December Movie Date

Merry Christmas Eve everyone!!! It's December movie date tiiiime.I hope you're all settling in around the Christmas tree enjoying a nice break from the usual. I know I am! Just in case you have any extra time this upcoming week, I figured I'd send out a little movie viewing inspiration.

As per usual, we need to grab a beverage before jumping to our movie reviews but this particular movie date I had a tough time making a decision. SO many tasty drinks this time of year! Since it's absolutely freezing here due to INSANE wind gusts (the house keeps shaking I don't even know what's happening, it's actually quite terrifying), I opted for some homemade peppermint vodka hot chocolate.

Perfect right?? A cup of this all snug by the fire next the Christmas tree and we're in business! Now that we're all set, onward to the December movie date.

Let's Go to the Movies!

Watched in theaters: Crimes of Grindelwald (Fantastic Beasts 2)

......So. Disappointing. Best word to describe it? Lame. I could rant but I'm going to try and keep it short. First off, there were barely any "fantastic beasts" so that was a bust. Second, it was insanely boring. The entire movie was just set up for whatever comes next. The ENTIRE movie. It legit could've just been a 10 minute conversation between a few characters and one vaguely interesting "show down". Essentially, when the movie got to the "show down" aka the climax of the film, I literally turned to Dan and said "...Was that it? Is that what I waited this whole movie for???".

Poor Dan by the way! He hadn't even seen the first one and I dragged him to this mind numbing, drawn out disaster of a film. It was ungodly boring and ridiculously slow. A paper thin, meandering plot that doesn't really make any sense, characters from the magical world of Harry Potter just randomly thrown in with no point, no main character, and no character development at that. Crimes of Grindelwald boils down to a money making machine where they split enough plot for maaaaybe two movies, into FIVE MOVIES! As much as it pains me to say this (big Harry Potter fan over here), you don't even need to bother with this movie. Skip it and save your time and money for something else.

Rented for the Homestead: Endeavor

UM OMG! Absolutely OBSESSED with this tv show. It's a British detective drama tv series but is on amazon prime video and airs on PBS Masterpiece Theater for us peeps in the USA. You. Guys. I adore this show. It's so atmospheric, intriguing, and at times utterly hilarious (based off of Endeavour Morses's facial expressions alone). This show is a prequel to one of the longest running and most well loved shows on the BBC "Inspector Morse", based on the novels by Colin Dexter. It follows a young Endeavour Morse as a lowly Detective Constable (before his Detective Chief Inspector days) in Oxford, England solving crimes and murder cases with his mentor DCI Thursday.

Each episode is an hour and a half so if you binge it you basically get a Morse movie every night. Trust me, I've been bingeing. At first, Morse comes off as moody, brooding, and more than a little arrogant, yet absolutely genius at his job. However, as you continue to watch, you realize the brooding arrogance is more just social awkwardness and he becomes incredibly endearing with a fabulously entertaining snarky edge. Oh and I haven't even talked about the side characters yet! DCI Thursday, Superintendent Bright (oh hey Game of Thrones!) are just as rich in character development and almost manage to steal every scene they're in...Almost. Endeavour Morse wins every time in that department. I'm not much of a crime show or mystery buff but seriously give this show a shot! If anything, watch it for the 1960's Oxford ambiance. Honestly, I could not recommend this show more if I tried, so just trust me and check it out 👍🏻.

Excited to See: Ralph Breaks the Internet (Wreck It Ralph 2)

Sooo I still havn't seen this, instead I saw Crimes of Grindelwald.

(Bad choice. Definitely should've gone to see this instead).

I'm still insanely excited to see this movie and will make it over there before our movie date in January I promise!

Out of the Kitchen - December in Seattle

Christmas time in Seattle this year has been absolutely magical. Dan and I took advantage of all the light shows that pop up around this time and had an absolute blast!

First, we strolled around the Woodland Park Zoo after hours for their yearly Zoo Lights extravaganza. So much fun! They changed the Zoomazium into a Snowmazium where you get to throw "snow balls" at each other (fluffy balls the size of your hand), set up a shadow room with huge, animal shaped props, multiple beverage stops including boozy hot chocolate, and of course thousands and thousands of lights.

After that, we hit up Enchant, the largest Christmas tree maze in the US. It moves around the country to a couple different places each year and this year it landed right in Safeco Stadium. It even had a ice skating trail! Apparently, I have lost all coordination and could barely keep it together on the ice while Dan was literally skating circles around me. Quite rude if you ask me. Who knew he was such a good skater??

We've also been thoroughly enjoying our new white Christmas coconut whiskey concoctions. Bringing the snow to the holiday no matter what!

As always, the obligatory photo of Calypso. In case you can't tell by the snarky look on her face, she was not impressed with the nap time interruption.