Category Archives: winter

Blizzard Bonanza

NEMO!!! Love ya to pieces.

Disclaimer: I don’t have a car or house to shovel out and wasn’t affected by power outages or transportation delays (perks of being on a school snow day schedule) so to me blizzard = play time. Major playtime.

Mike and I headed out Friday night in the height of the blizzard to hang with my old roomies (perks of having besties two blocks away) and almost became insta-snowpeople. Observe:

On Saturday we (I) made Nemo pancakes because HOW COULDN’T I, then we bundled up and hopped into our cross-country skis to ski around the ‘hood. Cross-country skiing is HARD, yo. I was sweating like a wildebeest and almost-crying but eventually channeled my inner snow bunny and got the hang of it. We dropped our skis off at home and hippity-hopped around town, took 1,000 photos, and came home to eat Kraft mac and cheese and drink hot cocoa. It was wonderful

I asked Mike if he had any spare gloves I could wear. This is what he presented me with…

PicMonkey Collage

How to Survive a Snowstorm: A Step-by-Step Guide

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I LOVE SNOW. Looove it. Can’t get enough. Should probably move to Antarctica.

Last year we got almost zero snow - which I’ve been crying about for the past 10 months - so when the weatherpeeps at home started predicting a small snowstorm headed our way, I said “GLORY GLORY HALLELUJAH” and did a snow dance. However, in my old age I’ve started to realize that the rest of the world (or at least the rest of the people in my life) are not snow fans. Everyone else hears snow and they’re like, UUUUGH.

Luckily I have enough snow cheer to spread around all the land, so! I’ve put together this guide for all you snow-hatas to help you survive your next snow storm. In addition to following this guide to a T, I would also suggest a.) good snow boots b.) a gigantic fluffy down coat and c.) EXTRA warm mittens.

Step one: Grab the closest snow-naysayer and drag her outside. Make snow angels! Don’t throw a snowball.

Step two: Go inside and warm up with a mug of hot cocoa and peppermint marshmallows (discovered at Target!!)

Step three: Encourage someone else do the shoveling.

Step four: Make homemade Ben&Jerry’s ice cream with your new ice cream maker. Chocolate peanut butter cookie dough should do the trick.

Step five: Drag another snow-hata outside to make a snowman with you. When the snow is too fluffy to pack into a snowman, put a tiny snowball on top of a snow pile and call it a snowlady.

Step six: More hot cocoa. A good book. Bunny slippers. THE END.

Merry Merry

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Ho ho ho and Merrrrryyyy Christmas, my friends! I am in the midst of happily being snowed in to my house and haven’t left my couch (or my new bunny slippers) in over a day - except to go out for hot cocoa. Pri.or.i.ties. Here are ~~some~~ {lots} of pictures from the past few days of Christmas-ing

My aunt made 22 kinds of Christmas goodies. Twenty-two. Can one person fit 22 cookies in their belly, you ask? Only if they’ve been training since the age of three, I tell you…

All the cookies will be miiiiiiine.

This year we went to Utica the weekend before Christmas to spend time with my extended family. Mike and I stayed at my aunt and uncle’s log cabin in the woods, and we woke up in the morning to freshly fallen snow, a wood-fire stove and lemon-ricotta pancakes. Dreeeeamy.

All the cousins with Buscia! She’s the cutest.

After visiting with everyone in Utica, Mike and I headed to his house (along with 10 family members + 3 dogs) for Christmas round three! There were Christmas crackers and tree decorating and adorable puppies in reindeer antlers. And, an ice cream maker! YES! Ben and Jerry’s, heeeere I come.

Finally, I headed home for [real] Christmas. We had our traditional Polish Christmas Eve dinner, went to mass, and battled it out for the Christmas pickle. Peter {brother} found it in four seconds. As ALWAYS.

How was your Christmas, friends? Anyone else want to join me on a cookie detox?

(Just kidding. Christmas or not, cookies are life.)

((But I will join you in eating 10x more veggies.))

The Adventures of M&M: Christmas Tree Hunting

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Fa la la la la, la la la CHRISTMAS.

This past weekend Mike and I went Christmas tree hunting with our pals Liz and Dave. We jingled all the way to Grafton, MA to pick out the most perfect Christmas trees at Highfield’s Farm, and throughout the course of the day, no less than four Christmas miracles occurred.

Christmas Miracle Number One: When L&D picked us up in the morning, it was rainy and gray and I was being a Debbie Downer because I believe that you CAN’T chop down a Christmas tree in the rain. This is Christmas Law #2, closely related to my other ~~irrational~~ belief that it’s not Christmas if there isn’t snow on the ground (you know you grew up in upstate NY when…) But somehow, miracle of miracles, as we pulled into the Christmas tree farm it started snowing huge, fat, fluffy, stick-to-the-ground flakes. Walkin’ in a winter wonderlaaaand…!

Christmas Miracle Number Two: Mike and I found a tree we agreed on.

(You should know that growing up, my family got a normal 6 1/2 foot tree and Mike’s family got a monster 11 foot tree. So we settled on [what appeared to be] 8 feet.)

Tiiiiimberrrr!

Christmas Miracle Number Three: Let’s do some math here: one car, two trees, four people, seventy five feet of rope, zero roof rack. How did we expect to get these trees home, you ask??? Brains and brawn, people. Brains and brawn.

While Liz and I scurried away to the farm’s cute little log cabin to get some hot cider, Mike and Dave worked on tying down the trees. When we returned to the car they had successfully tied one tree to the roof. We all high-fived and moved on to the second tree only to realize….our genius men had tied half the doors shut.

At least the tree was secure?

We managed to attach the second tree (using the “wrap the entire car in rope” approach), and headed on our merry way. While driving back through Boston we were so delighted that people were pointing at our car and smiling; we thought we were spreading so much Christmas joy!

And then we pulled into the driveway. And the trees were precariously perched DIAGONALLY across the car.

But we still had both, AND they didn’t fall off while we sped down I-90! Fa la la la la, la la la…miracle.

Christmas Miracle Number Four: After praising Santa and his reindeer for helping our trees miraculously make it home, Mike and I hopped in our elevator with the cute and perfectly-apartment-sized tree.

And then we brought it into our apartment. And it was two feet too tall. And four feet too wide.

(Dear landlord, please don’t check our ceiling for tree sap scratches. And if you do…sooowwwwwyyyy.)

Though buying a saw to chop two feet off of the bottom of the tree inside our apartment can hardly be considered a Christmas miracle, the fact that we managed to rearrange our living room furniture to fit a two-sizes-too-big tree certainly is.

It’s a woooonderful feeling, feel the love [and the tree] in the room from the floor to the ceilin’

Winter Walking

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It finally SNOWED!!! I was so very happy to wake up this morning to a blanket of fluffy white snow covering the courtyard outside my window. After some coffee and bagels, Mike and I laced up our snow boots and went for a nice long walk around Brookline. We discovered a cheerful yellow house, made snow angels, and even ventured out onto a frozen pond. A perfect little snowventure!