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!

What's for Dinner? 1-3-11

Pizza is what's for dinner. Here's how I normally make it... but tonight I'm cheating. Freschetta is in the oven as we speak.

1.) Mix up dough in bread maker. Recipe:
                For 1.5lb ball of dough
                1/2 tsp. salt
                3 cups all purpose flour (I use two cups of whole wheat and one of all purpose)
                1 1/2 tsp Bread Machine Yeast
                1 cup water  
                2 tbsp Olive Oil
        Dump all of the ingredients into the bread machine and run it through a dough cycle. Sometimes for mine  I have to watch it ball it up because sometimes it's too wet or too dry (I blame it on the humidity). If it's too wet/dry, i just add flour or water until it mixes into about the right consistency. This is what you should have after the dough cycle (on my machine that's an hour and a half).

2.) When it's done in the bread machine, roll it out into a pizza shape. I put it on a floured surface and knead it a few times first, roll it out then I put it on a lightly floured pizza stone, like this:

 3.) This is the most important part. Brush dough with olive oil, sprinkle on some oregano, and then pierce many times with a fork. If you don't do the piercing it will get bubbly and poufy and make crappy pizza dough. Then you bake it in a 400 degree oven for 2-5 minutes. Bake it until the dough is firm enough to lift off the stone. Put on the sauce, cheese, and other toppings of your choice.

4.) Carefully transfer the pizza from the stone to the racks in the oven. Put a cookie sheet under the pizza to catch any drippings and bake until cheese is melted and bubbly (I usually bake it for 15-25 minutes. But I always start checking it at 15 minutes)

And there you have it. My usual pizza! :-)

Style File 1-1-11

Happy New Year!!! I have been enjoying my visit up in Michigan with my family. We've been doing a lot of relaxing, which is great. I love just relaxing, haha. Later this week I will tell you  more about my trip, but as promised here is the very first style file. I decided to do an "Up North Style File". Enjoy!

The pictures aren't necessarily the greatest. I am feeling lazy and don't feel like cropping anything or editing them. I'm still on vacation, right?

This style file features what a fashionable Northerner would wear to snow shoe!

 

 I made this scarf. I knitted it a while a go. Probably when I was in high school?

 Borrowed these boots from my brother and the snow shoes from my mother's co-worker.

Big leather gloves. Kept my hands warm!



Jacket: Old, bought it when I was in high school.
Hat: Christmas gift last year
Gloves: Borrowed from my dad
Scarf: Knitted
Jeans: Levi's
Boots: borrowed from my brother
Snow Shoes: borrowed



Ok, ok, my first style file was a bit of a joke. I'll have a real one next week. I just need to figure out how to get good pictures by myself without a tripod. I might need to invest in one.

Christmas Decorations

As promised here are pictures of the tree and our balcony. :)

COMING SOON!

I have to finish wrapping the presents under the tree, but I should be able to do that tonight. That means very soon I will have picture of our tree up! Yay! Aren't you just so excited? ;) I'm also working on finishing up Christmas cards, so hopefully those will be able to go out next week. I just have to find stationary somewhere. All the places I've been haven't had any Christmas stationary. K-Mart didn't even have any non-Christmas stationary. I was quite disappointed in them.

More importantly...COMING SOON TO MY BLOG:
I've been feeling pretty inspired by other blogs I read, so I thought I would introduce a few new things starting January 1st. I read a lot of fashion blogs because I'm a junkie (my favorite is Jen Loves Kev), so I thought I would try my hand at posting Style Files too. So once a week I am going to try to post a picture of me in a (hopefully) fashionable outfit. I shop mostly at JC Penney and Kohls, so it might be interesting to see how my styles measure up to the real fashion bloggers, haha.

I'm also going to introduce a weekly What's for Dinner? post. I'm a foodie at heart and I'm  constantly making new things in the kitchen. I'll take pictures and post the recipes for all of your enjoyment. And I just like talking about food.

Lastly, I am going to make an effort to post pictures of my scrapbook pages. I  know a few of my friends like to scrapbook, so I thought it might be fun to post what I'm doing and maybe it will inspire someone in their own work.

So there you have it. Three things to look forward to starting in January. Look for my first Style File Jan 1!

Until then, here are some pictures from our recent trip to Colonial Williamsburg. We went for the Grand Illumination, but it was so cold that we left before all those festivities started. It was still fun. :) It wasn't as decorated as i thought, but there were some pretty wreaths there.

I found what you can do with your extra Yarn Balls mom! Make a wreath! haha.

Christmas gifts, Christmas cards, Christmas cookies...

This morning has gotten off to a slowish start, but that's ok. I was up at 7:30 when my alarm went off, but then I kind of laid in bed messing with my phone until 7:55. Then I got up, got the dog out and all my other morning routines (i'll spare you the details, haha). It was really cold in the house, so the dog jumped on the bed and buried herself in the covers. I thought that was a good idea, as I was cold too, so we got in some belly pats. Then I finally got to eat my breakfast of Champions (Toast and Hot Chocolate with two large marshmallows). So now here I sit sipping my hot chocolate (i've already eaten the marshmallows) and I decided to blog. In the order of my title.

Christmas Gifts:
I'm 100% in Christmas mood. I have almost all of my shopping done. I still have to pick up a few things and order a few things. I need to work on wrapping stuff and getting my in-laws gifts out in the mail soonish. They gave us some gifts at Thanksgiving to keep until Christmas, but I must confess that I've opened some of them. I'm a terrible person.

Christmas Cards:
Last night I put in Home Alone and began filling out Christmas cards. This year I am doing something I swore I would never do: I am making a Christmas letter to go inside of the card. So much has changed for us I figured people might appreciate a little bit of an update. I just have to get some stationary to print them off, then I'll get the cards out (hopefully) by the 17th. That's my goal anyway.

Christmas Cookies:
This coming weekend (or maybe next weekend) Brad and I are going to make awesome Christmas cookies. I found them on the Pioneer woman's blog here: Decorated Christmas Cookies

If you don't want to sift through the post here's what they look like:

 I am excited. They're made with Royal Frosting, so that means the cookie had better be good because the frosting is not the star. That's ok, they look awesome. Maybe if they turn out well, I'll make more and give them as gifts. There are more pictures of what you can do with them on the blog post. I love the Pioneer Woman.

Brad officially had Northrop Grumman pay for his class, so he's officially all set to go, complete with getting his book ordered. I ordered my books for next semester too, so they should be here soonish. I have to do a bunch of reading for my January class and write a paper before January 1st. Icky. I'm hoping to get it all done before I go to MI, but we'll see. I know I'll have time while I'm up there, I just don't want to deal with it on vacation!

Speaking of school, I should really get going. I have a bunch of reading and papers to write!

What a blustery day!

According to Facebook, everyone is getting snow! We are not, but it is very windy out and a storm is on its way. We are under a Tornado Watch, but I'm not too concerned because the sun just peeked out from behind the clouds.

I thought I would show some pictures of our Thanksgiving weekend! This is going to be a way picture heavy post. But that's ok. :)

 Waiting eagerly for the food to be done! I think the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade was on.

 Brad and Kathy. :)

 Turkey!

 It was so yummy!

 Presents for our Christmas celebration on Friday afternoon. I got a George Foreman, the blu ray of White Christmas, scrapbooking gear (including the circle cutters! So excited about them!), a recipe organizer, and Bath and Body Works stuff. Brad got a good assortment of gift cards, movies, and other various stuff. :)

 Megan and Faith concocted an elaborate activity before the gift exchange commenced. Each little package had instructions on it that you had to follow. Jeff's said he had to read the Christmas story. Mine was initiate a group hug. Others were to lead the group in the Hallelujah Chorus, laugh like Santa, lead the group in the 12 Days of Christmas, there was a mini-scavenger hunt for someone, and other such things.

 

Faith and Lawrence. :)

Bree and Grace also wanted me to take some "Senior Portraits" of them together (they're both high school seniors). Here are a few I've already gotten around to editing:

I might put up some more as I edit them. I'm sort of playing catch up on school work this week. I didn't do much while I was gone, and I'm subbing on Friday, so I have my work cut out for me. Plus I have some papers that are going to be due in  two weeks, so I really need to get going on them too!