'Tis the Season

Well Merry belated Christmas everybody! I had a wonderful Christmas this year, as I generally do. The holiday is not over though because we're visiting family for the next couple of days, which should be a lot of fun. Saturday, Sam & I were originally supposed to go to the Miami-St. John's game at the Garden but plans changed so I'm going to visit the fam in Jersey instead. I love how everyone has their own little traditions they have to do.

I was originally supposed to work on Christmas Eve, which I was pretty bummed about because I was going to miss everything that went on. Pop Pop comes over every year & so do my brothers & Kelly. Once I got to work, there was absolutely nothing for me to do & the only game was the ND-Hawaii game so I asked if I could go home since it was silly for me to be there. Luckily, I was able to & didn't miss a thing. Christmas Eve is the only holiday that we acknowledge that we have another heritage besides just Italian. On Christmas Eve, we have some Swedish food for my dad. Sill is the thing that we all dread. It's pickled herring & you have to have at least one piece. My piece is usually no bigger then my pinkie finger nail. The other usual food includes homemade mac & cheese, meatballs, shrimp & some other pickings. After dinner/dessert we open the presents from my grandparents & Uncle Den. Then we watch "It's a Wonderful Life" & cry. The last thing we do before bed is read "The Night Before Christmas". We have been doing this for as long as I can remember & it's definitely one of those traditions that's going to continue on when I have kids.

On Christmas morning, you wake up & open your stocking. Then you can go & look to see what Santa brought. My brothers & Kelly come in the morning & we open presents for several hours. When we were little we had a limit to how early we could get up & we had a door closing off the back porch so we couldn't see what was back there until my dad opened it. Pop Pop & Rae come over later in the day & we open presents with them & then eat for the rest of the day. This year we got Wii Fit so we worked off what we ate with that. That's about it as far as traditions go. I hope you had a lovely Christmas!

Christmas Light Connoisseur

I love the holiday season. Seeing Christmas trees lit up, lights lining the streets & just decorating to the extreme. It really brightens up the night with the amount of lights everywhere. Some people abuse this privilege though. You know who I mean. Those that try & be Clark Griswald. Those tacky people who put up far too many things & mix everything all together. Call me a Christmas light racist, but the lights need to be segregated: colored & white do not mix!

I am so judgmental of people who do this. I tend to drive slower during the holiday season, just to appreciate the holiday spirit around me but then there are those eye sores that just make me wanna drive my car right into the front of their house to put not only myself out of the misery, but their house as well. If you put icicle lights around your ledge, do NOT have them in colors. They are icicles; icicles are white. Also, don't decorate half your house with colors & half with white. Pick one. I personally prefer white, red or green lights but if a house is decorated with all colored lights & nothing but colored lights, I will accept it. Under no circumstances should you ever think that decorating one bush colored, one white, one red, one blue & one green is a good idea. Trust me, it's not. I also have a problem with blue lights. Unless you are Jewish, blue lights should not be used. Christmas colors are red, green & white so stick with the traditional. Also, this is a religious holiday not an American one so please avoid red, white & blue. I also HATE when people have blinking lights that are more like Las Vegas then La Navidad.

One of my biggest decorating pet peeves is those massive, imposing blow-up items. One is acceptable on a very large lawn. People on Staten Island do not have large lawns, do not use them. If you can't pull off one, then you definitely can't pull off multiple. Nor can anyone get away with some of the designs of these hideous creations. Since when does Santa ride in a helicopter? I am so against these for every holiday season. There was a family that lived near me in Coral Gables that had at least one for every holiday. At Christmas time last year, I counted & they had 14. FOURTEEN! I don't care if you live on a golf course (which these people certainly did not) you cannot get away with 14.

My mother tries to go against my advice at times when I am not around to defend myself. I knew Maggie was meant to be my dog when she chose to chew on the blue lights while we were decorating on her first Christmas before Linda could put them up behind my back. Luckily for my sanity, I was around for decorating this year & was able to stop any unnecessary colors. We have a very tasteful white light display on the bushes in front of the house. She did get some sort of twinkle light that I am not so into but even I can compromise. Red, white & green lights also surround the door & the inside window. Traditional, tasteful, terrific.

Oh, Christmas Tree

I just got back from picking out my first ever live Christmas tree! I've always wanted a live one but we had our artificial that we use every year. I think my parents were sick of hearing me complain about how much I hate colored lights, (& that's what happens to be on our tree) so they gave in & we got a real one. It's so fun to pick out a tree & I think every one I saw I liked, but we finally settled on one that is perfect. It also happened to have a tag with little Texas pictures on it, so I am assuming that's where it's from, so it really couldn't be more perfect.

We're also decorating our tree differently this year. Normally we just use all of the ornaments that we've collected throughout the years & along with the colored lights it just looks like Santa threw up on our tree & left us with this big old Christmas mess. I still love it though because our trees always have character. This year, however we decided to go a new route. Since I've traveled a lot & so have my parents, we decided to get ornaments from all the places we went & this year we are going to have a "travel tree". I contributed a Vegas, Hawaii & Miami. Since obviously there wouldn't be enough to fill a whole tree, we're also putting snowflakes & stuff like that on it & will of course have white lights. I can't wait to listen to Christmas music & decorate it. As if I don't listen to enough Christmas music during the month of December. Speaking of, "Oh Christmas Tree/Oh Tannenbaum" just came on my iTunes! It's like it knew I was blogging about it right now or something. Bizarre.

But speaking of Christmas trees, Samantha & I decided to go to the tree lighting at Rockefeller Center last night. Let me tell you, what a nightmare! All I wanted to do was see Beyonce, I didn't even really care about the tree so much & we didn't even get close to either. Of course she was on a rooftop so I don't think I'd have gotten close anyway. Instead of standing in the cold unable to see anything, we just ended up at a bar watching it on TV. Strange that we would end up at a bar, I know. We ordered some sort of "Christmasy" drink, which was just a big sweet disgusting mess of a martini, but I still drank mine & half of Sam's anyway. When I saw Jaime Foxx come out on TV, I was so sad because I love him so much & I was so close to him yet so far away. I was really hoping him & Beyonce would forgo the Christmas music & just break out into Dreamgirls but I can't always get what I want. Maybe if I told them it was my birthday they would reconsider? We ended up waiting around though & saw the tree after the sea of people dissipated but not even a close up, so I'll have to go again at some point. If I ever decide to go to the lighting again, I know now to get there in the morning if I want a good spot. Probably will never happen but it's good to know.