Saturday, December 26, 2009

Hipster Holiday

With great sadness I admit that I'm probably a fucking hipster. The greatest piece of evidence being at how offended I get should somebody try and brand me one... everyone knows a true hipster will deny it 'til the bitter end.

Now, with that out of the way, I can tell you about my holiday without you pointing out how just about every fun thing I mention is a hipster staple (though my attitude towards it all is not one of irony but, rather, neo-sincerity, so there).

The plan was for Aaron's parents to come down but his dad got sick at the last minute (like, hospital sick) so they couldn't make it. He's doing better now so we've rescheduled everything until late January and we simply considered this Christmas "practice." In fact, we plan on keeping our tree up until then, which is fine by me since it smells nice and is pretty to look at. Being our first, we didn't have a box of decorations lying around so we simply went to Fantastico (aka. "the best party store in the world") and got a ton of birds and a string of large bulb lights. Here's our topper:



Y0u can also see the tree in the background of this next picture, which also prominently features [drum roll please]... my new bike!

my new bike



Yep, Santa was good to me this year. I haven't owned a bike since my cruiser was stolen a few years back. Not a naturally graceful or athletic person, I always thought I needed fat tires or extra wheels in order to be a bike rider, but my test run on this guy proved me wrong. I can't wait for the weather to get a little better so we can bike all over this town.

My other favorite gift was the loop rug kit given to me by my grandma. She's an avid crafter and has accumulated all sorts of crafting crap over the years. Every Christmas she brings down a car load of goods and lets us grandkids fight it out. This year I scored big time and got the faux zebra skin loop carpet which I've been constructing feverishly since we got back from my family Christmas. I'm about 6 hours and two hind legs in. The goal is to get it done some time during the year 2010.

working the loop rug



While I've been obsessing over the rug, Aaron has found the time to explore a hobby he's been dreaming about for months: pickling vegetables. The goal is to make baby carrots as good as the ones at Tartine.

Bad food pictures always remind me of bad porn... you be the judge:

pickled veggies



He's also got a batch of sauerkraut going which might be done around the time we head to Berlin in about two weeks. Since Germany is the land of the pickled foods, I figure it's the perfect time to begin our education.

This was probably the best Christmas I've had for a while. Nothing super spectacular happened, we didn't really go anywhere, it was just a nice, relaxing holiday. And, in the true spirit of giving, I did give one gift I wanted so badly to keep for myself (but figured my mother was as equally worthy):

mom