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!