Christmas in the New House

We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas cooking and enjoying our new house this year. The neighborhood and the house was quiet and peaceful, and we even got a little snow on Christmas! As with every other year, we missed our families and friends but we're secretly trying to plan a good time for some visits in 2015... Hopefully that will all come together some time soon.  :)

Christmas Eve was our italian feast, and we made stuffed pasta shells and lasagna this year. We made our own lasagna noodles, and quickly learned through mistakes why you shouldn't stack sticky noodles on top of each other after they're rolled out.  haha   Regardless of the mishap, everything turned out delicious. We made way too much food as usual, so we now have a giant refrigerator full of left-overs, but it will get us through the next week without having to do much cooking.

One of my favorite but oddest traditions we've created is to sit with some chocolate tequila and enjoy the movie "Bad Santa" every Christmas Eve. Not exactly your sentimental Christmas movie, but we laugh so hard and really enjoy ourselves.

For Christmas, I ended up having to substitute the smoker for our new crock-pot to cook our pork shoulder. I was sad, but the smoker just wasn't ready for cooking. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but the shoulder was just as tender and tasty coming from the slow cooker, and it was a delicious Christmas meal! I will happily use this as a substitute for making pulled pork any time now. So easy to throw it in and let it cook all day without having to deal with cleaning up charcoal and a grease filled smoker...

Our family and friends sent us so many amazing gifts, and this gift card is going to be put to good use as soon as I can get out of the house! Merry Christmas from Colorado.  xx