Welcome, Christmas! Bring your cheer!

The holidays are finally upon us!  This means that I am (finally) finished with my surgery rotation, and now Stuart and I will be driving around the Southeast United States to visit with family and friends!  Of course, we couldn't begin our holiday festivities without the soon-to-be-famous annual tacky party.

Yes, friends, that is a floor length hunter green velour skirt you are seeing!  Stuart donned his green cords and women's sweater and we got the party started!  Unfortunately I had one of my too-frequent blond moments:  I took about 50 pictures of the party to later discover that I had no memory card in my camera.  They saved on my camera's 'hard drive', so to speak, but I don't have a cord that can connect my camera to the computer.  So you have to work hard to imagine about 25 friends in their tackiest clothes, eating fried twinkies and pigs in a blanket.  A good time was had by all!

After the tackiness was over, I decided to take a morning to spread the Christmas love by making treats!  Stuart went for his marathon-training 3 hour run last Friday and I headed to the kitchen (yes, I am running a half-marathon with him; no, I have not yet started training - I bake instead).  I spent a wonderful 4 hours in there and wound up with flour in my hair and on the floor, and a counter covered with homemade Reese's cups, lemon shortbread and cake-mix cookies.  Now, I have a passion for good food blogs, and here is my weak attempt at capturing my cooking on film (don't judge me).

Baker's semi-sweet squares melting and getting ready to be made into cups!

Mardi loves Publix too!

The Reese's in action.  I put homemade caramel in some of them.

Cake Mix Cookies, made famous by the lovely Laura Copeland.



And a way to use up leftover scrapbook paper - recipe cards!



Since I put a picture up of Mardi, I have to mention our latest adventure.  Apparently Mardi loves Christmas just as much as we do.  She loves it so much that she just can't stop herself from eating decorations.  Without giving too much detail, one day last week she threw up a Christmas bow.  Two trips to the vet and a whole lot of steroids later, she is on the road to recovery, and we are now having to cat-proof our home.

Stuart and I left Daphne on Saturday morning and were blessed to be able to attend a wedding of one of Stuart's dear friends, Lori, in Starkville, MS.  We actually had 5 (FIVE!) friends to get married that day, but could unfortunately only attend one wedding!  After the celebration (and delicious food I might add), we drove back to Brookhaven to start our family holiday travels.  We are currently here with Stuart's parents and will be heading to Gadsden to see mine on Wednesday.  After that it's on to Memphis on Christmas Day to see Sal, Brian, and little Vera Kate!  We can't wait!

I'll have to give a play by play later.  I hope you all are having a great holiday season!  I'll leave you with this video which I think is important for us all to reflect on this time of year!