Toast

*I’ve saved these red velvet bows for several years and rewire them onto a fresh green wreath.*

*Front entrance before I plugged in the white pot lights. Yes, they really were there and they did work!*

*I bought fresh garland a few days after Thanksgiving and hung it on the front and side door with tine white lights, and above the garage as I felt the garage felt lonely.*

Like many do-it-yourselfers, I’ve been tangled up in tiny lights for thirty plus days and nights, and I feel like toast: either my body has been browned by dry heat, or I’ve simply succumbed to ritual in which a drink is taken, or, probably both.

We can now all add Production Manager to our CV. If putting up indoor and outdoor garland and trees and lights with extension cords, wrapping and posting and shipping a multitude of gifts, choosing and printing and stamping and sending a holiday photo card, baking cookies and roasting small birds and tenderloins of beef, making pastas and sauces and eggs three ways because everyone is hungry, setting and clearing the table for seventeen multiple times while holding small babies, and always making sure the coffee is on and hot doesn’t count for something, I’m not sure what really counts.

Of course I chose these activities, and even though it was hard and took all of me I wouldn’t have done it any other way. By the way, no one is really counting anyway so what we do with our time and what we put out there is really up to us. This holiday season was a definite learning curve and I’ve never felt more rushed and unorganized to put dinner on the table.

We had five littles at the table. Here you can see three sets of adult eyes on Jacqueline, she’s that beautiful. Tulips are from the grocer. There were three bunches on the table, all in small waterglasses. We’ve recently taken a liking to IPA’s!

*Toy breaks during dinner and an overturned Manolo*!

*Early morning coffee and play session. We had toys all over.*

*The kitchen was where I was to be found. Here I am plating the pasta for the sauce.*

*I made a triple batch of bolognese from the Christmas Dinner trimmed and tied filet mignons. This dinner was a win. The pressure was off and we were pretty relaxed.*

I’m not sure if it was the expansion of family size or the moving forward of dinner time that made me feel so unaccomplished, or that Peyton exclaimed on Christmas with tears in her eyes that the cheesecake was burned, I just didn’t feel like I ever really hit it out of the park.

This was one of my small holiday wins: a scratch blue cheese dip with crudités that I took to the Booie’s for one of the first nights of celebrating. We ate the leftover vegetables with breakfast and lunch the next day.

If you have any holiday misses or feel like it all just went too fast or you are just simply glad it is all over, I think the best we can do is gather up the small moments that were good and hold them dear and close. It took me over a month of constant movement, and it cost many more dollars than anticipated, yet we were all together, and we loved, and we laughed, and we ate, and we drank. For this I am grateful, and if feeling brown and dry and like toast is what it takes, I’ll have another order, and maybe make it a double.