The stockings are hung by the chimney with care, but the care was taken not by me but by my husband, who had brought in masses of plants for the winter and assembled them on the hearth in such a way that I can't even reach the mantel, so when the time came to hang the stockings, the long-armed one had to do it, and now the stockings are hung by the chimney with plants.
But that's okay. The greenery looks festive, and some of the plants are even draped with blinking Christmas lights. Our small Christmas tree sits in front of the big picture window so that it's possible to admire sparkly bird ornaments hanging on the tree while watching live birds flitter around the birdfeeders outside.
Meanwhile, my experiment in non-dairy holiday baking continues: I've made one batch of cookies with avocado-based plant butter, another with olive oil-based plant butter, and a third with plain old butter. The taste testing will occur after the rest of the family arrives tomorrow.
And we did a different kind of taste-testing earlier in the week, when we celebrated our anniversary (a day late) by dining at the Bears Den restaurant near Cambridge, Ohio, which features the best locally-grown beef I've ever tasted, and then watched the holiday light display at the Guernsey County Courthouse. We tried to figure out how many times we've made that same trek during the holiday season, but we couldn't work it out. On the previous day we'd made it all the way to suppertime before one of us said, "Wait, isn't this our anniversary?" That's what 42 years will do to you.
He's baking bread today while I run some last-minute errands. I baked the cookies; he hung the stockings. He strung up the lights; I decorated the tree. Together we're trying to make a festive family holiday so that maybe this crazy partnership can last another 42 years.
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