Christmas is in full force here in NYC, I am even contributing to the festivities with a 3′ tree inside my apartment. It smells of evergreen, and the christmas tunes are playing loud!! Doesn’t get much better than that.

I love this time of year in the City. Every street corner you turn you find yet another little pop up shop Christmas tree vendor. So for me this year, instead of the parking lot at K-Mart back home, it’s the corner of Greenwich and Chambers. I’ve quickly realized that it’s okay for traditions to evolve over the years. I might not be bundling up (b/c it use to be REALLY cold after Thanksgiving) with my Mom, Dad, Big Brother and Baby Sister. We’d get hot chocolate, probably because I had not tolerance for the cold, and head to the “Christmas Tree Man” that setup year after year in the parking lot adjacent to K-Mart. My brother and I would meander through the trees to pick out the tallest, most perfect (and probably meaning most expensive) tree we could find. Mom would have to approve first! We’d also pick out a little tree, known as the “kid’s tree”. This one was adorned with colorful lights, and all the ornaments we’d made or bought on family trips. The “big tree” was elegant and beautifully lit with white lights. They’d load them in the back of Dad’s truck and we’d head home. Then poor Dad, some how managed to carry our 8′-9′ tree inside all by himself. It didn’t end there. A little left, no now a little the right. Okay, not pull it back towards you a little…WELL, IT HAD TO BE STRAIGHT! This usually ended in a little frustration, followed by sweeping up all the stray pieces that sprinkled the floor from the car to the house. But we all still had BIG smiles on our faces. I would be chomping at the bit to decorate it RIGHT THEN, everyone else seemed a little exhausted. Funny enough, it seems year after year it ended up being just Mom and I hanging all the ornaments. Everyone else seemed to bail after two or three. Oh the memories. So you know, change, even little change, can be hard. I miss these days, but when I find that “teary” feeling coming on, I just try to reminisce on fond, fond memories of Christmas time when I was younger. I remind myself to be thankful of those times, and look forward to the new and exciting things to come. However, I still cannot wait to go home before Christmas, wrap presents with Mom, sit by the fire with a lit Christmas tree as a beautiful backdrop, and relish in the moment as we make new memories!

*Mom, after watching you make gazillions of bows year after year after year. Well, I still cannot do it near as well as you. You just have all these little tricks, and I cannot quite get them right. The whole twist thing when you’re making the bow? I am trying to master it!

I put my virtual “visual coordinator” skills to the test and designed a holiday window for Bergdorf Goodman. It was festive, fancy and LOTS OF FUN. Now, I do not know about you, but the store windows displays in NYC starting around this time year really tickle my fancy!

{you can test out your skills too right here at the official Polyvore site, more details here}

Yesterday was a day of grocery shopping, crafts, baking, cleaning, and a little P90X but that’s a whole post in and of itself

we dyed hard boiled eggs the traditional way, but they dye just wasn’t right. the colors were too BRIGHT, and they just were not jiving with our “decor” style in the dining room for easter sunday! so………

we decided to take another route. we blew out way over a dozen eggs, martha stewart describes that process for you here. yes there is a little tool to do this with, but that little tool wasn’t to be found in our house. so we painstakingly removed the insides from the eggs [note: without actually touching our mouths to the eggs as BHG describes here which SCREAMS salmonella]. Once that process was complete and our brains were completely blown out, we painted the eggs.

one coat

after another

and they finally looked like this.

added to the grass table runner [from a cute store in downtown Homewood] under  the “nest” of yellow alstroemeria

the lingering of our headache paid off

and we moved on to the next step…

baking our “easter stamped” cookies

and decorating the tree

Happy Easter!!