We had my family over for Christmas Eve/Hanukkah dinner - a non-traditional, but delicious feast of comfort foods: mac and cheese, spicy apricot wings, latkes, and an impressive assortment of Christmas cookies.
Clearly, I would be a horrible event photographer. How to people get picture-perfect photos from their holidays? Ours are a blurry mess of shredded paper, dirty dishes, and uncooperative photo subjects.
Also, Gravy looked like this the entire evening:
"Wrapping paper! My favorite! Kill it!"
There's a story behind this duck:
The week before Christmas, I was talking on the phone with my mother and she was gushing on and on about these mercury glass ducks she'd seen on the blog of "that boy from Pennsylvania." I had no idea what she was talking about, but finally realized she meant Michael of Inspired by Charm!
Michael owns an adorable inn and gift shop in St. Mary's, so I e-mailed him to see if there was a chance that he still had any of the ducks left, and if so, would he be willing to sell one and ship it to me. I thought it was a long shot, since he had blogged about the ducks way back in July. But I was in luck!
Michael was so sweet to take the time out of his busy holiday season to package up the duck and send it down to Virginia. When it arrived, I put it on my mantle for a few days before wrapping it, and have to admit, I was a bit sad to see it go. It really added a pop of color to my boring black/white/gray mantle decor. However, the duck's new owner loves it even more...
Mom was SO surprised when she opened it on Christmas Eve! "You got me the duck!" she exclaimed.
Ahh, the awesome power of the internet. Also, Michael had made a few purchases from Funnelcloud Studio earlier in the month - I just love that we both gave Christmas presents to our families from each other's shops!
And it's extra special because my grandmother used to collect duck figurines and her favorite color was green. A happy little reminder of my sweet and funny Nana who I miss so much!
Banjo approves. "Can I eat that?"
Any holiday worth celebrating deserves a lot of cheese:
"When Santa comes down the chimney, I'm going to bite him!" "We don't have a chimney, Stupidhead!"
5 comments:
seriously, this just made my day. thank you. :)
looks like you had a great party!
That looks like such a wonderful, lovely time! My family's Christmas Eve is such a huge, loud, crowded production that I've often wondered what a quiet, intimate one would be like. It looks awesome. Also, all that comfort food made me hungry. Especially for mac-n-cheese. And yes I realize it's 10am. haha :)
I agree with Lauren! It's 10:45, and I have an overwhelming urge for mac & cheese. Great photos, Rachel -- it looks like you had a lovely holiday.
Thanks, all! I have a small family that has been divided up due to divorce, etc, so it means we celebrate Christmas about 7 different times with small groups of people. I do miss the big family get-togethers of my youth, but not the stress of it all!
Lovely photos, and such a precious anecdote about your Nana.
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