Christmas Eve: 2012

Henry’s sister Kelly usually hosts Christmas Eve at her house, but we wanted to give her a break this year so we had everyone come to our crib for once. You guys know that I am embroiled in a hate-hate relationship with my house, but Henry really gave it a good cleaning and then I lit a bunch of candles.

Because candles make everything better.

Chooch picked out some Christmas M&Ms at Target and I poured them into a red bowl. Then I filled two other bowls with Chex Mix and some sort of spicy chips that no one but Chooch and I liked. I thought I did a fine job and made sure to point this out once everyone arrived.

Earlier that weekend, Chooch and I walked to the Mexican market to buy candy. I put some of that in a Mason jar. Something for everyone, you know?

There was a time when I was really super into having parties and had a spread so good, most people just wanted to stand around the food table all night.

I don’t know exactly what happened, but thank god for Henry, else our Christmas Eve crew would have gone terribly hungry. I had no idea he was making half the shit he made. Like ham. Did I even know Henry could make ham? Why would I know that? When’s the last time a vegetarian*  asked someone to cook them a motherfucking ham?

*(I eat fish now though, so I’m a poser.)

Henry also made mashed potatoes; some weird Lebanese dish with lamb and green beans, prompting an argument over whether or not I like green beans; peanut butter blossoms; shrimp-y deviled eggs; and an array of finger sandwiches which was actually my idea, I just didn’t feel like executing it.

I was really upset that I made room on one of the platters for Henry’s cocktail weiners and then he never put them out. The more wine I chugged, the more weiner-compassionate I became. “The weiners still haven’t been put out!” I would cry and Henry’s sister would laugh, because I get it — weiners are funny, but this was SERIOUS! There was this gaping void between the pepperoni and carrots that needed to be filled. IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

“I’ll get to it!” Henry kept saying, while ruining my pretty red serving platter by carving his fucking ham upon its face. Whatever.

So much cheese — I PUT THESE ON THE PLATTER! I also put out the goat cheese and I would have also put out the brie but I wasn’t sure how to open the package so Henry had to do that later. The cheese in the middle was some sort of whisky aged cheddar? Mike, Laura and Henry made fun of me because I couldn’t taste the whiskey, and then Henry asked, “Do you even know what whisky tastes like?”

I thought about it for a second and then realized that the fact that I had to even think about it probably meant that no, I don’t. If you gave me a flight of scotch, whiskey, brandy and bourbon and told me I could have STD-free sex with Jonny Craig if I correctly distinguished all four, I’d be scooting my radioactive kooka across the floor for some relief right about now.

That is to say: I would fail that taste-testing sesh.

At least I wasn’t eating the wax like Henry’s mom was!

In lieu of ingesting it, Mike made architectural masterpieces out of his cheese refuse.

Stephanie called my finger sandwiches “delightful.” Technically, I only made approximately four of them (but to my defense, they were the prettiest ones) before hysterically whining about how difficult it was while flailing about, leaving the rest for Henry to prepare.

It’s OK. He’s used to this.

Camera lens had no less than 7 fingerprints on it, but I was too drunk to notice. Besides, maybe I was going for that dreamy holiday haze. YOU DON’T KNOW.

Oh, and would you look at what is on Henry’s mom’s plate? Why, that would be an Erin Kelly Original Cookie. And by original, I mean that it originally came out of a plastic tub of fundraising cookie dough. I made these when Henry ran to the store earlier that day, thinking he would be so delighted when he came home to see that he had one less thing to do.

But no.

He was apprehensive.

And then when he saw the first batch, and how they had all adhered to each other to form one slimy pile of botulism, he said, “No. You can’t put these out. People will get SICK, ERIN.” My next batch was monitored closely and once Henry deemed them properly incubated, I was allowed to put those ones out on the table.

And then Henry had the audacity to almost forget to bring out the other thing that I sort of helped to make!

Weird shrimp egg things! He showed me how to pipe that shit into the eggs using a plastic bag. It was exciting, and when I grew tired after injecting the first three, he made me keep going.

Ugh, it was awful! I hate making food things!

Blake and Sam, sitting in the one corner of the room that wasn’t cleaned.

After texting back and forth with my friend Jessa about Newtown tragedy, she filled me in on the Sandy Hook Snowflake project, where people all over the world are making snowflakes to help turn the new elementary school into a winter wonderland. I thought, “What better time to undertake a project than when I have a houseful of minions guests to help me. I found this tutorial on some lady’s blog on how to make really fancy snowflakes out of junk mail, so I made Laura demonstrate. I’m not a good teacher. And besides, Laura had JUST looked at the instructions on my phone! They were fresh in her memory!

Even Mad Henry made one.

Snowflake Sweat Shop.

 

Mike made German Chocolate brownies, OMG.

Cousins.

Stephanie, Kian and Samantha. They appreciated the Jonny Craig-touches on my Christmas tree. So there, Henry. (We are in the same demographic though.)

We managed to not kill each other! Let’s have all of the parties at our house, Henry!