Christmastime is, without a doubt, my favorite time of the year. The twinkling lights, beautiful paper, and giving gifts. It's the season for snow, hot apple cider, and crackling fires. I adore the functions and the hustle and bustle of the season.

This Christmas, as mentioned in a previous post, I'm having a tough time really getting into the mood of the season. Or rather, my mood for the season. To help me rediscover my misplaced holiday cheer, however, my wonderful and loving husband is doing everything he can to keep some of our little traditions alive.

Tree:

My tree is a nearly sacred thing for me during the holidays. With the twinkling lights and precious little memories hanging on it... the darned thing just screams of love and joy. Normally, we don't get the tree up until a couple weeks before Christmas.. We like our real trees. This year, however, we'll be getting the beast (we have very tall ceilings) a little early... next weekend early! Stay tuned for some photos of this years beauty.

Even if it is the one thing we can manage this year... it will go a long way towards making it feel like my favorite time of year.

11/23/10 - Baby it's cold outside in Seattle

11/24/10 - Still freezing my butt off....

I know its a little early for this post. Thanksgiving hasn't even arrived yet... but I'm going with the feeling anyhow. 

I'm having a heck of a time getting into the holiday spirit this year. I feel like I'm just going through the motions of winding up for the season. I feel badly for it too. The Christmas season is my favorite. I start thinking about it the moment we clear the hurdle of Halloween and, if I didn't have a penchant for live trees, I try to start decorating the day after Thanksgiving. I love finding the perfect gift for someone and hope that it is unexpected and lovely for them to receive it. Best of all, Mike and I will be celebrating our 1st year of marriage just before Christmas this year. 

I'd  originally had visions of a lovely day spent Christmas shopping and baking together before ending it with a celebratory meal at one of our favorite restaurants, but with Mike out of work we won't be able to do that. Realizing that our budget constraints have reached their ugly little fingers into my favorite time of the year was a blow. A crushing one at that. 

And to be honest? It's kinda put a hitch in my giddy-up. I'm sure we'll manage for the anniversary, we're still sending cards out ... I'm ordering them tomorrow, in fact. We'll still have evenings in front of the fire with a Christmas movie on... it just doesn't seem to have the same sparkle for me that it normally does. 

Hopefully the snow will cheer me up this year (I've got my fingers crossed for the anniversary since it didn't snow on the wedding)... Snow always brightens my day. We may even have some this weekend. 

Happy mid-week to you all. 

I had an entire post ready to wax poetic about Cook's Illustrated magazine this morning. Specifically their "best of" edition which Mike's mom gave to us.

I had to toss it.

It's not that we're not still really enjoying the recipes we have discovered in there. . . Simply that I cannot wax poetic for 200+ words about an edition that I "haven't found a bad recipe in" when we found one.

The herb crusted pork loin turned out to be a salt brick and completely inedible for us. I will write about that lovely experience when I'm done training next week. Until then my description will have to do justice.

We're still catching up around here at becoming Jones. Just when I thought I was going to have a bit more time to update y'all around here... things get crazy again. It is really the way of life.

Mike had his test on Saturday, along with 1999 other people in line for one of 20 positions in this apprenticeship.  We both knew that this meant essentially re-learning algebra for the test and he tackled it with some serious tenacity. So, Saturday, he got up early to ensure that his brain was fully functioning before showing up at this test.
He arrived to discover that Kane Hall at UW is HUGE. As is typical of him, he found some other guys hanging around to take the test and struck up a conversation.

That is how he discovered that two thousand people are testing through for 20 positions. OUCH. And, while he feels good about the work he did on the test, he doesn't think he'll get the position. Logic would dictate that people already in the union and with previous experience in the field will likely be hired first. But the game isn't up yet... in a few weeks we'll discover if he tested high enough to move on to the next hiring stage If he does he'll have a physical test to take.


Our Halloween was relatively uneventful. The roomies had a party on Saturday night. We handed out candy last night... until I got fed up with the 16 year olds coming around with no costumes. Once I got fed up we turned the lights off and decided to keep our candy.

How was your weekend?