Our Christmas weekend was awesome! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and that Santa brought you everything your heart desired. Even though Erik and I spent the holiday in New York, away from our parents, we still had a lot of fun visiting NYC, hanging out with his sister on Christmas Eve, and opening presents on Christmas Day. Here’s our Christmas weekend recap:

Friday

I had an orthodontist appointment in the city, so we drove down in the morning to take care of that and a few errands. We had a great parking spot by Central Park, so we walked down for a few blocks, passed the Central Park holiday market and browsed for a bit. Lots of pretty jewelry.

Erik had heard about a gingerbread competition at Le Park Meridian benefiting CityHarvest, a non-profit that supports the homeless in NYC. We thought the gingerbread entries were very creative. For $1, you could vote on your favorite. Here are the two we voted for.

Erik voted for the gingerbread typewriter

I voted for Occupy North Pole. So cute!

From there, we walked down an extraordinarily crowded Fifth Avenue. On our way to Rockefeller Center to see the Christmas tree, we passed by some decked out retailers, including Cartier and Fendi.

Cartier

Fendi

Finally, we got to the tree! It’s big and beautiful, and the crowds, while also big, are not so beautiful. I am so glad I no longer work in midtown during the holidays! One season was enough! Yikes!

Ever want to see what the tree looks like in person? Here’s a video!

The tree in the shadow of glorious 30 Rock

One of my favorite things that we saw were the dancing Salvation Army officers! Yep! The men collecting change for the Salvation Army were dancing along to Christmas tunes and it was hilarious. You can watch it here.

After we snapped a few pics, we quickly exited the area. We attempted to stop at Serendipity 3, but the wait was tw0 hours, but Dylan’s Candy Bar was around the corner, so we just stopped there instead for a little sugary pick-me-up! And then we took a cab back to our car because we were sooo tired from walking and there was no direct way to take the subway. It always costs more to take a cab, but sometimes, we’re just plumb tuckered out, it’s totally worth it.

When we got home, Erik made a second attempt at putting up shelves in our apartment so that we could hang stockings. The first attempt led to a couple of holes in the wall (now sealed with spackle). But the second attempt was a success!

My talented husband. I don’t know what I would do without him!

Saturday

Christmas Eve! Erik and I woke up relatively earlier so we could finish up some grocery shopping for our joint cooking projects. I had the intention of cooking my Oatmeal Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip cookies, and Erik was going to cook Baked Creamy Leeks for Christmas Eve dinner at his sister’s house.

Unfortunately, my cookies were a disaster. I have no idea what happened. It’s a complete mystery. I even followed a recipe on Martha Stewart’s website for oatmeal peanut butter chocolate chip cookies, but the recipe didn’t pan out. I was very disappointed. Luckily, Erik’s Baked Creamy Leeks came out great! But I didn’t photograph his cooking endeavors, so I don’t really have anything to share. Other than to say they were made with heavy cream and cheddar cheese and didn’t look a thing like a vegetable when all was said and done!

Around 3:00, we went to our local church for services. We’re not heavy church-goers, but you know, it’s Christmas. If you’re going to go at all during the year, you go on Christmas and Easter. So we went. It was nice. Chronicles of Narnia themed. After church, we drove up to the town my sister-in-law lives. Her town reminds me a bit like Stars Hallow from Gilmore Girls. It doesn’t have quite the same town square area, but they seem like they all know each other. Every year, they have a Christmas Eve gathering, where townsfolk gather around a bonfire to sing Christmas carols, a big tree is decorated with lights, they serve cookies with hot cider and hot chocolate, and Santa visits! He arrives on a fire truck! It’s pretty funny. I love it. We’ve gone there twice for Christmas and it’s definitely a favorite thing of mine.

It was freezing, of course, so we didn’t stay long. For dinner, my brother-in-law made Swedish meatballs and noodles, and we also had salad and the leeks. For dessert, there was cake and cookies. Yum! But in between dinner and dessert, we decorated gingerbread Santa sleighs that my sister-in-law bought for us! It was such a fun little crafty activity to keep us occupied while our food settled.

My Santa sleigh

Erik’s sleigh

When we got home that night, we were tired but I was in the mood to watch one last holiday movie. I had never seen Elf (I know!) so we picked that one. It was hilarious and I can’t believe I waited so long to see it!

Sunday

Since we stayed up so long to watch the movie, we slept in pretty late on Sunday morning. We didn’t get up until around 10 o’clock! While the coffee brewed, we opened our stockings. This was our first year doing stockings and we weren’t entirely sure when we should do it, but we figured while we waited for coffee worked well. Erik gave me a spa eye mask, some chocolates and Burt’s Bees body butter. Yay!

Our lovely tree and collection of presents

Then we opened our gifts. Lots of great stuff! I got some sweaters, Julia Child’s French Cooking cookbooks, leather gloves, some journals, a necklace, a scarf and a headband. But the best part was that my parents gave us a gift card to Best Buy to help us pay for an iPad! Unfortunately, Best Buy is sold out of the iPad so we’ll have to wait a little bit before we get it. Bummer.

After opening presents, we made brunch! We used our new waffle maker that we got from our wedding, but it took a few tries before we figured out the proper setting for the waffles. We also had bacon, eggs, and mimosas! Yum!

Our Christmas tradition when we’re on our own is to see a movie and have Chinese food. We were supposed to hang out with a blogger friend, but those plans fell through. But we stuck with our plans and saw Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows and then had Chinese food on our way home. Nothing fancy or even that good, but it was still fun to spend some quality one-on-one time with my hubby.

All in all, it was a really great Christmas and I am so excited to see my family later this week in California, and then to celebrate my friend’s wedding next week! Starting of 2012 the right way: with the most important people in my life!