If you are not married yet, but think you will ever be married or plan on getting married in the future, prepare to hear that question... a lot. And have a good answer. "Good" does not satisfy the masses.

Today I had my first guest blogger from Lynne "The Lower Free Bridge" Calamiapants. And it's true... I have been slacking on my updates.

Today I bought a spray from Williams Sonoma called Winter Forrest that smells like Christmas. Not like gingerbread or snow (whatever snow smells like), but like a combination of pine and cinnamon. It reminds me of when we used to have a real tree when I was a kid... or when my mom would get pine spray for the prelit fake tree. And I want the second memory. A sprayed prelit tree. I am excited to make this happen. I have some Target gift cards and I know just what they're going towards. Wow, Thanksgiving is next week, Christmas is in a month an 10 days. Happy Holidays!! Here's to making my first one as a wife a memorable one!

Guest Blogger

Sometimes I get angry when Jackie doesn't update her blog. I visited the Patchwork Life to get an update on her life yesterday but do you know what I saw when I got there? No update. If you haven't guessed by now I, Lynne Pistachio Calamia, have commandeered her mini red computer and am forcefully guest blogging because I have a lot of important things to say about dogs.

I recently watched a NOVA documentary about dog-human communication. It was amazing and I can't stop talking about it and thinking about it. It is called Dogs Decoded and is available for your viewing pleasure at pbs.org. I graciously included the link so its easier to find and someone out there will actually watch it. As we all know dogs evolved from the Gray Wolf, but the Gray Wolf only has one bark. It makes one noise. Domesticated dogs have many different barks and scientists hypothesize that dogs developed these other barks to communicate with human beings! This scientist guy recorded different styles of barks and played them for human test subjects in his lab and an overwhelming amount of the humans figured out what the dogs were trying to communicate. That doesn't make sense and I don't know exactly how to explain it but for example he recorded a dog being approached by a stranger at the front gate of a house and the specific bark sound was recognized by people as a defense or a warning type bark. JUST WATCH THE SHOW its much better than how I'm explaining it here.

I'm feeling pressure to rush this guest blog post because Jackie and I are going to run some errands and I apologize for the content. I do not, however, apologize for the photo of me slow dancing with the dog. Notice how Benedict's hands are on my shoulders and my paws are on his waist which is clear reversal of normative slow dancing gender roles AND socially accepted species roles. TAKE THAT AMERICA!

Guest Blogger: The Lower Free Bridge/

Picture Perfection

So our photographer Alex has finally completed the pictures and wow, how I love them. Today we are meeting up with him to get the disk, look through them, and get coffee. I want to look through them on flickr again but I also want to be excited to see them at 3:30 today, so I'm going to wait.

Things I learned about my wedding from my wedding pictures:

My hair is insanely long.

The camera is not my chin's friend.

My tattoo looks nifty in black and white.... so does kelly's.

Gordon is a handsome man (ok I knew this before, but it needed to be said).

We were sucking face duing a lot of the wedding.

Even by the end of the summer, I'm a pale pale lady. But so is my husband.

Our food looked delicious and possibly even better on camera.

My friends are awesome dancers.

Gordon and I should never be photographed dancing.

Our nieces and nephews are freaking adorable.

Gordon's friends can make picking me up look easy (I am not so sure it was, I was in a 25+ lb dress).

I have a gorgeous wedding party.

I want to get about 90% of the 667 pictures printed. This is going to be tough.

Which one am I going to pick for my thank you card????