The holidays are FINALLY over and I’m glad.  Now I’m anxiously awaiting for life to return to normal tomorrow so I can look forward to the year ahead.

It was a hard six weeks.

The thing about being married and having your own home is that you get to create your own traditions and have an opportunity to do things exactly the way you want them.  And I’m not going to lie, I felt ready. I was ready.

• I was ready to celebrate Thanksgiving without a Christmas tree.
• I was ready to eat at a reasonable hour.
• I was ready to eat things I actually enjoy.

But most importantly, I was ready to be the lady of the house. To be the one calling the shots.  I was ready to take over the holidays without offending my mother.

Still, it was a lot of work.  And it probably wouldn’t have been as stressful had I taken baby steps to morphing into Martha Stewart, but I didn’t want to miss out on getting started.   I spent my entire life watching, and learning and this was my final exam.

And I can proudly say that I feel like I passed.

 This is what my holidays looked like:

Thanksgiving was awesome!

Sarah, my bff, was my sous chef and together we cooked up a storm for days!  The menu we made was to die for and although we had intended to have some latkes to observe Hannukah, that didn’t work out so well.

Anyway, you can find the menu here.

And I need to send a shout out to Ree, The Pioneer Woman, for her amazing brine recipe.  It was a success.

Like most Latinos, I observe Christmas Eve instead of Christmas. Since we are a bicultural family, we celebrated both.

Our Christmas dinner was far simpler than Thanksgiving dinner, and almost entirely vegetarian except for the prosciutto that found its way to the antipasti tray.  On Christmas morning I made my world famous pancakes. YUM!

You can find my menu here.

I also need to thank Chef Pandita for her bundt cake recipe and for all the help caramelizing onions…I had no idea that was such a tedious task!

It really was an amazing experience to be able to have the holidays my way for once. Still, I think that this year I’m going to try REALLY hard to be a little less obsessive about the holiday season once it comes around because that sure kills a little bit of the fun…

Happy new year everyone.