Advent 2021

In our household, "Christmas" (Advent) cannot begin before Thanksgiving. (I hear about it every time the grocery starts holiday muzak early.) Due to work and Dear Husband's desire that the tree last through Epiphany, we typically start our preparations the first week of December. This year we went to pick out a tree from our favorite vendor, Trees for Veterans, only to discover an empty lot. We are afraid the pandemic claimed the tree supply, the business, and/or the friendly man who ran it. So we purchased a likely specimen from a hardware store and decorated it after its poor branches had a chance to fluff out while we attended a service of lessons and carols at one of the big episcopal churches nearby, complete with a choir that processed in robes, a string quartet, and--of course--the organ.

My Christmas present to DH this year was brunch at the Inn on Negley on St. Nicholas Day (December 6). We can't usually brunch, since local restaurants typically seat on Sundays, so it felt luxuriant to dress up and go out on a Monday morning. We arrived with big appetites at 9am, just as breakfast was wrapping up for the B&B's overnight guests. This meant that we essentially had the room to ourselves. Everything was beautifully decorated, with an entire Dickens Village under the sideboard.

We started with fruit cups, mini pastries, cranberry juice, and individually steeped teas. DH chose the sweet entrée, which was chunky French toast, while I opted for the savory, some of the best-seasoned eggs and potatoes I have ever tasted. So full that I couldn't even touch the toast that came with them, we asked them to box up our eggnog cheese cake desserts to go. It was really lovely to have this time together to catch up with each other.