Merry Christmas!

and Happy New Year! But is it too late to talk about Christmas? Or the tree we got at the farmer's market? Of course not!

So like I said, we headed to the good ole farmer's market. There were a lot of trees from numerous farms, which was a bit surprising and overwhelming at first. It was great though because good deals could be had and it afforded me the chance to haggle a bit, not to mention everything smelled fantastic!

Anyways after about 20 minutes of checking out the trees, we decided to make a choice, since after awhile, they all look the same and we were in danger of pine-peeping (photography pun alert!) the trees.

So here is Beth giving the seal of approval on our choice:




Our tree hailed from Ashe County, woohoo Western N.C.!


The tree was tied to the top of our jalopy wagon by the lumberjack.

Shucks, I miss my beard!

And here I am giving the tree my seal of approval too!

So back to house to put the tree up and then decorate it with ornaments, lights, ribbon, of which we previously had none. (We also got an amazing wreath from the farmer's market, but I can't seem to find the photo anywhere!)

After numerous trips to the store, kind gifts from friends and one boss, the tree finally was ready!






The view from outside:






We played host this year, and had Beth's grandmother, her sister Brittany, her parents and younger bro Andrew over for Christmas and the weekend. It was great to have the house filled with people, although the cats disagree with us on that!

Our main event was Christmas Day lunch, where we started out with spinach stuffed mushrooms topped with cheese, followed by a pear and walnut salad with mustard vinaigrette and blue cheese:






The main course was broiled salmon with garlic lemon pepper crust:




With sides of mashed potato gratin with goat cheese, garlic and scallions:






and steamed fresh asparagus sprinkled with Parmesan cheese:





For dinner, we had honey baked ham, sweet potato casserole, brown rice and stuffing. Of course, the rest of the weekend was spent eating leftovers of all of above.

And wouldn't you know it, after all the preparation and build up, it was all over with too quickly! Luckily, we had New Year's to look forward to, as we were headed to Whiteville for the big family oyster roast!

More on that to follow, hope everyone had a good holiday!

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Nothing says Christmas like the Movies

For some reason this year, I've struggled to get into the Holiday spirit. Maybe it's because the calendar sneakily ambushed me and suddenly I found myself less than 7 days from the BIG day with not a preparation in sight. (Ok, not entirely true...we had the tree up...mostly decorated, but not finished.) Or perhaps it was due the unseasonal warm weather last week that killed my Christmas Buzz. But most most likely, my Grinchness is probably rooted in the bitter fact that I only get Christmas Day off.

Whatever my excuse, I am breaking clean from my Bah Humbug ways and with that said, I am determined to lift my spirits into a holiday frenzy no matter what. Scrooge be damned. This is Christmas. So with that determination set forth, I am hitting up the telly whilst I wrap my presents, basking in the glow of Hollywood's Christmas delights and relishing in holiday nostalgia.

And lo, I give you

Beth's Top Ten Christmas Movies

10.) All those claymation movies....Rudolph, Frosty, The Year Without A Santa Clause, and the like. Since these movies are made out of clay, I figure I can lump them together....You're welcome for the deliberate pun.

9.) The Santa Claus starring Tim Allen. OK, so maybe it's a tad on the predictable side. And maybe it reeks of the '90's, both in terms of fashion and it's choice lead actor. But you know what? That kid is super cute and the slapstick is pretty decent. So yes, I defend this movie for making my list because trust me, there are alot worse Christmas movies out there people (Fred Clause Vince Vaughn, really?) Maybe I wouldn't buy it, but if its on TV, I am secretly excited.

8.) The Nightmare Before Christmas. Is it a Halloween movie? A Christmas movie? I couldn't tell ya, but for this list's purposes it is now officially dubbed a Christmas movie.. I secretly suspect it's a commercial golden egg, as the story line hits up all the major commercial holidays, thus justifying this movie's prominent display year round. Either way I love it for Tim Burton's updated venture into claymation. Plus it's a musical, something I'll get to in a moment.

7.) The Muppet's Christmas Carol Who doesn't love Kermit and Miss Piggy singing along with all the their Muppet friends, while telling this classic Charles Dickens' tale. My childhood love for the Muppets instilled a deep and unabashed love of musicals, much to Somanna's dismay on road trips.

6.) ELF Somanna thoroughly disagrees with me on this one. But that's why it's my list, not his. If you are feeling down this holiday season, just remember the this Elven Rule: "The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear." And if that doesn't work watch the scene where Will Ferrell finds out Santa is coming!

5.) National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation We all know it and love it despite having the lines memorized. We acknowledge that funnier movies and actors have come along since Chevy Chase's hey day, but the Holiday season wouldn't feel right without a visit from the Griswold's and Cousin Eddie.

p.s. let's all take a moment to reflect on the career trajectory of Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Reflect and give thanks that she found Seinfeld ....and a straightening iron.

4.) Home Alone This was the second movie I ever saw in a theater and at 10 years old, this film convinced me that Macaulay Culkin's comedic genius should earn him nothing short of an Oscar. Good thing they didn't give it to him, the fame screwed him up enough. But nonetheless, this movie is time tested, gut grabbing, slap your knee stick funny. If you haven't seen it in awhile, watch it again because if you don't laugh out loud at this movie, you might not be human.

3.) A Charlie Brown Christmas Linus tells Charlie Brown what Christmas is all about and Snoopy is adorable as always. It just isn't a holiday without the Peanuts.

2.) How The Grinch Stole Christmas You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch! The cartoon version of Dr. Seuss's classic is the only way to go. And I'm betting that song is stuck in your head now isn't it? So I'll save you the effort and post the lyrics here. Merry Christmas!

1.) A Christmas Story "You'll shoot your eye out kid!" I triple dawg dare you to tell me there is a better Christmas movie than this one.



"But I heard him exclaim ere he drove out of sight, Happy Christmas to All and All a Good Night!"

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Slow day at work + business speed internet =...

Wedding pictures!... I know I know there are plenty of pics from it by all you wonderful people, but Heather has gotten some amazing shots of you folks! Worth a look see! The albums are on Beth's Picasa site, so when you have that slow day at work (that's why I was able to get them up, and the fact that bandwidth and speed is better!) check 'em out! Oh, and not all 1600 plus pics are up, there is a reason Heather took several shots of the same thing, I was surprised how difficult it is for us to coordinate our eyes to be open and looking at the camera... no problems with people smiling though!









(Thankfully no pro pics of the kegstand kraziness... the guilty party, you know who you are!)
-Cheers!

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"Is your house on fire Clark? No, Aunt Bethany. Those are Christmas Lights"

It may be an annoying 61 degrees here in NC (my apologies to all those Yankees battling snowstorms and ice, but it is hard to get into the Christmas spirit while I sweat in my Christmas sweater.) But we nonetheless battled through the "elements" of semi-sunny skies and warm temps to get the house all decked out.

Check it out! Trust me, we are already a big hit in the neighborhood (and with the power company.)




Sike!

That's not our house, but you already knew that. But oddly it does make you feel more Christmas-y, doesn't it? Now we're off to start our Christmas shopping. I'm fairly sure tacky and procrastination are complimentary traits.

p.s. The title of this post is for all the movie buffs out there. First one to guess right wins a little somethin-somethin'.

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(No) Word Wednesday

Taken in Coorg.

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Memo to All the Daddy's Out There

I fully expect to see Jeff and Paul doing this in a few years with their little girls!

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Thanksgiving Part II!

I bet you didn't think we could possibly eat more did you? HA! You were wrong. Do not test our eating skillz people! Somanna is a human garbage disposal and I come from a long and proud family of food connoisseurs.

So whilst we were in the burgh de Pitt, we swung by Sewickley's newest burrito joint: Azul



We kicked off our meal with guacamole and chips. The guacamole destroyed my willpower with its most excellent flavor, a proper balance of red onion and cilantro with a hint of lime.


Somanna ordered the chicken burrito, wet which means it comes with salsa, sour cream and holy guacamole Batman! I ordered the steak burrito and Bob ordered the pulled pork, both wet of course. Who eats burritos without sour cream and guac, dieters aside, I ask you?


Nice job catching my grubby fingers hitting the chips there Somanna!


As you can also see, Somanna sampled the Bohemia cerveza and found it a little heavy and bitter, but still a tasty accompaniment to his meal.

Bob advised us to order the salsa verde (green salsa) as it was far superior to the salsa rojo (red salsa). And right he was, but we had to try both of course. The California style burritos were excellent, stuffed with rice, beans and grilled veggies. And with Azul being less than 10 minutes from Bob's house, it is dangerously close.

And hey the local artwork on the wall even caught our attention:




Zihuatanejo, Mexico is where we collasped, err honeymooned after the wedding.

Best of all, we had leftovers which we gladly dropped off at Brittany's as we rolled down the highway back to NC.

As for our weight gain, don't worry. I've have managed to coerce the commitment of my husband, sister and younger brother in doing our first 5k in February. Muahahaha! At this point I think Andrew is in the lead, as he is the only one that's actually been training thanks to his track star lifestyle.

Stayed tuned folks: Holiday Merriment is upon us and you don't want to miss our first attempts at Griswald style decorating!

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It's Thanksgiving Charlie Brown!

Well despite this post's tardiness, here it is nonetheless.

For el dia de turkey, mi esposo y moi headed north to Pittsburgh to converge on my brother's house with the rest of the family (minus Brittany, who had to work. Bah Humbug! But she was with us in spirit and thus spared the annual holiday weight gain.)

All in all, Bob & Rosie hosted ten extra peoples, plus their five and they did it in their trademark smoothness. Maybe if I give them a shout out here, they will write a book on the art of hosting and will give me a shout out for repeated guest perfection. One can hope...

I could bore you with details of our trip, but let's cut to it shall we? After all, the whole point of Thanksgiving is to gorge oneself on endless amounts of food right?

So here is the purrty Turkey that Rosie cooked this year. And believe me, it was as tasty as it looks! Not only that, the table was gorgeous enough to make Martha Stewart drool. Big ups to Rosie! She was rocking the domestic front!

Now here is where I would put a picture of the spread, but apparently my personal photographer was busy doing something else and slackin on his duties. Tsk , tsk.

(If Shaloot makes it back to the stairs on the right, he regains his super human powers by which he can hurl small children onto fluffy couches with great might.)

So instead I give you the beautiful setting in which we feasted with little self control.

You ain't got nothing on Rosie, Martha!

But do not fret my dear reader (it's a little early to assume we have more than one of you at this point.) But we.ate. good. And eat we did.

For starters, there were 3 kinds of stuffing to suit your fancy: crab stuffing, oyster stuffing and veggie stuffing.

And of course there was brown rice (a Wyche staple) gravy, sweet potato casserole with pecan topping (My favorite!!), asparagus casserole, jalapeno cornbread, salty ham ( a MacKenzie staple, I think), roasted green beans, cranberry sauce straight from the can (Erin, I'm right there with you honey!) as well as the freshly made kind.

And for dessert we had pumpkin pie and raspberry crumble.

And ice cream. To go with the pie of course. Duh.

And Aunt Margaret's Mexican dip on Friday. And FRESH fried oysters on Friday too.

And smoked salmon....and chex snack mix, which we kountrily refer to as "Trash."

And I'm going to stop because suddenly I'm self conscious both about the size of this food list and that I lovingly shovel "trash" into my mouth and never questioned this title until I had to write it out. Hmmm.....

So yes, we all gained weight. And before you even ask I'm going to go ahead and bite the bullet and acknowledge, that yes, there were NO mashed potatoes. I know it's like American sacrilege or something.

I can't speak for the MacKenzies, but the Wyches have always been rice folks. We have brown rice, red rice, yellow rice, white rice with gravy, and Jesus loves them all, plus all the little children of the world. Maybe that's why I ended up marrying an Indian man....with all my rice lovin ways, curry was bound to enter the menu rotation at some point.

So when we weren't eating, we were hangin out w/ the family, maximizing our weight gain by being as sedentary as possible. Somanna and I finally managed to watch Pirates of the Caribbean 3. Yea, I know it came out like in 2000 or something, but you know what? Our netflix queue is absurdly long and we're a little behind, alright? So just back off! That Planet Earth series is a LOT OF FRIGGIN DISCS ok?!!

But we finally saw it and now we can truly sleep at night knowing Jack is reunited with his beloved Black Pearl. I of course was relieved to have uninterrupted viewing of Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom. So it's all good,(except for Kiera Knightly's acting, but we still love her for her amazing abs don't we?)

And when we weren't busy doing all that , it was time to play with the three cutest boys in 'Merica. So now I give you what you have hopefully been chasing all this time: a barrage of photos of The Wyche Boys.


Joe. ....Bob's own personal Mini me.


Mac n Cheese + dinosaur pj's = childhood bliss.

Jackers is really the sweet one of the bunch, but apparently he is not feeling the camera love on this one!

Sweet Jack

Wasss up! Bennett rockin the stripes and trying on Shaloot's kicks.

(They are playing the latest Gameboy contraption which is called a PSP or something...I don't know ...it made me feel way old and inept at technology. Great self esteem booster when a six year old rolls his eyes at you because duh, its sooo easy Aunt Beth.)

"I would never misbehave Aunt Beth, look how cute and sweet I am?"

"See?"......Flirt!

P.S. they now refer to Shaloot as Uncle Shaloot. Very cute and something to be thankful for indeed.

(the b&w picks were made on film by Shaloot's old skool camera, the Pentax K1000. Check out the other shots on his flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shaloot/sets/72157610578095695/detail/ )

Nice plug there Somanna.....

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(No) Word Wednesday

Going to post a random photo to get through the mid-week hump! Enjoy!
ps- its a hint about the next post...

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City of Steel!

Is that even correct? Anyways as you know we took a trip up to Pittsburgh for the Thanksgiving weekend and apart from hanging with the family and eating the food (which will talked about by Beth) we got to see Jeff and Christine's new baby girl! She was born on the Wednesday before, so a great Thanksgiving they certainly had!

Jeff with his baby girl:

and her proud mama:

We're so happy for them and think that they will be wonderful parents! It's going to be great watching her grow and tugging at their heart strings!
We also got up with Santosh on Saturday and we met in his borough of Squirrel Hill and started the cold day with some warm, spicy Thai food! It is seriously good and we believe him when he says its the best in Pittsburgh... heck its the best we've had! We started with chicken satay:


We then had a green curry dish and panang curry with fried and white rice washed down with Thai iced-tea. Well Santosh and Beth had it... I'm not a fan of tea that's cold:

After warming up we took a quick trip to check in the sites. First up we went up to Mt. Washington and for the infamous view (though from a different perspective):

The Heinz field, home of the Steelers:

and we went hunting for the ice-rink Santosh stumbled across couple of days ago:

Pittsburgh is a neat city, lots of history and character, definitely worth checking out in more detail... that means getting to walk around and take more pics! But dang it gets cold up there...
-S

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