The Christmas Haul

Yesterday morning I was awoken bright and early by my sister texting me to let me know they were opening gifts.  I got on Skype and it turns out that they had already opened theirs, except for the ones I gave them.  So it was more like they sat in front of a computer staring at me while I opened their gifts.  I got some pretty awesome stuff though.

Every year, my mother insists on purchasing me either a new set of pajamas or a new pair of pajama pants.  This year, it was the latter.  I actually love them.  They are very comfortable, and I should know since I took a glorious nap in them earlier today.  She also bought me some fancy coffee because she knows that I rarely splurge and buy the good stuff for myself.  I’m definitely looking forward to that, although I am trying to cut down on my caffeine consumption.  I got a few other practical things, like new sheets and a comforter for our bed.  But there were lots of fun things as well.  I received season 5 of Boy Meets World. I’m slowly collecting all of the seasons before they bring it back (!!!). I also decided that it’s time to invest in all the seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because I’ve been watching that show so much recently.  (In this instance, “investing” means I asked for it for Christmas, and my mother got it for me.)  Right now I only have the first 2 seasons (thanks Mom!), but that should keep me busy for a while.

New pajama pants!

 

And my two favorite Christmas gifts have to be my NARS Alhambra duo and my Sigma brush kit for eyes.  This is actually my first Sigma brush set and I’m already in love with it.  The brushes are dense but soft and work extremely well to distribute whatever product I’m using.

NARS is a funny word.

They’re beautiful colors, and they’re very pigmented.

I don’t think I’ve ever posted a picture of my brush storage. These are my new Sigma brushes along with some other brushes I already had.

I thought I would throw this in, just so you could see how I store my brushes, pencils, lipgloss, and lipsticks.

I spent most of the day with Daniel’s family.  Daniel’s uncle Richard and cousin Paula visited and went with us, Daniel’s parents, and Daniel’s sister Nicole to see a matinee of Les Miserables.  I really liked it.  Daniel hated the cinematography, which was distracting at times, but I still enjoyed the film quite a bit.  In continuing with the Jewish Christmas tradition, we went out for Chinese food right after the movie.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and got to spend some quality time with their family.  I know I had a great time with Daniel’s family, and I’m so happy that I got to participate in their traditions this year.

Tomorrow is Christmas!

Hi!  Tomorrow is Christmas which is very exciting.  I finally get to open the gifts sent from my parents.  My mother sent me home with a few gifts back in November when I visited, but then a few days ago she also sent a gigantic box to Durham full of even more gifts.  She went a little crazy.  I think she misses me.

Daniel and I have had a busy couple of days.  We went back to Taberna with his parents on Thursday, and we all shared some of their amazing bacon wrapped dates, flamenquín, gambas a la plancha, and paella, with their molten chocolate cake for dessert.  It was phenomenal.  Again, I highly recommend it.

Today, we went to see The Hobbit.  Daniel and I sat through The Lord of the Rings trilogy a few months ago, which was fine except for the fact that I really can’t stand Elijah Wood.  I might have discussed this before, but I just feel like they are movies that appeal more to males.  Here’s the thing:  I am a girl that loves action movies.  Give me any Die Hard or James Bond film, and I’m all in.  But with movies like The Hobbit, it’s a lot of fantasy and sword fights.  Also, there’s dragons, and over the years I’ve realized that dragons just ruin movies for me.  I don’t know why, but if there is a dragon involved, I’m probably not going to like the movie.  Maybe it’s because my dad tried to make me sit through Reign of Fire at 13 or 14 years old, and that is a bad movie all about dragons.  Despite the fact that it starred Christian Bale, Matthew McConaughey, and Gerard Butler (in this instance, a sexy trifecta full of rippling muscles and bad acting), I could not even make it half-way through.   Anyway, The Hobbit was actually good, it’s very entertaining, but I certainly felt every minute of that 3 hours.  Okay, fine, to be fair, it was only 2 hours and 40 minutes, give or take.  I will definitely try to finish watching the rest of this trilogy, although I am having a very hard time understanding how they could even remotely have enough source material to make 2 more films.  We will see.

We also went to his parents’ house this evening to watch It’s a Wonderful Life.  It’s a great movie, but watching James Stewart running around in the snow didn’t make me miss Upstate New York even a little bit.

I hope everybody has a Merry Christmas.  I will share what I got on Wednesday.  I’m also hoping to have a post up soon about some scarves I’ve made recently.  🙂

Weekend Recap

I usually post these on a Monday but, as you can probably tell, I’m a little behind with my blogging.  As I mentioned in my previous post, I made Daniel stuffed shells for dinner on Friday for his Hanukkah gift.  That night was kind of quiet for us because we both had to work on Saturday morning.

On Saturday night, we went out for dinner to a new tapas restaurant downtown.  It’s called Taberna and  their tapas are fantastic but what really knocked my socks off was their paella.  If you’re ever in Downtown Durham looking for a new place to try, go to Taberna.  The service was amazing and the prices are very reasonable.  You can try a huge variety of great food and it’s a really cute restaurant.  Daniel and I can’t wait to go back.  That was sort of our belated anniversary dinner, since we both forgot about it earlier in the week.  It was Hanukkah and his dad’s birthday on that same day, so we just ended up hanging out at his parents’ house to celebrate those.

After dinner at Taberna, we drove to the new apartment of Forest and Fran.  Forest is one of Daniel’s friends from high school and Fran is his girlfriend.  They just moved out of Forest’s mom’s house and into an adorable apartment near Southpoint.  We drank beer and wine and watched trailers on Youtube for some of the worst movies every made (including The Room, Enemy Mine, and Tiptoes).  It’s always a pleasure to see to them.

On Sunday we went to a small Hanukkah party with delicious food and good company.  Everyone brought a “white elephant” gift, which is kind of like a gag gift; basically, it’s something weird or random you might find laying around your house that you don’t want.  My brother recently gave me a bag of some of the most random dvds ever, so Daniel and I chose 3 of those, wrapped them, and I think Daniel’s parents finally ended up with them.  We came home with a silver picture frame.  Honestly, I’ll probably re-gift it to my mother.  She would get some use out of it.

On Monday while Daniel was at work, I went out to a craft store to buy more yarn for the fluffy infinity scarf I’m working on.  I also stopped at Bath and Body Works to pick up some of their candles because they were having a 2 for $20 sale.  The sale might still be happening.  I bought a Japanese Cherry Blossom scented candle, which is a really classic scent from their signature line, and I bought one of their holiday candles called Snowed In.  I’m burning that one as I type this and it smells great.  I wasn’t sure about it at first but I’m glad I bought it.  I was bummed that they didn’t have any of their 3-wick candles in Sea Island Cotton, which is one of my favorite scents, but I would never wear it on my body.  I just think it’s a perfect candle scent.

I hope everyone is having a great week!

The Final Haul

Hanukkah is over, so I can officially give my final Hanukkah haul.  We left off at the glorious new iPad that I can’t stop using.  (So many apps, so little time.)  Since then, Jessica came home from Wake Forest in Winston-Salem, so we had to exchange gifts with her.  She bought me and Daniel two video games:  Halo 3: ODST and Arkham Asylum.  Daniel has been loving the Arkham Asylum, which is great. She also bought me a gift card to Starbucks (yes, another one).  Daniel bought me some crochet supplies, including a book with tons of patterns and different stitches, new hooks, and yarn.  I’m already half finished with an infinity scarf.  Pics to come when it’s all done.

Daniel also bought me the first 3 seasons of CSI: Miami.  I admit that I absolutely love that show.  I already had the 4th season because that was when I first started watching the show on tv.  Now we are starting a CSI: Miami marathon and I could not be more happy.  I’m easy to please, right?

For the last night, Daniel gave me Super Mario Galaxy for the Wii, which apparently got rave reviews and I’m so excited to play it.  First, I need to finish a few other games I’ve started, including Hey Ice King, Why’d You Steal Our Garbage for the Nintendo 3DS and Super Paper Mario for the Wii.

Oh, and I made Daniel stuffed shells on Friday!  It would have been a fantastic success had I not forgotten to put the spinach into the ricotta mixture.  I was completely bummed about that, and still kind of embarrassed that I forgot something so crucial, but the dish wasn’t all boring.  I did make a great red sauce with sausage mixed into it, and everything still tasted great.  We will be eating those leftovers for quite some time.

Happy Hanukkah!

I’m kind of bad about posting lately because things have been so hectic here.  There’ve been a lot of exciting things happening so this is probably going to be a long post. First, Happy Hanukkah! This post is coming to you from my new iPad, which is really exciting.  Daniel’s parents bought it for us which was very nice of them.  I can already tell I’m going to be using it a lot.

Let’s recap what’s happened during Hanukkah so far.  On the first night, which was Saturday evening, we went to Daniel’s parents’ house to open gifts.  Nicole bought me two bottles of nail polish and some eye makeup.  She knows me so well.  I also received my annual gift card to Starbucks from Adrienne.   We spent the majority of that night eating latkes and chatting with Wendy and Andy, who are good friends with Ken and Adrienne.

On Sunday night, Adrienne handed me a gigantic gift bag full of Doritos.  She knows me pretty well, too.  As one of Daniel’s gifts to me, he made me a delicious dinner consisting of chicken bacon roulades, green beans, and homemade bread courtesy of Ken.  It was amazing.  We’ve only had that dish once or twice before, so it was a nice surprise.  I had expected risotto or something like that, so I’m glad he surprised me.  I only guessed what it was after we went grocery shopping together earlier that day.  From me, he opened The Orange Box for the XBox 360, which has Portal, Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episodes 1 and 2, and Team Fortress 2.  He was very excited about it.  And I’m looking forward to playing through Portal again on an actual console.

Our beautiful and delicious dinner! Thanks Daniel.

The full table shot.

On Monday I opened a chocolate orange and a gift card to Target, both from Daniel’s parents.  Daniel gave me The Avengers on DVD which I was thrilled to see because I love that movie. (You can read all about that here.)

But Tuesday was the most exciting day. Daniel called me around noon to tell me that he had received a job that he only just interviewed for on Monday.  As you may know, he is currently working a temp position at Duke, but his new job will be a full-time position at Duke that will start the same week that his temp position ends.  How perfect!  Last night we celebrated by going to Bull McCabe’s for some drinks and good Irish fare.  And then…we went to his parents’ house where they gave us an iPad. Ohmygod.  I love it.  AND we also went to Best Buy to pick up our new TV, which was also a gift from Ken and Adrienne.  So right now we have a lot of new toys to keep us busy for a very long time.  I can’t even express how excited I am right now, about all of it.  Daniel will finally be able to sleep now that he has full-time work, and I am so proud of him.  I have a fancy new gadget that I can’t get enough of, and we’re only half through with Hanukkah.

Our new TV. Daniel is playing Skyrim. He wanted me to take the photo so that it looked like he was doing something cool.

The iPad.

If anybody reading this has any suggestions for cool or interesting apps, let me know.