I hope everyone had a wonderfully-merry Christmas. Mine was delightfully relaxing. It was so relaxing that I didn't even get up to grab my camera on Christmas morning and take pictures of our little cherubs opening gifts. In fact, I have absolutely no pictures to commemorate this year's holiday. I also didn't make Christmas cookies for the neighbors until yesterday and I haven't called my grandma yet to wish her a Merry Christmas. I'll wait until New Year's and tell her I planned it that way.

This was the first time we stayed home with just immediate family. It was great not to have to travel, especially with all the new TSA shenanigans:

Sheesh. No one's exempt!
(Found on boingboing.)

The day was spent opening gifts, stuffing ourselves silly, and watching movies. My kind of day. I didn't even try and use my downtime for crafting, which I usually long to do. (Actually, at this time of year I'm usually so sick of trying to make homemade presents that I never want to pick up another crochet hook or glue gun again.) I did however do some web surfing and randomly found this this t-shirt design at Snorg Tees, which I thought was quite hysterical.





We didn't even really have to cook, as the pozole we made for dinner the night before also makes for an awesome breakfast. And lunch.

Ours kind of looked like the image above. It was our first time making it and it turned out super-extra delicious if I do say so myself.

This is a common Mexican dish to serve at Christmas. Going to the store the day before, I marveled at just how many carts had gigantic cans of hominy and chiles in them.


It was nice to recharge and try to restore some of the sanity I lost in the last few days before the big 25. Being a procrastinator extraordinaire, I had quite a few things to do within the last 48 hours and the stormy weather didn't help.

(image source)

I finally just had to resign myself to the fact that not everything was going to get done, and I relaxed a bit after that epiphany.


With New Year's approaching, I've resolved not to make any hasty resolutions, if any. Why start out the new year by setting yourself up for failure? I'll probably write a few things down, but for now, I'm going to try and keep this relaxing thing going a while longer.



Happy Monday

Quicker and Cheaper Than Lying on a Couch for an Hour

I always knew deep in my heart that I was a misfit toy. This psychological profile pretty much sums up what every therapist has told me since the beginning of time.

Now I just need to get me a map to that island...

Find out what Christmas movie best describes your personality with this Newsweek "diagnosis."

Silent night, holy night

All is calm, all is bright

Round yon Virgin Mother and Child

Holy Infant so tender and mild

Sleep in heavenly peace,

Sleep in heavenly peace.

Merry Christmas to all,
and to all a good night.

Christmas in the Cube

For a while I couldn't get any of my Christmas decorations at home to look decent, so I gave up and just threw a bunch of stuff in my cubicle at work. I usually try to make decorations for my cube, but around this time of year I'm too busy making gifts (which always take me about 10 times longer than I think they will). Instead, this time I just used stuff I already had on hand, which made it look a bit too commercially and cheesy, but what the heck.




To make things a bit more personalized, I added old ornaments I'd had as a kid or were given to me by former students. I put them on top of the bookshelf.




The lighthouse ornament is from my uncle, who collected U.S. lighthouse replicas and visited almost all of the originals. He passed away unexpectedly a couple of months ago, so this one is even more special to me now.




This is Clara from the Nutcracker. Her left arm used to hold the Nutcracker, but they're both long gone.



My personal favorite is one that I painted when I was about four years old. The loop at the top of her hat to hang her on the tree was broken long ago, so she doesn't really have a choice but to hang out on the sidelines.




I realize that it totally looks like a scene from the Rudolph TV special, but that's okay. I happen to love that movie. Especially this guy:

(image source)

He's welcome in my misfit toy menagerie anytime.

Awkward

You must go to Awkward Family Photos. Right. Now.

Seriously.

Run. Don't walk.

And while you're at it, swing by Cake Wrecks.

For, you know,

Poo-Dolph the reindeer.