What Our Christmas Looks Like Now

I thought it might be fun to share what our Christmas day looked like this year since we don’t celebrate Christmas anymore. You know, a day that is somewhere in between for us… not a day to celebrate anything, but certainly not an ordinary day either. Too many things are closed, so many people are gathering, and whatever else is happening in the world for so many people. It’s just not a regular Wednesday, ya know?

It’s funny to me that at the beginning of Alex and my relationship (since the birth of Marlowe really) I was so frustrated that Alex never had the holidays off. And now that we don’t celebrate Christmas, it seems like he always has it off now, haha. Never both Christmas eve and Christmas, but now he’ll have at least one of the two days off.  I mean, he really only had two days off Marlowe’s entire two week break time. But that’s restaurant life, ya know? Anyway: Christmas. While we don’t celebrate it, we’re very happy to be able to spend the day together as a family during the busy tourist season. So we’ll take Christmas day (or really any day) to do our favorite things together.

Marlowe and I woke up bright and early on Christmas day. Alex undeniably needed an extra minute after the holiday rush. (Fair). And well, I’m not sure what got into me, but I woke up with a big cleaning urge running through my body. I made Marlowe a smoothie and started tackling some piles of laundry. And she played with the calculator on my phone… I’m not sure where the fun is in that? But she liked it.

We also wrapped some presents for my nieces. They had picked out something for Marlowe and I didn’t want them giving a gift without receiving one (thoughts on this could make up an entirely different conversation/post), so we put together two little handmade gifts for each of them.

Two paintings (a painting for each) and for the oldest cousin, we gave a bead box filled with vintage and handmade beads I had collected over the years. And for the other, a Mexican embroidered dress that we turned into a shirt 🙂 I’m sort of obsessed with Marlowe’s “serious bunny” painting. I’m obviously biased, but I’m obsessed with this stage of her art.
I even pulled the bedding from the bed to wash. I rarely do this. Alex usually is the one who does the washing of things (I do the folding– compromise right?). But I seriously woke up on a mission and wanted to clean all the things. So the bedding all came off too.

Keyboard player extraordinaire.

I even organized my fabrics and textiles. I’m going to turn some of these pieces into pillows.

I’m forever grateful that he likes things clean and tidy too. It was one of the first things I noticed (and liked) about Alex when I met him. We all like an organized space around here. Clean space, clean mind, right? And now that we’ve minimized it’s just really easy to keep clean. Also really easy for the space to feel cluttered because it’s so small, but then it takes two seconds to pick it up too.  Win/win.

Also: Alex vacuums wayyyyy to much. It’s so loud in a tiny apartment. It drives Marlowe and me nuts. But obviously, I’d totally rather he vacuum too much than not enough, ya know? 🙂

After my Christmas cleaning spree, I decided to make some juice and ginger shots. I don’t make juice every day. While I’d like to drink it everyday it can be rather time-consuming. But this day felt like a good day to put a little bit of effort into an extra glass of health. For the ginger shots, I love to juice the ginger with a bit of lemon and apple or with pineapple. It’s so good. If anyone is fighting anything then I make this immune fighting drink.

If you’re curious to learn more about juicing/juicers, I talk about my favorite one in this post. I’ve had two in my lifetime– both are very different but both useful. I compare the two so you can figure out the best one for you 🙂 #notsponsored.

We all knew that if the weather allowed we would make our way to the beach. The first week of her break it was RAIN RAIN RAIN. Oh my goodness, so much rain. Thankfully by the second week, it all cleared out to the most gorgeous weather. Maybe a tad cold for us sub-tropical non-snowbird people. But so good still.

Been really into friendship bracelet making lately. Thankfully Alex and Marlowe enjoy wearing all the bracelets I make 😉

See, sweaters and bathing suits. Like, sort of warm in the sun. But sort of too cool with the breeze. Confusing Florida winter weather. Well, for us. I’m sure for the Canadians, New Yorkers, and whatever other snowbirds this beach weather was PERFECT.

Also, attacking Marlowe with my love is my favorite.

She didn’t want to go, haha. And we probably would have stayed all day, but we promised Marlowe pizza dinner and had hoped to see my brother so there was just a lot of other things to do. So we packed it up and dragged the kid home.

Also, this is probably the closest thing Marlowe will get to a sleigh ride this year. She definitely wants to try winter again. I’m good with it. MAYBE I could do three snowy days somewhere, but I certainly wouldn’t go out of my way to fly somewhere for it.  We might road trip to New England and Canada this year (again) … but in summer. #soclose.

My friend Christine thinks I’m nuts because often times after the beach, I head to the gym. She says there’s no way she could go to the gym after the beach and needs to go before. But I think its the PERFECT time. You’re already dirty, sweaty, and in need of a shower. And if I go to the gym BEFORE the beach then I’ll be smelly at the beach… and I don’t want that, ya know? And the beach doesn’t tire me out. As long as I stay hydrated I always feel refreshed and great. So after the beach, I put on some sneakers, go downstairs and lift heavy things.
I came back upstairs to this guy making pizza. (Yes, he is the best.) Pizza on Christmas was a tradition for a few years. Like I mentioned, he always had to wor on Christmas before. So he would make pizza in the morning, we’d have it for breakfast together and then he’d leave for work. It was nice being able to spend the day with him AND have pizza together this day.

He always used to make the dough from scratch. But then when I got sick, the pizza stopped. You know, #glutenallergy. But this year we decided to give the whole gluten-free pizza making thing a go.
Spoiler alert: the pizza looks better than it tasted. The dough was a bit too sweet and chewy. We used a packaged box gluten-free dough mix. I think next time I’d rather just really try to make it from scratch. But still, meh pizza is better than no pizza, right? And it was made with love, so it tasted pretty good to me.

And actually, it tasted pretty good the second day. Alex made an extra pizza and the next day I reheated it and it tasted significantly better. So that was great 😉

That pizza biting face is just too good 🙂 I just felt so bad because Marlowe had been looking forward to *Christmas pizza* for quite a while, but her nose was all stuffed up from school germs and she could hardly taste it! SO sad, right? Poor thing. We gotta try to do the pizza thing again soon for her.

We had also planned to maybe go to my brothers after pizza. But we were all worn… and when we have any germs at all, we try to keep clear of all the people. So we ended the night on the couch with Home Alone. Simple and fun. She had been asking to watch it all season and it finally felt like the perfect day to indulge this request. And it was. The perfect day for Home Alone and a really great day in general.

There were no presents (for us anyway), no big celebrations and no fancy events. There were everyday basic chores and activities we do often, but we had a great day. We had a really simple, productive, and fun family time together. I’d love if Marlowe could have tasted her food, but other than that, I wouldn’t have changed a thing 😉

I hope you guys had a great too! Whichever way you celebrated the day… or didn’t 😉