Coffee Chat // December 10, 2013

I've seen this kind of series pop up on various blogs and vlogs in the past, and I adore the concept. Since I'd love to gather us all together for a chat over coffee but I'm still working on inventing that teleporter and my apparition skills are sorely lacking, we'll have to settle for the occasional Coffee Date post. I hope you'll join me!

Instead of just rambling about the random things going on in my world, I thought I'd throw out a few questions for you. Play along in the comments below if you'd like!

1. What's your favorite holiday memory from childhood? 
2. When was the last time you did something special or exciting? 
3. Have you seen any good movies lately? 
4. How do you avoid getting too stressed out during the holiday season? Please help. I'm desperate.
5. What was the last impulse purchase you made? 

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When I was about eight years old, my family started holding a Progressive Dinner, which was one December night where we'd travel between my aunts' and grandparent's houses for appetizers, dinner and dessert. I remember thinking it was such a fun idea, and I loved getting to see the Christmas tree and decorations at each of my relatives' houses. We'd get to stay up later than normal, and if we were lucky on the drive home, my stepdad would take a short detour and go past the "fancy houses," which were always my favorite to see all lit up with Christmas lights. I don't remember us keeping this tradition for too many years, as I think it got to be too much work and travel time for the various families, but I loved it while it lasted.

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Life hasn't been particularly exciting this year, but we did recently buy a new car in October-- a bright blue Prius named Dory, after the fish from Finding Nemo. She's gorgeous! It's basically our first "grown up" car purchase. We went from a 1999 Mercury Sable, a hand-me-down from my step-grandma, which felt like driving a tank around our tiny urban neighborhood and was starting to cost us far too much in repairs. I'm so happy to have a smaller and more modern car now!

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I always tend to watch more movies in the winter. Mark and I often go to mid-day matinees at our local theater, and we saw The Book Thief two weekends ago and Catching Fire the week before that. Catching Fire was SO GOOD, you guys! This is my review, summed up perfectly in one GIF:

The Book Thief is one of Mark's favorite books, and I thought the book was quite good as well, so our expectations were pretty high for the movie adaptation. I thought it was a beautifully filmed movie, and the story still made an impression, but it is nowhere near as good as the book.

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Stress during the holidays is always a problem for me. We have about 20 people to buy gifts for every year (yay divorced families!), and the logistics of spending time with each family-- plus friends and work parties-- makes me threaten to run off to Germany for Christmas EVERY YEAR. This year, I took some pressure off myself by deciding not to send out holiday cards. I feel like I should feel guilty about this, but I don't. At least not until someone points out that I didn't send out cards. And I'll give them the side-eye for it.

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I admire the people who are able to refrain from buying themselves anything during December; I do not have that kind of self-restraint. I don't do a lot of shopping or internet browsing during the year, so when I start Christmas shopping for family, I always end up finding stuff for myself too. That has been the case this year since I have a few ladies to buy for for Secret Santa exchanges and have been spending time on sites like Sephora and BaubleBar. Black Friday and Cyber Monday online deals didn't help matters either. Most recently I ended up buying myself this rose gold pave bracelet from BaubleBar when I had a discount code. Oops!

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Your turn! Feel free to answer any or all the questions, I'd love to hear from you.