Gift Guide: Your Bearded Boyfriend

1930s Smith Corona Typewriter, $89 on Etsy.

Mustache key hook by Ben Floater, $40 on Etsy.

Clifford print by Ashley Goldberg, $35 on etsy.

Hartford necktie, $50 at Supper Club.

Whale plaque, $16 at BROOKLYNrehab.

Whiskey Stones, $19.95. These stones stay cold no matter what (also seen on Cup of Jo).

Lincoln Tee, $32.

Button hoody, $88.

Grey tie, $80.

Sunday Best v.5

I have a hunch "A Single Man" is going to leave me drooling. Look at those colors! The fabrics! Gorgeous.

Sunday Best v.5

• In case you missed this, a Tiger Woods slow jam. Huge. Quickly.
• I love the idea of these Manly man bath products. Perfect stocking stuffers for dudes.
• Is it weird to covet a placemat?
• Does anyone want to build me a paper moon? I think it would be the most perfect, Gatsby-esque photo booth accessory for my wedding. Srsly, how can we make this happen?
• Have someone on your list who already has everything? Why not give a village a cow in his or her honor?
• Very cheeky Christmas cards.
• A Wild Things-inspired bachelorette. Very creative!

Eggnog Cheesecake Bars

I feel like I'm going to be using the "disasters" tag a lot more lately.

I have a long list of baking projects I wanted to tackle this holiday and at the top were Eggnog Cheesecake Bars, found in this month's Martha Stewart Living (recipe here). The past has proven I'm pretty good with cheesecake, so I wasn't too nervous about this and as such, skimmed the ingredient list and went for it.

Right off the bat, I knew I wanted to use cinnamon Teddy Grahams to make the crust. Teddy Grahams have never failed me before, so why mess with something if it's broken? I crushed the grahams and looked at the directions and realized the first potential disaster: I didn't have a 9 inch pan. I only had a 13 by 9, so I thought, "Okay, no big, I'll just make more crust."

I don't know if that worked out very well, but I melted butter, mixed butter and sugar with the crumbs and poured the crust into the Pam-sprayed pan.

The recipe called for an egg yolk, which demanded I use a skill I haven't needed yet: separating the whites from the yolk. I had no idea how to do this (seriously!), so I cracked an egg over a bowl, tossed the yolk back and forth while pouring the white down and then reserved the yolk:

P.S. Yolk is gross.

I beat cream cheese until it was fluffy. This is where I tell you I don't think that went very well. I don't think it got quite "fluffy" and I also don't think I used enough cream cheese.

Then I added the other ingredients: 2 eggs, 1 egg yolk, sugar, flour, brandy, eggnog, salt and nutmeg.

It came out...drippy...and clumpy...and scary.

THIS IS WHERE THE HORROR BEGINS. I go back to the directions and see, to my terror, that I'm supposed to cook the cheesecake in a water bath by filling a roast pan with hot water. I DON'T HAVE A ROAST PAN. WHAT AM I TO DOOOOOO?

It might be relevant to mention it was after midnight at this point, leaving me whining, feeling helpless and general pouting to the extreme. Sean suggested I just stop what I was doing, put the batter in the fridge and tackle the problem the next day.

So on the next day, I went to the Teeter and purchased one of those $2 aluminum roast pans and filled with hot water. Of course, I missed, and got some water in the batter, which had spread incredibly thinly over the crust.

As I watched, the crust absorbed a lot of the batter. NOT GOOD.

I baked the cheesecake mess (look at the crust peeking through! LOOK AT IT!) for 45 minutes and pulled it out. It looked scary, I won't lie. But I trudged forward, like a foolish general.

I put the cheesecake in the fridge for almost three hours (should have been longer) and when I couldn't wait any longer because my guests were going to arrive any minute, I sprinkled some nutmeg on top and cut the cake into bars.

The final result. What do I think? Well:

1. My crust was mushy beyond belief. I figure either a) I did a bad job baking it, crushing it, etc. or b) It absorbed too much of the batter.
2. The eggnog taste is really good. The consistency wasn't too bad either.

Anyone have any suggestions about how I could have avoided the mushy mess? Also, do we want to take bets over whether I'll ever learn to read the instructions in advance?

A Braid in Her Hair

How pretty is this girl's hair? Srsly, the little braid, the color, the flip at he ends -- all perfect.

Spotted on the ever-inspiring The Sartorialist.

Climbing the Laundry Mountain

This is a picture of my weekend. So. Much. Laundry.

We've talked about this before, but if there is one major area in which I'm not remotely domesticated, it's laundry. I don't:

• Do it every week, even though I have a washer and dryer.
• Hang up my clean clothes.
• Put my dirty clothes in the hamper.
• Change my sheets as quickly as I should.

It's kind of a problem. I spent ALL of Sunday doing laundry and when I say all, I mean ALL. I washed everything in the house: clothes, sheets, towels, rugs, dish towels. It was kind of ridiculous. My dryer literally sighed during that last load.

So my point is, what little tricks do you guys use to keep your dirty clothes in check? Any super-secret good tips? I could use them.

O Tannenbaum!

Let me tell you, some of the hardest decisions to make are what should be the easiest.

Sean and I had three options for a Christmas tree:

1. Use my miniature artificial tree to save money.
2. Buy a bigger artificial tree, which is bad for the environment, but would be reused for all of the foreseeable future. Also, doesn't need water, doesn't demand vacuuming, etc.
3. Buy a real tree, which is what both of us grew up doing.

I posed this question to the internets and here are two of the 20 responses I got on Facebook:

• "Real trees blow. Go with a large fake one, they aren't expensive, they last for years, and best of all they don't flare up seasonal allergies."
• "Real. It's biodegradeable and it'll smell like Christmas. Even the Apple Store has one. Think about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, there's bound to be one plastic tree up in that mess....."

I decided that since it's my first Christmas with my future husband, my first in our new home and my first in Newport News, we should go with real. I'm here to say: So far, so good. Watering isn't too much to ask and Sean quickly vacuumed up the needles.

We went to Dean and Don's Farm Market on Warwick Avenue in Newport News, which was such a great choice. The trees sold there are farmed in Floyd, Va. and each is tagged with a name and a price. We saw "Carly Simon," "Hannah Montana," "Bullwinkle" and some other fun ones, but we brought home a handsome fir named "Thing 1."

We also brought home a Target pre-lit artificial wreath to hang on the porch door.

I wish I could say decorating was easy. Sean has a bit of a reputation in his family as a Grinch and I think I might have been a bit grinchy for both of us. I'm a very particular, very just-so kind of person, which makes me a terror when trying to trim the tree.

We didn't have enough white lights for a big tree (since I only had lights for a mini tree), so Sean graciously went out to Target to get two more strands. Then he brought those home and we found he'd bought white cord lights, to which I said, "WHITE CORDS? WHITE CORDS? WHO ARE YOU?!" So he went back and exchanged them.

And hours later, after two trips to Target, several breaks to watch a very anticlimactic Amazing Race finale and other distractions, we finished. And may I say, I think our tree is gorgeous.

I set up my new glass jars (to be filled with candy) in front of a mirror with a garland I used to drape on my mantel at my much-missed Staunton apartment.

I trimmed the garland with my IKEA diamond-shaped lights. LOVE them, but I don't love that LED color.

Most of my ornaments are ones I've had since childhood. I dug and dug through the box to find my favorite -- a glass ballerina. So gorgeous.

And we bought Sean an ornament of his very own, one of two on the whole tree. We need to buy this boy some ornaments, stat!

Sunday Best v.4

Wasn't Paul really hot with a beard? This was peak Paul, for sure. I DVR'd the History Channel's Beatles On Record last week and it was pretty great. You can check it out again on Dec. 19 at 7 p.m.

Sunday Best:

• Do you doodle? So do our presidents.
• No room or money for a big tree? Love this article on decorating in small spaces.
• Love "The Nightmare Before Christmas"? Check out the MOMA store's Tim Burton collection.
• I almost spewed my Diet Coke trying not to laugh at this picture of Aretha Franklin.

Today we're doing laundry and DECORATING! Very exciting, and a bold new step in domesticity, for sure.

Journalist Gifts

So, obviously, not all of my readers are journalists or have a journalist on their shopping list. But I strangely have a slew of journalists on my shopping list and as one, I'm always on the lookout for great journo gifts. Here are my picks:

When I was a very young child, about 6 or 7, someone bought my father a board game called "Headlines." To play the game, every person chose about five cards and tried to assemble a funny headline out of it and someone judged each round to pick the best (sorta similar to Apples to Apples). I don't know if that game exists anymore, but Man Bites Dog seems like a similar and cheaper option.

I've been a lifelong newspaper reader, but even I have days where I wrestle with the cheap paper pages and get super frustrated. A coffee shop in Staunton called Coffee On the Corner keeps these Alessi Newspaper Readers on hand and they're awesome. They retail for about $65.

My childhood home (and my adulthood home, unfortunately) was littered with old newspapers, many of which we held onto because we needed them for contests or posterity or because we're packrats. At least this $55 wire newspaper rack could help keep them straight and tidy.

And last, but not least, Save Journalist T-shirts found here.

Silhouette Votives

I saw these Jayson Home and Garden votives on one of Design Sponge's gift guides this week and was immediately drooling.

I think they would be beautiful at a wedding, especially at the table where the groom and bride will be sitting, but I also think they'd be fabulous on any table. $15 each.

In a Rut

Just dropping a note to say I'm in a rut.

I haven't cooked in weeks.

My house is a disaster.

I have piles of laundry, piles of dishes, piles of recycling.

I have no Christmas decorations up.

I'm a mess.

BUT, as I get all that cleaned up in the next few days, I will write about it. So in the end, my rut may benefit us all, dear readers.