Joey and I have very different ideas of the perfect New Year’s Eve.  While his involves friends, family or crowds in general, and doing something that really feels big and celebratory, mine involves a good meal and some kind of low-key activity that allows me to be in my bed shortly after midnight.

I felt like we’d been doing that celebratory thing for years and I was ready for a quieter start to the new year.  (Go figure that the one year we didn’t have solid NYE plans was the year it landed on a Saturday night.)  So I made a dinner res, we picked a movie, chose a brewery within walking distance to that movie and lo and behold, we ended the night in our pajamas in our very own living room.  Hardly exciting, but to me, it was so perfect.

You may not have NYE plans, but if your nails look like you do, then it’s all good // Dinner at ChoLon involved those French Onion Soup dumplings and we haven’t stopped talking about them since // Post-Rogue One beers at New Image Brewing // Starting 2017 with my #1: PRICELESS

I’ve started many New Year’s Days with a hangover so starting one with coffee, waffles and Harry Potter is much preferred.  My sister and Wayne got us a waffle maker for Christmas and we had major success using it.  I think it’s all in that flip feature.  Harry Potter Weekend is what I live for ♥  I feel like I usually catch the last 4 movies, but I caught the first four (they skipped MY FAVORITE one: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and I was only semi-livid about it) and I forgot A) how teensy they all were when the series started and B) how good the third movie is!

 Let’s hear it for the families who celebrate actual New Year’s Day.  My mom pulled out all the stops — Mom, aren’t you exhausted after Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s?! — and I made an actual gluten-free/dairy-free pie that tasted pretty good and, more importantly, looked beautiful.  Pretty proud, in case you couldn’t tell.  Afterwards we all watched The Grand Budapest Hotel and for a second I forgot how shitty the end of 2016 was and felt like 2017 might be alright.

My resolution is to take more human face photos — which doesn’t necessarily mean less food photos — and I think I’m starting out strong.

We started the Monday that felt like a Sunday with breakfast at Stowaway.  I got a Mushroom + Thyme Tartine and holy moly, it was so good.  I’d like that for breakfast every day forever, thank you.  Mostly Monday was a quiet day of grocery shopping, black-eyed pea cooking (for good luck in the new year!), getting my haircut and watching When Harry Met Sally.  Because, even though Carrie Fisher is probably best known as Princess Leia, let’s not forget she was also Rolodex-toting, “he’s never going to leave her”-repeating Marie, who “will never want that wagon wheel table” and I love her so much for that role.  Please let all the good food in this post be a sign of things to come in 2017.

2017, please be kind to us.