What I've been up to! (Lots of Pictures)

With the holiday's and everything, time just got away from me! The last "real" update I made was about our Christmas tree and all that stuff. I mentioned making Christmas cookies in that post, so I thought I would show you how they turned out.

They were pretty labor intensive, but man they were fun to make! I also tried a different cookie recipe and I really like it. It was almond-vanilla and they gave the cookies just a little extra oomph. I wouldn't want to try these with a plain sugar cookie because the frosting is more of the supporting character in the Cookie Movie.

Brad and I had the chance to travel up to Michigan to spend Christmas and New Year's with my family. We had such a great time! As seen in my first style file, my mom borrowed some snow shoes and took us snow shoeing. None of us had ever gone before, so it was kind of an experience. I think it probably would have been more difficult had we not been on groomed trails, but it was still soooooooo much fun. We also went to see my brother's wrestling tournament on New Year's Eve. In this particular match my brother didn't win, but he wrestled hard. In the tournament last night he beat a kid 14-3 or something like that. Go Sean! (Note to my Mother: I plan on burning all these photos and sending them to you on a disc. For some reason I forgot to copy them to your flash drive when I copied over the Christmas morning pictures).

The holidays were great. For Christmas, Brad got me a Cricut Expression cutting machine. As he puts it he "Made a major sacrifice to the cult of Scrapbooking". I keep telling him it's not a cult; just a way of life. Oh well. Anyway, my parents got me a lot of stuff to go with the cricut (including four cartridges!). I think I'm set for a while because I have a total of seven now (I bought one with some Christmas money), three font cartridges and four shape cartridges, but a couple of the shape cartridges also have a font. I've been a scrapbooking maniac for the last couple days, I am so proud of my pages now that I have the cricut, haha. 


Aside from the scrapbooking stuff I got some clothes, really nice make up from my grandma, Chocolate Haus stuff, Donkey Kong for Wii and a random assortment of other little things that I love but don't really feel like typing about them. Brad got a Keurig coffee maker from my parents, and let me tell you what... that thing is awesome. I've been enjoying a coffee every morning since we got home! It even makes the coffee at a drinkable temperature. No more burning my mouth on too hot coffee. Whoever invented that thing is a genius. Genius, I'm telling you. He love it too, which I suppose is a good thing. :)
(I just really love this picture of my grandparents. I don't think either of them particularly like having their picture taken, but this is just a really fun snapshot. One for my portfolio, I think!)

As for New Year's we had a pretty low key celebration, which is the way I like it. We had been at Sean's wrestling tournament all day, then stopped at the mall for a bit to exchange a few gifts that didn't fit correctly (some awesome pants my mom got me just aren't made for tall girls. BLAH!) and then we came home to watch TV and ultimately watch Dick Clark's Rockin' New Year's Eve thing. You know, where the ball drops in NYC. Then we spent New Year's Day chilling with the family, meeting with Amy and Shawn to catch up a bit, and packing up our stuff. We came home on Sunday the 2nd, bright and early.

Since we've been home I've been making lots of pages. I'll snap some pictures and post them probably next week for my first Scrapbooking post. It will be fun! I also ordered a tripod for my camera. It should be here sometime today, so I'm hoping to be able to make another style file post on Saturday. Taking pictures of yourself is pretty difficult without a tripod! I think that's going to be my Style File day, Saturday. What's for Dinner? will probably come on Mondays, and any scrapbook posts will just get posted whenever I get them up. Occasionally in place of a style file, I might post a collection of things I wish I could be wearing, but those won't be too often. I'm really hoping to get people reading my blog. I always feel so inspired after I watch Julia and Julia to make a really awesome blog. How do you get people to read? I'll have to ponder this more. Until next time!