Just wanted to share a few of my favorite pictures from Holiday Fun last weekend. I took over 100 pictures. I always have big plans to beautifully capture events on film. Then, when it's all over, I look at the pictures I've actually taken and am disappointed. Photography is something I'd love to be better at. Learning to take better pictures is one of my goals for the new year.
In any case, the weekend was so much fun, even if I wasn't all that happy with my pictures. Kristen and Rita arrived in Boston around 7 and we had cheese, crackers, veggies, hummus and other snacks. Oh, and wine. We also had some of that. Funny story. H called me from Trader Joe's on Thursday night and asked if I wanted him to pick up some cheese and crackers for my guests on Friday. I said sure, that would be great. When I showed up on Friday and opened the fridge there were like six different kinds of cheese. Apparently he doesn't mess around when he buys cheese. Not that I'm complaining. I've actually been eating leftover cheese for lunch all week. I think I'm officially all cheesed out, which I didn't even think was possible.
When Paola arrived (late because of car trouble) we had some green minestrone that I put together. It was so tasty. And sort of light, which was good because as I mentioned, there was a lot of cheese.
And then there were peppermint Joe Joe's, which seem to be Trader Joe's version of Oreos.
Oh, and more wine.
In the morning, we worked on a circle journal project that I brought. Those aren't quite ready yet, so we haven't officially started the process. But I think it will be cool for each of us to have a little book with pages made by all the others in it. We chose themes and started decorating them. Paola's theme is "lists", Rita's is "love is...", Krippi's is "it's a funny story", and mine is "top ten". I'm pretty excited to start exchanging them.
After that we went to Kendall Square to the community skating rink.
Super fun! If you haven't skated in ages, you should definitely find a rink and do it. I'm happy to report that none of us wiped out.
No wipe outs, despite the fact that there were antics. There are always antics, but when ice skates are involved, the potential for injury increases exponentially.
After skating, we went on to Harvard Square for lunch at Tory Row and shopping. I'd never eaten there before, but their menu had a lot of things that sounded good on it. Paola and I shared the meatloaf sandwich. It was kind of awesome. So that place gets a thumbs up. Next, we stopped in Black Ink for a while. That's one of my favorite little card and gift shops. They've got awesome letterpress greeting cards and a truly random assortment of cool little things. It's designed kind of like a general store.
At this point, the girls decided it was time for the main event, the relatively new (opened in August) Harvard Square Anthropologie. I think we may have been there for over an hour. It's a magical place with many floors of beautiful things.
Here is Paola, pretending that Anthropologie is her house.
I was very good and didn't buy anything. I was seriously tempted by several items but I showed admirable restraint. But I did find Paola a gorgeous dress for Christmas in Washington. So I shopped vicariously.
We hit LUSH, The Tannery and The Harvard Book Store, where I did pick up a couple gifts.
Harvard Square was so festive and pretty. After all the shopping, we had dinner at Tamarind Bay. I love Indian food and you can usually find most of the same dishes at any Indian restaurant, but this place has a different menu. They serve lots of things I'd never heard of or tried before. H joined us for dinner and we ordered five different dishes and shared everything and I thought it was all delicious. Especially the fish curry. That was amazing.

Later, back at the loft, we had our gift exchange. I'll take pictures of the present I got from Kristen and post them this weekend. It's awesome sauce. I'm going to make things with it.
So, in conclusion, I'm very glad we have this tradition. We get together every year around Christmas for girl time. Spending time with them makes me happy and thankful. I love my ladyfriends. The end.