Winter Meme

1. Hot chocolate or apple cider?
Cider, especially my lazy manda cranberry apple cider (apple cider mix + warmed cran-apple juice = yum!)

2. Turkey or Ham?
It depends on whether we got our fill of turkey (and turkey sandwiches) at Thanksgiving. This year we did go for turkey and had planned on doing ham for New Year's Eve but just sort of ran out of steam. I can't remember what we ended up having for New Year's.

3. Do you get a Fake or Real Christmas tree?
Except for the one year I begged for a real tree, it's always been fake. I love how they now come with the lights already attached. LOL. So much easier.

4. Decorations on the outside of your house?
Our 'apartment' is actually the top floor of a house with our entrance way back on the side. So we don't have much visible real estate on which to put decorations. The roof is out of the question, and there's plastic over the windows. Our one bit of decoration is a snowflake windsock-spinner-thing. It's very windy around here, so it gets put to good use.

5. Snowball fights or sledding?
Ehh.. I'm too old for that. Actually, I only went sledding once in my life. My prime sledding years were spent in Florida, and we usually only get one good snow a year up here.

6. Do you like hanging around the fireplace because it’s warm?
No fireplace. :-(

7. Do you enjoy going downtown shopping?
Here, 'downtown shopping' means Ace Hardware, Family Dollar, and CVS, but yes, I do enjoy shopping there. CVS is great for stocking stuffers.

8. Favorite Christmas song?
I love all the solemn, old choral hymns such as "O Come, O Come Emannuel" and "Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming." But since discovering the King's College, Cambridge CD last year my favorite has been "Once in Royal David's City". It's so beautiful. And versitile! Sufjan Stevens has recorded two versions of it, one with banjos and one that's a piano instrumental where the notes ring like bells.

10. How do you feel about Christmas movies?
What's not to love? The only ones I dislike are the sappy made-for-TV holiday romance movies. There's always a new batch of them every year. I avoid them like the plague.

11. When is it too early to start listening to Christmas music?
Three months seems to be the maximum continuous time I can listen to holiday tunes, so anytime from October on is a good time to start.

12. Stockings before or after presents?
After.

13. Carolers, do you or do you not listen to them?
Do people still do that??

14. Go to someone else’s house or they come to you?
The family gets together on Thanksgiving and New Year's Day, so Christmas is a home day.

15. Do you read the Christmas Story the night before christmas?
Nope.

16. What do you do after presents?
This year we watched a Christmas parade on the TiVo, then started cooking the turkey.

17. What is your favorite holiday smell?
Cookies baking.

18. Ice skating or walking around the mall?
I'd love to have a mall to walk around. Online shopping is so boring in contrast.

19. Favorite Christmas memory:
The year I got my digital camera. I think I cried. :-)

20. Favorite Part about winter?
Having an excuse to knit woolens!

21. Ever been kissed under mistletoe?
Not that I recall.