6 Month Anniversary

This year on January 23rd, Blair and I celebrated our 6 month anniversary!  I've never been a big anniversary fan...until Blair and I got together.  And now, I'm pretty excited about them.  :)

We got lucky and found a great Groupon/Living Social deal for a fancy hotel in Santa Fe.  We snagged a night at La Posada Resort & Spa.  It was a great way to celebrate our 6 month anniversary!

After dinner, everything on the square was closed so we returned to our room where the Resort staff had arranged delivery of free champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries in honour of our anniversary!  How sweet is that??

Our room was equipped with a fireplace and free wood!  We were extremely grateful for this.  Not only was it gorgeous, but...January in Santa Fe is COLD.

 Part of our coupon deal was free breakfast in the room.  So tasty!

 And free in-room Starbucks!

 We spent the day doing the Santa Fe Geocaching Challenge...which wasn't that much of a challenge at all.  But it was fun!  We even happened upon this Travel Bug.  It's a travel book store and cafe!  Inside, they have a box of travel bugs that people drop off/trade when they are in town.  Of course, we couldn't resist doing the same!!

At the end of the challenge we got a prize!  I won't ruin it for anyone, if you ever want to do it yourself.  Just know we are excited. :)

Then we went for a picnic at the Thomas Macaione Park...

..where we enjoyed gourmet pizza slices. :)

After we were fortified with tasty goodness, we decided to head out for a drive / hike in the snowy mountains nearby.

I couldn't help but make snow angels!

Blair joined in on the fun. :)

Such a gorgeous view!

Happy 6 months, Blair!

Christmas - Botanical Gardens

Ever since we lived in Japan, one of my family’s Christmas traditions has been to go see the lights at the Botanical Gardens.  Japan’s light show was spectacular.  They had a really large laser display that would put on a production twice a night.  Loved it! 

Of course, I could have a slightly higher opinion of it because of the company I was with.  My dad was a commander on that military base, and therefore he made some pretty top-notch friends.  Because of this, we had some sweet experiences.  This just happened to be one.  Botanical Garden light show with the Mayor of Kadena and his family, the Mayor of Okinawa, and my family.  To top it off, we were escorted to a private viewing session on top of one of the large buildings that overlooked the laser display, and then were service yummy appetizers and champagne.  Yeah, it was awesome.

After that experience, we knew we wanted to make the Botanical Garden lights a yearly tradition (granted, they have never been quite so elaborate….but always super fun!)  It continued when I lived in Washington, with the lights in Bellevue.  They had fabulous displays that were incredibly intricate and clustered uniquely.

When I moved to Albuquerque, I was afraid that tradition would come to an end.  But I was mistaken!   God blessed me with an Albuquerque Botanical Garden that also does a fun light show!  Yay!!

The Botanical Gardens here are really nice.  It’s a large facility, with a vast selection of plants to view.  They even have a Japanese garden section and a wine grape field.  I was very pleasantly surprised, and impressed.

Our community group from church decided to go see the light show together.  What fun to enjoy the sites with so many wonderful friends!

Great friends!

Awesome lights.

It’s always tricky capturing people and the lights in one photo, with the light vs. dark making one or the other blurry.  Sigh

After walking through the rose garden, we came upon a cute old-timey band!  If you know me, you know I LOVE Christmas music.  I’ve been known to start listening to it in October.  It’s bad, folks.  But lucky for me, we got LIVE Christmas music!  So fun!

I loved the way they lit up the overhang above them!  It makes it postcard-esque.

Once again, blurry vs. clear.  sigh

Hummingbirds always make me think of my Mom.

Giraffes always make me think of my nephew , Luc.

This was really cool.  They had a light section set up so that it looked like the elephants were moving and spraying water!  I wish my nephews and niece would have been with me to watch.  They would have loved it!

  I thought it was really cool that they had some on the water!

I tried really hard to capture us with some lights.  I think this is the coolest one.  It’s really hard to see us, but I think it’s awesome how we are lit up solely by the lights themselves.

Isn’t this creative?!?

Snowmen lightposts

And I’ll end with my crazy picture.  :)  As we were walking through one of the tunnels, there were a crazy amount of lights all around us.  So I decided to try a delayed shutter as we were walking.  This is the cool effect.  

I really like how it turned out.

Thanks, Community Group, for a wonderful night…and for helping me fulfill one of my holiday traditions!

Christmas - Decor

I love Christmas.  Love, love, LOVE Christmas.  I’m kind of a crazy person when it comes to this holiday.  Decorations always go up the day after Thanksgiving.  Our house is decorated inside and out.  Not one room is untouched and left bare of festive décor.  Christmas music is blasting all weekend long while these tasks get completed….and yes it takes at least all weekend long.  It’s somewhat of an obsession.

I blame the military.  Yep.  And there’s a splash of logic behind this accusation too.  You see, growing up I was constantly forced to uproot my life.  Moving didn’t just mean new schools and new friends.  It also meant losing consistency and routine.  Which isn’t all bad...but it can be really difficult for a youngster (heck, who am I kidding.  It’s still really hard sometimes!) to constantly pick up and change pretty much everything in life. 

For me, part of my defense mechanism was latching onto traditions.  If we did it once, it became a “tradition” in my head and then I begged and pleaded to do that very same activity again next year.  Because that activity was the same.  Yes, I enjoyed adding new activities with each new location.  But I craved that consistency that made the holiday different from the rest of my life.  Holidays became special, simply because they were predictable.

While this year added a lot of newness to my holiday….first Christmas as a married couple, first Christmas in New Mexico….it was really fun to teach Blair my traditions and to learn his.  The blending of our past traditions will be what makes our future OURS. 

Putting up the Christmas tree is always one of the very first things I do.  I LOVE unpacking all the special ornaments and finding the perfect place to accent it’s specific beauty.

Decorating our first Christmas tree together!  It was really fun combining our ornaments and telling the stories behind them.

We positioned our fancy tree right in the center of our little “window” cutout in the entryway so people could see it immediately as they walked in our front door.  :)

Ain’t it perty?  Both of our families had multi-coloured lights growing up, so that is a definite must-keep tradition now.

Of course we had to put up the mistletoe.  ;)  This is actually one of the mistletoe balls that we had at our house every year.  My parents had two, and gave one to me when we got married!

I normally have three large pieces of art above my couch, but they are completely the wrong colour for Christmas.  So I covered them with wrapping paper and hung wooden letters (that I painted gold) from each.

I wanted a little something to make the windows festive.  My family always put candles in the windowsill.  I found some at the Dollar Store that worked perfectly.  And then I hung some candy canes to give it a pop of colour.

It was not just our first Christmas as a married couple, but it was also Dolce’s very first Christmas ever!  She LOVED having the house decorated.  It was problematic.  She climbed the tree and batted at all the ornaments.  She ate the wrapping paper off of the presents.  She clawed my Christmas rug.  *sigh*  But, once in a while, she was calm and absolutely adorable.

Also, I made our stockings!  It’s a family tradition that I absolutely hold dear.  It all started with my great grandmother.  She made a few for my grandmother and her family.  Since then, my Grandma and Mom have been making them for new family additions. 

This is my Grandma’s mantle:

Now that I’m married, this year was my first attempt at making stockings.  I had to make three for Blair (one for our house, one for my mom’s house, and one for my grandma’s house) and one for me.  I tried to completely recreate mine as closely as I could…because, you know, it’s tradition.  lol   I think they turned out really well!  You can find out how I made them on my Art of Domesticity blog.

I even made a much smaller / simpler version for our cute poofy-tailed kitty.  Hehe

I’m bummed, and really surprised, that we forgot to get a picture of the outside of the house, with all the fancy lights.  But alas, we are lame.  However…..we hosted our community group one night during the holidays, and one of the sweet little girls (Anika) said “Mommy, their house looks like a gingerbread house!”  I LOVED it!!

Thanksgiving

This was our very first Thanksgiving on our own.  We decided to stay home instead of go visit family this year for two reasons:  1)  money, or lack thereof; 2)  it was our first big holiday as a married couple and we wanted to celebrate it in OUR new home. 

That being said…..Neither one of us had ever been without family for the big day.  Neither one of us had ever cooked a turkey before.   Neither had ever solely hosted a holiday event before.  It was definitely a new experience. 

Some of our good friends (Tyler and Amy) were in the same boat.  Newly married, without family in town, and first Thanksgiving together.  We invited them over for the day and had SO much fun!

I started the morning early with pie making….

And turkey preparations…

Here’s the turkey all ready to go in the oven.

Anyone notice our mistake??  We, stupidly, used a candy thermometer…which means that it MELTED in the oven.  Bwahaha!  Part way through our cooking we peeked inside the oven to check on it and are horrified at the sight.  Luckily it hadn’t gotten on the turkey yet.  Blair pulled it out and ran to Bed, Bath & Beyond for a meat thermometer.  So thankful they were open on Thanksgiving!  I guess something has to go horribly wrong the first time you cook Thanksgiving dinner on your own. hehe

I decorated the table and made fancy name placeholders.

 You can find directions to how I made the placeholders at my cooking/craft blog called Art of Domesticity.

We wanted it to be a holiday with a little something from everyone’s family traditions incorporated.  So I made stuffing because that was always my favourite part of my family’s food feast.  Blair made his mom’s squash casserole.  Amy made her family’s macaroni and cheese.  Tyler made his family’s orange rolls. 

On TOP of all that amazing goodness, we also had the giant turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, green bean casserole (southwest style with green chilies and bacon. yum!), peas and carrots, pumpkin pie, and pecan pie.  All for FOUR people.  It was a buffet able to feed an army and we had four people.  hahaha  (the leftovers were DE-LICIOUS!)

Thanks to the generosity of family and friends at our wedding, we had fancy new  items to use when serving.  It felt like a real holiday!  We had a carving set, a giant platter, wine glasses, gravy boat…everything we needed.

Here’s the turkey.  So moist and perfect.  I was really worried that it was going to come out of the oven either undercooked, super dry, or burned to a crisp.  But it was so moist and perfect!  Success!!  (despite the minor thermometer catastrophe.  lol

Our table is all set and ready to go.  

                We were STUFFED, and still had enough for several meals (for each family).  Now that’s what a Thanksgiving feast should be.

After dinner, we played games (our family tradition) and went to see a movie (their family tradition).  It was such a great day of food, friends, and integrating family traditions.  Perfect way to spend our first Thanksgiving as married couples!!