After Christmas shopping

One thing I miss the most about the States is the clearance, especially after Christmas sales. At least I have the miracle of the internets and the internets have spread their world wide web tendrils to my Macbook. And my Visa.

50% off at Barnes and Noble.

A list, yes?

• The Shaper the Knife the less You Cry
• Nigella Express
• How to Eat
• The Wilde Women
• The Prince of Tides
• Love Walked In

There are two Nigella Lawson books on there. She writes her cookbooks like books to be read, not directions to be followed. Her love for simple, well made food is something that I admire and share.

Plus she's gorgeous.

And my 3 year old nephew saw a picture of her once and said, "It's Nikki!" My aspirations of secretly taking over Nigella's life and making it my own started then.

I've been thinking about new year's resolutions. I just made my deployment goals so new years resolutions for me seem like they'd just be echoing what I've already set out to do. That doesn't mean I'm not making some. I'll keep you posted.

Resolutions for y'all?

Merry Christmas Eve

I don't know how many of you know about life at an APO. But the government tries to provide the people here with basic comforts of home. One of those comforts is publishing a newspaper in English that can even be delivered to your house. (or you can check it out online) This is today's front page. The small print under the picture says:

With sleigh bells attached to his rucksack, Mike Lord waits for a helicopter at Camp Liberty in Baghdad on Tuesday. Lord, a civilian contractor at the base, said he'd grown out his hair and beard for the season and planned to visit as many U.S. bases as he could in his up-armored sleigh.

People like Mike Lord make me smile.

Let it snow!

This is what I woke up to this morning! A picture taken from my back balcony gives you an idea. And believe it or not it's still snowing. This rarely happens. I plan on drinking peppermint tea all day.

Shopping: check

I finally have all my Christmas shopping (that I have to mail) pretty much done. I spent all last night wrapping presents and got the big one mailed out to my parents today. I'm hoping to get everything mailed out by Friday.

I have a confession: I usually really hate shopping for Christmas presents. I know that sounds weird but living overseas from the rest of my family I'm really at a loss. I don't know if cousin Annie has taken up knitting or if my dad discovered a new love for tofu. This is the kinda stuff you miss out on when you don't see your family regularly. And you can only buy the women so many baskets of soap and bubble bath. The men really don't need that many do-dads. I'm starting to run out of "Italian" things to send people too.

I felt the same distain this year, too. Then as I was wrapping presents a transformation started to occur. I started to get excited about what the people receiving the gifts would think and looked like when they opened them. I started picturing their faces, their excitement. It made me excited. Now I can't wait to get these last few things in the mail instead of dragging my feet like I usually do.

So what about y'all? Feet draggers on Christmas gifts or do you skip to the stores?

Best Christmas Card Ever

My Aunt Aimee sent me this card along with a HUGE box of presents for the hubs and I. She's an artist. I haven't opened the presents yet, but I think this my be my favorite present in there.

Christmas cookie/movie extravaganza!

On Saturday I got together with some friends to make Christmas cookies and watch Christmas movies.

The recipe said it made 3 dozen. But I'm pretty sure we only got 18ish cookies out of it. And no, we didn't eat gobs of cookie dough either. It just didn't make a lot, which is weird because usually sugar cookie recipes make a ton of cookies.

The icing was also a taaaaaaad runny. Wasn't it Martin Luther King who said, "it's the flavor that counts, not the beauty." Or something like that.

I made Buddy the Elf from the movie Elf (which we watched) in cookie form. He was delicious.

We also made Christmas hearts.

What?

It is SO a thing.

This is Cecilia (in grey) and Missy (in green). They were two of my three cookie cohorts. No one was too keen on getting their picture taken since we were all in our sweats. It didn't stop me.

Movies watched:

Elf

The Muppets Christmas Carol

Love Actually

The Grinch

Charlie Brown's Christmas

Extravaganza? Complete success!

Slowly getting in the Spirit

It's wasn't until last week when I went to the Christmas market that I started feeling like doing anything Christmasy. I'm still on the fence about decorating my house. So I decided to make one of the things I look at the most, my computer, in the holiday mood then maybe I would be too.

I got this cute background from Pixelgirl Presents. Check it out. They have some other cool ones too.

Christmas flowers

I feel like Italy is the Christmas capitol of the world. 98% of the Italian community is Roman Catholic... of course. So Christmas here isn't taboo like it was becoming in the States when I left 3 years ago. I don't think anything there has really changed.

Here's another little tidbit about Italians where I live: they love fake flowers. I mean LOVE them. They have stands full of fake flowers at the market. They have the real flowers too, but more often than not they are fake. So real looking I almost bought some to take home until I heard the vendor say "plastica" and I realized.

I bought a few ornaments from this little stand. It was homemade ornaments in support of a local elementary school.

I hope y'all are ready for Christmas overload on this blog because there is more to come.

A Camisano Christmas

Every Sunday Camisano has a market. It's the best market in this area if you ask me. Today, next Sunday and the Sunday after they have little Christmas additions.

Here's a hot chocolate stand at the market:

Sometimes you gotta add more chocolate to the chocolatey-ness. Italian hot chocolate is out of this world. It's really thick and not too sweet. It's like liquid chocolate. I know that the name hot chocolate insinuates liquid chocolate but Italian hot chocolate is really just like melted, delicious, European chocolate. Next time you are in Italy in the winter time, I really suggest you pick one up.

They also had cute little handmade goods like these gooses:

There's some more good stuff I took pictures of at the market but it's a different type of stuff so I'll share tomorrow.

Happy Sunday.