Because everything else in my life at the moment stresses me too out too much to blog about, I’ve decided to write a fluffy entry about my birthday gifts for your personal enjoyment. 
Crocs Hanalei sandals. Check these suckers out. Aren’t they hot? Plus, they have (almost) all the comfort of crocs, but you totally can’t tell they are Crocs! Sure, they ARE a heeled shoe, but the most comfortable heeled shoe I own. Definitely a new summer favorite. Thanks mom and Dave! ding!
With a red polo shirt, and the sandals, hello stylish nautical look! Hotness!
A foodie read. Oak found Under the Table for me on Amazon. I’m a few chapters in and so far it’s very enjoyable.
A fancy candied apple from Rocky Mountain chocolate factory. I got a piece once as a free sample when I was browsing at the mall like 2 years ago (or more, I don’t remember), and Oak has had to hear me mention how tasty it was every time we’ve walked by that joint on our mall visits. Lucky him. I think that my heavy hinting can subside for now… drool.
An electronic yogurt maker. Who knew you could MAKE yogurt? I’m already picturing my cute little homemade yogurt pods in my future lunch boxes, flavored with multitudes of Oak’s homemade jams. Sorry Harris teeter, someone else will have to enjoy your yogurt from this day forward.
Luxurious spa robe. With my initials! Hellow Luxury. Excuse me while I go take a bath …
OK, so our townhouse is under contract. Yay!!! If all goes as planned we’ll be out by the end of the month. Anyway, we just got our home inspection back, and of course the buyer wants “everything fixed” that is on the freaking report. Sounds reasonable enough until you realize the ridiculous things that are itemized. Here are some of the most random and minor:
- The oven light doesn’t work. We never realized it because we almost never turn it on. Um – open the door and LOOK AT the food? Fix included a new appliance lightbulb for $1.19.
- The outdoor outlet in the front is apparently wired backwards. We’ve used this outlet multiple times and never experienced a problem, nor was it found when we had our home inspection.
- The pull-down stairs for the attic are installed with screws instead of with the prescribed 16D nails. The last time I checked, screws were stronger than nails ?! Also not noted from our home inspection.
- There are no plugs for the bathtubs. We keep them under the sink. Oh brother.
- There needs to be new weatherstripping on the door.
The only issues I would consider somewhat major are some termites that are covered by our HOA and a window that needs new some new glass. Anyway, it’s all worked out/ordered now so there we go. Exciting!
Well, I finally took our tree and decorations down today. (yes – delayed reaction! I was so lazy last weekend!)
Christmas was at our house this year! Santa was very good to us as usual - I got some clothing staples I had been wishing for – a few shirts and sweaters, a new purse, new jammies (a hello kitty set and some Victoria’s Secret Pink pj bottoms) and of course every year I get socks because I have a hole sock problem. haha. My stocking had some fun scrappy goodies (stickles! Ink! storage! and the silhouette of course!). There was metal water bottle to replace my apparently toxic Nalgene one. I also got my very first Webkinz – a hippo that I’ve named Harry. Luckily Oak’s sister was there to teach me about the World of Webkinz, because I am like 20 years too old to be using it. That’s okay. It’s actually pretty cool 
Oak’s family also got me a gift card to Victoria’s secret so I had a shopping spree at the semi-annual sale. Is it just me or is shopping in the regular VS store a freaking nightmare, especially during sales? This time I used the website and it was much less stressful. Hopefully my goodies will arrive any day now!
Oak got some awesome new kitchen goodies like a pasta machine, new fiestaware pasta bowls, a few other cool gadgets, and a book that has 1001 foods you must taste before you die. How appropriate is that? He also got a pressure canner from me, which he offered a not-so-subtle hint about. haha. Hotness. I’m sure I’m forgetting something!
Anyway, we found many ways to entertain ourselves during the holiday. There was the annual Christmas Craft – which this year was glittered pinecones with Martha Stewart craft glitter. We also played some games – of the video, computer, and board sort. Skye, Mom, and I also had a few serious coloring sessions. I got a new box of some crazy number of Crayola crayons and a Hello Kitty coloring book. I just love to color. haha.
Here are the pictures. I’m trying out this “gallery” thing in wordpress for the first time – so you can click on a picture to see it larger with the caption. Enjoy!
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- Gathered around the hors d’ouerves on Christmas eve
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- Oak receives fiestaware
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- The annual Christmas fruitcake
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- This year’s Christmas craft was glittered pinecones
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- The moms play Guitar Hero with Skye’s assistance
Well, the holidays were good this year! Santa treated us well and we had tons of fun (I am so NOT ready for the 4th button on Guitar Hero). After the New year, we did nothing but blob out completely. Yes, my Christmas decorations are still up. Oh well. It was nice to not have to DO anything for a few days!
We had a small new year’s gathering at our house. Nothing crazy, but Oak made a roast leg of lamb that was pretty tasty and a recipe with cotechino sausage and lentils from Titina, the lady at CapriFlavors. (Have I ever said how handy it is that we have many specialty groceries here? ding!).
Here I am, ready to smash the peppermint pig, a sign of good luck for 2009. Though, apparently I am feeling very sinister about it.
Happy New Year!
This isn’t a complete excuse for my absence, I know – but I was basically out of service last week. I was going about my business, leaving work to go to a holiday lunch, and the next thing I knew, I was laying on the ground face down at the bottom of the stairs outside our building. And, mon dieu, it hurt. Some very kind man (I’m assuming a fellow employee, but I have no idea who it was… thank you!) helped me up and got me back inside with some paper towels. I decided I better go home and get some band-aids and called Oak to see if he could come help me – well, I ended up getting some stitches on my lip. And, my lips were swollen like two balloons last week. I couldn’t laugh without it hurting, bite into anything (like sandwiches… bite sized food only please!), or talk without sounding weird. Boo!
So, the first thing I did when I got my stitches out on Saturday was eat a sandwich. Isn’t it funny how the moment you can’t have something you start craving it like no tomorrow? It helps there was a serious sale on lunch meat at Harris Teeter last week (50% off! HELLOW!). So, now my facial features are pretty much back to normal size and color but I have some residual bruising on my knees and hands. I mostly forget until I do something like put on lotion, and it’s like, hmm, why does this hurt?
On Saturday, I had recovered enough to go on with our cookie party! We made 4 different varieties of cookies, and we even had a signature cookie-making drink (Thanks Daniela). As a result, I have consumed way too many cookies. Ah, tis the season! The crafting of gifts has continued, as well as the shopping for and wrapping of the store-bought gifts. Busy busy busy. I’m really glad that I had gotten ahead on some of this stuff before I was out of commission!
So, since I have nothing else to discuss and this is an awkward ending to my post, here is a question : what is your favorite christmas cookie?
Well, the holiday season is in full gear. Which means, insane busy-ness. Thursday was Oak’s work holiday party, which was fun and gave me an excuse to get dressed up in a new dress. It was hot. All the holiday parties at my work are during working hours, which leaves little room for dressing up. Even wearing Christmas colors is probably a bit much for those. I’ll do it anyway. =)
We’re also in high production on our homemade holiday gifts. They are obviously Top Secret at the moment, but perhaps after the holiday I will have to share what we made. I think the trick is in high volume production – not making different things for different people. This is a trick we learned from Martha, whose Christmas book we’ve been pouring over this year.
I found Martha’s Christmas book at the flea market a few seasons ago and it is definitely a worthy investment. I think Christmas time was when I first encountered Martha as a child – when she was spray painting pine cones gold and sticking cloves into oranges. Those, and many other ideas are covered in the book. Some ideas, like the gingerbread mansion and cassoulet, are beyond insane. The cassoulet serves 100 people. If you ever find the book – read the ingredients – it has ingredients like “10 whole chickens” and “20 pounds of carrots.” Holy moly! Martha, we don’t all have THAT many relatives! hahaha. However, I do think we’ll want to try her eggnog recipe. Oak has had some brewing in the fridge since before Halloween, but it is way too strong for me and most other people that have tried it. Maybe that’s the point so you don’t drink very much of it.
Progress is also being made on decking the halls, sending Christmas cards and gifts, and holiday shopping. Our holiday potluck is at work this week, so I’ve got to think of something to bring to that as well. We’re also having a party next weekend where we are making a (to be determined) selection from Gourmet’s favorite cookies 1941-2008. Should be interesting!
Assuming I have a few free moments from holiday preparations, I’ll be posting again soon
Well, I upgraded wordpress and in the process all my nift-o widgets stopped working. Poo. Well, after re-installing most of them, it seems to be in working order again. Phew. Situation averted.
I think my new year’s resolution for 2009 will have to be to increase the frequency of my blog posts. It’s so sad – for every blog I read I wonder why they miss a day of updates when I am letting it go for weeks. Shame on me.
Thanksgiving at our house this year was very low-key but nice this year. Oak made a few of the recipes that came out well last year, and we added on a yummy apple pie recipe that seems to combine apple crisp and apple pie together! Hotness! Also, my cornbread was edible for the first time in about 5 years. The recipe in Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook is very Yankee-friendly. (Yes, there is a difference between Yankee and southern cornbread, I’ve learned.)
And, after several games of Scrabble, which seems to have become a holiday tradition, I realized that I won’t be taking the game up professionally any time soon — not even one win!! With wordsmithing being my profession and all, you’d think I’d be very good at coming up with words. Here are my 3 reasons for losing:
- All the low-value letters I kept getting. (At one point I had something like RIIIOE).
- A lot of awesome work terms that would make great words – IIOP, HTTP, JMX … etc, are not in the Official Scrabble Dictionary. Sure — accept Ye Olde English, but not Nerd English!!
- Mom needs to stop practicing year-round with online Scrabble, because that really isn’t fair to the rest of us (hint hint).
On a final note, I was very happy to see a nearby high school march in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. NC represent yo!
Well, it’s a busy week. This coming weekend is the NextStep pig pickin’ – in which Oak roasts a 150-pound porker for consumption by 300 hungry IBMers. Needless to say, all of the purchasing and preparations are in high gear.
So, instead of leaving you hanging, I present you with some shots from our garden from a few weeks ago. We have a small but fruitful container garden on our back patio (OK, this effort is mostly Oak’s but I try not to kill the flowers). We also started growing some flowers and stuff in the front with cuttings that Oak’s dad gave us when we were up in NY. We also got a bunch of flowers on the cheap at Lowe’s last night for that area, but we still have to plant them. Pictures coming of that soon, if it gets very attractive looking at least!
This is the mammoth basil, from which we have already had a batch of pesto:
My variety garden box (from Ikea!):
A cute little gnome guards one of our thyme plants:
This hen and chicks pot has been multiplying like crazy. This all started with 1 plant last year:
Oak’s family got him an “early birthday gift” of this pig foot wiping thingy. It sits next to our front door. Oink!
This is a plant stand we got at Ikea last year. It’s holding the purple flowers, thyme, and crazy chives on the bottom:
Our rosemary plant survived the winter. Oak has recently learned you can make them reproduce with the cuttings… I feel more experimentation coming on:
The garden peas with some decorative marigolds in the same box for some color. Since this picture, we already have a few good size pea pods growing:
This is the ichiban eggplant, aka “Itchy”. He has since grown a large and attractive purple flower:
Since there’s a variety of things to get done in the next 3 days, this will most likely be my last post until the weekend of pigness begins. I will try to keep you updating on the porky goodness on twitter, if you are so inclined!! I’m a little weary because it’s supposed to be almost 100 degrees out on Saturday, and this whole thing is outside. I’ll be sweating.. like a pig. Oh dear, bad time to use that expression! Have a great week.
Apparently this is my week of nostalgic blog entries. So, in 4th grade, I played the Jell-o girl in our “History of LeRoy” play at Wolcott Street Elementary School. Because of this important acting role (my only roles in plays were in my elementary days.. sigh), I felt it was my responsibility to share with my readers this New York Times article on the origins of Jell-o. Also, if you’re really feeling the need to further explore the history of flavored packaged gelatin, you can visit the Jell-o museum in LeRoy. I wonder if they have a record of 4th grade Jell-o girls past and present. I bet they are completely missing this important piece of Jell-o history. In fact, I wanted to top this entry off with a photo of me as the Jell-o girl, but alas, I have no idea where the pictures are. Time to make Mom dig through the archives..
So, we had a nice relaxing Thanksgiving this year, and I finally have the photo evidence up. What wasn’t photographed was the amazing stuffing that we made from the November 2007 issue of Everyday food – nice and simple, made out of Oak’s homemade ciabatta bread. Yum.
Later that evening we went to see Fred Claus and played almost too much Scrabble (I did actually win a game — woohoo!). We ended up purchasing the official Scrabble dictionary to put an end, once and for all, to the words that are and are not allowed to be used in the game. For those of you that were wondering, most middle English words are allowed – so go ahead and use “ye”. On Black Friday/Saturday we did the obligatory shopping – but not any of that getting up at 4am stuff. Craziness!
