Happy Almost New Year!

Man, I have been neglecting my blog since the holidays started. I'm back now! Hooray!

How was my Christmas, you ask? It was delicious. It was low-key (which was very necessary since the last couple of months have been WHOAAA busy...).

Also, I was good allllll year, so Santa (Kev) brought me the most WONDERFUL Christmas present! Wanna know what it was? 'Course you do...



HE GOT ME A KINDLE! It's wonderful, and awesome, and it means that I can carry hundreds of books around with me at once, and read whichever one strikes my fancy. Right now I'm reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. That's right....and Zombies. Everything is better with Zombies. It also has ninjas.

I also won the office Christmas raffle, and won this little beauty, which will be an excellent running companion (note to self: start running again to counteract effects of yummy cookies).



In an annoyingly Grinch-like mood today at work. Lucky for me it's almost the LONG WEEKEND! Hooray! Time to relax and make home-made pasta from scratch with my fancy Kitchen-Aid pasta-maker, finish my Thank You notes (can you say delinquent bride?), and celebrate New Year's Eve at Dave and Lisa's.....

Grace

So with the Christmas weekend fast approaching, I've been thinking a lot of about Grace. I've started reading Andy Stanley's "The Grace of God", and in the first couple of pages, he's already really summed up what Grace is.

God's grace is something that I really find myself wanting when I'm in the wrong, and something that I'm less than likely to extend to someone if they've done or taken something from me.

I never deserve grace, but I get it way more often than my words or actions would merit.

This Christmas, I'm going to try harder to extend grace where it feels like I shouldn't. Maybe it will make a bigger impact in someone's life than I could even imagine...

It's almost CHRISTMAS!

Despite the fact that I'm still battling a some lingering nausea (a delightful remnant of my visit from the flu fairy last week - I am a fly-paper for germs and bugs), I'm VERY excited about the fact that it's almost CHRISTMAS! Hooray! Family, and presents, and wassail, my mom's raisin scones with butter and strawberry preserves, and things that smell like pine, and cozy sweaters and extra long weekends! I love it.  I have a little flower arrangement on my desk full of red and white carnations, and stuffed with different types of pine branches, and my desk smells like the holidays.


Not to mention, it's my first Christmas with my brand new husband!  I haven't entirely finished shopping for his presents yet, which I will have to do rather soon to get everything together by the end of the week.


Time to go get some Nutcracker tea, and try to mentally will myself to overcome the last bit of this nasty stomach bug.


xo


ps: next Christmas I might have to swing by the shop of the ladies over at 1canoe2 for some pretty letterpress things (a medium which I've become rather interested in lately):

There's no place like....bed for the holidays?

Oh boy. I've been sick. 

See, this is the magical time of year when people get all heroic and come in to work sick, spreading holiday cheer and flu germs. 

See, I can't really blame people for coming to work a little sick. Because we all get colds, and you can't just not come to work whenever you have the sniffles. But if you have the flu, and are basically hovering on the borders of coherence, and feel very uncomfortable being more than 20 feet from a washroom or trash can, you should not be at work. 

That is all. 

 

If Donna Reed were to read this, she'd confiscate my pearls....

I am a major procrastinator. Sometimes it makes me a little frustrated with myself, but I've learned to be a little patient.

For example, there are usually a few dishes in my sink. Some stuff that you just can't put in the dishwasher have been known to sort of accumulate in my sink for a day or two, while I systematically ignore them until guilt reminds me of their presence, and I dig into them with a scrubby sponge and a sink full of suds. It's not that I don't like to have a clean house, it's just that I like to do fun things, like bake, and make messes.

Every once in a while, I'll be seized by a temporary fit of cleaning, and I'll spend an hour or two going from room to room sweeping and dusting and rearranging, and I ususally manange to use the wrong type of cleaner on everything. But it gets clean. I fish all the scrunched up socks from under the bed. I find all the shoes that are hiding in the proximity of the front door, and return them to the closet to commune with their friends. I sort through the pantry and realize that I have two separate boxes of baking soda that I thought were a single box that kept migrating around on its own.

But if being a neat freak, constantly polishing the hardwood floors, and Windex-ing the windows, and fluffing the couch pillows means that I don't get to spend a little time in the kitchen making a nice cozy dinner for me and Kev, or that I don't have the time to make a batch of Mexican hot chocolate cookies (thinking about making those with the maple spritz cookies tonight...yum...) then so be it. Hopefully the people who love me best will thoughtfully ignore the very friendly dust-bunnies under my couch while they nom on a cookie or two.

Christmas lights!

Man, it's COLD outside.

This fact became particularly noticeable yesterday morning when Kevin's car broke down, and we ended up together standing at the QT gas station near our house (which was essentially a wind tunnel of cold and blowing snow). It wasn't really the best morning. I lost (and subsequently found) something expensive, then the front door wouldn't lock, and we jiggled it around until it opened for us, and then his car wouldn't start. It was like the world was telling us to go back in the house, get back into our pajamas, and get back into bed and snuggle for the remainder of the day.

On the BRIGHT side, however, there are some VERY nice things that come with the cold weather! Cookies! Christmas lights! Eggnog! Hooray!

Kev and I did a little running around last night and we purchased a cookie press with some of our wedding gift cards (yay!). So tonight I will be baking a nice big batch of Maple Spritz cookies with my fancy new cookie press, and those cookies will be coming with us tomorrow night when we go to Lake Lanier Islands with the new Mr. & Mrs. McMath (woo hoo!). Time for Chick-fil-A, and warm cozy scarves, and mittens, and hot cocoa, and walking around in the snow looking at Christmas lights...I think a few Maple Spritz cookies will fit right in!

Last night after Kev and I got home and warmed our tummies with a bowl of chili, we set to wrapping presents and packing them up to send to Canada. Everything in the house is covered in bits of packing peanuts and EVERYTHING Is covered in glitter. Everything. Glitter wrapping paper is nice, but messy. Why do I buy it every year? We packed and wrapped until 11, when I 'hit the wall', and crawled into bed and promptly fell asleep. What happened to the days when I could be up till 1am on a work night, and not bat an eye? Am I an old person now?

Hooray for Cookies! Hooray for Christmas lights!

Top 10 Reasons I'm Glad It's Friday....

1. Because it's been the longest week everrrr.....
2. Because on the weekend, I'm somehow able to be awake at my usual week-day time, but I don't have to drag myself out bed, mentally whining to myself while I get ready
3. We're going to Kev's parents' house tonight to help them put up their Christmas tree, and have chicken soup and a lot of cookies
4. I've been fighting a feisty cold all week, so it's time to buckle down, bundle up, rest up, and consume massive amounts of orange-and-carrot-juice-Airborne smoothies and large quantities of vanilla cinnamon tea to kick this cold's butt
5. Because this weekend I WILL get my Christmas shopping started (and perhaps completed?)
6. It's payday
7. It's CHRISTMAS BONUS payday
8. I get to spend the whole weekend with my scrumptious husband, and he wierdly enjoys running crazy errands with me all weekend
9. More baking. That's right. Last weekend was not enough.
10. Because I intend to blog more this weekend, since I recently heard that there's people who are reading and liking my blog, and until recently, I was pretty sure only my mom read this.

Hooray Friday! Somehow when I'm leaving work on Friday, I just hope some peppy rock-ish song comes on the radio when I turn the key in the ignition. It gets the weekend started right....

Sick day....

I'm convinced that even though today is about the same temperature as yesterday, it feels about a jillion times more cold. Here are some things that I would like to be doing today:

• taking a hot bubble bath with a cup of tea while catching up on a few podcasts
• baking a big batch of Mexican Hot Chocolate cookies
• catching up on my laundry (you know it's time when you have more clothes that are dirty than clothes that are clean)
• sitting on the couch with my Kev sipping a Newton's Folly, and watching snow fall outside

In true keeping with the start of the winter-ish season (come on, I'm from Canada, it's cold outside, but it's not CANADA cold outside...) I was sick yesterday. I was actually sick-ish starting on Tuesday night, but I decided to tough it out and go to work yesterday since one of my other coworkers was out with the flu, and I cover his stuff while he's out. Bad idea. Shoulda stayed home. Ended up going home around 3, and got all snuggled up in bed in my PJ's and watched the latest episode of Glee.

Did I ever mention before that I like this show? I know the storyline is insane and slightly convoluded at times, but it's darned entertaining. Yesterday the Christmas episode was on, and it was delightful. Not really Kev's thing, so I try to watch it when he's not home....



By the way, I feel like it's very important for me to let the world know that I've reconciled with Martha Stewart. For many years, I downright resented her ability to spend a quiet afternoon painting stencilled flowers on her garden trellace, and then iron her bedsheets (who does that??) and give her Chow-Chow a doggie shiatsu massage (seriously?), all while waiting for her rosemary persimmon bread to rise for the holiday party she's throwing that night. It took some time, but I finally discovered the root of my resentment. Cookie dough. She makes these amazing cookie recipes, and I LOVED trying them, but whenever it came to a roll-and-cut recipe (which I incidentally like the most), my dough would turn into an unmanageable ball of goo, to which I would add so much flour to make it workable that it would turn into a tough ball of cement that was basically worthless.

But no more.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm working with an amazing Kitchen-Aid stand mixer now. Maybe it's the fact that I pored over the Martha Stewart Christmas cookie special edition. Whatever it was, I've got my cookie mojo back, and I frankly couldn't be more excited about it. Ask Kevin...when my ginger snaps came out perfectly (seriously....they were perfect) I jumped around in my kitchen with glee. That, in turn, gave me the culinary confidence to tackle the peppermint meringues, which seemed daunting at first, but now they're one of the easiest recipes I've ever made. I'm making some lemon ones this weekend, I think. I'm excited about it.

So Martha and I are back together. You can send cards of heartfelt congratulations to my house.

There was a Lemur on the box, so I bought the tea...

I'm ashamed to say that I haven't come very far since the days where any package that had pink glitter on it was instantly appealing to my 5-year-old self. I went to Trader Joe's last night, and realized that part of what I like so much about shopping there isn't just that the food is yummy, and so much of it is organic. I love their packaging. Whoever does their marketing is a serious smarty-pants. This particular package of which I am speaking was all decked out with little Christmas lights, and had a cartoon Lemur on the front, drinking some of the tea. I'm not sure what this has to do with tea, but it got my attention, and I'm glad it did.



What am I talking about? I'm talking about their new Vanilla & Cinnamon Black Tea. Now don't get me wrong, I like my coffee in the morning. I should correct that by saying that I REQUIRE my coffee in the morning. It makes it so that my coworkers can tolerate me prior to 10am, as I am SERIOUSLY not a morning person. But around this time of year, around this time of day, I'm sitting at my desk, nose pressed firmly to the grindstone, and I think "mmm...a nice cozy cup of tea would be scrumptious right now".

This tea is seriously yummy. Just the right amount of vanilla flavors, with just a hint of cinnamon. It's the kind of tea that makes me want to be at home sitting on the couch with a big cup of it, listening to Bing Crosby and wrapping Christmas presents. I haven't bought any of my Christmas presents yet. I realize that, in fact, time is ticking away at an astonishing rate. I actually have to mail Christmas presents to Canada, and hope that they get there in time. I have a lot to do this week.

I have so much to do....

Yummm.....

It's freezing outside. Literally. I haven't been outside, but Kevin was. He said the weather app on his phone told him it was over 30 degrees out, but that it felt like 28. I believe him, and have no desire to venture outdoors to attempt any kind of confirmation. 

Instead, I stayed in and finished part II of yesterday's baking extravaganza! Hooray! Wanna see pictures? Of course you do....

Yes. I made peppermint meringues. They're adorable. I even painted little stripes of red gel food coloring on the inside of the pastry bag before I piped out the little Hershey-Kiss-Sized meringues, so they look all cute and festive. There's about 20 in this picture in the teacup (with our adorable tree in the background all lit up), and there's about 250 more of them in the kitchen that are covering every cookie sheet that I own. I think I overdid it.....but they're just so darned INEXPENSIVE TO MAKE, and so cute and gift-able to boot. I mean really, you need three eggs, 3/4 of a cup of sugar, peppermint extract, and a little red food coloring (you could not bother with the food coloring I guess, and I probably would if it wasn't Christmas). I think next time, I'll make them bigger, and do red and green food coloring to make them a little more Christmas-y still. 

This part of the blog is ESPECIALLY for my Auntie Sheryl. She gave me my first rolling pin (which I use now in place of the paper towel roll holder I was using before) and she also gave me my baking timer (which keeps me from burning everything I make into ash). She loves seeing pictures of me in my kitchen, so I had Kevin take this one just for her. Yes, I know I have flour on my face. 

Hi Auntie Sheryl!

Here's what I made next.....

I also made some gingerbread cookies, and they might be what I'm most excited about. See, whenever I make cookie dough that's supposed to be the kind you roll out and cut out cute shapes, it turns into goo. Big, messy, sticky, unmanageable balls of sticky goo. This time, they came out perfectly. I even got to use the little adorable set of biscuit cutters to cut them out in little fluted shapes. I love these. I played with different types of frosting, and ended up with a blend of cream cheese and tangerine, which I thought would go nicely with the spicyness of the ginger snaps. I tried a few, and they tasted good, but ultimately I ended up leaving the majority of them unfrosted...why mess with something good? 

Yummy. I'll have to bring some of these to work tomorrow.....the last thing I need is big containers full of such goodness just lying around waiting for me to eat them all up. Maybe I should start running again.....

Next up, I plan on doing some sugar cookie snowflakes with white royal icing and pearly white dusting sugar. I even have some blue sugar-pearls that I might pop on, too, just for fun....

Let's stay inside today and be cozy...

So it's cold outside today. You might wonder how I know this, since I'm currently all snuggled up under the covers at 8am on a Saturday, and have not set foot out of bed. 

The glories of the iPhone.

I can wake up, and carefully reach one hand out from under the comforter fortress, grab my phone, and come to the startling realization that it's exactly one degree above freezing, and that the rest of the day will probably be very wet, mushy, damp, and cold. This rather undesirable weather has led me to decide that we should probably stay inside today, and do cozy things. 

These cozy things will likely involve the following: 

•  sipping coffee: with eggnog in it, of course, because there's no other way to drink coffee once Thanksgiving is over. I'm just saying.
• Baking: (I have the new Martha Stewart cookie edition, and have decided that I'm going to do an obnoxious amount of cookie baking this holiday season. Today I think I will be doing the peppermint meringues, since they look so adorable, and maybe a batch of ginger snaps, because I got some lovely biscuit cutters of various sizes for a wedding present, and I love the idea of a counter-top full of sweet ginger cookies dusted with confectioner's sugar). It's possible that after all this, I may make a venture to the grocery store to get some candied ginger, all in order to try the ginger almond cookies that are drizzled with lemon frosting. Yummy...
• Watching a movie and doing our Thank You cards for the amazing wedding presents we received. Our family and friends spoiled us like crazy. (I'm thinking I'll watch the Family Stone, because it's sort of an off-kilter Christmas movie, and because I really like Diane Keaton.)
• Completing the organization of our little office, and rearranging some of the pictures and things.

Also, something extremely exciting is happening today at 11:00. Tiffany Petersen of Rustic White Photography is coming with our WEDDING PICTURES. We got a sneak peek the other day (http://www.rusticwhitephotography.com/flaunt/#/page/84f5/) and they are wonderful! The wedding went by so stinkin' fast that we felt like we missed so many of the cute little details. They caught everything I was hoping they would, and they made us look pretty adorable to boot!


And alas, my discovery for the week. I don't exactly recall where I stumbled across her blog (perhaps on Apartment Therapy), but Joy the Baker's blog is fantastic. So many yummy recipes (some of them are even healthy-esque recipes...vegetarian, vegan, etc.). Anyway, after a week of drooling over her entries, I am going to get out of bed at some point this morning and make her recipe for fried apple cakes. They're basically pancakes, but flourless, so they're just apples, and yummy spices, and butter, and lemon juice. Those will be nice with some eggnog coffee, sittin' on the couch with my hubby, staring like crazy people at our Christmas tree, and seeing if Hulu is functioning sufficiently this morning to deliver a much anticipated dose of Tina Fay 30 Rock-ing our morning.


I should probably get up. Kevin keeps coming in here in his big fuzzy fluffy blue bathrobe and pajamas to kiss me and make sure I have enough nog' in my coffee, and he says he wants me to take as long blogging it up as I want, but I think secretly he wants me to get up. So I will. 


More later!

Today, I am a petulant three-year-old.

Maybe it's something in the air. Maybe I didn't get enough sleep last night, or maybe the sleep that I did  get wasn't as high-quality as it needed to be.

I'm cranky. Consider this a news bulletin, and a warning.

I feel like one of those little kids that you see at the grocery store with their parents who are just generally being irritable, unconsolable, and generally billigerant. The kids that obviously need a nap or a 'time out'. Yes! A time out! That's exactly what I need, and the weekend is almost here to remedy what has apparently been caused by me getting out of bed on the wrong side today (which would literally involve crawling over Kevin to go in the opposite direction of the kitchen, where the happy happy coffee lives...).

I'd like to go home and take a nap. I'd like to put on my bright blue pajamas with the strawberries all over them, and crawl onto the middle of the bed, make a little cocoon of the blankets, and watch The Family Stone. I'd like to sip hot chocolate, and do something crafty and creative. I'd like to bake a little multitude of cute little peppermint mirangues.

My husband is so sweet.....I sent him a little text with a sad face letting him know how my day had started off in general, and he responded with a little kiss, and promises of a back rub when I get home. He always listens so sweetly, and snuggles me close if I'm feeling sad, and doesn't mind cuddling quietly for a few minutes on the couch looking at the Christmas tree if that's what will make me feel better. I think perhaps tonight, a Sushi date is in order. I think a little time out of the house to just have a nice meal of softshell crab, and bamboo rolls...