Christmas 2019

I don't know about you but I'm completely befuddled (and slightly exhausted) about how Christmas has come and gone.  I did a terrible job about documenting our season here on the blog but if we are being honest, much of it was school, work and pretty mundane stuff with some magic sprinkled in here and there.

However, I thought it would be nice to do a photographic recap so here it goes, a few of our favorite moments from this Christmas...

Last weekend, we had friends over for a Christmas gathering.  We bought a board from Home Depot, sanded it and coated it with beeswax, and made a gigantic charcuterie board with it.  It was such a fun thing to do!  In the very center, we made a rosemary, olive, pepper and cheese wreath!

The house looked super festive with lots of greens (I did post specifically about that on theflowerfrog.com) and white lights.

Christmas morning we had to wake Harris up at 9!  My Mom joined us for breakfast and then the whole family came over in the afternoon to eat and exchange gifts.

We only had one small snow before Christmas, and it didn't stick around too long, but it was still beautiful!

And finally, we sent out Christmas cards that we somehow totally missed taking off the fake name on the front of the card.  We still sent them out... so Merry Christmas from The Cunninghams!

Tree Trimming

 With such a short season between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we got our tree immediately following Thanksgiving so we could enjoy it for as long as possible.  We went to a very cute and charming cut your own tree farm this year as the place where we usually get our tree closed after 30 years in business.

We had our usual broccoli tree soup and pull apart bread rolls for dinner.  The rolls are a huge hit!

This years ornaments commemorated Grace playing Henry in Henry V and Harris breaking his collar bone while snowboarding!

We just love our tree!

Thanksgiving Week

Both of our children have the entire week of Thanksgiving off and it has been a wonderfully full week for them.  Here's a rundown....

Last Saturday, Grace headed into NYC to spend the day with Trystan.  Trystan is the son of dear family friends from our college days.  He is currently studying at NYU and was a wonderful host.  They went ice skating in Central Park, spent a couple of hours wandering the Met, walked the Brooklyn Bridge, and drank copious amounts of tea/coffee.

On Monday, the children and Bryce headed out on their annual Thanksgiving backpacking trip.  Every year, Bryce says that it won't be a hard hike and that there won't be a lot of snow.  And every year.... there is.  :). They love it.

On Wednesday, Grace found out that she was accepted into her #1 choice for college, St. Andrews University.  Yep, the one in Scotland!  To celebrate, I made shortbread cookies and we drew the school's logo on it!  We are super proud of her.

Thursday morning, the children and I got up super early and headed into NYC for the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade.  We had been given tickets to sit in the Grandstands but, unfortunately, even though we got there in plenty of time, they had already closed admittance (it was not at all clear to anyone that they would do that!).  So... we watched while packed in like sardines and could only see the big floats and balloons.  It was still fun and certainly a bucket list type of thing to do!

We got home in the early afternoon and then hosted Thanksgiving at our house.  Bryce smoked a turkey, I made cranberry sauce, desserts and an app board and everyone brought side dishes, it was really nice!

And there is our week in a nutshell!   After a bit of a tough fall around here, it's so nice to be getting back into the groove and looking forward to the Holidays.

The Essential Work Shirt

I have exciting news on the The Flower Frog front!  I finally, finally got our shop live.  Of course, there are some tweaks to be made but I feel so relieved to have it open and out in the world!  A bit of backstory is in order...

The number one reason that we even began to think about opening an online shop was because of an idea that I had years ago to make a shirt that was beautiful and functional to wear while working in the garden.  I had a traditional smock from England that I loved to wear, I do like a uniform, but didn't really work for our environment of heat and humidity.  Plus, it didn't look very good on me!  So I started working on designing my ideal shirt to wear and thus the Essential WorkShirt was born.

It's taken years to actually get it off the ground and have it designed and made.  The learning curve for me was overwhelming at times and there is still lots for me to learn.  However, even if I never, ever make one single sale, I feel super proud to have seen my idea for a work shirt to completion.    If you are interested in learning more about the whole process, I wrote about it here.

Harris' Birthday Cake

Harris has worked tech crew for the fall drama production at school (Grace performs) and this has been show week which means that we basically haven't seen the children since last Sunday!  Which also means we really, really struggled to find a time to celebrate Harris' birthday!  We managed to squeeze in a couple of hours with my family to have cake as we couldn't even find a night to do a proper dinner!

I made a chocolate cake with chocolate icing, salted caramel popcorn on top and fudge dripped down the sides.  It wasn't my favorite chocolate cake I've ever made, but it was still fun and the popcorn added a bit of interest!

15

Today marks Harris' 15th time around the sun.  Harris is genuinely a great kid, but he has certainly entered the teen years in that he doesn't share a whole lot, he will often want to play video games for hours at a time and he is attached to his phone in ways that make me think it can't be healthy (I think this about all of our phones!).  However, there are, of course, lots of reasons why we love him and here they are...

1.  His sense of humor.  Always.

2.  His love of trampoline.  He's committed and he can do crazy things with his body on that trampoline!  This summer he completed the Quad-Quad, which was a very big deal to him.

3.  We are also proud of him for trying diving and continuing on with it this summer and into the winter.  It's a natural fit after trampoline.

4.  His willingness to try something or go somewhere new even if he doesn't really want to (there are limits though!).

5.  He has a genuine love for shows that make him laugh.  He has seen Modern Family and The Office too many times to count.

6.  He's very warm hearted and affectionate.  This is getting rarer these days so we sure appreciate it when it comes!

7.  He's a loyal friend.  He has a small circle of close friends (and none of them are at his current school) but he loves them and tries to stay connected though youth group, texting and video game playing :).

8.  He's fearless.  I know that this can be good and bad but this child is willing to try almost anything whether it be something physical, academic or for fun.

9.  He seems to have adjusted surprisingly well to high school life.  He reports that he really likes changing classes, that he enjoys that he gets to go outside to walk to different classes and he seems to have adjusted well to the academics.  He hasn't told us much about his friends but my sources have confirmed that he seems to have made lots of friends and is always with others.

10.  His undying love for his dog.