Anniversary Traditions (update)

I just realized that I never updated how Christian and I did on executing the traditional anniversary gifts: paper for the 1st year.

Well, I think we did pretty darn good.

I got Christian four cookbooks: Momofuku (we had our first real date at Momofuku Noodle Bar), Chanterelle and Staff Meals from Chanterelle (we had our six month dating anniversary there; sadly it's now closed), and The Foods of the Greek Islands (our honeymoon was in Lindos, Rhodes).

I gotta say, before the day, I was totally impressed with myself. Christian loves to cook, loves new cookbooks and those cookbooks all have great meaning for us. He was totally thrilled with them but I feel like his presents blew mine out of the water.

My "card" was actually a beautiful album he made for me on blurb.com, which made me cry like a baby. (My cards for him were from Target, btw.) And he got me the beautiful Frank Gehry heart pendant necklace from Tiffany seen above. Currently, it's off getting the chain lengthened because it was a little too short. I can't wait to wear it once it's back. What a show off.

Next year will be cotton. A little less than 50 weeks to figure that one out.

P.S. We also had an out of this world dinner at Uchiko here in Austin. That place probably deserves its own post.

Anniversary Traditions

I've talked before about how much Christian and I love establishing new traditions.

Well, tomorrow is our 1 year anniversary (has it already been a year since the best day of my life?), so we're starting to establish some anniversary traditions.

1. Our welcome dinner (we didn't need to rehearse anything since we got married at City Hall) was at a pizza place below our old NYC apartment. So, each year the night before our anniversary we're going to have pizza for dinner. I think this tradition will be a big hit with the kids (once we have them and they're old enough to eat pizza, of course). Tonight, Christian's making the pizza which is very exciting because I love love love his pizza.
2. Every year we'll also watch our amazing wedding video as well as this awesome video Christian's best friend made with footage he shot of us answering Newlywed Game-style questions.
3. We'll take pictures. That's a given.
4. We're also trying to follow the traditional or modern interpretation of the traditional wedding gifts for at least part of our presents to each other. The first anniversary is paper (traditional) or a watch (modern). Tomorrow morning, which is the designated present time, we'll see how we did.
   

Establishing new Thanksgiving traditions

Yesterday was my first Thanksgiving as a married woman. Christian and I actually get to spend Thanksgiving AND Christmas together this year (we've never spent Christmas day together) and we want to start establishing holiday traditions for our new family of 2.

So far, for Thanksgiving we've got:

1. Re-watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy each year on Thanksgiving day/weekend. The extended versions. I may have agreed to this tradition after a lot of holiday imbibing.

Right now, we're on The Return of the King. Obviously, I'm paying a lot of attention. Helm's Deep was successfully defended yesterday afternoon and I totally missed the whole thing.

I've started doing the holiday cards tonight. I think that will also be one of the traditions -- me addressing cards while LOTR plays.

2. Candied sweet potatoes, brussel sprouts, cornbread and turkey all make the cut for dishes we want to make every year. I never had candied sweet potatoes until a friend brought them over for T-day dinner last year (shocking, I know). Boy are they good! Very excited they are going to be a staple from now on.

3. Lots of booze with Thanksgiving dinner. Which leads us to #4...

4. For the time being, #4 is sleeping in late the next day and avoiding Black Friday shopping as much as possible. This tradition will probably be revised at a later point. But this morning, it was fabulous.