I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with friends and family! I know I did. 🙂

1. Brooklyn Orchids 2018 Calendar: shameless plug alert! Each year I create a calendar using my own photographs of orchids (if you’re new here, I have a blog about orchids called…Brooklyn Orchids). This 12-month calendar is available for $24.90 in my Brooklyn Orchids Zazzle store, so if you know anyone who’s really into orchids or loves pretty pictures of flowers, my calendar would make a nice holiday gift. Hot tip: Zazzle very frequently offers discounts, especially during the holidays, so you most likely won’t have to pay full price as long as you enter their current promo code at checkout. I’m pretty sure there will be Black Friday and Cyber Monday promo codes, so the next few days will be a great time to order your calendar!

2. Gingerbread Turkey: I built my Trader Joe’s gingerbread turkey kit to use as decoration for our Thanksgiving dinner, and it turned out pretty well! My hands were cramping from squeezing the piping bag to get the icing out, and it definitely did not look as good as the photo on the package…but it was cute overall. I had no idea how to affix the sprinkles to the icing around the edges of the turkey the way the package showed, so I kind of just started throwing some sprinkles at it before giving up on them.  😛

3. Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii: my parents are in town and on Wednesday night we had dinner reservations at Graffiato in Chinatown. The restaurant is near the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum, so we met up at the SAAM and took in some pre-dinner culture. The museum is larger than I remember, and there’s still plenty I have yet to see. For example I hadn’t been to the wing that houses the below very cool installation by Nam June Paik. I need to go back to the museum and explore some more!

4. Beaujolais Nouveau: it’s that time of year again! When I saw a display of 2017 Georges DuBoeuf Beaujolas Nouveau at Whole Foods, I immediately bought two bottles. It’s a light, juicy red that’s released the third Thursday of every November to celebrate the official end of harvest. It’s also affordable (about $12 a bottle)—what’s not to love?

5. Jackson Galaxy Mixed Twisted Refillable Kicker Cat Toy: a fun thing for the kitties by the cat expert of My Cat From Hell! I didn’t even know he had a line of cat toys, but when I saw them at Petsmart last weekend I figured I’d buy one and see how our cats liked it. Walter is not super interested in this toy, but Zoe goes apeshit bunny kicking it, so I’m satisfied.