Things To Do For Two

As you may have read in yesterday’s post, Brad bought me a smoothie recipe book for our Christmas in July celebrations. This afternoon’s high temperatures called for a refreshing drink, so we flew ourselves into the kitchen to whip up our very first successful smoothie. Emphasis on the successful. With just 4 simple ingredients it was pretty hard to fail and it ended up tasting great! If you have a blender at home, try the recipe below and let us know what you think!

Recipe:

1 cup strawberries, hulled

1/2 cup blueberries

1/2 cup plain yogurt

1/4 cup milk

* we also added about a tsp of honey to sweeten it up.

Blend for 1 minute and enjoy!

As July 25 approaches so too does the 5-month mark before Christmas. Why not dream of cooler times during the summer heat and celebrate Christmas in July? Not to worry, most Christmas in July celebrations are way less stressful and costly than Christmas in December. It can be as elaborately or as simply as you please.

SHE SAID:

I’ve been trying to think of cooler things to do lately during these 30-degree days of high humidity. While sitting in our unfinished basement with my feet in a bucket of ice has been tempting, I needed something a little more stimulating and a lot less insane.

While Christmas can often be used synonymously with insanity, the idea of celebrating twice in one year may sound, well, insane to you. Not to worry, though, only the idea is insane. In practice it’s actually quite lovely and how the real Christmas ought to be – simple.

As with the normal Christmas, food is the major focal point of this celebration. We tried taking the traditional Christmas foods and putting a summer twist on them. For instance, instead of roasting a turkey, we made mini turkey sliders on the BBQ. In place of cranberries, we had sparkling cranberry and pomegranate drinks. Instead of corn as a side dish, we had corn on the cob. Okay, that last one was a little lie. We didn’t have corn on the cob because Brad hates feeling like a greasy ape after eating it, so we fried it with pepper, butter and Parmesan instead. Anyway, you get the point.

The cooling off part of this celebration comes mainly with the dessert and activities you choose. Since we don’t have very many ways to cool off in our house, save shoving our head in the freezer from time to time, our cooling off often comes in the form of food like ice cream, popsicles, or even just straight up ice (we’re desperate people!). In lieu of heating up the oven up to bake anything, we bought cookies n’ cream ice cream as a play on the milk and cookies left out for Santa on Christmas Eve.

As for activities, we couldn’t do much more than lie low and watch a Christmas movie. We opted for The Holiday, but never made it through since that movie is ridiculously long. If you have the luxury of owning a pool you can really indulge. If you’re on a slightly lower budget, you might even opt to buy a kiddie pool and create your own little patio pool party. Better, yet, you could head to the beach, lake or indoor pool at your local sportsplex.

I enjoyed celebrating Christmas in July with Brad, but I think it could be even better with friends and/or family to celebrate with, since that’s a big part of what complete Christmas for me. If you’re looking for something to do this weekend as July 25th draws near, why not plan your own celebration? Remember to tell us how it went and don’t hold back!

HE SAID:

When someone mentions Christmas, what pops into your head? I would imagine your mind goes to one of two extremes. Either you conjure up images of joy and happiness, or of pain and misery, you love it or you hate it. The beauty of Christmas in July is that you have the opportunity to do all the things you love and none of the things you hate.

If I had ever heard of Christmas in July before I married Susan, it didn’t make much of an impression. When she told me about it, I couldn’t really wrap my brain around the idea of voluntarily putting myself through the rigamarole of the holidays in the middle of the summer. But once we set out to actually try it, I discovered that there are many ways to make it quite enjoyable.

There are three main pillars to the holidays that I wanted to incorporate into our summer festivities:

Gifts

We aren’t the type to go spending-crazy at Christmas time. We always set a very reasonable budget and we’re usually quite good at sticking to it. Regardless, I almost always come out of the holidays feeling like we went overboard. We are by no means wealthy, but we have a good life so it sometimes seems silly to spend even the relatively small amount we spend on Christmas.

With that said, we tried to keep things as minimal as possible for Christmas in July. We kept it to one gift each, and it was great. I feel like one gift means way more than the mountain of junk that can pile up in December.

The trick is to keep it low budget and low pressure. Spend whatever you think is appropriate, but don’t obsess over giving gifts of exactly equal monetary value.

Food

I won’t go into too much detail since Susan told you about the food already, but I really enjoyed our little twist on the turkey dinner and the milk and cookies dessert. Though it was a much lighter meal than the big feast on Christmas Day, we still felt the turkey coma hit us pretty hard.

Decorations

Again, we opted to keep it simple in the decorating department. Putting up and decorating the Christmas tree is a daunting task once a year, let alone a second time in the heat of July. So we grabbed Susan’s mini Christmas tree from the basement as well as our wooden Santa. It was simple, easy, and fun. Of course, if you feel so inclined, you can spare no expense and fully decorate your house as if it were December.

I enjoyed Christmas in July quite a bit. Though it does feel odd doing Christmasy things in the summer, it’s still a fun time. If you enjoy the food, the gifts, and the fun, but hate the shopping, the crowds, and the busyness, give Christmas in July a try. You can make it as crazy or as simple as you like for a fun summer holiday.

SHE SAID:

Going into this movie I had pretty low expectations. The idea of invading people’s dreams and messing with their thoughts seemed a bit too far out there for my liking, but I knew Brad really wanted to see it so I gave it a chance, albeit a very small one.

The first half hour or so of the film lived up to my lowly expectations. As my confusion increased more and more with the plot, I sunk deeper and deeper into my seat, waiting for it to end. A couple factors played into my confusion – one, there is a ridiculous amount of time warping at the beginning and two, I hadn’t read up on the film enough before going. To avoid the latter pitfall, I highly recommend reading a brief synopsis before proceeding to the theatre.

Strangely enough, after the first half hour when Ellen Page walked onto the screen, the plot began to make a little bit of sense to me. Up until that point the acting was all that carried me through. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a convincing major role alongside the likes of Joseph Gordon-Levitt (500 Days of Summer), Michael Caine and Cillian Murphy (Batman Begins).

I would say that maybe this one’s a renter (so that you can rewind during the confusing parts) but the special effects should be seen on the big screen if at all possible. If you can trudge through the first half hour you won’t be disappointed and the ending will leave you satisfied.

HE SAID:

Have you ever been close to falling asleep only to be jolted awake as if you had been shocked by a defibrillator? Or how about waking up from a dream only to find out that it was a dream within a dream? These are only two of the many aspects of dreams that are explored in Christopher Nolan’s new film Inception.

Inception stars Leonardo DiCaprio, and Halifax’s own Ellen Page in a mind bending heist movie about dreams. If it sounds weird and intriguing, that’s because it is. The basic premise is simple enough. Cobb (played by DiCaprio) has found a way to get inside people’s dreams and extract thoughts that are hidden deep in their subconscious. Things take a turn when he is presented with the challenge of placing a thought in someone’s mind rather than taking it out, i.e. inception.

I won’t bog you down with any more plot description than that. All I can say is I loved every minute of this movie. For all the hype that surrounded Avatar, this movie deserves that and more. The visuals were amazing, and, imagine this, the story was even better.

Unfortunately there was something that I didn’t enjoy about my night at the movies. Thankfully it had nothing to do with the movie itself. We sat towards the end of a row where there were two empty seats next to the aisle and then me. The lights went down, the previews started, then in walks a couple who decide to plunk down right next to me. Maybe I’m weird, but when I have to sit next to strangers in a theatre that isn’t packed full, I try to leave at least one empty seat between us for a personal space buffer zone. Anyway, I figured maybe there were no better seats available so I got over it. That is until the grocery bag FULL of food came out. Oh my sweet stars above…I’m getting anxious just thinking about it. Not only was it a grocery bag full of food, it was full of food in noisy wrappers. They literally ate for two hours straight. They rummaged through the plastic bag a thousand times, opened at least 15 of those mini chip bags, chewed with their mouthes open, and burped out loud, through almost the entire movie, including the quiet parts. I was fit to be tied. As a result, I missed a few chunks of the plot, which is not a good thing in a movie like this. The sad part of the whole thing is that I can’t remember the last time I went to the theatre and something like this didn’t happen. Anyway, that’s the end of my rant.

Despite my surroundings I really enjoyed Inception. It was very complex, but not impossible to follow. If you’re looking for a light hearted movie for a weekend date night, this may not be the best choice. But if you’re looking for something visually amazing that leaves you thinking, this is it.

If you’ve seen Inception, let us know what you thought of it. Also, if you can relate to my experience with noisy theatre neighbours, tell us about that too.