Festive Figments

As some of my earlier blog posts may demonstrate, I was so caught up in grading and writing before Christmas that I all but forgot the holiday loomed so near. A day or two before Christmas itself, I. was walking me in to the university library when we passed one of our favourite charity shops. This one had been selling Christmas trees for nearly a month, but the formerly expensive trees had been heavily discounted to £5 and £10 (for small and large trees respectively). With all our Christmas decorations in America, we decided on a whim to get a small tree, figuring that we could make enough trimming to make it properly festive.

While I was in the library, I. and the shopkeeper worked out a deal whereby I. came home with a much larger tree than expected (for much less money than we thought). Christmas eve was a day of great origami; I. made cranes and boxes, and then we both attempted the beautiful kusudama flowers a friend of ours had made a few years ago and which I'd found online since then.

Also on Christmas Eve, I discovered that despite his pitiful sighs of lament over all the candy he couldn't eat, someone! had eaten some of the construction materials for my yet-unfinished gingerbread house. Unwilling to buy another bag of licorice, I improvised, and the resulting house had a slightly oversized "stone" fireplace of M&Ms rather than the licorice bricks I had expected.

Christmas itself was splendid. We attended the beautiful Episcopal church we found last week, and had a wonderful time again, then came home and sipped coffee on the couch. Presents were sparse, but the absence of gift-wrapped items made the festivities more about spending time together, and we enjoyed sitting and talking, sipping delicious beverages, and watching the occasional sci-fi show.

This year, I. was in charge of cooking our Christmas dinner. At the Christmas Eve farmers' market, we had bought a lovely slab of ham, which he simmered in cider and then roasted in the oven with a mustard glaze. I. made fresh herb bread and then transformed his beautiful baked slab into stuffing, and supplemented these with mashed potatoes and carrots. As a treat, we had also bought some of our favourite local cider at the farmer's market, which went beautifully with the ham.

On Boxing Day, we slept in ridiculously late (during which time I learned exactly how much I had been pushing myself in the grading and writing marathon) and spent a lazy day doing very little. I. took me for pints and word games at the pub, and then! we went to enjoy my Christmas present, which as two tickets to (very good seats at) The King and I, onstage at the nearby Edinburgh Festival Theatre. While not quite as amazing as last month's trip to Top Hat, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

The 27th marked the three-year anniversary of I.'s proposal. I. made an amazing soup for supper, which was Thai in flavour and contained shrimp, coriander, and my favourite kind of noodles.

We've had a fairly lazy end of month; I'm now caught up on grading but a bit behind on writing, and am looking forward to the start of a new semester, and to a bit of exciting travel for conferences and research as I embark on what is supposed to be the home stretch of thesis writing.