It's The Most Wonderful Time of the Year!!!!

In the Mobley household, we decorate for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving...always.  We need to squeeze in as much holiday cheer into those 31 days following Turkey Day as humanly possible.  However, as you can tell from previous blog posts, I'm very strict about fully appreciating the joys of Thanksgiving before moving on to the next holiday.  So I've chosen to write separate entries as to not take anything away from my favorite harvest holiday.  The next month will absolutely be a barrage of holiday activities that the Mobleys will be participating in over the course of the month.  So each blog until January will no doubt have a Christmas theme. I just wanted to warn you of that, because it is....after all...the most wonderful time of the year.  

Immediately after wrapping up a festive trip to Connecticut, Mike and I headed back to Manhattan with a little extra cargo in our car.  My brother & his girlfriend Jen accompanied us to the city for a quick day trip before they headed back to Dallas.  Now, being a host/tour guide to people visiting Manhattan can often be a very daunting task as there are limitless options for things to do in the city.  But when it's Christmas time...it's even MORE stressful.  There is literally an overload of things to see/do in Manhattan around Christmas.  There is ice skating at Rockefellar, Macy's storefront windows, decorations on Fifth Avenue, Radio city Rockettes, lights on Park Ave, and decorations on every street corner you see. So to simplify it for myself, my only task was to bring Jenny and Garret as much festivity as possible in the one day we had together in the city.

We took them to the Union Square Christmas fair which reminded me of a similar fair Michael and I went to in Ireland last year.  There were booths of hand knitted hats, home made chocolates, silky scarves, and loads of quirky New York art.  One could get lost in the fair for hours.  But the major event of the evening was our dinner at Rolf's...arguably New York's best decorated establishment for Christmas.  In fact, I'm going to go as far as saying it's the most festive place in New York City.  So what better way to kick off the season than some mulled wine, eggnog and some holiday schapps????  The food is questionable....but it was still fun to sit in their Disney-like booths and order delicious drinks.  The Rolfs dinner was quickly followed by a mini pub crawl to some of the most elaborately decorated bars in all of Gramercy Park.  Yes, it was only about a 4 block radius, but I sometimes feel like our quaint little neighborhood has a lot to offer, and we don't spend much time going out around there at night.

The first Mobley Christmas Tree!

The next morning was met with a bit of sadness as Garrett & Jen headed back to Dallas.  But there is no better way to battle the "end of a vacation blues" than to bust out the Christmas decorations from storage!!!! And while New York City may not have the most festive Christmas Tree lots, we picked out one of the most beautiful trees I've ever seen and carried it 3 blocks back to our humble abode.  We never had a real tree growing up in California, and while it made our lives much easier during the clean up, there are few things as festive as the smell of a real live Noble Fir sparkling with shiny white lights.

Winston decorating his tree

Over the past 3 Christmases that we have spent together, we have collected quite a few ornaments and it's always so fun to unpack them and remember the years prior.  And every year I am surprised by how many decorations we have, and how many more we end up buying.
Mike and I try to stay in town over the month of December so that we can enjoy everything that Manhattan has to offer during the Christmas season (come Jan/Feb, I'll be taking every chance I can get to get the hell out of dodge).  So we can't wait to share with you our first Christmas together as the Mobleys.  Let the festivities begin!

Gobble Gobble Gobble!

It's the time of year where we all think about what we have to be thankful for, and this has been such a wonderful year that it's often hard to remember everything that I'm so grateful for in my life.  But I feel compelled to share what has made our lives so fulfilled this year and what we are thankful for on this joyous holiday.

• My husband!  This was the first Thanksgiving we spent as "the Mobleys", and words can't even express how thankful I am to have him in my life.  I'm so grateful for how he works his little hiney off so that we can have the fun, exciting life that we live in Manhattan.  I'm so glad that I found a man whose main focus every day is trying be the happiest and most festive person you could possibly be.  It's an infectious characteristic that makes me smile, and makes it hard not to get caught up in his happiness.  He's incredibly supportive of me and my unpredictable hours in a crazy New York ad agency, and he's patient with me when I don't wake up singing and whistling like he does every morning.  Not a day goes by that I don't thank God that our paths crossed 3.5 years ago in LA and that we get to spend the rest of our lives together.  

• Our families!  Not only do I have two amazing parents who have given me anything I could ever want in life, but I just doubled my luck this year! We're so thankful to have the strength of two loving and happy families to spend our lives with as Christmas comes closer.  We wish every day that we could be closer to both our parents and our siblings, but that just means that we cherish the time that we do spend together that much more. 

• Winston!   It may sound silly, but that little critter brings both of us more joy than you can ever imagine.  I know that one day Michael and I will be wonderful parents to a real baby, but for now, he's it!  He's made us the little family unit and I can't imagine how sad a day would be without seeing that wiggly little hiney every day when I come home from work.

• Our Friends! Mike and I have a really, really fun life, and that is because we have really, really, REALLY fun people to spend it with.  We have friends all over the country, so there is sure to be a good time regardless of which state we visit.  But you all (and you know who you are) make us so happy, and the times we spend with you are some of the most festive celebrations ever.  We love you all and look forward to many many more great times with you. 

• Our home!  They say that home is where the heart is, and I'm thankful to have the quaint little Manhattan apartment that we live in.  It's almost been two years since we dramatically downsized from our LA living, and I appreciate every day that our sweet doormen give us a happy wave.  Or when I can have my laundry delivered to my front door, or that I'm just mere steps away from the 6 train.  Our fireplace may be electric, and our closet space is pitiful, but I'm proud of the home that we've built as a couple and I'm thankful every day that we are fortunate enough to live in such a special place.

• Iron Maiden!  I asked my wonderful husband to contribute to the blog with things he's thankful for, and this was his response...sigh.  

So it goes without saying that our first newlyweds Thanksgiving  was memorable and successful.  We are lucky to have some family close by in Connecticut to minimize the nightmare that is Thanksgiving holiday travel.  This year, we got a special treat because we had family from Chicago come in to join the DuPont family in Connecticut!  It was quite a houseful.  The wine was flowing, there was a lot of laughter, and of course, there was too much food.  We definitely missed the Mobley family, but we'll get to see them in just 3.5 weeks on Christmas Day.

I'm always a little sad when Thanksgiving is over, because it's a holiday I look forward to so much every year.  As a child, I always thought that Turkey Day was a pointless holiday that got in the way of me getting presents and putting up Christmas lights.  But as an adult now, Thanksgiving has come to mean so much more to me now.  It's more than just a gluttonous day of treats.  It's about family, and surrounding yourself with the ones you love.  It's about taking time out of the daily grind and the pressures of the real world to focus on what's really important in life.  Yes, the food is delicious, and football is on all day, but there is nothing more joyful than a houseful of love & happiness.  

Clean Sweep!

Right now we live in a one bedroom apartment in Gramercy Park.  And while we will most likely renew our lease when it is up in April, I'm confident that this will be the smallest space that Michael, Winston and I ever occupy together.  So there are hopefully larger closets, more cabinets and bigger storage spaces in my future.  At least that's what I tell myself every time I get a new pair of shoes and have to throw out an older pair so that I can fit them all into my "closet" (if you can even call it that).  I also do not believe that anyone I hire could ever do the level of cleaning that I'm capable of doing myself.  I clean a lot, and I clean often, and I'm convinced that no professional can make my house sparkle on a weekly basis for under $1K/month.  So much to Mike's chagrin, Saturday morning cleaning is a team project.  And while we still have our tiny living space, that's not going to be changing any time soon.  

Cute little wall art we bought to supplement our
decorations!  

The way I clean, I could be locked up in the apartment for days trying to vacuum up every piece of Winston's hair or sweeping every microscopic fiber of dust.  But Mike and I have gotten into a pretty great routine that has allowed us to still have our Saturdays.  It's like a well-oiled machine on Saturdays.  We wake up and eat our breakfast/coffee, put on some tunes, and hit our prospective projects.  I do have to say, that as much as I love my husband, this is an approach that he didn't ever volunteer for until we were married.  And now that we're husband and wife, our household responsibilities are shared.  I'm giving him a lot of credit for being my hero against the stubborn soap scum in our bathtub and for rescuing me from ever having to clean a toilet...but before our wedding there were many Saturdays where I sat sweating over a Swiffer wet jet whilst my husband slept on the couch with Winston draped across his lap.  But nowadays, he's come to accept the fact that if we split up everything, he actually gets to hang out with his wife, and get out to enjoy the weekend.  Enjoyin a cozy weekend at home in Manhattan is much better in an immaculately scrubbed apartment.  I hope that we can keep up this system as we move on to bigger and better living spaces because so far the tag teaming has made for a happy marriage, a home-y apartment, and a happy wife!  

And with a squeaky clean apartment, what better time than to take on a little home improvement project?  The holidays are coming up, and we're still waiting anxiously for our beautiful couch, so we're perfecting each room until that wonderful delivery day comes.  This weekend we made some minor adjustments to our bathroom.  After 5 or 6 dark and stormys this summer, Mike and I thought it would be cute to buy a few authentic hand painted buoys from a gift shop in Cape Cod to turn our bathroom into "the most festive you can be outside of Christmas".  So without spending too much moola, and just a few minor tweaks, we transformed the bathroom to a little nautical retreat.  A nice little room upgrade before we start to welcome friends and family for the holidays!

Bulldog! Bulldog! Bow wow wow

Our very own Handsome Dan

Since moving to New York, we've been fortunate enough to participate in a few yearly traditions.  It has been almost 2 years since the Mobleys arrived in Manhattan, but we've been able to pick up on some great events that Mike and I missed out on while living in California.  One of the greatest traditions that unfortunately only occurs every TWO years is the Princeton v Yale football weekend. 


The Buck family is extremely generous in opening up their home to all who wants to come and they put together one of the most elaborate tail gate experiences I've ever seen in my entire life.  The spread this year included: two fully stocked Tahoes, home made chili, a fresh batch of Mr. Buck's famous whiskey sours, a 10 lb roasted turkey, TWO beef roasts, unlimited chips & dip, spinach salad, coleslaw, a Hieneken keg, a 75 quart cooler full of beer, over 6 pounds of cheese & salami, a 20 quart cooler full of wine, multiple bottles of pungent/peaty scotch, a giant inflatable Tiger, custom made cups for the event, and at least 4 handles of miscellaneous other booze.

We got an extra bonus because Mike's parents were in New York for the weekend!!!  We all caravan-ed out to Princeton Friday night to get a head start on the festivities. Saturday was a perfect day to spend 7 hours outside.  The crew was packed up and ready to head out to the Princeton campus by 8:30am where we strategically staked out our tail gating real estate.





Our set up was key to ensuring optimal socializing while still having enough room to throw a football around.  Mr Buck, being a loyal Princeton alumni and a VIP member of the board, was able to secure the best tail-gating location at the parking lot of Ivy Club, which provided us with prime access to a bathroom, which was key considering we were out there from 9a to 4p.  

Princeton is one of the most beautiful campuses I've ever had the pleasure of visiting, but during fall, it's absolutely spectacular.  Not only was this my first time joining the Princeton/Yale weekend celebration, this was a first for Winston as well!  He was quite the hit (amongst both Yale and Princeton alumni) with his Yale sweater. Even if you're a loyal Princeton Tiger, it's hard to resist his face and regal disposition.  The ladies were pretty smitten, and people even questioned whether he was "the real" Handsome Dan.  

It meant a lot to me to be able to spend the day with Mike's parents as well.  This was Mr. Mobley's first Yale/Princeton football game in over 50 years!!!! But Ivy League football games are totally different than the cut-throat collegiate football I experienced at both USC and at the University of Texas.  The actual game was less of an attraction than the festive tail gating, so only a few of us visited the actual stadium.  And...get this...the tickets were $9!!!   So the day was just a beautiful event full of food, fun, family, friends and football...all of my favorite "F words"!

The Buck's hospitality continued past the daytime events and went through the night as they invited everyone back to their home for the evening.  As one could imagine, there were quite a few leftovers from the tailgate and some big football games still on TV.  So they had quite a house full of energetic adults playing Apples to Apples, wearing silly hats, drinking every available form of alcohol, and congregating around the cozy fire pit outside. 

Sunday was rough, and I think we all left Princeton with a little less seratonin, and a little more sadness about the weekend being over, but it was worth it to spend the weekend with some of my favorite people being festive as ever.  If only we didn't have to wait two more years for the next Yale/Princeton matchup!

Happy Harvest

I had a fabulous childhood.  Most of my early years were spent in beautiful, sunny, Orange County, California.  So that means that I went most of my life without having all four seasons.  Now that doesn't mean I was sheltered in a perpetual summertime because the other benefit of my fabulous childhood was that I was able to travel a lot.  While I didn't live in "four seasons" weather for the majority of my life, I was fortunate enough to travel to snowy ski towns, and crisp east coast cities in the autumn.  But one thing I didn't do since my early, EARLY years of living in Chicago was have that yearly experience that every kid loves...jumping in a big pile of crispy leaves!!!! Since moving to New York, and since we've experienced a full year (almost two) of the crazy, sometimes unpredictable, and often extreme weather conditions, I've become much more appreciative and nostalgic about the harvest season.

In some of our previous blog posts, I've been repetitive in declaring fall my favorite time of the year.  But I feel it warrants a bit more thought.  Also, most of my other entries have been Mobley entries about what we're doing since marriage, but I'm taking some selfish time to share with you some of our favorite things about fall in Manhattan.

The changing of the leaves  - We don't live in the suburbs, but that doesn't mean that the city doesn't put on an amazing show of welcoming autumn through the most vibrant shades of yellow, red and orange that you've ever seen.  Just yesterday, after running errands, we stopped to look at a tree that looked as if it were on fire.  And even though I'm usually in a hurry in the morning, I can't help but be distracted by the colors in Madison Square Park during my walk to work. 

Union Square Farmer's Market - The Farmer's Market is wonderful most of the year.  But harvest-time makes those  errands a lot more festive.  The vendors are soliciting their home made cider, fresh apple pies, barrels and barrels of warty/odd-shaped gourds (my favorite autumn decoration), seasonal flowers, and pumpkins the size of Winston.  We try never to miss a weekend at the Farmer's Market because despite the crowds of people doing their shopping for the week, it's a Saturday tradition that we enjoy so much more in the fall.

The scents of autumn - for some people that means rotten leaves.  But for me, the air just smells a little bit different in the fall.  It smells crisp, and clean, and if there was a scent for festive...it smells festive in the fall.  In our home, it smells like spiced pumpkin or Farmer's Market, thanks to Yankee Candle's seasonal scents. 

Some hearty beef stew I made
using our shiny new crock pot!

Food! - Fall is a time for some of our favorite food.  Meals that include spicy chili, hearty stews, butternut squash & pumpkin flavored desserts.  The delicious feasts, paired with a harvest ale make my heart happy and my belly warm. 

The Weather - I thought that I'd get robbed of my autumn last week when we had the first snow of the season before Halloween even happened.  But immediately following the winter storm that ravaged the East Coast, the weather returned to to the chilly, crisp season that I've grown to appreciate.  While I prefer my bikini's and sundresses to bulky sweaters, there is something about getting bundled up in colorful scarves, silly hats and fun boots that has to make you smile.  The sun is still shining, and somehow the sky is a more vibrant shade of blue.  I cherish these crisp days of gorgeous weather as it is only a matter of weeks before I have to wear fur lined parkas & snow boots.

Football - Need I say more?  My husband grew up an avid Niners fan, and I am just thankful that he puts up with (and participates in) my annoying and mostly heartbreaking support of the Chicago Bears.  To which I'd just like to say BEAR DOWN (Beat the Eagles!)

Family & Friends - With autumn comes two of my favorite days of the year...Halloween & Thanksgiving.  Two days that are focused entirely on spending time with others.  It irks me slightly when people choose to start their countdowns to Christmas immediately after Halloween.   And while I love few things more than a nice cup of egg nog whilst listening to Christmas carols by a fire...let us not forget about the joy that is Thanksgiving.  We'll have a blog entry devoted entirely to Thanksgiving, but the Mobley home is decorated (of course) to celebrate the harvest holiday.  

And none of this would be as fun without an equally festive husband who doesn't go one day without enjoying the harvest season.  We've spent hundreds of dollars on harvest ale over the years that neither of us particularly liked only because it's all part of the harvest experience (or because the beer bottle had pumpkins on it).  He has dug through piles of gourds to find the ugliest ones so that we can have the perfect decorations for the Mobley household.  And he's the first person at Pottery Barn as soon as the harvest/Thanksgiving catalog comes out...one day we WILL have plates with turkeys on them, as soon as we have a bit more room!  

Living other cities has made me more appreciative about the great things in each of the places I've lived.  I could write novels about how breath-taking it is when you reach the highest point of Golden Lantern in Dana Point and you see the ocean for as far as the eye can see.  It would take me days to tell you why moving to LA after I graduated was one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life.  And there are no words to describe how amazing it is to drive along the roads through Texas and see miles and mile of blue bonnets in the spring. But one place that beats all of my many homes is New York in the fall.  It doesn't get much better than this!