Christmas in January 2014

Posted in Family, New Jersey by rfitz11

Happy end-of-January! I don’t mind January, since it’s my birthday month, it’s generally nice and cold (I hate luke-warm winters) and has also become the season of the Second Christmas. Aka Fitzgerald Family Christmas. Scott and I had the opportunity to host his side of the family for the second time since buying our house. (We hosted Thanksgiving during the time of the black hole in my life. I’ll get to that later.)

Scott’s brother’s family joined us for the weekend (his sister’s family couldn’t make it, unfortunately) and it was a great, low key time together.

The kiddos are all ready to visit Aunt Rebecca’s house at the shore come summer time!
We had fun opening presents and just hanging out for the afternoon. We made good use of still having the fancy-schmancy laser light show at our house from New Years Eve and have a dance party with the kids in the basement, complete with ribbon wands and light up bouncy balls. I am determined that they will love coming to Aunt Becca and Uncle Scott’s house! After dinner, we roasted s’mores over the fire. Prince is getting better at having patience with the kids. It gives me hope that he won’t be traumatized by future little ones. Now that our holiday season is officially over, I’m so sad that we have run out of built-in excuses to see one another. Now the warm weather can’t come fast enough, so we can entice all of our family to our house because of the beach. But it is aways so good to spend time with family, even if its just playing in the basement with the kids or taking trips to the {fancy} grocery store with your sister-in-law.

New Years Eve

Posted in Friends, New Jersey by rfitz11

2014 started in fine fashion at Casa Fitzgerald with plenty of old friends, our first party in the new house and, of course, sparkle.

I was the one throwing the party, so OF COURSE there was sparkle. And crafts. And crafts WITH sparkle.

My life-long friend, Lauren, and her husband, Hugh, made the trip to New Jersey to spend Scott’s birthday and New Years Eve with us. They also just bought a house (we closed the exact same day) so it was fun visiting each other’s homes over the holiday season. Please note I not only got Lauren to wear a tiara, but it is also captured in a photo. This was a once-in-a-lifetime situation.The tiaras were a hit with the girls.

And the men. Well, they wore the hats for a little while.

Some more (or less) than others.But only someone as special as our friend Danny could rock a “Canjo” and a corn cob pipe.

After the countdown, the party resumed in our basement bar, complete with bartenders, a laser light show and dancing. Oh, was there dancing.

I felt so lucky to have not only our New York/New Jersey friends travel to our house to ring in the New Year but also my dear friends from Virginia. If its true that your New Years Eve is an indication of your upcoming year, I say bring it on. I’ll gladly take a year with a {new} house full of good friends, laughter, prosecco, food, love, dancing…and glitter!

6Jan2014

The Christmas Season

Posted in Family, New Jersey, Our House, Travels by rfitz11

I’m still trying to get back into the blogging swing. Being a commuting homeowner is hard to get used to! But I have so much I want to catch up on. Both personal and home things. So up first – the Christmas season for the Fitzgeralds.

Oh, right. We bought a new car. A Jeep, actually. Scott couldn’t be more thrilled (he drove a Jeep in high school so I think he’s doing a little Glory Days reliving). It did an excellent job getting our first real Christmas tree home!

I admit, I grew up with fake trees. And I have to say, I prefer fake to real. I’m sure that is Christmas sacrilege or something. But they are perfectly symmetrical, pre-lit, and and don’t shed! Oh, and they don’t need to lean against the wall to stay standing. Our sweet, leaning tree.

I’m a huge fan of Christmas and Christmas ornaments in particular. It’s a bit of a ritual to take each one out, reminisce on the story behind each one and pick the perfect spot on the tree. We added a few new ones this year, including an Adirondack from our trips to Cape May,

and a new home ornament.

Our new Jeep has also come in super handy with the snow we got over the past month. We’re learning that our neighborhood is adorable in all seasons. I greatly appreciate the effort all of our neighbors put into decorating their homes. I hope they didn’t mind that we left our pumpkins out until mid-December and didn’t so much as put a candle in the window. I’m going to milk this new homeowner thing for all its worth! We’ll pull our weight next year, folks.