Merry, Happy Holidays-ukkah!

 December has been super busy but good busy. DH and I celebrated our 19th anniversary a week or so ago. We spent a night in Salt Lake City and ate Spanish tapas, drank Spanish wine, crashed an ugly sweater work party at our hotel's bar, and even met Buddy the Elf and Santa. Good times were had!

We celebrated the Winter Solstice up at the Red Butte Gardens on Saturday.

Wednesday was more Winter Solstice shenanigans to welcome back the Sun! I cooked up some stew, traditional wassail, G helped me make up solstice cookies, and we decorated paper lanterns and had them lit all night long on the longest night of the year. I love that feeling...waking up and knowing today's light is just a little bit longer than yesterday's! Welcome back, Sun!

Books

I'm in the middle of two or three right now but I did manage to finish off I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. That's a wild ride. I hope she writes another memoir in ten years and I hope it's full of more hope and healing. 

I'm almost done with Defy the Night by Brigid Kemmerer. My niece just read it and she wanted me to read it as well so we could talk about it.

The Battle for Christmas by Stephen Nissenbaum is an interesting read on the evolution of Christmas and its traditions in America. He uses a lot of primary sources from the time so we get a sense of time and place and people. I don't think I'll finish this one until after the New Year but finishing it I am. 

I also randomly picked up The Maid by Nita Prose. I'm almost halfway through. Quirky but also painful to see how she's taken advantage of. 

TV

DH and I finally finished of the second season of The Witcher! I just started the second season of Slow Horses on Apple TV. Such an excellent show with Gary Oldman.

Movies

We watched A Christmas Story and A Christmas Story: Christmas. We just saw Spirited on Apple with Will Farrell and Ryan Reynolds. Really cute. Elf was the other night. DH and I watched The Holiday again. One of our favorites every holiday season. I think we'll watch It's a Wonderful Life tonight or tomorrow. G has not seen this one yet. I'm hoping he'll appreciate it even if it's a little old school for him. And I've caught quite a few on Hallmark so far. I'm actually pretty impressed with some of them this year. Three Wise Men and a Baby was really good.

I'm also hoping to get in A Muppet Christmas Carol and A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott sometime this weekend! And a couple of holiday horrors too like Black Christmas, Krampus, or that new one Violent Night!

Baking-- I'm hoping to get a Christmas Swiss roll made, peanut butter cookies, more sugar cookies and frosting. Drinks--I've got buttered rum and coquito on the list.

May your Christmas be a safe and merry one!

Joining up with Deb from Readerbuzz and her Sunday Salon.

Cat Thursday-- Holiday Kitties

 Welcome to the weekly meme (hosted by Michelle at True Book Addict) that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats!

My cats have really cute lately. So here's a couple photos for your viewing pleasure.

Cat Thursday

 

 

 Welcome to the weekly meme (hosted by Michelle at True Book Addict) that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats!  

Holiday cat antics are the best or the worst...

2022 Yuletide Spirit Reading Challenge!

 Michelle over at Seasons of Reading is hosting her yearly holiday reading challenge: 2022 Yuletide Spirit. I don't usually signup for holiday challenges but I have at least two if not three I plan to get in this month so here I go...

Reading level challenges:

1. Candy Cane: Read 1 book.

2. Mistletoe: Read 2-4 books.

3. Christmas Tree: Read 5 or more books (the fanatic level!)

I planning on the Mistletoe level with at least 3 books. But hopefully more will be read!

1. The Battle for Christmas by Stephen Nissenbaum
2. Hark the Herald Angels Scream edited by Christopher Golden
3. The Afterlife by Holly Chase
4. I may try to reread A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
5. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. While technically not Christmas it still has that holiday spirit throughout the whole book. I've been meaning to reread it for years now...

Additional Levels

Fa la la la la Films: Watch holiday movies!!!! Yasss! So many new ones to see this December and old ones to revisit! Spirited on Apple TV and A Christmas Story: Christmas.

Visions of sugar plums: Read books with the wains and share what we read. My son is older now but every Xmas Eve we read a few children's Christmas books around the tree and eat pizza and cookies and cocoa.

November...Being Grateful

Ever since I got back from vacation for Fall Break back in October, I have been plagued with one illness or another. My son gave something to me and I felt terrible the last day of vacation on our drive home and that turned into a major sinus infection...I thought I was starting to get through it and decided to finally get our flu shots...maybe it's coincidence...but within a few days I got all the flu-like symptoms and have been lying in bed for the last week. It's amazing what a few weeks of ill health will do to a person. I haven't been really all that ill since before the pandemic. It's made me really appreciate the health I had before I got sick and what I can look forward to once I start feeling better.

It really sets me back for holiday plans and excursions and goals I'd been working on...all need to be replanned, gotten rid of, or moved to a much later date. It's exhausting.

That's life, though, plans and life just can change in an instant. Without times like these it is harder to appreciate the good health that we have or the good times that are here. 

Finally, feeling better. Probably the best I've felt since October 15th! I am truly grateful for antibiotics, humidifiers, cough drops, mindless holiday baking shows, and a family that kept going...

Made it out before my flu hit with my dear friend Steph to celebrate her birthday right before Thanksgiving.

Books read in November...I'm surprised I made it through these, tbh.

The Problem With Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars by Meghan Daum

An interesting look at some of the ways the culture wars have affected people in journalism. It wandered a bit but it was a worthwhile read.

The Cuckoo's Calling (Cormoran Strike #1) by Robert Galbraith

I've been wanting to read these for awhile and decided this was as good a time as any. Not my most favorite start to the series by any means but I'll read the next one just to see how the characters evolve and interact with one another.

The Last Wish (The Witcher #.5) by Andrzej Sapkowski

These are a conglomeration of stories about the Witcher Geralt. I've been watching the Netflix series and decided it was time to read the source material! I liked this a lot better than I thought I would. So much of the stories are reimagined Grimm's fairytales...Beauty and the Beast...Rumpelstiltskin. It kind of makes me wonder of Sapkowski wrote the series as a bit of satire or parody on the fantasy and fairytale genre. A bit tongue and cheek, as they say.

The short stories give us some insight into Geralt's world of misfits and magic. We also learn a bit more about Yennefer and how her and Geralt meet and how they become so intertwined. And yes we see a lot of Dandelion, Geralt's infamous bard. It's just good fun. I don't know how else to describe it. 

TV

All the holiday baking shows, of course! The Great British Baking Show was fantastic and something I look forward to every year and their holiday special they do with actors is a riot.

1899 on Netflix was also really fantastic. Be prepared to have more questions by the end than answers but it's quite a mystery and I can't wait till season 2.

White Lotus' second season on HBO has been very engrossing. Loving this season's take. And let's not forget the wrap-up season of The Vow on season two on the wellness cult Nexium and the prosecution and conviction of its leader Keith Raniere. So good and disturbing.

Magpie Murders on PBS was a great adaptation from Anthony Horowitz' novel. Fun, fun, fun.

Movies

I'm not going to lie...I watched a lot of movies this last month...I didn't have much energy for the other important things at night...so yeah.

But my favorites were Bodies, Bodies, Bodies; Smile; Fall; and for the holidays the winner was The Noel Diary on Netflix. I actually kind of teared up a bit...

And over the Thanksgiving weekend we watched all of the Harry Potter movies as a family! It's almost a family tradition. Loved it.

I am looking forward to watching all the holiday movies of old with my family and then the weird sequels and or the new adaptation of that timeless classic...A Christmas Story followed by its sequel on HBO and the new Spirited, A Christmas Carol adaptation, with Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell on Apple TV. 

We're going to show G "It's a Wonderful Life" for the first time. I've been saying that almost every year but there are a lot of good ones and it seems this one never popped up. But it's a goal!

The Holiday with Kate Winslet, Jude Law, and Cameron Diaz are DH's and I's favorite as well this time of year. Can't forget Elf either. G will also watch a few holiday horror movies with me like Krampus.

I'm also looking forward to our 19th wedding anniversary! Wowser. Nothing fancy, but we're heading up to downtown Salt Lake for a night, eat some dinner, and spend a nice time together. Hopefully catch some holiday lights up there as well.

Happy holidays!

Joining up with Deb from Readerbuzz and her Sunday Salon.

Cat Thursday-Thanksgiving Kitties

 

 Welcome to the weekly meme (hosted by Michelle at True Book Addict) that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats!  

Day after Thanksgiving kitties. Couldn't resist sharing their cuteness. Shadow also had some tooth surgery earlier this week but she's doing great now. Hard to see the kitty babies hurting. So very grateful they are both doing well this week!