AtomicKnits

99. Get my mom's Christmas cookie recipes and make Christmas cookies in 2008 and 2009 - 2008 Complete!

Last time I was at my mom's house, we sat down and wrote out all of our family Christmas cookie recipes, because I wanted to make some for myself this year.  Last year I didn't get to have any and I was bummed.  I made pecan balls, chocolate covered mixed nuts, and coconut nests.  I spend most of last Saturday making these.  Now, there are cookies everywhere and that's presenting a different kind of problem...but they're SO GOOD!

Escape to the Jersey Shore

The last few days were a real treat.  Santina's family rented a beach house near Cape May, New Jersey, and I was invited!  It was only a couple hours drive for me, so I went out on Tuesday and came back yesterday.  We packed a lot into those few days!  Of course there was lots of eating and relaxing.  On Wednesday, we too Frank, Santina's nephew, to Wildwood to go to a water park.  I hadn't been to a water park in YEARS and all of the water slides were a lot scarier than I remember them.  We also got SWEET old timey photos taken and Frank was such a good sport all of the way through.

After multiple water park fun, we treated ourselves to a southern New Jersey delicacy, the deep fried Oreo.  That's right, you heard me.  They were DELICIOUS.  If you are ever even remotely close to the New Jersey coast, it is worth stopping for these sweet bites of pure heaven.

The next day we visited the Cape May Lighthouse.  There was a small museum and several nature trails around the lighthouse and a small gift shop.  It was really neat to learn about this lighthouse.  I guess it played a pretty big role in WWII.  The folks here helped a lot of innocent merchant ships prevent getting blown up by German submarines on their way to Europe.

After checking out the museum, we all climbed the many stairs to the top of the lighthouse and took many goofy pictures in between.  It was very humid in the lighthouse.  There were a lot of places to stop and look at the views as well as some essent(ial) circular porthole windows toward the top of the climb.

It was a little hazy and foggy that day, but the views were still pretty cool.  Here you see a sweet WWII bunker on the beach.  I'm so glad I got to get away from my apartment and my job search for a couple of days.  Santina's family were so generous to me while I was there and it was really good to see them and spend time with them again!  The rest of the pictures from the Jersey shore can be found here.

The evening I got back to West Chester, Justin took me to see something really special - a Drum Corps International competition at West Chester University.  Now, my high school didn't have a marching band of any kind, so I had no idea what this was all about.  It's nuts!  It's seriously the most impressive thing I've seen done by a group of people in a long time.  You have to appreciate how much time and work all of the members of each of the teams had to have done in order to pull a show like this off.  In my next life, I am totally going to be in marching band.  The rest of the pictures from the show are here.

Santina came to visit!

This weekend Santina came to visit me for a few days!  We had an awesome time and we did lots of crafty things.  The first day she was here we ventured out to The Lamb's Wool in Landsdale and I ended up renting a spinning wheel for a month!  I'll have more on that in a separate post after I'm done my first yarn.

One of the things Santina really wanted to do was learn to macrame.  She had to special order the supplies because craft stores no longer carry it (haha) and she also ordered an instruction book with dozens of plant hangers patterns.  We both made one of the easier plant hangers and we were SO EXCITED with our results.  They are kind of silly and incredibly dated, but they were really fun to make and in no time we'll have lots of plant hangers to place all over our imaginary wrap around porches and huge gardens.

Another thing we did a lot of this weekend was EAT AND DRINK.  Justin and I took Santina to a few of our favorite spots in the boro including Kildare's Pub, Victory Brewing, and Iron Hill Brewery.  Now, at Iron Hill, they have a large seasonal selection in addition to their regular beer lineup.  As a result, the current beer sampler consists of 12 BEERS.  For $7.  How could we not pass that up?  After Santina ordered hers and discovered this wonder, Justin and I ordered them too.  Needless to say, we were a wee bit tipsy as we left the restaurant.  As we were walking home, we spotted Bam Margera walking into Kildare's across the street.  We were excited.

I also showed Santina how to carve rubber blocks to make prints with.  She did an awesome job with her first block.  She made a rotary telephone stamp.  I don't have any pictures of the finished project, but I'm hoping she'll post some!

We had a really awesome weekend, and I miss hanging out with Santina so much.  Hopefully I will see her and her family again soon at the shore!

The big day, in your wedding suit.

So, two weekends ago, I went to Plattsburgh for a long weekend to chill out and see my family.  It was a pretty uneventful weekend.  I enjoyed it very much.  I really loved seeing my mom, dad, and grandma.  BUT, what I should really talk about is...

RACHEL'S WEDDING!!!!!  This was last weekend, and it was AWESOME.  I went to NYC via Greyhound (fuckin' Greyhound) and after a long traffic jam, finally met Tim, Beth, and Eric at Port Authority.  We went straight to Rachel's rehearsal dinner at this really nice Italian restaurant.  We ate a lot of good food and drank A LOT of red wine.  Danny's mom also made us these really nice luggage tags shaped like golden airplanes!  I put mine on my bag already, and I love it!  That was so nice.  After that we went back to our slightly ghetto room at the Sheraton complete with some kind of spittle on the phone (which Eric shoved right against his ear, haha!) and a hole in the ceiling of the bathroom.

On Saturday, we went to Ground Zero and took a look at the site, and looked at the little memorial they have set up with all of the pictures and plans for the new Freedom Tower and stuff.  It was really intense to see the actual result of what happened on 9/11 after seeing things just on TV.  It's just kind of this huge hole in the middle of NYC with a few construction trucks and trailers next to it, while the rest of the city is alive and bustling.  Ground Zero is just kind of like this dead hole in the middle of all of that.  It's sad.

After that, we went back to the W where we slept on Saturday night to get ready for the wedding.  The W as a hotel is super nice and swanky, and I was pretty impressed by the look of it and all of the little details and stuff.  They did, however, totally screw up our room!  Instead of a room with two double beds, we got one room with one bed, and air matress, and a rollaway bed.  We got them to knock the price down *slightly* and give us free drinks (which we didn't have time to use, because we had to hurry to get to the wedding because our room was late because of this screw-up), and free breakfast at Olives on Sunday morning (which Tim couldn't even eat because he was too hung-over, and made Beth and Eric feel more hung over).  Ok, so we all got ready for the wedding and put on our nice clothes and stuff.

And then we went downstairs for the wedding, and it was BEAUTIFUL.  It was in the Great Room of the W and we first went in for the actual ceremony, which was really lovely.  Rachel's dress and veil were SO NICE, and there were rose petals and candles everywhere.  And the bridesmaid dresses were so elegant and pretty.  It was awesome!  Rachel and Danny seemed so happy and so did their families.  It was really special that we got to be a part of it.  After the ceremony, we went back to the lounge area to have drinks and little finger foods (which were DELICIOUS).  After a couple (strong) drinks, we went back into the great room for the reception.  This was the really impressive part.  The Great Room was all dim with lots of candles.  The dance floor was in the middle of the room with all of the tables around it.  Stephannie and I were totally freaking out when we went in because of how amazing it all looked.  All of the flowers for the centerpeices were these deep red and purpley pink colors.  Oh, and the CAKE. OMG the cake was SO AWESOME.  It was 5 tiered I think, with sugar ribbons around each tier and fresh flowers on it.  So, we ate more food, and drank more wine and danced and talked and got really, really drunk.  I mean, really, really, really drunk.  A couple of us were better off than the others, but for the most part, all of us were totally destoyed by the end of the night.  We exploded into our hotel room and hung out for a while, and then went to bed.

On Sunday, we woke up feeling kind crap, ate a really swanky breakfast, and headed out to our respective destinations.  It was a REALLY fun weekend, and it was so neat that I got to be with all of my friends in NYC.  It was so nice of Rachel to invite us to share her wedding day with us, and the ceremony and reception really reflected her personality, which was really the best part.  How, her and Danny are in Hawaii for too weeks and hopefully they're having a lot of 'fun!'