Are you KIDDING ME with that last one? It almost looks like the stairwell where Derek and I got married. But honestly....this would be my ultimate holigays set up if I were rich enough and so anti-joy that I did an ostentatious tree decoration every year:
I'm all holigay horned up just thinking about it, holy fucking shit. It's gorgeous. The couple two homes down from us have four trees in their living room, with a delightful dressing of baubles in their windows, and I envy it every time I walk by their home.
This aesthetic will always be a pipedream for me, though. Not only do I like for my house to look warm and inviting, I actually like it to BE warm and inviting. And you can't have set ups like that with cats, kids, and friends who come by. Too much shit will break. So we have a very modest fir strand with warm white lights that goes around the banister, and then we have our tiny little tree. Derek and I are kind of at a loss, because this year, we could not find the box with our lights, our tree topper, or half of our ornaments. All of the us have an ornament that is just for us that we put on the tree first, before any other ornaments are put on. Derek has a hot sauce bottle, I have a pair of pointe shoes, Rhyann had a stand in ornament last year and we were meant to pick a forever one this year, but that eluded us, Laurel had a little owl with a scarf, and Alex had a rainbow christmas tree. They've all gone missing. I had to go buy new lights and new ornaments this year, and I didn't buy a tree topper because who cares, but our tree DID look a little funny with just....wires at the top.
But all of the fuckin' presents under the tree served as a great distraction for the fucked up lack of a hat our tree was sporting this year. As previously stated, I went fucking NUTS this year. Not only was I excited to have all of the kids at home, but I was excited because Rhyann didn't have to leave. My oldest baby lives with me full time now, and what can I say? It inspired me to really embrace consumerism and support capitalism with my whole, entire heart.
And boy did I fucking EVER. Wow.
The tree is STUFFED with gifts. The back of the tree? Stuffed. The side of the tree? Stuffed (you'll see stockings resting on the mound of gifts). Under the tree? Stuffed. This tree was fucking packed to the god damn gills with presents. And the stockings!
I do a theme every year for the stockings, and this year was "nostalgia". Gifts that Derek and I would have wanted in our stockings. I forgot one of the gifts, which was tamagotchi's, but it isn't like the kids noticed. They seemed to enjoy their stockings. I would say the highlight of the stockings, the theme that ran throughout, were the sea monkeys.
This is Rhyann's stocking...Rhyann got Sea Monkeys on Mars.
This is Laurel's stocking, and Laurel got Original Sea Monkeys.
And this is Alex's stocking. She got Sea Monkeys Magic Castle.
Now, Derek and I did not get Sea Monkeys. I was trying my hardest to find the executive sea monkeys set...which I had never heard of, but Derek went on and on about when I discussed with him the theme of this year's stockings. I thought he was lying to me. He was not.
The sheer absurdity of such a thing existing thrilled me to my very fingertips. Sadly, I couldn't find one that was being sold. Plenty of people had them in sold out listings, but that doesn't help me very much. Had I been able to find that for Derek, I would have nabbed myself a portable sea monkey aquarium...
But because I couldn't get Derek the one he wanted, I opted instead to get us Sea Monkey shirts with the original art on them. I'm wearing mine right now, in fact!
This gold beauty is my stocking, and I love it so much. I wanted something mermaid-y, but I have yet to find a mermaid stocking that perfectly balances chintz with aesthetic. So gold sequins will have to do. You can see my little shirt sticking out of the top of it!
Here is Derek's stocking, and his little shirt is similarly peeking out of his top. Cuties!!!
Let's see. Here is everyone and their stack o' gifts:
Alex, happily holding the gift from her dad, which she insisted on opening first. I think she had a good idea of what she was getting, and she was just really excited about it. Her mound of presents is kind of hidden by her chair, so the depths of my overboardness aren't as overt. I will say that about 100 bucks of stuff that I got for Rhyann and Laurel, Alex opted out of. She took the cash for Genshin. So Alex had a few less gifts, but no less was spent on her. I spend the exact same amount on the kids, so even when it looks like somebody got more, they didn't get any more SPENT on them.
Laurel is buried under her presents, with overflow in front of her, and Rhyann has chosen to stack theirs up on the side of the couch. The two big presents in red and pink wrapping papers are Derek's big presents from me and the kids. But like...really they're from me. Everything is from me. More on that later.
Here is my lump of stuff, on the right hand side, and Derek's is on the left. This was after stockings had already been opened, so the middle part of the couch is lousy with tchotchkes and socks. Mostly socks, really. Derek and I got some of the same things the kiddos got...some lotions, socks (mine say "I am a delicate fucking flower" and Derek's say "it's ok to fart". I joked that I really should have switched those, since I'm the one that needs to know it's ok to fart. At least while I'm awake), and I think we got one more thing in common with the kids...but our big stuffers were drinkables. Derek got these gorgeous coffees from a few Black Femme roasters (we've tried one of the three, and it is absolutely STELLAR), and I got a shitload of tea flavors.
I took photos of everybody opening their presents, but I would be posting like, a bajillion photos, so I grabbed my favorites from the many, many, MANY photos that I took, and I will post those instead of all of them.
Here are my favorites of Alex:
One of the things Alex has as an outfit signature is tights. Because Alex is tall and thick, mainstream tights are just....not built for her. They're thin and flimsy and bullshit. So I got her a grip of Snagtights. I think I got her...uh...five pairs? Which may not sound like a grip, but they're 20 bucks a fucking pop. Five is a grip, scientifically.
Alex opening up her pen that is modeled after Raiden Shogun's weapon in Genshin. She was obviously delighted.
Here she is posing with the Staff of Homa model that Derek spent weeks and weeks making her, and I spent days painting. Unfortunately, the scale is off, and the print was a little thin, so it has already broken. But the joy is still palpable!!
And these are her new headphones for school! The little cat ears light up, they are too fucking cute. Alex loves them.
Here are my favorites of Laurel:
Laurel giving one of her new stuffies the Simba treatment.
These next two photos are from the same gift, but Laurel seemed super duper extra happy with this wig:
As might be obvious from her literal leap into the air with excitement.
Alright, so I almost always get everyone one gift in a similar vein. We all get different versions of it, I tailor it to each person. This year was body related. So, I got a bunch of little stuffies from I Heart Guts, I believe. I got a brain with depression, Alex got an estrogen molecule (wearing a little daisy hat and adorable shoes), Derek got a back pain, Rhyann got a GERD, and this is a picture of Laurel opening up her bed bug. Laurel got a bed bug because the hotel we got the kids for the con they went to earlier this year had a bed bug problem, and all three kiddos got infested. I was wary that maybe it wasn't the right time to poke fun yet...thankfully, I was wrong. Laurel got a big ol' laugh out of it.
Here are my favorites of Rhyann:
Here is Rhyann opening up a very funny stuffy from Derek...a bear shaped liked a cinnamon bun, with a very tiny head.
Here they are, opening up and showing off the very cute pink cuttlefish wet specimen that Alex got them (this is a bonus favorite picture of Laurel).
Rhyann is opening up a stuffy of Lucas the Spider, which I had never heard of, but we all know Rhyann loves spiders, so Derek saw it and knew he had to get it for them.
But wait! Rhyann also has a video!
Here are my favorite pictures of Derek, and Derek ALSO has videos!
Will he go out to play upon a spider's web, having enormous fun and calling for a friend? The world may never know.
There are so many words to express my feigned annoyance that he was the most excited over 16 pairs of Dickie's socks and not the variable speed drill I bought him, or any of the other amazing gifts he got. So many. I'll leave the stringing them together for you to do on your own time.
Here are Derek's videos!
I have been planning the Jesus shirt for years. Very literally. Since about 2018. I'm glad I finally made it. I wish I hadn't talked myself out of doing it the way I wanted to...when I described it to Derek, he told me it was exactly how he would have wanted it, but oh well.
Here is the story of the James Garfield T-shirt:
Derek and I were doing a crossword puzzle. Alex wandered into our room, asked what we were doing, and then asked if she could maybe help with the crossword. So I gave her a clue, something to do with James Garfield. And she said, completely in earnest, "is that the cat that loves lasagna?" and Derek tittered a little bit, but I didn't, I held my composure, and then explained to her that no, this was a president of the united states, and that Garfield she was thinking of was a cartoon cat. She left, and that was that Until later that night, long after she went to bed, I finally let go all of the pent up laughter I had been holding in. Because I try so hard not to laugh at my kids when they make honest mistakes. I will laugh, but almost always when they're not around. I told Derek it would be amazing to make a shirt with a picture of James Garfield on it that said I hate Mondays. He thought it was hysterical. So I made it, knowing he would forget about it soon after. Victory. What a great shirt.
And now, because I feel obligated to share pictures of me but ONLY because I love this gift so much, here are the photos of me opening my very favorite gift, from Derek and the kids:
He is a 7 foot long duck that I named Mr. Petey C. Quackers (Petey C is actually PDC, which stands for Premium Duck Content), and he sleeps with me every single night. Derek stuffed him a bit more, as he was a little floppy straight out of the box, but now he is a robust gentleman that is my sleeping buddy. Between him and my weighted blanket, I am fully in love with my sleeping arrangement.
That is a pretty great summation of our present opening day. We did that on the 26th, when Laurel got home. The next day, we opened up the stack of gifts from my dad and Caryn, which I wrapped in special paper so we'd know it was from them. Rhyann got a great knife and sheath, Laurel got a bauble for her purse bag, and Alex got a few skirts and a cardigan with skulls on it, and she wears that like it's her fucking religion.
On to the next thing we do for the holigays: the food.
This year we did Caribbean food. We initially planned on Mediterranean, but couldn't narrow down the regions we wanted to focus on, and then we were going to do Ethiopian (I bought so many gorgeous spices, I made nitter kibbeh and awaze in preparation), but we ultimately revisited Caribbean. We didn't really overdo it, either. For us, it was a very tame amount of food.
I don't like touching the raw meats, so did absolutely none of that important prep. But I made lots and lots of other tasties.
Here's the base for green sauce! All manner of fuckin' aromatics and peppers and shit.
This rudely reminded me of my whiteness, because when I sniffed it, I almost died. It punched my olfactory system straight in its sensitive Italian goolies. But after I cried several tears, I could process how freshy and gorgeous it smelled.
I cleaned out my food processor and batched up another delicious sauce: a mango pineapple scotch bonnet hot sauce.
Look, I'm not proud of this, but I made this in late December. The mangos and pineapple were canned. THEY ARE HARD TO COME BY FRESH IN MISSOURI IN DECEMBER.
This one smelled hot, but not nearly as punchy as the green sauce. The sweet offset this really nicely.
It fucking TASTED hot, though. Fresh and perfectly scorchy. Look how gorgeous they are side by side!!!
Was I getting parched in a way that only a boozey drink could satisfy? Why yes I was. So I made myself a negroni, which was my little holiday drink love affair. I've found that I am very taken with amaros (I even like Jager, but I drink it with the gravitas of an aged woman, not the lack of a will to live to see my thirties like a 20 year old boy), so a negroni just...makes sense. I also used my favorite gin. Who am I even? I don't have any idea.
Next, I made callaloo. This is perhaps the sexiest greens dish I have ever created, and I have been craving it ever since. I've made it another two times and eaten it all by myself, I'm not proud.
I didn't plate this one beautifully to show it off, because...I mean. The true answer is I just ate it all out of the pot. It went from the pot straight into my mouth. It never saw the right side of a plate.
I believe my last contribution was the sweet potato pudding. this photo is going to look like nothing special, but I assure you, the mini bite I took was magical, and the report back from my family was a unanimous rave review.
Almost every morsel was eaten, and I made a lot. So that's impressive.
Oh! Good news! I was just going through my photos and I found out I DID plate myself up a little bit of foods! Including the greens! It isn't a GOOD photo, but it does mean that I had a bit more control of myself and I didn't just house all of the callaloo over the stove like a monster.
But that's about all I made on my own. I did help Derek with prep work while he made the meaty aspects of the meal.
Yes. We used a Crock Pot for the jerk chicken. Sue us for utilizing the modern convenience of midwestern families everywhere with their dump meals.
We did broil it like real people would, though. And it scorched up beautifully!
Derek made the jerk sauce, and it was reportedly wonderful. I will cheat and eat beef, but I do not eat chicken, so I didn't try it. I actually meant to use a little portion of the jerk sauce for my tofu, but I really lazed out. So I ended up having oxtail.
I SAID OXTAIL.
We bought out the store. That's a fuck ton of oxtail.
First, they had to have like...a mini brine?
I don't quite understand what this step did for the ultimate finish of this dish, but Derek and I didn't run our usual tests on if steps like this are frivolous or necessary. Oxtail is too pricey, so we'll just take the recipe as is. No tweaks required.
Oh hey! I made this bit!
The oxtail had to marinate before being cooked. It's a fucking process to make this oxtail stew.
FIVE MORE LEFT! Just kidding. We fuckin' shoved all ten pounds of oxtail into two storage bags.
Marinate, you once swishy bastards. Soak in all of the flavors.
Fulldisclosure, Derek did not understand how to make the caramel in the instant pot, he thought it wasn't working, because he couldn't quite bring himself to listen to me when I tried to help him. We're lucky that the dish didn't turn out all acrid and fucked up, no thanks to Derek. Who can be seen here, burning the brown sugar and looking puzzled over why it isn't doing what he wants it to do.
But everything turned out ok. Derek did eventually trust my advice, and here is my little plate. I ate meat.
Callalo, oxtail stew, and cauli rice. Quite the gorgeous little meal!!!
And that was our big fat food day this year. It was a treat. We didn't make everything I wanted to make (I didn't get to make cornmeal cakes, or tostones, or...I think I had three other things I planned on making, but we were just...kind of ill-prepared this year. Not ill-prepared. Lazier than usual), but we had a delicious day.
Now, every year I ask everybody who gets me gifts to get me a Whole Foods gift card, which I then turn around and use for a charcuterie board for a New Year's Eve dinner for myself and Derek. Alex is never interested, and the other two kiddos are never here.
BUT.
This year, the oldest two would be here for NYE, and Alex expressed interest in our charcuterie board.
So what does a silly bitch like me do in that case? Oh you bitch. She spends 500 dollars for one meal and makes a total fucking STUPID time of it.
I had to be in STL to finish my tattoo:
I love her wonky eye! She's supposed to look like me, but...she doesn't. Oh, well. I'm already dreaming up my next piece, so on to the next. Anyway.
After my hour and a half of finishing this piece, Derek and I headed to Whole Foods, where I would go on to spend an embarrassing amount of money on cheeses and crunchies and meats:
Look. That is a deceptive conveyor belt. It doesn't really look like anything, it looks like I bought a normal human person's amount of things for a charcuterie board. 300 bucks at Whole Foods? That tracks, you can easily spend that amount of money and only come out with four Asparagus waters and two things of organic raspberries.
This picture does NOT show the additional 150 I spent at Costco and the additional [REDACTED] I spent at a couple of other stores to bring my NYE whims to life.
Are you ready to see this shit laid out? Feast your eyes, hos.
Ok, so here is the entire table. Keep in mind, you have not yet met the cheese. The cheese deserves a grand entrance of its own. So what have we got here, huh? Let's introduce you to the key players at the meat and crunchies table:
The meat spread isn't that inventive. Derek and I did grab three different brands of prosciutto (one from Italy! Italian pigs! What class!) and whether it's real or not, we found the dead Italian pig shavings to be the superior dead pig shavings.
The peperettes, to me, tasted like spent cigars and I hated them. There is a dish of pate in there, but nobody ate it. Not even the cats. So I have to assume it wasn't good, because they will eat each other's vomit with relish, so it's not like a one of them has a discerning palette.
That pate did not get put away, and it looked the exact same way when we woke up the next morning. Not even a LICK had been printed onto that smooth, gross liver.
Alright, so here is one of the dumbest, smart purcahses I made. The big hunk of yellow above the gorgeous chocolate assortment is Amish butter. I spent ten bucks on two pounds, and I have never been happier to be alive than I was when I was eating that butter.. That butter is exactly what butter is supposed to taste like. I found excuses to put it in and on everything. It was that fucking good, and it was worth every penny, and I fully intend on buying another block the next time I'm in the area. No shame. I'll buy two or three. They'll get used. I'm keto and vegetarian. Butter is in my macros, mother fuckers. I'll eat it at every meal, FOR every meal AMISH BUTTER FOR EVERY MEAL 2023!!! See you later, healthy heart!!!! Eat my dust, Surgeon General! And by dust I mean my cremated remains, as that would surely kill me.
But see, I did make sure to include fruit! Obviously. I wanted to make the meal healthy! So we've got grapes, red pears, two kinds of apples, gooseberries, a pomegranate, tapenade, my homemade apple jelly, my homemade pickled apples, Derek's favorite kind of olives, and then...spreads!
I bought all but two of these things in Ithaca, and I bought them specifically for this food celebration. The honey (Cacao Kapow! is honey flavored with cacao nibs and infused with peppers) and the three spreads in the front are from Ithaca.
Is it time for the main event? Yes. Yes, you fucks. Get ready for the cheesing of a lifetime.
Here we have our precious little soft rinds:
Look at this Miette. She is the fuckin' sluttiest, tastiest ish:
I'm so god damn horned up for that cheese. But wait, we have other tasty softies:
Anyone who tells you they don't want to fuck that cheese is lying.
What else have we got? Up next we have our hard cheeses:
