Emily and Matt

Today is our six month-o-versary! We made it! Not that I doubted.

I won’t lie, Christmas was absolutely exhausting. A part of me is jealous of the other two newlyweds who are in SoCal because they don’t try to squeeze in family time in one day. By 2 p.m., we had Christmas at our place, at my parents’ place, Matt’s parents’ place and were onto our last stop at Mama’s. I loved spending time with each family, but it wore me out.

You know what else wears me out? Captions.

One more Christmas-related post coming up!

I am finally ready to share our Christmas decorations, even though it’s over and no one really cares anymore. My family is all about the traditions and decorations, so it was fun, and a tad intimidating, to put it all together on my own. I would say “our” own, but I did most of the decorating while Matt was out of town for a week.

First up, my homemade wreath.

Next our tree, which we borrowed from Mama’s house. No one remembers her old tree being so short, so it may be Gran Even’s. It’s small size is good, because my ornaments filled it right up. Although, we needed more lights than we expected.

We really wanted to go fancy, with the wires and the subwoofer, where you’ll notice is where Santa found his cookies and milk.

One of our newest ornaments is from Sara, our friend and also a bridesmaid. It’s a SF cable car, so we can remember our San Francisco friend. Thanks, Sara!

I love that our living room is feeling more and more like home. Hopefully it will stay this way once the Christmas decorations come down.

And, of course, don’t forget the nutcrackers! Since I was two, my brother and I were given nutcrackers (as well as a new ornament) each year. And one year I received five, because the Wizard of Oz set was just a normal present. It seemed overwhelming last year, when both collections (50 something in total) filled my parents’ house. Now it seems much better, with my 26 nutcrackers displayed in all over the house.

Matt had requested his present be delivered early, in case it would be something that would enhance a little party we had at our place. Don’t ask me how, but Santa got the message, and his present was waiting for him after his week-long business trip.

Note: It was sent early because he made the extra nice list!

What could it be?

Rock Band! Woo hoo! I’m now considering making a No Doubt tribute band.

That’s all for now. Next I’ll post some pictures from Christmas Day. Hope you all had a merry one!

SWAG = Stuff We All Get. If it’s good enough for Michael Scott and Megan, it’s good enough for me.

This website, called SwagBucks.com, is a Google and Ask search engine that lets you earn “bucks” for searching. You can then redeem your earned bucks for stuff, like gift cards all the way up to iPhones. It’s fun to get something for stuff you already do.

If you want to join in the fun, click here or copy my referral link:
http://swagbucks.com/?cmd=sb-register&rb=258768 It helps if you make it your homepage, so you can remember. By using this link, you become my “friend” (hello, nice to meet you, Friend! What do you want for Christmas?) and I get bucks each time you search, too. It’s also all the more reason for you to get your friends involved.

And just to come full circle, I offer you this Office clip:

Although, I don’t believe this is a scam. I did several SwagBucks searches to find that out.

Other similar rewards programs I’m involved in are MyPoints, which you earn points by clicking on emails and clicking through on online purchases, and Ebates, which earns you money for online purchases. Comment below and I can send you referrals to those, if you wish.

Moving on now. Next post won’t be website promoting related, I promise.

Tech savvy kids are in luck, they will be able to track Santa on Christmas Eve online! I stumbled across a link to do this on Google Maps, which led me to NORAD Tracks Santa. Per their website:

Santa Cams are ultra-cool, high-tech, high-speed digital cameras pre-positioned at many locations around the world only on Christmas Eve. The cameras capture images and videos of Santa and his reindeer as they make their journey around the world. Come back to this page on December 24 to see Santa fly!

Apparently NORAD is a bi-national U.S.-Canadian military organization responsible for the aerospace and maritime defense of the United States and Canada. Everyone join in the chanting: U-S-A! SANTA! U-S-A! RUDOLPH! U-S-A! … yay Canada … U-S-A! ONLINE PRESENT-TRACKING IN MOTION! U-S-A!

At our company Christmas party, I let the cat out of the bag: I love Christmas movies and music. My friend looked at me, puzzled, saying “Oh, that’s nice. I only know one other person who likes that stuff. You must have worked in retail.” I highly doubht working in retail would enhance my Christmas spirit.

I can thank my family for this. Christmas is a really special time, filled with many memories. My mom always decorates so nicely, with everything from garland to candles to candy dishes filled with red and green treats. I’m trying to replicate that in our new home, but that’s for another blog.

Getting to my point, yes there is one, I think the best way to conjure up these memories is through music. I love everything from traditional hymns to Alvin and the Chipmunks. Some years I manage to make mix CDs for my family. And I’ve been meaning to do that this year, but don’t think I’ll get around to it since my music collection is stuck on my wonky computer. So instead, I’ll spread my cheer through You Tube clips.

I’ve heard this Mariah Carey tune via Pandora, an online radio site. It really gets me amped for what I should really be dwelling on this time of year:

This next one is from “White Christmas,” which I have actually yet to see. I heard it through XM radio and thought it was quite fitting this year, with all the economic hardships and uncertainties. Plus, I have a thing for Bing!

The following continues with Bing (and Fred), but with a twist. It was shared with me by my college roommates and I believe it was from the Gap Christmas CDs. It’s a favorite of mine every year, but this year was my first time to actually see the movie.

That’s it for now, if I stumble on any more, I’ll post them. Enjoy!

We were spammed! I wish it were almost as fun as being jammed a la Spaceballs:

But it’s not. Spam of the food or internet variety is just plain gross and I’ll do my best to fix the problem. My awesome readers were bombarded with links touting prescription drugs and other bogus stuff. I’m sorry I didn’t catch it earlier. Apparently, my blog platform has been compromised for several users, and I am still learning how to upgrade to the newer version. (Yes, I dabble in Nerd Talk from time to time.)

Thanks everyone for sticking in there.

Hello blog land. No updates on bread baking, but I’m almost out of the loaf that I bought for Matt and managed to eat all by myself. This post is actually one I never got around to publishing before the wedding. Like food on the ground for less than 10 seconds, this one is still good. Enjoy!

In reading wedding blogs and forums, it’s interesting to see that many betrothed women are not changing their names. I, for one, am anxious to change my name. Mom and dad — it’s not that Atwood is a bad name. I really love it. I’ve had people tell me that it’s a perfect writer’s name. Sure, there was that boy Patrick in third grade who always called me “Itwood,” “Ofwood,” “Bewood,” etc., but the playground taunting didn’t really come into affect until I interned at a big company.

“I’m sorry, but we can’t change this,” my boss told me. “I guess your parents weren’t really thinking about email addresses when they named you.”

Yes, my first initial with my last name becomes: eatwood. As much as I tell people my email address is “E for Emily and Atwood,” they write it down and say “Oh, eat wood! Ha!” Sometimes a coworker will walk by my desk, mutter it out loud and laugh.

And then there was the woman who said, “Eat wood! That’s great! Like, go suck an egg! Go eat wood!”

Now, unless you lived with me during my last year in college (or you presented me with one major diamond beauty), you’re not allowed to call me that.

(Post-wedding Emily here, and you also can’t call me that because my name is officially and legally changed.)

Internets, I confess that I’m not an uber cool newlywed housewife. Last night I “successfully” added loaf number 5 to the bread reject file. It turns out that I can’t bend bread recipes to my convenience. Telling my friend Jillian about loaf number 3, she said she hasn’t heard good things about silicone loaf pans. (She knows a lot about stuff like this, in case you were wondering about her credentials, because she baked me snickerdoodles when we were freshmen in high school and her mom sewed her prom dresses.) So I bought a metal one:

It looks so sad and dwarfed in its pan. The crust was also really thick and painfully crunchy. Yet, I didn’t think the pan was the problem. Something else must have been wrong. I turned to Megan, my cousin and cooking/baking extraordinare, who suggested that my yeast was bad and that I wasn’t kneading for long enough. I used new yeast and kneaded until the end of time last night and…drum roll please…it was still a failure. Truth be told, I was too ashamed to get photo evidence of my most recent let down.

On the bright side, loaf number 5 wasn’t as dense and was larger than the one above. Megan suggests that I knead by hand and not with my “handy” mixer, so we’ll try that once this loaf runs out. I also think I need to let it rise for much longer since the weather is pretty chilly these days.

One small victory was when Matt got home from practice, he asked for some of the partially failed bread! I thought last batch would have led to eternal breadmaking distrust. Yet, his “thumbs up” while chewing is encouragement enough to continue on. I’ll keep you all udpated.

Matt has been traveling on business a lot lately, so I’m having to get used to being married long distance. We spent about a year and a half dating long distance, so you think we would be used to it, but no. So now I’m compiling a list of reasons why this stinks. Why yes, it is a very productive use of my time. Maybe I’ll forward this onto his boss…

1. Cooking for one. My meals typically consist of crackers.
2. Taking out the garbage.
3. Being warmed by the heater, not a hug.
4. No one to laugh at my jokes…but myself.

One upside is that my parents had me over for dinner the past two nights. Although, my mom said that they’ll have to invite Matt over without me to keep things fair. Somehow I think they would let me in, too.