New Year’s Eve is usually an over-rated disaster. Who’s with me? Plans rarely live up to the hype, there’s always that one friend of yours who is crying YET AGAIN, it’s crowded and your constantly having to guess whether Susie and Bobby are on or off again. Why not do like me and The Mister and celebrate in the comfort of your own home?
For the past few years, we’ve finally wised up and make a nice, gourmet-like meal, invite some friends over, bust out some board games (favorite include: Apples to Apples, Yahtzee, The Last Word, Scattegories and The Nightmare Before Christmas party game) and bring in the new year together.
But see, this plan doesn’t work out too well if your food sucks.
Here are some of my ‘fool proof’ suggestions:
Main courses:
One-pot Pesto Chicken
Parmesan Salmon
Pasta with The World’s Best Pasta Sauce
Mahi Mahi with Harissa
Seared Ahi Tuna with Pepper Crust
Sides:
Portobello Mushrooms
Quinoa Salad with Steamed Vegetables
Dessert:
Honey Yogurt Cheesecake Bars
The Perfect Chocolate Cake (it’s healthy, too!)
Guiltless Chocolate Cupcakes
Oreo Bombs
Interested in what foods to eat on NEW YEAR’S DAY? Check out this list of lucky foods — and which ones to stay away from!
What type of celebrator are you? Do you go all out or keep it low key?
The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other. ~Burton Hillis
Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time. ~Laura Ingalls Wilder
Instead of being a time of unusual behavior, Christmas is perhaps the only time in the year when people can obey their natural impulses and express their true sentiments without feeling self-conscious and, perhaps, foolish. Christmas, in short, is about the only chance a man has to be himself. ~Francis C. Farley
Even as an adult I find it difficult to sleep on Christmas Eve. Yuletide excitement is a potent caffeine, no matter your age. ~Carrie Latet
Christmas is forever, not for just one day,
for loving, sharing, giving, are not to put away
like bells and lights and tinsel, in some box upon a shelf.
The good you do for others is good you do yourself…
~Norman Wesley Brooks, “Let Every Day Be Christmas,” 1976
[I]t is the one season of the year when we can lay aside all gnawing worry, indulge in sentiment without censure, assume the carefree faith of childhood, and just plain “have fun.” Whether they call it Yuletide, Noel, Weinachten, or Christmas, people around the earth thirst for its refreshment as the desert traveller for the oasis. ~D.D. Monroe
And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more. ~Dr. Seuss
Christmas – that magic blanket that wraps itself about us, that something so intangible that it is like a fragrance. It may weave a spell of nostalgia. Christmas may be a day of feasting, or of prayer, but always it will be a day of remembrance – a day in which we think of everything we have ever loved. ~Augusta E. Rundel
We hear the beating of wings over Bethlehem and a light that is not of the sun or of the stars shines in the midnight sky. Let the beauty of the story take away all narrowness, all thought of formal creeds. Let it be remembered as a story that has happened again and again, to men of many different races, that has been expressed through many religions, that has been called by many different names. Time and space and language lay no limitations upon human brotherhood. ~New York Times, 25 December 1937, quoted in Quotations for Special Occasions by Maud van Buren, 1938, published by The H.W. Wilson Company, New York
Can you feel it? It’s coming!!!!
What do you and your family do for Christmas Eve? If you are Jewish (or another religion), do you do anything fun? Friends of mine always ordered pizza or chinese and played board games 
