Happy Christmas weekend

This is my favorite time of day. I am an early riser (5:30am), and I love being the only one awake. Besides my cat. There's something magical about this time of morning, with the tree lights on, my very favorite Christmas candle lit, and a Christmas movie playing while drinking my morning tea. 

This year I purchased a mini tree for our kitchen and decorated it with mini cookie cutters and gingerbread men. I absolutely LOVE it.

Christmas Eve movies included The Nativity Story and All I Want For Christmas while I looked up recipes for more cookies to make that we don't need but I wanted to make anyway :)

We made up a batch of our traditional sugar cookies :) Those are Tim's favorite cookies, and it doesn't quite feel like Christmas without them.

That evening I went to Christmas Eve service with my sister and her family. Chloe had just woken up from a nap-she was like this the whole evening hahahahaha, I just kind of plopped her down on the couch and she didn't move!

After the service, Tim and I opened our gifts. He bought me the Lunar Chronicles book series as well as Mastering the Art of French Eating, by Ann Mah. I'm so excited to start reading again!

Tim's parents bought us a bunch of stuff and shipped it to us since we ended up not going to Pennsylvania this year, including slippers, Muk Luk navy boots for me, a thin wool long shirt that you wear with leggings, pajamas, a stronghold wallet (I think that's what it's called), a running jacket, a duster, and Tim also got slippers, pajamas, and some clothes. 

I love this photo of Tim haha-it looks like he's wearing a red fur shawl! I had seen that mug on Facebook earlier this year and bought it immediately. He loves it :) We made some hot cocoa with marshmallows and watched Scrooged (until I fell asleep like 1/2 hour into it...it's because I get up so early I have the hardest time staying awake after snuggling under a warm blanket with cocoa!)

Christmas morning I drove to my parent's house for our traditional Christmas breakfast. This year my mom made egg casserole, and I made three types of muffins: chocolate chip, blueberry, and cranberry with orange zest. I actually felt pretty that day, thus the photo in my car lol :) 

We went to my nephew's Christmas program but he didn't want to wear the sheep costume lol, so Chloe wore it for a while :)

 Once I got home, Tim and I opened our stockings. I got a lot of things from BlueQ.com for Tim, including the below socks haha :) He got me a new card box and sleeves for our Final Fantasy card game. Then I bought a crap load of candy for the both of us.

We ate a bunch of sugar cookies and watched a Hallmark Christmas movie, aka I watched the Hallmark movie and Tim took a nap :) Rebecca, I'm going to let you either borrow the movie or you'll have to come watch it with me, it was really cute!

Katniss Kitty got a lot of fun things in her stocking, including a catnip carrot (see the last pic), some catnip mice, and catnip oil bubbles! We played for about 15 minutes with the bubbles!

After that it was time for our annual family photo. This year "Mrs. Claws" came and visited us from the North Pole because Santa ate all the Christmas cookies (thus why she had a catnip carrot), but she knew we always make extra cookies, so she made a quick trip down to get some :) :) :)

Meow-y Christmas, love the Finks

Day 2

Day 2 on our trip to Maine was my favorite, I think, even though I made a HUGE mistake that kind of ruined our afternoon...I'll explain later, but first, let me talk about our trip to King Arthur Flour! 

When I plan our vacations, I always search for unique places to go, and King Arthur Flour's Bakery and Cafe in Norwich, Vermont was one of them :) It is slightly embarrassing, but I was so giddy happy when we got there, I could NOT stop smiling, and I will admit I think I almost started crying??? There is something seriously weird about me haha. When I get to try new things, especially new food, I am ecstatic.

 Tim and I got there about 10 minutes before they finished serving breakfast, thank GOD!!! I really wanted to try their breakfast sandwich :) Tim got a mocha and I got a hot cider for our drinks, and we each got a breakfast sandwich. They don't have a ton of seating inside, but thankfully it was a relatively warm day outside, so we sat at a table in the fresh air :) This sandwich was everything I hoped it would be: a perfectly buttery and light bun with fluffy egg and cheese.

King Arthur also has a store, packed FULL of any type of baking item you need. I, of course, ended up being in one of those moods where everything I saw I was like, "Oh that's cool, but I don't need it", and I proceeded to walk out with only a mug, shirt, and a gift for a friend...oh well :) Oh, and I also walked out without my credit card. 

As I was checking out, I put my credit card in my back pocket with my phone. I NEVER do that, and a voice in the back of my head even said that it was going to fall out of my pocket, but I ignored it. We left the shop and drove an hour north to a cider mill. I got out my purse to pay for lunch since Tim and I rotate between who pays what, and it was my turn to pay for lunch. I'm so glad it was! If it wasn't, we would have made it to Portland before realizing I left my card behind. EVERYTHING was pre-purchased (hotel...etc) with that card, so without it, it would have been very very bad. I was able to call King Arthur Flour and they put me through to the store who said it was in their Safe. Phew! Because we had to go back to get my card, we had to miss going to Mount Washington Auto Road :( Oh well. I definitely learned my lesson. We'd like to take another trip to Vermont in the fall again anyway, so we'll just have to make sure we go then. Rather, Vermont and New Hampshire since that's where the road is :)

Croissants, coconut macaroons, cardamom twisted roll, air cookie? (or maybe cloud?), scones, and hot cocoa cupcake.  Everything was delicious. It'd be so awesome to work there!

The day still turned out great. We had Serial podcast to listen to on our way, and it was super interesting! I highly recommend a podcast for long road trips, especially Serial! We ended up getting to our hotel around 7 meaning it was still light out the whole time we drove, whereas we would have gotten there around 10 if we had gone to Mount Washington Auto Road. It gave us time to relax, especially Tim after a long day of driving-we ordered pizza and turned on American Pickers :)

This is my shirt I bought :) Besides accidentally putting it in the dryer when we got home and it shrunk a bit, I love it! Day 3 coming up!

Day 1

I'm finally getting about to talk about our trip out to Portland, Maine! Our first day of traveling was just that. We drove about 15 hours to get to Chester, Vermont, where we tried out Airbnb for the first time. Due to Canadian border traffic, we didn't get there until 11pm-what a long day! About half way through our trip, we started listening to the podcast Serial, and that is what kept us awake! We got through both seasons. I think we both liked season 1 best as it was more of a "murder mystery" compared to the second season. 

We started our drive at about 6:45am, 45 minutes past when we were supposed to leave...oops :) We got our traditional Burger King croissanwich that we always get when we're going on an early morning road trip and were on our way. Once we got to Cadillac (45 minutes away from home), Tim had me drive because he was so exhausted-I am much more of a morning person.

I drove until we got through the Canadian border, then Tim drove the rest of the way. We stopped in Buffalo, NY for lunch, but misread Yelp's directions to Five Guys and ended up driving through traffic for an extra hour. That cut out us going to Beetle Juice's covered bridge :( Oh well. We had a few places we missed going to on this trip that hopefully we can do next year if we go back :) I do recommend that if you're on a time table on a road trip, DO NOT go far off the freeway. Even if it says its only 3 miles away. 3 miles away in rush hour traffic is a LONG ways away.

We got to our airbnb home around 11pm that night, after driving through crazy winding roads in Vermont. The roads are absolutely gorgeous during the day, but when you've not seen your surroundings yet because it's so dark, they're just annoying haha.

I've heard lots of great things about airbnb, and because the hotels in this area were outrageously expensive due to the time of the year, we decided to stay in someone's attached apartment instead. We were pretty nervous, but it turned out to be a great experience! Our host gave us great directions and we had no trouble finding the apartment. It was on a dirt road, and once you turn onto the road, you drive up. and up. and up. and up. and up. Way up into the hills. This is where we stayed. It was a little quirky and the decor wasn't our favorite, what with a vintage dress hanging from the closet in the bedroom, and some dolls out and about, but it was comfortable and clean. And it was such a nice surprise to wake up to this:

 It seriously looked so crazy outside, I felt like we were on a different planet! Oh, and those holes on the right are two ponds. Further to the right is a tennis court. I can only imagine how expensive this property is!

Then the fog rolled in, but it was still gorgeous!

I mean, how crazy is it to be that high up in the clouds?!

 Oh, this is just their TREE HOUSE.

 It was so beautiful and peaceful out here. They even had a private dirt road that went to the top of the hill they live on with 180 degree views. It was pretty! I'm sure it'd be more if the sun was out, but still fun to see.

Then we were on our way to King Arthur Flour, aka one of my favorite places on our trip!

 Almost the entire drive to King Arthur Flour, our view had GORGEOUS fall colors and rivers. I saw a covered bridge too but we missed turning on that road, so no pic :) It's all in my memory. Actually, that's how it is with any picture of the fall colors-it was SO unbelievably gorgeous I literally laughed out loud at one point. I just took it all in rather than photograph it. There was this one part where we went around a corner and all of a sudden there were just HUGE rolling hills of color and the cutest little town that had a church with a steeple. It was just amazing. 

This isn't it, but imagine this 10x better and that's what it looked like :)

 Everything was so peaceful!

Again, how high we were up! Crazy. Next post will be all about King Arthur Flour, my favorite place on the trip, besides me forgetting my credit card there!

28.

Tim and I just got back from vacationing in Portland, Maine, and let me tell you: always, always, always make sure you have five more days of vacation at home to vacation from your vacation :) Tim and my ideas of vacation differ: I prefer traveling and eating new foods and seeing the sights whereas he is very much a homebody and would prefer staying at home, playing video games, and taking the motorcycle out on day trips. When planning our vacation, we compromised: the first five days we traveled, and the last five days we stayed at home :) Win-win situation. It is so nice coming home knowing you don't have to go back to work right away. SO NICE. Especially when your birthday is in those last five days :)

My birthday celebration started the day before when I went to my sister's house. My niece and nephew made the cutest cards for me, and my sister gave me the most thoughtful and best tasting (meaning the chocolate, not the bath bomb or dish soap) and best smelling (the bath bomb and dish soap) presents. 

 The next day, October 14, was my actual birthday. I started it out by doing my daily Blogilates workout, then proceeded to eat the below muddy buddies prior to eating breakfast for the day :). 

 Tim and I tried out a new-to-us restaurant called The Fillmore for lunch. 

 It's the cutest place. I ordered two sliders: pulled pork and BLT, as well as an order of truffle fries (probably my favorite type of fries in the world), and Tim got a burger with truffle fries. We also got two pops and left with a mocha and a hot cider. Delicious food, but NOT worth $40!!! Yikes. We will go here again, but we'll definitely be watching what we order. Keep in mind my sliders were LITTLE. And Tim's burger was $12.50. Nope. 

 Tim got a mocha and I got an caramel apple cider to enjoy for the ride home. As soon as I tried it, I knew something was weird about it, there was something in it that I just. couldn't. place. And then....I realized the "caramel" flavor they add is BUTTER. Ewwwww. Nice try attempting something different, but butter does not belong in a drink. I'll be drinking a plain hot cider from now on.

 My mom stopped by with some beautiful flowers from their garden :) I think I'm going to plant a bunch of these in our yard next summer. They're so pretty!

 I decided that I wanted some apple pie for dessert (I'm much more pie person than a cake person), so we stopped at Meijer and picked up some apples and vanilla bean ice cream (and apple cider and pumpkins!). Tim helped by cleaning the pan and adding the butter to it, and I did the rest. He gave his moral support by providing his presence in the kitchen until I was done haha. I made us four mini apple pies. They're the perfect dessert when there's only two of you. That way we also didn't have a pie just sitting on our counter waiting to be devoured by moi.

I always bake leftover pie dough with some cinnamon and sugar. It's something my mom always does, and it's super comforting. And delicious. 

 We ended the night watching Tarzan (surprisingly pretty good!) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which I proceeded to fall asleep during, so we finished it the next morning. I think whoever is making films is having a mid-life crisis because seems to me like almost every movie that has come out recently or is coming out is a reproduction from our childhood! And it's awesome.

Overall, I felt loved and had a great birthday. My next few posts will go over our trip to Maine, which I am SO happy we decided to go on, even though just a month ago, I was thinking it wasn't going to be possible! Tomorrow is back to work...but I am going back feeling refreshed and ready to start up my hobbies again after work. I am going to make sure Tim and I take trips every year. It is amazing how much a job can suck the life out of you, even if it's one you don't mind. I am going back knowing that my job isn't my life and am going to try and stay motivated after work to pursue my passions :)