25 Days of Christmas

ABC Family is counting down to their annual 25 days of Christmas TV Schedule. Tonight the girl and I are already watching the ABC Family Christmas movies they are playing during the Countdown (see schedule). Check it out!

Christmas in New Orleans

Well, the family is all here and we have been busy to say the least! When my parents arrived on Tuesday we headed straight from the airport to The Galley (2535 Metairie Rd) - my dad's favorite restaurant. I had the crab cakes with crawfish sauce and have to say they are my second favorite New Orleans dish next to Drago's crawfish ravioli!


Hubby and I planned a lot of meals and prepared some in advance to make meal time easier. We didn't want to spend so much time going out to eat and deciding where to eat. We made turkey/sausage gumbo, crawfish pies, hungarian soup and pulled pork sandwiches.

On Saturday morning we had a family photo taken by Katherine Bentz. It is rare we are all together and my mom has wanted us to get a family photo done so that was our Christmas gift to her.

On Saturday night we got to involve my family in a tradition we have participated in since we moved here in 2004. Our neighbor Patty and her husband Frank always invite us over for a Spaghetti dinner which is immediately followed by the decorating of Gingerbread Houses. Now, this is not your typical gingerbread house decorating. In fact, I will bet money you have never seen anything like it before! Patty prepares a homemade house and constructs it for each person. Then, she lays out the candy to decorate it. Imagine 10 -12 cookie sheets filled with those single serving pie plates each filled with a different kind of candy. Her table probably seats 12 people or more and we all sit around it with candy covering the table and barely leaving room for us to decorate our houses. We each get our own loot of icing in icing bags with tips to adhere our candy to our houses. It is amazing and gets bigger each year! My family just couldn't believe it and loved it. Here are our works of art!






On Sunday we finished our christmas shopping, wrapping, preparations. We cooked some steaks and boiled up some shrimp for dinner. My brother couldn't get over the size of the shrimp we have here!


Today we headed into New Orleans to take my brother for his first tour of the French Quarter. We had lunch at the Bourbon House which was a good choice for all. It was chilly outside, but we walked all over the quarter and took in the street artists. This gentleman below could really play a mean harmonica and had a pretty good voice!






After our visit to the quarter we returned home to set up the neighborhood's traditional luminaries. Many houses buy them from a neighbor and set them along the road in front of our houses to light the way for Santa.

After some fun with fireworks we read "The Night Before Christmas", set our cookies, milk and carrots for Santa and rudolph and then put the kiddies to bed. Once in bed my mom and I prepared our breakfast casserole for the morning. We put the gifts under the tree, stuffed the stockings and now at 12:07 pm I better put out that fire in the fireplace so Santa doesn't burn his bottom and get to bed! I leave you with this very sweet photo of what my daughter put together for Santa tonight.

My Holiday Poem

The halls are decked
The lights are strung
The house is clean
The Hungarian cookies are done.

The to-do list was long
I fretted and puffed
We worked diligently
to get all items checked off

Tis the eve of family arrival
All three are tucked in tight
Hubby has stomach flu
I hope the littlest sleeps all night

The house is silent
The dog is snoring
I take a deep breath
And apologize for this poem being so boring!

I sit here in silence
anticipating my family's arrival
and hope that we make it through
without an episode of Survivor!

He He!

Happy Holidays ya'll!