Happy Thanksgiving!!

Hi everyone!!

Thanksgiving is one of Laura's favourite holidays (it is heavily food-centred), but because we don't celebrate it here in the UK, she wasn't able to get the time off work to properly prepare a Thanksgiving meal.

Thankfully, that's what Thanksmas is for, which is only two days away!!

Laura decided to do a little vlog to celebrate this wonderful day, and tell you all about what she is thankful for.

 

What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving??

So this may have happened.....

So Thanksmas is only 3 days away, we've done our last bit of shopping, the turkey is bathing and the fridge is packed full.

We started our countdown here: http://sprezzaturaourway.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/countdown-to-thanksmas-2012.html

The only thing left is to cook, oh and finish decorating. Our start to decorating went a little something like this:

So as you can imagine we have quite a bit to do! But bring it on!! 

Is it just me?

It's been a while but today I decided to rant. Normally if I rant at Laura and she doesn't look at me as if I have 4 heads then I consider that my rant is not completely crazy! So rather than complaining at Laura I thought I would put it out to the blog world and see if anyone agrees!

Passwords!

Let me preface this with I understand wholeheartedly the need for passwords. Having just had my phone stolen I do see why having them is necessary but......

Seriously how many passwords can one person need in a day?!

Let me start at the beginning of today, as with every day I need a passcode to get into my office so before my brain is fully engaged I have to enter a four digit number! Challenge!! Password 1!

Then there's the password to get into my computer - here's where I became UNRAVELED this morning! I changed my password last Friday and noted it down, nice and simple 'Holiday2012' or so I thought. As I sat down I entered it and got the 'wrong password', I tried again and again and again and once more, then again oh and again and then I defeated the computer by turning it off! Not that it solved the password problem, it just postponed it. I got a cup of tea and started again, I tried every password I had used in memory and NOTHING! I raised a helpdesk request and then after my 100th attempt I added an 's'. I made my password 'Holidays2012' and it worked!! Seriously 'Holidays' - who uses the 's'!!!!

So lets say that was EVENTUALLY password #2!

Then I have to enter password #3 to get into my emails - that one thankfully hasn't changed in 18 months! Then password #4 gets me on to our sales system!! By this time it's only just 10am!

When it comes to my phone thankfully I am always signed in - although that could have been bad if Mr Phone thief (I say Mr as there was only men around) wanted to cause chaos on our twitter account :) But can you imagine if I had to sign into:
Blogger
Twitter
Instagram
Tumblr
Hotmail
Gmail

So phone sign in can go down as 1 more password!

If I get cash out then there's the ATM password, I have one, the joint card has a different one, the credit card has one and I have a TERRIBLE memory, so I could be there some time making sure I am 100% sure of the pin!

And laptops they require a password! Seriously see passwords- they are stressful! The nemesis for me though is accounts that have required me to put 'numbers' in my username or password!! I mean that's it, I request a new password as often as I use the account.

The funny thing is Laura and I actually did a focus group with paypal about how to make life easier. The suggestions ranged from face recognition to speech analysis, eye recognition to finger print signing - I mean they were trying BUT who knows how long that would take and would that be better?

Who knows?

Right rant over, I feel somewhat better after getting that out there.

I hope I am alone in struggling with password overload, I sense I won't be, but as they say better safe than sorry even if I lost nearly an hour of my life to frustration and memory lapse! Holidays2012! Seriously!!! Next time it's back to the good olde ILoveLaura4eva!

My day may have been a bit better had I stayed in bed :)

Countdown to Thanksmas 2012!

For those of you have followed us from the start you may have remembered this (THANKSMAS) happened about this time last year!

THANKSMAS is the event we created to celebrate both Thanksgiving and Christmas with our best friends. As with Thanksgiving there is turkey, cornbread, candied yams, green bean casserole, mash potatoes and things to be thankful for and as with Christmas there is the cranberry sauce, pudding, crackers and party games. It is a true union of the traditional American style food and English festivities.

As we LOVE Christmas we also use it as an excuse to get our crimbo decorations up and get the festive tunes playing while wearing ridiculous Christmas themed items of clothing, see exhibit A:

Exhibit A

With this being our second Thanksmas there were a few changes that needed to be made, namely making more space!! Especially as this year we will have an extra guest and a dog (albeit a tiny, incredibly cute one by the name Willow) so being rammed against the wall won't work. Our solution was to move out a couch, so right now our hallway looks ghetto with it sat out there.

Although did turn our front door into a present so hopefully Mr Postie will forgive our challenging access because we have given him a reason to smile - who doesn't like presents, right?!

Food preparation is underway with the turkey already at home in our freezer and our shelves crammed full of all kinds of goodies. The only thing missing is dessert which we hope is arriving with the lovely ladies from 2 brides to 2 mummies!

We also have another American joining this year as Laura's school friend Alison will be coming so Laura can at least have a bit more of an American Thanksgiving feel.

In getting our flat ready the next step after clearing the space was to set up the tree:

Laura got the hard task of the un-wravelling fairy lights!!

Our finished tree looks like this:

Have a good week and for those of you celebrating Thanksgiving on Thursday!!