On Gwensday I do what I want...

...well, to a certain extent. Anyway, I wanted to be sure to share with you some events from last weekend.

Friday we went to Mike & Amy's new house for a champagne toast. Aaron and Mike have been friends since they were 12 and Mike and Amy are moving here from Atlanta. They'll be living a 10 minute walk away from us and we're excited to have them here! Of course, Friday was when we got hit with snow and ice -- welcome to Columbus!

Then Aaron and I went to Mitchell's Steakhouse, which used to be a Cameron Mitchell restaurant but is now owned by Ruth's Chris but is still called Mitchell's. Go figure. Anyway, it's one of our favorite places to go during the holidays, especially when it's snowing (although they should have opened up the blinds so patrons could see the snow outside). We both ordered steak, of course, and other highlights were my lobster bisque and a coconut ginger lemon drop martini - delish!

Inside Mitchell's

THEN, we walked over to the Ohio Theatre to see the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and Chorus perform the Holiday Pops. This was the 30th anniversary of the Pops, and the first time in 22 years that Aaron and I were in the audience instead of onstage. We thoroughly enjoyed it and had to refrain from singing along, except when we were supposed to sing along!

Sunday we went to The Grand Valley Dale Ballroom with some of our framily to see Deana Martin's Christmas show. Deana is Dean Martin's daughter, and Valley Dale has been host to lots of stars, including Dean, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, BB King and even Alice Cooper! It was a fun, festive evening!

As for Saturday, it was a pretty lazy day involving naps and football-watching. And now it's already Gwensday and getting close to another weekend. Hooray!

You're Always a Kid on Christmas

I thought that today I'd be doing the slacker's weekend recap on Tuesday, but I couldn't resist linking up with Helene and Taylor to share some Christmas memories and never-before-seen-on-this-blog classic pictures of me.


Let's start at the beginning. This is my first Christmas and that's my great-grandmother.

My dad was a Lutheran minister and my mom was a church organist so we were always at home for Christmas Eve but on Christmas Day we would travel to see my grandparents in Warren, PA. That's where this next picture was taken in 1978. Clearly I had received a new outfit and I'm oh so serious.

Are you ready for this? I'm not sure I am. This is 1981 and I'm rocking a new swimsuit.

Most of my Christmas memories involve music. Between singing in choirs my whole life and going to church and just plain loving Christmas music, it's probably my favorite part of the season.

And cookies. My mom makes great cookies and for a while I baked Christmas cookies, too, but I haven't done that in years. My friend Robin is on day nine of Twelve Days of Cookies and I just might have to try some of these recipes!

What's your favorite thing about Christmas?

Frivolous Friday

So what's the weather like where you are? On Gwensday Columbus got up into the 60s and we even spent some time on the screened porch after dinner to take advantage of the mild temps. Yesterday it just got colder and colder and today all the schools are closed because the white veil of death is coming. Leading up to today, the local news gave teasers like "we could have record snowfall!" As it turns out, the previous record was 2 (that's TWO) inches. Inches, not feet.

To be fair, the inclement weather is starting out with ice, and that does make everything worse.

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Let's move on to "The Sound of Music Live," which was on NBC last night. I debated whether or not to watch this and I wasn't going to be home anyway but since I have a DVR with seemingly unlimited capacity, I went ahead and recorded it and watched later. I wasn't sure I'd make it through the whole thing because honestly, Carrie Underwood was just ... not good. And I'm not hatin' on her (even though I really wanted Bo Bice to win "American Idol" that year because she had zero stage presence, I admit that she's turned into quite the performer, just not in this). Sorry, but girlfriend can't act.

The best parts of the show involved seasoned Broadway actors Laura Benanti, Christian Borle and Audra McDonald (I never liked "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" until she sang it - I've mentioned my love for Audra before). And this is the point: NBC wasn't doing a remake of the 1965 movie; it was a live televised performance of the 1959 stage musical. It really drove me nuts to read people on Facebook and Twitter complain that "nothing can compare to the original...Julie Andrews was the best." Look, I agree that Julie Andrews rocks, but unless you saw Mary Martin on Broadway in 1959 you can't talk about the original.

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Adam Levine.

via

I've been a Maroon 5 fan for a long time; I've seen them in concert. But I was late to the Adam Levine party until I started watching The Voice. He's yummy and seemingly very cool and fun. And he's admittedly messy. I just watched him on Ellen and he talked about the difference between dirty ("dirty is gross...unhygenic") and messy ("messy is when you don't care that that shirt is on the floor"). I love him even more now.

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Finally, on a less frivolous note, when I heard that Nelson Mandela died -- which, by the way, I found out from an ESPN alert on my phone -- I knew that Facebook and Twitter would blow up with quotes and sentiments and I can't really add to any of that, but here's one of my personal favorite quotes.

Happy Friday, stay safe if you're in the path of the winter storm (okay, stay safe even if you're not) and have a great weekend!

I Suck at Goals

At the beginning of every month, a lot of bloggers post about their goals for the month. Me? I work well up against a deadline, and I don't mean a self-imposed deadline. Now that I'm working from home, it's just that much easier to put things off. I started thinking specifically about things on the blog that I've started but haven't kept up.


Restaurant Odyssey - I have seriously slacked off on posting our reviews. I have somewhere around 10 posts to write and the first one is from a restaurant we visited in April.


Organizing/Decluttering - I did the drawer in the bathroom. One single drawer. In January. And it's deteriorated into a mess again.

My mom sent this to me last night. ADCD is genetic, people.

Travel - For a while I was on a roll, but I never did the final post from our 2010 Italy trip and that Europe trip we took in June? I only managed the first post from that.


Getting Fit - Yeeeaaahhh. The last post I did on that was six months ago. And of the 20 pounds I lost, 10 have found their way back.

So, I'm not making any promises, but here's hoping that December sees me getting back on track.



On a completely different topic, you should check out Steph's giveaway - $25 to the charity of your choice.

Thanksgiving Windup

Happy Post-Thanksgiving, in which it's perfectly acceptable to eat leftover pie for breakfast. Actually, I think it's perfectly acceptable anytime but we don't have pie around the house very often. I hope you all had a great holiday weekend. We kicked ours off with Gwensday/Thanksgiving Eve festivities at our house. There's even photographic evidence of me in the kitchen.

Making Chex Mix (also acceptable for breakfast since, you know, it's cereal)

We hosted on Thanksgiving Day; there were 16 of us, including members of both our families and some friends (framily) as well. Enter obligatory food pictures.

Besides the obvious: amazing squash soup made by our niece Jackie; the stuffing had bacon and apples in it; sauteed carrots and onions are a favorite at our dinner.

We also make the kids pose for pictures. I'll have more, but here's one from my phone of my mom and her grandchildren.

Here's the best story of our Thanksgiving. A guy showed up at our door and said that he's a baker and that earlier he stopped by and took some rosemary from the community garden and to say thanks he brought us a loaf of bread. I was so stunned and I managed to say thank you and Happy Thanksgiving but I should have gotten more information or asked him to come inside or something. So if anyone knows a guy named Matt who's a baker and has a beard (or did on Thursday), let me know.

I hope you get an idea of how big this loaf of bread was, and it was fantastically delicious!

Friday we went over to my mom's to hang out with her and the kids and her cat Coco, who was a stray in our neighborhood that my mom adopted last winter.

Saturday involved lots of football watching and a neighborhood Friendsgiving at Jen and Jason's house.

One of the fun cocktail napkins of the day; the boys played football, but Amy's comment was "it's no Kennedy compound game."

Sunday was church, singing, napping ... even though Gato and Clover tried to block my couch time.

Now it's time to get some work done and perhaps some cyber-Monday shopping!

The Best Gwensday of the Year

Happy Thanksgiving Eve a/k/a my favorite Gwensday! I'm sure you're all sick of me referencing my birthday, but too bad because I'm going to do it again. A couple years ago my birthday was on Thanksgiving Eve and I posted about it here, along with some stories of birthdays and Thanksgivings past. (Don't dump all the potato water! Or, if you're me, do it and just don't care.)

Last night I walked a block to Little Rock Bar for karaoke night. Kat couldn't go but I decided to go by myself, and while the place was busy, none of the usual Tuesday night regulars were there. But I hung out for a while and sang and met some new people. It helps that I go there often enough that the karaoke dude and the bartenders and the owner all know me.

This must have been there Saturday too, but I didn't see it until last night.

Here's a playlist of the songs I did last night. "Glitter in the Air" and "Killing Me Softly" are favorites of mine, but the other two I had never sung before. What the hell, I didn't know most of the people there anyway!




We had snow yesterday and I couldn't resist taking this picture of our poor grasses in front of the house on my way home:

Aaron was fast asleep when I got home and the cats were pretty settled in, although I didn't see Bella at first. But then I found her snuggled in a pile of laundry:

She really got herself in there! 

And maybe she's not as airheaded as we thought - this morning Aaron realized that our heat wasn't on and it was only 58 degrees in the house!

And so as I write this, I'm in front of the fire and here's my view outside:

In case you can't tell, it's snowing. Sideways.

I hope everyone celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow has a wonderful holiday. Safe travels to all! We're hosting and the house already smells so good (no thanks to me - Aaron does almost all of the cooking).

Birthday Weekend Windup

Thank you to everyone for the Facebook messages, texts and tweets for my birthday! Aaron is always amazed by how many FB birthday greetings I receive, and he found the perfect birthday card for me:

Inside: "Which automatically makes this paper card
from me all the more special!"

Friday night we sang for a concert at church. My mom came over for that and spent the night with us, so she was here for some of my birthday. Saturday was Ohio State's last home game, so Aaron and I and Colin and Amy headed to campus to watch the game and partake in some adult beverages.

Birthday selfie; Most trees have lost their leaves, but not this one on our street; Beer tower;
Inside the Ohio State union

I couldn't resist a screenshot at the exact time of my birth.

Let's just say that on Saturday I acted half my age. And on Sunday I felt twice my age.


Our niece Jackie created this for me. I absolutely love it - she is so talented!

It was a fantastic birthday weekend! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend as well.