Happy New Year

Remember Y2K? Is it just me or does it seem crazy that that was TEN years ago? What a difference a decade makes!

Ten years ago, I was in California, home on Christmas break, and would go out for a wild New Year’s Eve with a group of girlfriends from high school, as was my tradition then. I was entering my junior in college. My boyfriend, Andrew, and I had just broken up (for the first of many times) because he was moving to Italy. He still called me everyday though.

Six years ago, I was living in China. I had a big party in my apartment with lots of people from all over the world. It was fun, but I was single and I missed having someone to kiss at midnight.

Four years ago, Chuk and I celebrated our first New Year’s Eve together. We had been dating for less than a month and I went to a party at his house. That night was the first time he ever told me he loved me and, funnily enough, the first time I ever got mad at him.

Today is my first New Year’s Eve as a wife. Over the last two or three days, Chuk has thrown together an impromptu party at our place for tonight. I hope to spend the afternoon at Ikea while Chuk finishes cleaning up for the party. (Our houseguests just left this morning.) I expect it all, the rest of the day and tonight, to be relaxed and low-key.

These last ten years have encompassed the best and worst times of my life. I’ve experienced a lot of loss, but a lot of growth too. I spent my 20s figuring out who I am and what I want and I hope that this next decade, my 30s, I’ll figure out how to get it.

A very happy New Year’s Eve to all of you out there in cyberspace. I’m so glad Y2K didn’t wipe out all the computers because it allowed us to meet. I look forward to sharing this next year with you all.

Silent Night

The National Christmas Tree last night

I'm spending a lovely evening at home with my family. I hope you're enjoying yourself too.

Dupont Circle in the Snow

Dupont Circle looked beautiful today in the winter sun. They started to clear away snow from around the fountain with a bulldozer, but there was still a lot in the green space. So much so that people had been making snowmen. There were several, but I only got a picture of this small one close to the path.

Sorry for the picture quality and the grey rectangles. I don't know what the deal is with my camera phone.

Dressing Up $0.99 Stockings

In an ideal world, I would have made matching, monogrammed green velvet stockings for Chuk and myself using the sewing machine he got me for my birthday. (I don't know how to sew and it seems like an easy project to start on.) In this ideal world, this project would have been done early enough that when I found out I had five guests coming for Christmas, I would be able to sew them matching stockings too. Of course, I would monogram these by hand too.

Alas, this is not a perfect world. The homemade stockings for Chuk and me will have to wait until next year. In the meantime, we'll use our mis-matched ones that we brought into the marriage. For our guests, I bought $0.99 stockings at Target. I still needed to be able to tell which was for whom though, so instead of building a snowman on Monday, I monogrammed their stockings. The job isn't perfect, my embroidery skills aren't great and I didn't have any red floss so I had to use green, but I think it adds some much needed chic-ness to otherwise cheap stockings.

All I Want for Christmas

Amber is hosting an "All I want for Christmas" party this week.

Of course I want lots of intangible things like an end to hunger and thirst, eradication of malaria, world peace, inner peace, a better temperament, a solution the climate crisis, etc. For my list of what I want for Christmas, I'm going to stick to material items. And because I don't want to bore you with all 36 items on my Amazon list, I'll tell you the things I don't think I'm going to get. These are in no particular order.

1. A butler bag because I hate having to dig around in my purse to find things.

2. A Wii. I seriously love the boxing game and I think it would increase my exercise level from zero to some.


3. A forget me knot ring because I love thin rings and also I think it is super cute and unique.


4. This comforter set. I might buy it for myself after Christmas if it goes on sale. Little known fact: I'm obsessed with bedding. Getting into clean sheets and shopping for bedding are like my favorite things in the world.

5. Rolls of satin ribbon. I have had a ribbon obsession (apparently I have a lot of obsessions...hmm...) that stems from my infancy. Throughout my childhood, I couldn't fall asleep unless I was rubbing a ribbon. Even now I love to rub ribbons, or even satiny tags on clothes. Um, this post is starting to dissolve from "Friend Makin' Monday" into "psychoanalyze what a weirdo Meghan is" pretty quickly.


6. These super-cute embroidery patterns, which I would embroider on a set of dishtowels.

7. A Craftsman bungalow.

8. A job in my chosen profession.

9. A trip to Ireland. We were supposed to go for my birthday, but that didn't work out for a variety of reasons. We're hoping to go sometime this year though, probably in the spring. Paradoxically, if I get a job, it's unlikely we'll go because it will be hard for me to accrue enough vacation time.

Now that you've seen my motley assortment, what are you lusting for this Christmas? Alternatively, what gift are most excited to give?

Personalized Money or Gift Card Holder

As you've probably figured out by now, I'm not really into giving gift cards or money as gifts. I prefer to pick something out for the recipient myself, but I understand this is not a perfect world and sometimes we must give a monetary gift.

I myself was in that situation last Christmas. I wanted to get Chuk a bike, because his had been stolen, but I knew he wanted a very specific kind. I asked lots of questions about what kind of bike he wanted, but I didn't want him to know I was getting him a bike, so I was asking in a conversational way, rather than getting a list of specs. Well, it was too technical and too complicated for me to understand the exact type of bike he wanted and I didn't want to blow a bunch of money on something that wasn't going to be what he needed. (I've since learned bikes are kind of like shoes; you have to "try them on" to make sure they fit your body type.) Long story short, I decided to give him the money to buy a bike himself.

I still wanted the gift to be special though because it's a little weird to hand your fiance a check and say, "Merry Christmas." Inspired by this post, I made him a pop-up money holder. I used a file folder, pictures cut out from magazines, and a photo I printed out on regular paper of Chuk to make a collage of him with a bike outdoors. Please notice the only picture of a bike I could find was a child's orange bike with training wheels and that the picture of road I had wasn't big enough, so I colored an extension with crayon. It doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be thoughtful. On the back, I pasted a heart-shaped leaf, leaving the top open to slide the money in.

He loved the bike. He loved the collage, especially that it was three-dimensional. And I love that he kept the collage displayed on his dresser for almost a year now. If you have to give a gift card or money, you might as well do it with style.

Snow Day!

I went to college in Connecticut for four years, graduate school in DC for three years, and taught at a school in Xi'an for two winters and never once had a snow day. I got a temp job last week and suddenly, I get a snow day! The whole office will be closed for the day.

Chuk has a snow day today too. It's a good thing because our weekend to-do list was too long and we didn't come close to finishing everything. Now we have a whole extra day to finish our chores, which is great since my aunt, her husband and my cousin are now coming to see us a day early.

I'm hoping we finish quickly so I can make a snowman. I've never made one before in my life and I'm dying to try it. We have the perfect kind of snow for it.