Where to begin?

Wow, with such a crazy busy weekend I don’t even know where to begin!!! I guess I will do a mini recap of it all, then come back later with brekkie?!?

Friday

Friday my dad had everyone over for a simple dinner before my aunt left on Saturday. The menu? Plain salad, arugula salad, my uncle’s homemade hummus, shrimp cocktail, nuts, grilled veggie, grilled filet, sausage, and chicken legs, and my pasta, rigatoni with zucchini and feta. Dessert was those beautiful trays of fruit plus a panettone. I love Christmas dessert! I took a pic before things were really done because I knew I would get too busy to take any more!

Here is one of the bowls of pasta I made:

My dad’s tree is always so gorgeous. My mom’s favorite holiday was always Christmas, and Christmas Eve was her favorite, hosted at our house. Our tree has always been spectacular, at least in the last 15 years or so, with different color schemes each year. This year we kept it super simple with a fake tree (to use until the day we all have kids and take them to cut their own) and silver/gold/white ornaments. The snowbabies are really old; I still remember picking up a few every year with my mom. Please ignore the lack of tree skirt because I have to buy a new one!

We put a few simple decorations up around the house too, simple and classy. Two of my favorite examples this year….

A santa hanging out on the piano next to a picture of my parents dancing at a wedding in 2000:

And a little artistic tree that we hang all of our Swarovski snowflake ornaments on:

PB and his two cousins showed up in time for dinner and we all had a blast. Saturday the cousins hung out with their Providence friends and PB and I went to pick out linens and chairs for the wedding. Our flowers are orange so that’s why there is an orange tablecloth hanging out on their sample centerpiece. We do anything to imagine what something will look like, ay? Here is the table linen we picked out:

The rental company will send that plus a few others for our tasting in January. Yay!

On Saturday night, post a GREAT 3 mile run outside in December with the love of my life, we had two friends for dinner. Our new candlesticks wanted to make an appearance in Rhode Island before moving to Philly for good, so I set them up on the buffet table:

Oh no! One of Santa’s helpers popped in the picture!

We continued the Christmasy trend with a red tablecloth and such. I can’t wait for our white plates so everything will look nice together!

I planned in advance and had everything ready to go before I went and got dolled for the night:

Do you do that too?

Then our friends Loco and her bf Pat had dinner with us. We made plain cheese pizzas and a spinach salad with pomegranate seeds, walnuts, and a balsamic/honey/mustard/salt/olive oil dressing. It was delicious. Pat knows how to set timers on cameras so we got a fancy group shot:

After dinner we drove to the MGM at Foxwoods to go dancing at Shrine with our friends. I have never been there and while we had a BLAST it was just not my scene. Kind of a lot of trashy people, if you ask me, but the music was slamming!

Here are some of my favorite girlies, all bridesmaids in the wedding:

Hub and I dancing and posing for PB:

And of course, a shot of PB and I!

When we got home I stuffed my face with brownies. Not so fun for me Sunday morning, so Sunday was spent lounging all day while I figured out how to upload old pictures to Picasa. I wish there was a way to go straight from my external hard drive to the internet, but alas there is not with Picasa. I want to upload my 2004 Italia pics!

After sufficient amounts of lounging, PB and I went to the gym. Snow = no running outside for us. I jumped rope for about 20 minutes. I usually do two minute sets of different types of jumping and then take a 2 minute break. It really pushes my heart rate up, even more so than running. I am not sure if that is because it is new or because of the nature of the exercise. My back and arms are sore from the weighted rope today, and my legs are sore too. After jumping I hopeed on the treadmill and kept up with PB for one fantastic 8 minute mile. I got that sweat I was looking for, if you know what I mean.

Then Sunday night we met up with our two friends who just started dating, along with PB’s cousins (soon to be mine too!) and my dad. It was a jam packed, fun filled, super duper weekend. When that’s all you have with your boy you have to make it that way!

On the food front I can say I did really well this weekend besides Saturday’s late night brownies. Blah!

How were your weekends? Anything fun and interesting? Please do share!