Twilight...the movie

A couple of months ago, I decided to join the craze and read the Twilight series. It's technically a young adult series of books, but I kinda liked it. I had some issues with the writing style, but frankly, the storyline is pretty intriguing. In a nutshell...a human girl, Bella, falls in love with Edward. Who just happens to be a vampire. And who just happens to find the smell of her blood irresistible. There are 4 books in the series; I read the first 3 books within a few days in August, and I read the 4th book in September.

The first book, Twilight, was made into a movie and was released on November 21st. You may have heard of it. As of yesterday, it's made over $140 million at the box office. Shawn and I added $20 to that total and went to see it tonight. I thought it was okay. Honestly, though...I'm not sure I understand why anyone who hasn't read the books would enjoy the movie. I think it might best be explained with some numbers. The book is 544 pages long. The movie is 2 hours long. That's it.

As you can imagine, there are a lot of things that are left out of the movie. I completely understand that this happens when books are made into movies. However, I felt like there was very little character development in the movie. Relationships that were important in the book are completely glossed over in the movie. Elements of personality that will be very important in books later in the series aren't apparent in the movies. And the worst part of the movie? Bella and Edward's relationship. In the books, it's a nice little love story...kinda romantic. In the movie, it seems like teenage hormones and infatuation.

I'm a bit intrigued to see what will happen with the second movie. Like I said, there are some things that I thought were rather important in the books that were omitted or not very obvious in the movie. And apparently the production studio has fired the director because she wanted to spend more time carefully adapting the movie from the book...and the producers wanted to hurry up and start filming New Moon.

Now that I've said all this, if you haven't seen the movie (or the commercials, for that matter) and are intrigued, click here to see the trailer for Twilight.

Christmas Cards

I've been trying to think of a topic for my blog, but I keep glancing over at my stack of Christmas cards. I desperately need to start writing these! I thought I was getting a head start by buying them early...I bought the cards before Thanksgiving. Before I bought them, I even made sure that I went through my address book and counted how many cards I thought we'd need. Good thing I did...I was thinking maybe 50 or 60. The actual count is over 100!

I think I've admitted it on here before...I have a little bit of OCD. There are just certain things that I'm very particular about. For example, it drives me nuts when my stuff gets moved (like, on my desk at work). I don't like it when furniture is out of place. (You can ask some of my college girlfriends about all this...I was the source of their amusement and entertainment for 4 years.) This ends up causing me to be compulsively organized with some things. (And yet, oddly, I can often be quite messy and don't mind clutter.)

What does this have to do with our Christmas cards? Well, I needed to make a list of who's getting cards. So I did that last night...typed up our card list. And when I bought the cards, I didn't just buy a whole bunch of one card...I got 4 different designs. So I needed to think about which cards would be most appropriate for/appreciated by which people. But I have a limited number of each design, of course. So I gave each card design a different color, and as I decided who should get which card, I changed the font color of that person's name. Yeah...I color coded my Christmas card list.

That entire process probably took me about an hour. But it's done and I feel really good about it! Now...I just need to start actually writing the cards. :-)

Advent

As you may very well be aware, we are currently in the season of Advent. In a nut shell, Advent is the period of time before Christmas. A lot of people think of Advent as a time of preparation, which it is. However, it should be more than just a time to buy your Christmas presents, decorate, and write cards. Advent is really supposed to be the time to prepare your heart for the Christmas season...which doesn't technically begin until December 25th.

The season of Advent begins on the 4th Sunday before Christmas...so this year, Advent began last Sunday, November 30th. During this time leading up to Christmas, Christians should be thinking of the coming of Christ...both in Bethlehem a couple thousand years ago and in the future. During Advent, the Scripture readings at Mass focus on the prophecies in the Old Testament of the coming Messiah and on the anticipation of the imminent arrival of Mary's child. As we hear these readings and are reminded of the great gift that we received on that first Christmas, we should also be thinking about the great gift we will receive when Christ returns. Are our hearts ready to receive this gift?

Lots of people buy and use Advent calendars. It's a great way to help children "countdown" to Christmas by opening a "door" each day. There's usually a piece of candy or some other trinket behind the door each day. But my favorite symbol of Advent is the wreath. Catholic churches (and many Protestant ones) will have an Advent wreath this time of year. There are 4 candles on the wreath...3 purple and 1 pink. Yes, purple is the color of royalty, but it is also the color of penitence. Pink is a symbol of rejoicing. Many people also have Advent wreaths in their homes to serve as a reminder of this preparation season.

Quite awhile ago, Shawn asked me if I could please get us an Advent wreath to light at home. Unfortunately, I forgot it until we were sitting in church last weekend. So this past week, I went on a hunt for an Advent wreath. It took quite a bit of time, but I finally found one! Unfortunately, this was the best I could come up with.

Since we wanted an actual wreath (not just a metal ring), I decided to make one myself. I ended up buying some garland and cutting it down to size with wire cutters. Then I also used some ribbon to spruce it up a bit. And here's the final product!I was going to include an explanation of the symbols of the Advent wreath, but frankly, that would take awhile. And besides, I think that this article does a much better job of explaining it than I ever could! I encourage you to take the time to read it if I've piqued your interest at all in learning a little bit more about the history and symbolism of Advent. :-)

Our New Toys!

Shortly after we moved, Shawn realized that he really needed to quit using his work laptop for personal use. We have 2 desktop computers (we each had one before we got married), but they share a screen, keyboard, and mouse, so only one of us can be on the computer at a time. Since laptops are just more fun anyway, Shawn decided to buy a laptop. However, I think he felt guilty for spending the money to get one for himself, so he decided that I should get one, too!

They arrived yesterday! They look the same, but Shawn's has something that mine doesn't. (I don't even know what it is...something with the processor or the memory or something.) So here are a couple pictures of my new toy! It's actually bronze instead of black...very pretty and shiny! :-)

My parents' visit

I realized that I've barely said anything about my parents' visit last week! They arrived on Tuesday afternoon, right at the height of Seattle rush hour. Since we live north of the city and the airport is south of the city, Mom and Dad got a good, long look at downtown Seattle. Fortunately, the fog that had been there when I drove down to the airport had mostly lifted by the time we came back through. That night, we just went out to dinner, and then Shawn and I did our best to keep them awake as long as we could. It had been a really long day for them...they flew from Akron, to Chicago, to Portland, and then to Seattle! But we all knew that if we didn't keep them up late, they'd be wide awake at 4:00am on Wednesday.

On Wednesday, we didn't do much. Shawn went to work, and Mom and Dad and I hung around the apartment all morning, basically just chatting. We eventually took a drive up to Anacortes so they could see a little bit of the San Juan Islands. Anacortes is a cute little town on Fidalgo Island, and we stopped at a little park so they could see the "beach" area. We also saw some of the "island" deer...so cute! They're tiny! I didn't have my camera with me, but Dad did. So if he emails me some pictures, I'll post them on here. This picture I found online does give a pretty good idea of how small the full grown deer are!
Thursday, of course, was Thanksgiving, so we stayed at home most of the day. We had the Macy's Parade on in the morning (they show it on tape delay here) while I cooked. We also watched a little football, and in the evening, we went to see a movie. In my family, it's a tradition to go see a movie on Thanksgiving and Christmas, so the four of us went to see "Bolt." Shawn and I had been waiting to see this since we first saw the previews for it this summer, and we were not disappointed! We absolutely love the hamster, Rhino. :)On Friday, we took my parents downtown. The main part of our day was doing the "Ride the Ducks" tour. I know you can find these in lots of cities...as long as there's something worth taking a tour of and some water. :) The "bus" that you ride in is actually a WWII amphibious vehicle. So our crazy, funny tour guide drove us around the city of Seattle for about an hour, giving us some history and pointing out the sites. Then the "bus" went into Lake Union (because it's also a boat) and went around the lake for about half an hour. You may know that Seattle has a bunch of "house boat" communities on Lake Union, and our tour guide even pointed out the house that was used in Sleepless in Seattle as Tom Hanks' house.

My parents on the "boat."
Our tour guide in the first of many "costumes."
And the "bus" going into the water.
When the tour was over, we went to Pike Market and did a little shopping. Being the day after Thanksgiving, it was more crowded than usual, but my parents got a good taste of one of the biggest attractions in Seattle. Then on Saturday, we dropped them off at the airport a little before 7:00am for their flight home!

It was a quick trip, but we really enjoyed having them here. I don't get to spend nearly enough time with my mom and dad, and it was nice to be able to entertain them at our own apartment like real adults. :) Oh, and they didn't have any problems with our spare bedroom, so it is officially ready for guests...any takers? :)

Thanksgiving Dinner

I feel like I'm behind the times here. I have every intention of taking a few blog posts to talk about Thanksgiving and our weekend, but I feel like I should already be moving on to Christmas. Well, doggone it...I still want to talk about Thanksgiving, so I will! :-)

I was a little nervous about making the full Thanksgiving dinner for the first time, but almost everything worked out really well! I hadn't had time to make the milk chocolate pecan pie before my parents got here, so I did that on Wednesday night. I had a huge mess to clean up when quite a bit of the filling overflowed the pie shell, but once we got the pie plate unstuck from the baking sheet (thank God someone suggested I put a baking sheet under the pie!), the pie was absolutely heavenly!! I started out Thanksgiving day by preparing my turkey. Fortunately, it was no longer frozen (although the neck really didn't want to come out...it was still slightly frozen to the inside of the turkey). I covered the turkey with an olive oil/butter/spice blend that I found on allrecipes.com, put some chicken stock and water in the bottom of the pan, and stuck it in the oven.

I was hoping to use Shawn's mom's recipe for dinner rolls, but she remembered that the recipe she uses has been tweaked and adjusted over the years for her to use at high altitude. That obviously wouldn't work for me down here at sea level, and she's not sure where exactly the original recipe is. So instead she sent us a roll mix. :) I still had to add a few ingredients, knead the dough, and let it rise...so I say it counts as making homemade rolls! The package had a suggestion for adding some herbs to the dry mix, so I did that, and the rolls were so good!!

The rest of our meal consisted of steamed green beans, mashed potatoes (one of the few things I can make without having to look at a recipe), and fried sweet potatoes (which my dad cooked, since mine never turn out as good as his). When everything was ready, Shawn happily used our electric knife (a wedding present) to carve the turkey! We also noticed that our "bar" section of the kitchen counter can be used as an excellent buffet area! Which is good, since I don't think our table is big enough to hold that much food at once. :)

Christmas Decor!

I hope that everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving! We had a good time with my parents, and the Thanksgiving meal went off without a hitch. I plan on blogging about that soon, but I'd like to post pictures and the camera is currently buried somewhere in Shawn's hiking backpack. I think I'll let him get that out. :-)

I think I mentioned on here that Shawn and I decided to decorate for Christmas before my parents came, so we actually did it a couple weeks ago. We had a couple reasons for doing this. First of all, we wanted my parents to be able to see our place when it was all decorated for the holidays! Second, we won't actually be here on Christmas, so we wanted a few extra days to enjoy the decorations before we leave on our Christmas vacation. And finally, we didn't decorate at all last year (since our wedding was just 4 days before Christmas), so we were getting excited to pull out all the decorations!

Since Shawn and I didn't live together until after we returned from our honeymoon, this is obviously our first time decorating together for Christmas! We mostly used decorations that we already owned, although I did purchase a 6.5' prelit tree for us! This is the biggest tree I've had in an apartment since I moved to Colorado 8 years ago. Even though it's fake, I love it.

Shawn put his "fish tree" up on the mantle. What you can't see in the picture is that all of the ornaments on this tree are either fish, people fishing, or camping. We still may be adding lights or ribbon to the garland on the mantle, too.

And finally, this is the wreath I bought for our door. I just added the ribbons...which were actually originally purchased last year as potential wedding decor and then never used!
Oh...and in case anyone reading this has a brilliant idea for me...I'm still in search of an Advent wreath. I completely spaced it until yesterday morning, when Mass started and I remembered that this is the first week of Advent. I know that I can order one online, but by the time it's delivered, Advent will be at least 1/4 over! Any ideas where I can get an Advent wreath quickly? Oh, and I did think about making one, but I'm also having trouble finding purple and pink candles. :(