My husband says the worst thing about having duty on Christmas is that the mess halls on base are closed, so he doesn’t have a place to go to eat. Luckily for him, I kind of like him (a lot) and decided to make a delicious bacon grilled cheese sandwich to take over to him.

First, the ingredients: Texas toast, bacon, and freshly shredded sharp cheddar cheese. I cooked the bacon earlier in the morning because I don’t cook bacon often and I wasn’t sure how long it would take. I drained off some of the grease into a small bowl for later.

I took the dirty bacon pan and heated it up on the stove. I like to brown both sides of my bread when I make a grilled cheese, so I browned the insides of the bread using the grease in the pan. I added more bacon grease to the pan and turned one slice right-side-out, piled on the cheese and bacon in alternating layers, and topped with the other slice of bread.

I hear the resulting sandwich was delicious. It looks pretty fun, don’t you think?! ;)

And since it is Christmas after all, here are some of my favorite ornaments we have on our tree.

On the left, the “Let it Snow” ornament was made by my mom (the eternal optimist) in 2010 and we collected the “Mele Kalikimaka” ornament in Hawaii on our honeymoon in 2009. In the center, I created a metal ornament with a photo of Clay’s homecoming in 2011 and the knitted star was one I scored on Etsy; the donkey and pepper drinking margaritas were picked up in Mexico in 2011, and the bottom ornament says “Our First Christmas 2009” and should contain a wedding photo but instead holds a photo from that year’s Marine Corps Ball. Two hand-sewn birds and an ornament painted by my grandmother in 2009 are on the right.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas!