Getting in Christmas mood

It's been some crazy days since the birth of my niece, and I still didn't get to see her at all, but maybe this weekend brings more luck.

It's hectic at work, too, as every December is.

Luckily, I got to enjoy some peace and quite this past weekend, when me and M. just stayed home for a change and focused on cooking, eating, resting and, well, some cleaning and ironing, too.

I like cleaning, or, I like the final result when the house is clean and tidy, but I hate the moments, when you're gathering yourself and like "ok, I'll go clean now". It takes me forever to get to the point when I actually take a mop in my hands :) but when I do, I clean just about everything. Plant leaves included.

We also were getting in xmas spirit. On Friday I put up the xmas tree in the office and Saturday I did it at home.

 

We live in a tiny flat and we can only afford to have a tiny xmas tree, that we place on the kitchen table, right next to my cookbooks and blender. Not the best position, but one has to work with the resources she has and I'm making the best I can. And it only lasts a few weeks, right? So, we'll just endure a smaller eating space for some short time.

One other thing I also did this past weekend was relaxing, full time. Like this:

A cup of nettle&mint tea and good reading. Life doesn't get much better.

In cooking news, these are some dishes I made the past week:

The Redwood's Falafel with baked potatoes & peas in creamy sauce

Risotto with tofu & zucchini

Baked polenta with cauliflower and a "mexican" sauce with zucchini, bell peppers, carrots, tomato sauce & corn.

Some more rice: stir-fry with broccoli and cabbage

Waiting

There were a few times in my life when time seemed to stop and dragged endlessly.

First was the time I heard on TV about a mountain accident when the person who died fit the description of one of my best friends. The hours when I was calling him on the cellphone with no response, calling around to learn the news, just waiting for any kind of information I could get, were horrible. It could have been 2 hours, but it felt like a year. At last, I learnt it was him and time stopped.

Then there were the cute hours, a few years back, when I met my partner and since we were long-distance at that time, each time we were to see each other, the time spent travelling was dragging in anticipation.

Today, at 4.15pm time stopped again. My sister-in-law's water broke and she and her husband, my brother, are in the hospital, delivering a new soul to the world. I hold my breath, I wait around, just to hear any news. Time is going to drag tonight.

Fingers crossed.

After the wedding

So the wedding of the year, why, DECADE, came and was gone. We surely had a wonderful time, though the whole experience was rather stressfull, so much so I'm left with a wonderful cold sore above my lip - the result of extreme temperatures (38°C, surely they picked the hottest day of the year to get married), absolutely no sleep (5 hours total in 2 nights) and plenty of work to be done. Plus, I took charge of taking care of the dog during the weekend so as to relieve my mother a bit. That meant walking 2 times a day, usually at about 7.00 or 7.30 when the dog woke me up for food. And ever during the wedding day, right after the official ceremonies were finally over I went home in my dress and all, changed, fed the dog and took her for a looong walk so she would not feel deprived of anything. But I must praise her, she's been so wonderful! We were really afraid she'd freak out because of all the people, the noise, the ongoing activites, the lights and the music... and she just went "meh" and slept through most of the weekend like she'd be trained to behave like that. I mean, I love her, she showed so much support & understanding and kept out of our ways all the time... and when I returned home from the wedding after she'd been alone all day she welcomed me and I swear, if she could, she would hug me for being home... she just snuggled in my lap and waved her tail and licked my palms.

As I said, the wedding festivities started on Friday when we had a sort of a "fairwell party" during which we decorated the house and yard and fed about 200 people - everyone showed up, the friends, family, the neighbours. It was loud and a long long night. I got maybe 2 hours of sleep and the next day up I got at 6.30 am and took the dog for a long walk. At 8.00 I finished decorating the wedding arch with flowers, at 9.00 went to my hairdresser, at 10.30 to get the wedding flowers & bouquet.

At 11.00 I retrieved wedding balloons (!), 11.30 barely managed to get myself dressed and do my make up and the first guests started to arrive. There was even some last-minute ironing involved. The bride was due at 12.00 and thank god she was fashionably late.

First we had a lunch buffet, then an outdoor civil reception and then to church.

(that's me on the left in the brown dress, remember?)

After all the ceremonies I went home to feed the dog and prepare a special surprise for the newlyweds:

It is custom to prepare the newlyweds something nasty and awful for their wedding night, like spread their bedsheets with rice and ketchup, but I decided they deserved better, so I decorated most of their house with rose petals & candles and added an alcohol-free champagne (she's 6 months pregnant) and Baci chocolates.

Then, I was back at the dinner reception where we stayed until morning hours, when I simply collapsed in bed.

The next morning the dog surprisingly let me sleep until 8 am but then she was too hungry or maybe she needed to pee so badly and couldn't wait anylonger and whined at my door. Off we went for another walk.

In the afternoon I then visited the Vegetarian Festival held in Italy just across the border (5 minutes from my house) where I picked up my veg bag.

For the price of 10 € I got quite a selection of goodies:

There's soy milk, corn milk, soy cream (2x), soy chocolate pudding, spelled pasta, cooked polenta, some lemon cookies, an arrabbiata tomato sauce, a pear juice, some fruit pulp and a mini berry tart, everything organic. Half of the things I brought to work to nib on. I must say the goodies are mostly stuff I'd usually buy & eat so it's a bargain. My mom was not so satisfied with her bag (not intirely identycal) and gave away half of her goodies. Good for me! :)

So then we returned back home, a 2-hour drive in heavy traffic and with sore soles that hurt everytime I touched the clutch and I've been mainly working and resting since. Only yesterday did I undo the luggage and sent the clothes into washing. And I do believe I'll need another day or two to recover. We're not teenagers anymore and it shows.

Speaking of age, it's my bf's bday today. He's 29! Happy birthday! We're celebrating with first a simple lunch out in about an hour and in the evening we're going for the first time ever to an indian restaurant. Hope the food's good and no problems afterwards! And I'm not buying him anything. We don't do that.

Day 197.