Friday, December 27, 2013

Christmas Cross Stitch

We've been having a very low key winter break - we're currently in Chicago with Ben's family, and tomorrow we'll head to Maryland for Christmas #2 with my family. No exciting updates to report, but I did make a Ben a sampler for his present, out of a toothpaste for dinner comic that he likes:
That's Ben, wearing his Knights of the Lambda Calculus tshirt.
Happy holidays, everyone!

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Tis the Season

Yesterday we went to Longwood Gardens Christmas - Longwood is a giant complex of gardens and greenhouses right outside of Philly, and every December they go nuts with Christmas lights and decorations. We got there right as the sun was setting, which made for some nice views:
I liked the reflections the "floating trees" made on the water.
After it got dark, parts of it felt like walking around in some sort of Dr. Seuss forest.

The centerpiece of the show is the giant conservatory, which is filled with many different Christmas trees. The coolest part was the central hallway:
That chandelier is made of flowers, and if you look closely you can see the pattern on the ground is made out of apples. APPLES. They also had lots of smaller flower chandeliers throughout:
Love those orchids.
It was cold, but quite tolerable with long johns and hot chocolate. We picked the perfect day to go, though, because this morning we woke up to this outside our window:
As of now there's about two inches of snow accumulated on our deck railing, and it's still coming down - we'll be staying indoors for the remainder of the weekend!

Sunday, December 1, 2013

Back from break

Ben and I went to our respective homes for Thanksgiving. I uncovered the following awesome picture of my 8-year-old self, fresh from Girl Scout camp 1995:
Check out that sweet swap hat.
Ben had fun with his niece:

Now we are back in Philly, and tonight we climbed into the bed to watch a movie together. I looked over at Ben and noticed that his nightstand was even more funny than usual, which led to the following exchange:
Me: If I did twitter, I would tweet "Things on Ben's nightstand: a glass of wine, an empty beer bottle, a piece of bread, and three mechanical pencils."
Ben: That's not true! It's two mechanical pencils and one pen. Also you left out that there's a receipt.
It's nice to be home.