Our 2013 Christmas at Home

I've realized something about myself.

What I've realized is that I positively stink at taking candid, random photos throughout the holidays.  Other than the usual pikcher-takin' of the treats and things that I bake so that I can share with all of you, as well as our annual Christmas card photo shoot, I'm typically left with only a grid of Instagram photos from my phone (seen above) and a paltry little collection of images when I finally remember to grab my camera (seen below).

So we will make do with what we have, I guess!

Matt and I prefer it when all of our family holiday commitments take place before Christmas Day.  We have a tradition that we have held onto for several years now that Christmas Day is a day for hiding in our house in our pajamas doing whatever we want, cooking dinner for just the two of us, and participating in some serious CouchTime(tm) with our boys.

This year was no exception.  We celebrated with my family on Christmas Eve, and because my parents live about 2 hours away from us, we didn't get home until after midnight.  Before we left, though, we discovered that our downstairs heat had stopped working!  It was a frigid night, so in the morning we decided to take our Christmas Morning celebrations upstairs into our cozy warm bonus room (where we spend 99.9% of our time anyway).

We have a second, smaller tree in there, so it was really comfy and just as festive!

The boys were given some cute squeaky toys that we knew they would destroy in 5 minutes flat, but Christmas is the one time we give them cheap toys with the sole purpose of letting them be mangled.  It is Christmas, after all.

Yeah... that Santa Claus is not long for this world.  He even looks a bit concerned about his fate.

As predicted, the toys were utterly destroyed in only a few minutes, and we had to throw them away to avoid an unpleasant and expensive emergency visit to the vet.  Despite the size of a corgi, they are powerful chewers, so we have to be careful about the toys that we buy them.  These refillable KONG balls are excellent.  They've had them for about 2 years, and after all that time they are only showing small nicks and dings.

The boys don't care that we recycle their current toys as gifts, because the real magic is on the inside... we stuffed their balls with brand new chew sticks!  Because they know the drill by now, though, it only took a minute or so for them to remove the stick from the ball and chow down.

Om nom nom nom.

We spent a long, lazy morning drinking coffee, eating a breakfast of delicious crustless spinach quiche, and opening our gifts.  It was pretty much a perfect day.

Later in the afternoon it was time to start preparing dinner, and we found out that sometime during the day our downstairs heating unit decided to start working again!  I was stupidly excited about that, because I had not been looking forward to spending too much time in the frigid kitchen.

For dinner, we made simple roasted Brussels sprouts (our favorite veggie!), a delicious, juicy turkey that we allowed to brine in pink Himalayan salt (a sweet gift from friends!) before roasting, homemade cranberry sauce (my favorite recipe for cranberry sauce!!) and a small pan of dressing that my mom made and froze for us at Thanksgiving.  Having that dressing in the freezer was amazing and made our dinner prep practically no effort.

We topped off our meal with a delicious rosé wine, which was a very thoughtful birthday gift that I've been saving for a special occasion.  It really hit the spot!

The rest of the evening was spent in a blissful, foggy wine coma, stretched out under an electric blanket in front of the TV.  It was a good year.

How did you spend your Christmas?  Let me know in the comments!