mistressofmuses (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mistressofmuses) wrote2023-12-26 11:31 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2023-12-26 11:31 pm
Christmas Eve and Christmas!
My work day on Christmas Eve was just as slow as expected. I finished up with my actual work within about an hour and a half, and then spent the rest of the day just watching through training videos. Those aren't due until the end of next month, but now I've only got one more to do.
After the half day, my mom came to pick me up. We headed back to her house to hang out.
We made some of our family's traditional holiday cookies: molasses cookies and butter cookies.
Molasses cookies!
These are quite possibly my favorite of all our holiday baked things. The spices are very warm, and they're just so very good.
And butter cookies!
These are made with an old-fashioned press. Wreaths, "railroad tracks", and Christmas trees.
Also a favorite, honestly.
We did get a bit of a white Christmas - it snowed a fairly good amount on Christmas Eve. Not as badly around us as it did out on the plains to the east, but still enough to stick. Fortunately the roads around us didn't get too bad.
Taylor and I finished up the Final Fantasy XIV raid we'd started last time ("The Binding Coils of Bahamut.") I definitely see what they meant about this being kind of a weird one to have be optional... because it really does feel extremely plot-relevant, despite a sort of "and now we must never speak of this to anyone" conclusion.
Then we watched the last three episodes of The Fall of the House of Usher. Not quite a typical holiday vibe, but I guess it falls under the "stories of ghosts terrorizing rich people" heading, lol.
Christmas Day was also nice. I was gifted a ton of books (as I'd asked for, haha.) My TBR list is definitely crying, and I have GOT to figure out how to make more time and space for reading. They also got a bunch of books from me. I'm pretty sure that's about 90% of what all our gift-giving is: just... swapping books around, lol.
Alex slept in, but came over to join us around 1:00 or so.
Cy was criminally cozy on my mom's loveseat. (He wrapped himself in the blanket, by nosing under where it was draped over the back of the seat.) The cushion cover is on there solely to protect my mom's furniture from our dogs' stomping on it.
And here's Bella standing on the loveseat. (The books on the table there are all the ones Taylor got, ha.) Ignore Bella's butt glowing in the sun.
We hung around for a couple hours, and then headed home. There Alex and I exchanged our gifts. I got a couple more books, a very large set of lots of colors of gel pen, and like... a thousand cute animal stickers, haha. Also a very cute "fruit bat" squish plush (it's a bat... that looks like an orange. I love it!) Also some candy and very cozy looking socks. I got him model stuff, some brushes for pastelling, a kitchen gadget with some various blades for chopping and slicing, and a new wallet. Also candy and some silly tiny plastic crabs.
After that, he was ambushed by a nap, so we delayed our Christmas movie watching. After he woke up, we made a pizza and then watched Christmas Vacation and our always holiday classic: Christams [sic] Twister.
Amazing as always.
I was dozing off after that one, so we put our other holiday movies on hold. (I'm mildly surprised - Alex doesn't usually want to stretch it into more than one day, ha.)
Today we watched A Christmas Story and Muppet Christmas Carol. Tomorrow will be It's a Wonderful Life. That covers most of our personal holiday classics, ha.
Very glad today was a normal day off for me, but then that I also took tomorrow off. I feel like I *should* have the week between Christmas and New Years off to just do... nothing. Or nothing beyond recovering from a big holiday and doing whatever I want to in order to prep for the new year. But alas, it's hard to take that string of time off from work, since there are a LOT of people who want it off, and a lot that's hard to get coverage for. Oh well - a three and a half day weekend is still nice.
After the half day, my mom came to pick me up. We headed back to her house to hang out.
We made some of our family's traditional holiday cookies: molasses cookies and butter cookies.
Molasses cookies!
These are quite possibly my favorite of all our holiday baked things. The spices are very warm, and they're just so very good.
And butter cookies!
These are made with an old-fashioned press. Wreaths, "railroad tracks", and Christmas trees.
Also a favorite, honestly.
We did get a bit of a white Christmas - it snowed a fairly good amount on Christmas Eve. Not as badly around us as it did out on the plains to the east, but still enough to stick. Fortunately the roads around us didn't get too bad.
Taylor and I finished up the Final Fantasy XIV raid we'd started last time ("The Binding Coils of Bahamut.") I definitely see what they meant about this being kind of a weird one to have be optional... because it really does feel extremely plot-relevant, despite a sort of "and now we must never speak of this to anyone" conclusion.
Then we watched the last three episodes of The Fall of the House of Usher. Not quite a typical holiday vibe, but I guess it falls under the "stories of ghosts terrorizing rich people" heading, lol.
Christmas Day was also nice. I was gifted a ton of books (as I'd asked for, haha.) My TBR list is definitely crying, and I have GOT to figure out how to make more time and space for reading. They also got a bunch of books from me. I'm pretty sure that's about 90% of what all our gift-giving is: just... swapping books around, lol.
Alex slept in, but came over to join us around 1:00 or so.
Cy was criminally cozy on my mom's loveseat. (He wrapped himself in the blanket, by nosing under where it was draped over the back of the seat.) The cushion cover is on there solely to protect my mom's furniture from our dogs' stomping on it.
And here's Bella standing on the loveseat. (The books on the table there are all the ones Taylor got, ha.) Ignore Bella's butt glowing in the sun.
We hung around for a couple hours, and then headed home. There Alex and I exchanged our gifts. I got a couple more books, a very large set of lots of colors of gel pen, and like... a thousand cute animal stickers, haha. Also a very cute "fruit bat" squish plush (it's a bat... that looks like an orange. I love it!) Also some candy and very cozy looking socks. I got him model stuff, some brushes for pastelling, a kitchen gadget with some various blades for chopping and slicing, and a new wallet. Also candy and some silly tiny plastic crabs.
After that, he was ambushed by a nap, so we delayed our Christmas movie watching. After he woke up, we made a pizza and then watched Christmas Vacation and our always holiday classic: Christams [sic] Twister.
Amazing as always.
I was dozing off after that one, so we put our other holiday movies on hold. (I'm mildly surprised - Alex doesn't usually want to stretch it into more than one day, ha.)
Today we watched A Christmas Story and Muppet Christmas Carol. Tomorrow will be It's a Wonderful Life. That covers most of our personal holiday classics, ha.
Very glad today was a normal day off for me, but then that I also took tomorrow off. I feel like I *should* have the week between Christmas and New Years off to just do... nothing. Or nothing beyond recovering from a big holiday and doing whatever I want to in order to prep for the new year. But alas, it's hard to take that string of time off from work, since there are a LOT of people who want it off, and a lot that's hard to get coverage for. Oh well - a three and a half day weekend is still nice.
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Having some time to do nothing is wonderful :) Hope you can squeeze more moments like this during the year!!
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Ugh, I've had such a hard time finding ways to make time to read! I've got other things I also want to do - game, write, etc. - and not enough time to do it. It's also rough being in a studio apartment, because there's no "other room" to go to. So if my partner is watching TV (which he always does, because he needs the background noise), then it's hard for me to focus on reading. About all I can do is retreat to the bathroom, lol.
I did enjoy having some "just not doing things" time over the last few days. I think that finding ways to do that sort of thing on purpose is going to be part of what I want for the new year.
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The molasses cookies look yummy! (Pip's favorite is butter cookies. GF flour changes the texture so you can't use a press, so I just spoon the dough up and press it with a fork. *g*)
Books! I love that you mainly exchange books.
Cy looks SO cozy! LOL Bella's butt! She looks like she's posing for the photo. Here me and my shiny but are.
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Glad you had a good Christmas! We put so much work into them and then something so often goes wrong that it's always a relief when you actually enjoy yourself.
Bella looks like she is smiling about her glowing butt, which is good because so am I :)
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I'm glad Bella's glowing butt is a hit! Haha. Her standing up on the loveseat arm to best watch what everyone was doing was very funny.
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The molasses cookies are so good! Butter cookies are also excellent. I imagine that the texture of GF flour wouldn't quite work with a press, but I'm glad you can still make them!
I also love that book exchange is basically always the holiday theme. Sometimes involving buying each other the same books, haha.
Cy was SO cozy. We felt bad eventually making him get up! And lol, Bella's shiny butt in the sun. I'm glad everyone else finds it funny, too!
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I'm glad you had a good holiday!
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It was a very nice holiday. <3
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It was a nice weekend!