May your journey through 2010 be filled with new adventures shared with your favorite people! Happy New Year!
Happy New Year!
5
Category Archives: holidays
Weddings
I love holiday weddings! It probably goes back to my own
parents’ wedding on Dec. 18, 1955. I wasn’t there but I’ve always been entranced by my mom’s description of her bridesmaids carrying muffs with holly sprigs pinned to them — how romantic and lovely is that? So I was tickled when Younger Daughter asked me to go with her to a friend’s wedding that was the weekend before Christmas. Her friends had so many sweet touches to the ceremony — a processional of guitar music, simple and
classic knee-length bridesmaids’ dresses, a swirly logo on the invitations and programs — that I should have known the reception would be equally classic. It was at Locust Hill, an outstanding historic house in Tuscumbia, Alabama — a town full of outstanding historic houses. I especially was enthralled with the entryway, where a holiday-decorated antique sidebar held scrapbook pages for guests to sign plus photos of the couple. And the groom’s cake was fun with its fishing theme. Now, I can hear some of you non-Southern folks scratching your heads and wondering what a “groom’s cake” is. While it’s true that this tradition of honoring the groom with his own cake is no longer confined to states that consider Jefferson Davis’ birthday an official holiday, it’s still not a common tradition outside of the South. And I’m not even sure why it’s such a Southern thing, sort of like cheese straws and using the word “tea” to mean “a tall glass of cold iced sweet goodness.” But I’m glad weddings are celebrated everywhere. Even where nobody knows what a groom’s cake is.
Holidays
Happy Holidays! I am still here but, as most of the blogosphere has been doing for the past few weeks, I’ve been lazy. Very, very lazy — computerwise. When it comes down to choosing between enjoying a mug of hot cocoa with the umpteenth replay of “Christmas Vacation” (I love that movie!) and actually logging on and putting my brain into gear and thinking my way past the visions of sugar plums dancing in my head (and the baking and cleaning and organizing and wrapping and …) — I’ve been choosing the easy way out. But no more! Time to get back to normal. Time to put away Christmas things. Time to … oh, who am I kidding? It’s still the holidays, our little tree is still up and I’m still eating sugar cookies and cheese balls and the last of the Chex Mix. But I will do better about blogging. Promise.
So how was y’all’s Christmas? Hope everybody had a good one. Kudos to those who, like Older Daughter, had four celebrations on that one day. She and my son-in-law and grandson Capt. Adorable made it to all of them, although the day of travel left the 21-month-old Captain dazed and confused.
Christmas
Hope you have a wonderfully merry Christmas -- and keep a sense of wonder and delight just like grandson Capt. Adorable.
Christmas
What says “holidays” better than food, family and friends — 
especially if that food includes all the Christmas cookies you ever wanted to eat? This year my cooking club, the Gingers (Girls In Need of Gourmet Experience Really Soon), came to my house for lunch and a cookie exchange. I went with red and white and borrowed my mom’s Christmas tableware (thanks, 
Mom!) for an easy meal of soup, cheese, crackers and muffins. (And, by the way, 
I have a great soup recipe: Find a caterer or restaurant who makes excellent soup and become a regular and valued customer. Works every time.) Then it was time to distribute our cookie choices. Yum!!! Just imagine having six people each give you a dozen of the most delicious Christmas cookies you’ve ever tasted — unbelievable. We all agreed this definitely will be an annual event for us. And in honor of the Gingers coming to my house, I put up a cooking table-top tree for them. It wasn’t difficult to find miniature decorations for it — for some reason, many of the ornaments I have for our big tree revolve around food and drink. Go figure. I had some vintage cooking utensils from my mom’s antiques shop and other leftovers from when the Gingers decorated a 15-footer for the annual Christmas-tree display at our local arts center a couple years ago, so the little cooking tree came together easily. The only downside is it makes me hungry every time I look at — but that’s not a problem when you have a practically endless supply of cookies in the house.
Christmas Style
My two daughters, 25- and 23-years-old, are the most stylish women I 
know. I am constantly in awe of them and have no idea where they picked up their fashion sense — not from their mom, that’s for sure. Take Younger Daughter, for instance. Now, she didn’t knowingly pick out a dress that’s identical to her sister’s shower curtain — she just recognized style and creativity when she saw it. Her look is the perfect expression of who she is: A smart and funny young woman who’s her own individual self. Older Daughter, mom to 21-month-old Capt. Adorable, excels at chic budget-friendly and I’ve-only-got-two-minutes-to-myself style, such as these skinny jeans, high-heeled ankle boots and black top accented with a chunky and easy-wearing necklace. (Also, please note the Captain in his Christmas pajamas — I couldn’t resist when I saw them at Target! — topped with a striped Gap hoodie. Seems as if he’s got his mom’s fashion intuition — at least until he can dress himself.) I love hanging out with my daughters — they make me up my game from my preferred winter uniform of jeans and boring black turtlenecks. I just wish I could fit into their clothes. I’ve never understood why they can borrow mine and look great but it does not work the other way!!!
P.S. Don’t forget to send me your funny and creative New Year’s resolutions for my Jan. 1 newspaper column. E-mail to cathylwood@gmail.com and include the way you’d like to be identified. You can be anonymous if you’d like, but I have to be able to tell the paper that you’re a real person. I’ve already gotten some great resolutions, but I want yours!
Christmas Decor
I am a lazy Christmas person. Don’t get me wrong — I love silver 
bells and starry nights and sugar cookies — but I’m not very good at the decking-the-halls part. Luckily, I know people who are — people who excel at Christmas. Like my friend Evelyn. I love the dinner table she set and the way she’s festived-up her living room with rich red and gold accents and a touch of green. This is how you do Christmas. I just light a lot of candles and hope the twinkle lights cover up the cat hair.
Children
"Would you like sugar and cream with that?" Grandson Capt. Adorable, almost 21 months old, enjoys tea time at his great-grandparents' house with special guests Cookie Monster and Alf.
New Year’s Resolutions
Okay, y’all, here’s your chance to become famous — or infamous, maybe. When I was a staff writer at the TimesDaily newspaper in Florence, Alabama, I’d turn my New Year’s column over to readers every year and publish the funniest and most creative resolutions folks sent me. I didn’t do it this past year since I’m not working in the office anymore, but this year my dear husband pointed out that really that’s no excuse. So here you go: E-mail me at cathylwood@gmail.com with your best resolution for 2010 and you may see it in my Jan. 1 newspaper column. I need funny, witty, bright and creative — we all want to save the world and spend more time with our families and friends and adopt more stray puppies, so those don’t count. You can do better! And even though I need to know who you are and that you’re a real live legal non-scary person, you can have your name/location/identity published any way you want: “Mary Smith, Huntsville, Alabama” or “A gardener in San Diego” or “John Doe, writer and part-time cook in Seattle” or “Cathy’s friend and shopping co-conspirator” or whatever you want. So e-mail me your family-friendly G-rated resolution by Sunday, Dec. 27, include your true identity so I can reassure the paper that everybody’s cool and also include your identity the way you want it published. I may edit your resolution to fit the space but I promise not to drastically alter it. I cannot wait to see what you come up with!
Christmas Decor
Has this holiday ribbon made it to your town yet? Everywhere I 
go in my usual family-and-friends route through Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, I see it. This super-wide bendable mesh is the latest thing to hit Christmas decorating since the invention of inflatable yard snow-globes — at least around here. Folks are decking their halls, 
mailboxes, wreaths, garlands, trees, lamp posts and even presents with it. I love it — it seems so bright and festive and cheerful — and I would join in except I spent major $$$ a few years ago on going all gold and white for our outdoor Christmas decor and I imagine that my dear and 
darling husband would not take kindly to a major redo. But it’s tempting. I tend to overhaul all our outdoor Christmas decor every several years or so. The current white and gold replaced a symphony of gorgeous metallic purples, reds, golds and greens that I was in love with but my children cringed every year and heaved ponderous sighs about living with circus decorations. And in its full glory, the white and gold isn’t much better — when I put everything out in its originally intended spot, the house takes on a sort of puffy Victorian fairy-tale look that really has nothing in common with anybody who lives inside it. Consequently, I pare it down to the bare essentials of a couple wreaths, some mailbox decor and a few bows here and there — leaving many $$$ worth of wreaths, garlands and ribbons packed up and unused. But do not tell the husband, please. Our secret???
Coffee with Cathy 