This was Chris and my first holiday season in the new house. While it may be the third house we have owned it has been the first time we spent Thanksgiving Christmas and New Years Eve at home. In fact this was the first Thanksgiving Chris and I made, which gave us an opportunity to start some traditions all our own.

Even though it was just the two of us we bought a 11 lb turkey. Together we managed to get it stuffed and roasted in our new fabulous oven (I really love this oven). I made cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and gravy, broccoli, gluten free stuffing and coconut custard pie. Chris wanted pineapple stuffing which has become a tradition for his family, so I prepared that the night before and made it our own this year by having it for breakfast with our coffee.

It was a lot of work for one meal but it all turned out tasty and we will probably do it again next year. I made some macaroni and cheese to eat with the left over turkey the next day, Chris ate a bunch of turkey sandwiches and he made a big pot of turkey soup as well. I don’t believe any of the turkey went to waste with Jean enjoying any thing that found its way to the floor.

For the last two years we purchased smaller Christmas Trees which would fit on top of our coffee table, however we have a lot more room in our living room right now so we bought a large tree this year. In fact it was so much larger than any of our previous trees that I ran out of lights and had to try to find a string which matched.

It is always a little more work to decorate the house for the first year, but I think we did a good job (I did not do a great job with photographing the rooms unfortunately). We had lights on the outside and I put up decorations in most of the rooms including some vintage pieces in the kitchen. Lucky we only hang two stockings because even though is it really pretty with a decorative key hole above the fire place the mantel is pretty small. I did love how everything looked decorated, but have a few changes in mind for next year.

We had a quiet Christmas at home with our traditional smoked salmon breakfast and honey baked ham for lunch / dinner, then it was back to work the next day. After work we went out for drinks and saw “A Christmas Story – A Musical” at the 5th Avenue Theater. Then we prepared for a New Years Eve party at our house. It was the first time hosting something for New Years and even though a made some pretty awesome decorations, I have no photographs of the house all done up. The party was a lot of fun and nice to start to the year to have friends around.

The holiday season marks the start of our fourth year in Seattle. In addition to the holiday celebrations we both have kept busy with game night, a visit from Chris’ dad, volunteering to feed the homeless,  going to a few shows and I added some shifts at the museum in here and there. Well into January already we are preparing for our trip to Vietnam and continuing to make progress on making the house our home. The paint colors are getting narrowed down and some “new” furniture has been purchased so we will hopefully have more photographs to share soon.