It’s Wednesday and I have decided to take part in Classy in Philadelphia‘s Where in the World Wednesday series!
The idea of WITWW is to post a picture of you in someplace in the world…it doesn’t have to be somewhere foreign or tropical. Just a picture of you somewhere that you consider traveling.
Your eyes are not mistaking you, those really are bones that I’m surrounded by. In October of 2008 I went to the Czech Republic, mainly to Prague, for a few days while visiting my brother in Germany. I had heard about this Ossuary in Kutna Hora, about half an hour away from Prague and just had to go. It’s interior is made up entirely of human bones. Human bones that were all dug up and left on the grounds of the church in medieval times. Whoever was morbid enough to design a chandelier out of every bone in the human body needed to have his head checked.
One more picture, for a clearer shot of all the creepiness…
That’s a HUGE shield made of, you know, bones. TOTALLY NORMAL.If you look closely there’s a bone-bird picking out the eye of the skull.
Tell me how this is religious?
Anyway, it’s creepy as fuck, especially in person, so I highly recommend going if you are in Prague. (And you should DEFINITELY go to Prague!) The town is also very cute. If that makes you feel any better about visiting a place made out of bones.
Let’s lighten the mood up here a little bit, shall we? First of all, I want to thank each and every one of you for your kind words in the comments, in emails and facebook messages. If I haven’t emailed you back, trust me, I will. I just need to stop tearing up every time I read them! No words can describe how much your support means to me, though. So, thank you. Between the outpouring of love for Brandy in the Blogosphere yesterday (really, its never too late to send positive thoughts so please go send them if you haven’t!), and everyones support today, I am reminded of exactly why I blog. This is an amazing community, it really is.
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This long holiday weekend was life changing, let me tell you. Not only did I leave the house twice and indulge in eggnog, cookies and hot apple cider, but I figured some shit out in my life.
But first, before we get to that, lets touch on this little Christmas Miracle: I LOST THREE POUNDS. I know, how the eff did THAT happen? I ate so many snickerdoodles, those little peanut butter cookies with the hershey kiss on them, nutballs, gingerbread cookies, gingerbread CAKE, sugar cookies…I’m practically made out of sugar and dough at this point. Christmas Eve’s stomach gymnastics aside, I have been eating myself silly this weekend and somehow, LOST weight. You better believe I’m giving the scale the wary eye, while at the same time celebrating. I am officially down to my normal, average weight after a year and a half of being at my biggest. I know that numbers shouldn’t count, but it does make me feel better. Especially when you go to GAP and realize you’ve dropped one pant size! PARTY TIME!
Friday and Saturday night I pulled out the wine and had a glass (or two) and put on some Lady Gaga to dance around to while I was stuck at home. Not any different really than any old day in my house but I did add in a fashion show.
Everyone asks me when I’m coming back to visit the city and while visiting is high up on my list, it’s not possible right now. While I don’t want to live in NYC again, just yet, I do miss it. I miss my friends, all the things to do and see and all the pretty dresses I own that are severely underused here. Every time I would go out on a weekend, I would doll myself up in a pretty party dress and hit the town. It’s hard not being social. My good friend from NYC said it best: You’re not built for the suburbs.
It made me a little nostalgic to play around in them, but it also made me feel pretty good because dresses I bought a couple years ago that I’ve clung to in the hopes they will ever fit again, NOW FIT. I love impromptu fashion shows.
So this weekend was life-changing huh? Yeah, it really was.
You see, Doni is moving to Colorado, right? We have been talking a lot lately about me joining her and at first it was just an idea being thrown out there. Then the night before Christmas Eve my parents threw in my face that Christmas was over after this weekend and I have to have a PLAN and SOON.. A plan that involves me getting out of the house. They said I should just move somewhere and try to get a job once there. (I wonder if they’ve been reading Nicole…)
So this plan has been swirling around in my head and when Doni said that I should be her third roommate in Boulder, I started seriously thinking about it. I did my usual thing where I dance around with oh it’d be awesome to just pick up and go but I don’t know if I can do it. Reading over my archives the past couple nights, I found that I did exactly that before Europe happened. Yet, I took that risk, I quit my job and went to Europe for three months on a budget meant to last only 6 weeks and I said screw it. That risk paid off so amazingly well that how could this one NOT? Doing is better than sitting at home at my parents staring at the four walls I call my bedroom. Even if it’s hard, it’ll be worth the try.
Sunday morning, after a conversation with my father, several critical pieces (not a job, but other things like how I would be moving there) fell right into my lap and it’s official: I AM MOVING TO BOULDER IN A MONTH!!!!! I am being proactive and chasing my dreams to Colorado, with the hope that everything will work out (which they effing will.).
It’s going to be a month of hard work to get a job by February 1st, to get some extra cash into my bank account “just in case”, packing and doing even MORE editing of my belongings. There’s so much that needs to happen before I move but really? So trivial because I AM MOVING TO BOULDER!!!! I could not be more excited.
Oh wait, I can because, after some research, I am going to VEGAS for the Sin City Blogger Meetup in May!!!!! Cue even MORE excitement. Who wants to be my roommate? 
2010 is going to be fucking awesome. Here’s to making things happen.
{Photo credit: Me! Spectacularpieces.com}
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hx4RsCfL_fA]
I only listen to this song once a year, December 29th. It’s the only time I can listen to it and be ok to sit and cry hysterically. Eleven years later and tears still fall. My heart still hurts.
Tonight, just past midnight, I realized what date it was. I realized this around the same time I last talked to her, eleven years ago. It was just before midnight and we were talking about our plans to go shopping the next morning.
The next morning I got up. Got dressed. Got ready for the day, like I normally do. I signed online before leaving the house to head up to the mall and the message I received found me on the floor in the living room, sobbing hysterically, screaming unintelligibly, unable to move.
My precious, beautiful Caroline had killed herself overnight, just past midnight. She was only 16 years old.
I remember telling my mom on the phone. I had been alone in the house and was desperate for someone to be there. Someone to take the horrible pain away. It took me ten minutes to be understood. My mom screamed and dropped a bottle of something or other and abandonned her shopping cart in the middle of Stop N Shop.
Everyone loved Caroline, she was a shining spirit and when the depression hit it knocked her off her feet, but that didn’t stop the caring. The love she had for everyone and everything. She always put her friends and family first, even her little sister who drove her nuts sometimes.
She would joke about how she wanted to get a nose job until one day on Oprah, she saw an Indian princess (she was adopted from Colombia) with the same nose as her own. She began announcing how she had a regal nose and no one was going to take that away from her.
I highlighted her hair one summer on her porch, in a three hour attempt that didn’t go as well as planned. We made pudding and failed at that too, burning it and I can no longer eat vanilla pudding because of the smell and taste. We would lie in her twin bed during sleep overs watching midnight showings of the Rocky Horror Picture Show, our hips knocking as we danced along to the time warp.
Angel was played at her funeral. The week leading up to it was hard; I went to grief counseling at her church, went to friends houses just so I wouldn’t have to be alone. My parents would check on me every night and morning while I “slept.”
A year to the date after she died, a year filled with heartache and pain and friendships lost, I went to sleep. I dreamt that I was picking her up from the airport. It was so vivid, I still remember it to this day in painful detail. She greeted me as she was prone to: a running hug that would practically tackle me to the ground. Still in a half hug she told me how she was happy to see me, she’d been having so much fun and that we had so much to catch up on. Whatever we did during the course of my dream didn’t matter. She told me she was happy. At the end of the dream I dropped her back off at the airport and we hugged goodbye. She told me not to worry about her. I woke up hysterically crying.
You’re in the arms of the angel now, may you have found comfort there.
Love and miss you every day.
July 7, 1982 – December 29, 1998
I am taking a break today from blogging about myself to let a guest blogger take over for something much more important. I have been reading Brandy’s blog since I started and I love her so when I received this email, sharing it was the least I could do. In fact, all over the blogosphere this post is going up to raise up the positive thoughts so that her ManFriend is protected by them. Please repost this if you can today, tomorrow (or the next!) on your blog, so we can expand the positive thinking throughout the entire blogosphere. Every little bit helps!
My name is brandy. And I have a blog.
And a plea.
I use my blog to showcase the crazy I meet everyday, share the stories of the kids I teach and document my love for tequila, dairy products and the abdominal muscles of Ryan Reynolds. Rarely do I talk about personal issues on my blog- as personal as the dude that I adore (who I actually met through my blog- single ladies, let that be a very good reason to blog, the possibility of meeting someone as wonderful as my man), but I need your help. And it involves my dude.
He’s a guy who made math comics for my class, so they would love learning about addition. He’s the kinda guy who sends my friends gift cards when they are having hard times, who remembers every story I ever told him, who was the first person I celebrated with when I got a teaching job. He’s the guy who sent flowers to me at school- dozens of my favourite pink roses just because he loves me. He’s a guy who has spent a year patiently explaining (and re-explaining) everything there is to know about football during the important games when silence is preferred. He’s made me word puzzles and comics and stayed up late playing Scrabble with me (even though I beat him almost every time). He’s listened to me cry about school and family and jobs. He is everything I never knew I needed and everything I always knew I wanted.
The holidays have hit us hard. He’s recently been told he may have something called multiple myeloma- an incurable cancer, that gives a person an average of five years of continued life. Though this news has came as a shock, he continues to be exactly who has always been- spending his time worrying about me, rather than worrying about himself. He’s the most selfless individual I know- (he stayed late on Christmas Eve to work, so his co-workers could leave early) and a post like this would never be something that he would promote or encourage but when I’m overwhelmed and feeling helpless, the blogging community has always given me tremendous support and comfort, two things I desperately need at this time.
As I write this, the future is uncertain and we aren’t sure what’s happening. He’ll need to see an oncologist soon, to verify what’s going on in his body. My hope is that everyone who reads this think positive thoughts and if you are a person who prays, could you add him to your list? (You can refer to him as ‘brandy’s hot awesome dude’). If you don’t pray, please keep him in your heart.This cancer is only a possibility and I believe that the prayers and positive thoughts of people can make sure it never becomes a reality.
I want to give a big thank you to the blog owner who scraped their original blog plans and graciously put this up. My goal is to get as many people as possible to see and read this post. If you are reading this and want to help, copy and paste my plea into your blog or send a link through twitter, so more people can keep him in their thoughts. I would be so very grateful (even more grateful than I am to my friend who first showed me the picture of Ryan Reynolds on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. If you haven’t seen it, google it. You. Are. Welcome).
I realize this all sounds dramatic, a Lifetime movie in the making- but this is life. Right now. And I’m throwing away any hint of ego and am humbly asking for you to pray or think kind thoughts. If you are able to pass this on, thank you and if you know anything regarding MM- please email me (my email is on my blog). This isn’t a call for sympathy or a plea for pity. It’s just one girl hoping you can think positive thoughts for the person she adores. If my current heartache provides you with anything, let it be with the reminder that life is short, love is unbending and no one knows what could happen next. Maybe it is silly, but I really do believe that positive thoughts can make a huge difference. Thank you for reading this and if you haven’t already? Please tell someone you love them today.
I did.
These are my new snow boots I got for christmas:
Cute right?
Now this is my new theme song every time I wear them:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hK3KULhwXbE]
First of all, Merry Christmas! That’s a very young me on Santa’s lap circa 1984 and I’m pretty sure that must have been my dentist since we were at his office, sitting in that dreaded chair.
Last night was our big family dinner. By big? I mean my grandfather, his wife, and my Great-Uncle joined my parents, my brother and I. Usually it involves my mom’s entire side of the family (which means DRAMA) but this year people called in sick with excuses like they had to work during the day or their neighbors were having something so they were feeling lazy and just going there.
Fine. Whatever. I’ll hang out with the old folks for a night.
Sounds kind of boring, right? Except that my grandfather, who is very Italian and likes to think he’s Frank Sinatra, can be quite the character and my Great Uncle…well “character” doesn’t even begin to describe him. The evenings festivities included deciding that my grandpa and I are going to write his memoirs, listening to my Grandpa sing Christmas carols (that he made up. I tell ya, Frank Sinatra wannabe), and trying to keep my Great Uncle from discussing politics.
There they are sitting by the tree that I picked out and that finally got decorated two days before Christmas. Poor thing.
Theres the rest of the crew sitting by the fire on the opposite side of the tree. Isn’t the back of my brother’s head nice? He resisted having his picture taken.
We ate a ton of good food–lasagne and italian sausage, I ate too much possibly bad cheese and got violently ill, revisiting everything I ate that evening. This lead to lying around the rest of the evening moaning to myself about how I was “dying.” I’m kind of dramatic.
Besides my little foray into death, I did learn the secret ingredients in my Italian Great-Grandmom’s pasta sauce, heard some interesting stories about my Great-Grandpa delivering turkeys in his truck during the Depression, and how my grandmother’s maiden name is German for bag and how that last name is plastered all over Women’s bathrooms for the sanitary napkins to be placed into. That’s just…special.
The evening was capped off by a game of Balderdash that I perked up just enough for a game and a half, before everyone took off. If you’re not familiar with that game, you get a word and a definition and the rest have to make up a definition and decipher which is the correct definition. The first time I played this game we used a dictionary and kept track of the score by points. This game had little figures you moved around a board, but same concept I suppose!
Some definitions that stood out included: “the beginning form of leprosy that is caused by eating a lot of bad cheese.” (That was aimed at me. Thanks, brother.) and “Dhole: The disowned son of Bob Dole who could never spell his last name right.”
Here’s a picture of my uncle unable to contain his laughter trying to read the definition that involved leprosy:
And no my Uncle is not freakishly tiny, my brother is really just that much bigger than my uncle. Than all of us, really. Whenever I see a picture of him with any of us, it always looks like he’s been photoshopped in at the wrong scale.
At around midnight we decided oh what the hey, lets open some presents. Or how about all the presents? Who wants to wait til Christmas morning? Apparently, not us.
Except there was a small problem. I hadn’t wrapped ANY of my presents (I know, I was supremely lazy yesterday.) and two of my presents? Were on my computer, still waiting to be burned onto a CD. Whoops.
Besides the unwrapped presents and late hour and the fact that I was still not feeling great, we had a good time opening gifts. I got a new pair of snow boots, a nice purse, some sweaters, two books (including Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by my new favorite author, Jonathan Safran Foer. Can’t wait to read it!), a Julia Childs cookbook, the requisite socks (but surprisingly, no pajamas. Every year I usually get a pair of pajamas because my mother never approves of the shirt and yoga pants I always wear. I guess she just gave up this year.) and a gorgeous white leather, huuuuuge jewelry box, which I’ve already filled to almost capacity. I have a lot of jewelry, what can I say?
I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas and that Santa was as good to you as he was to me! 
This was the scene of last Christmas Eve. For some reason we all were wearing silver paper crowns, a silly trinket that you “pop” open for the gift inside that my mother bought for the table that lead to everyone wearing theirs throughout dinner.That’s my Uncle talking to my Mom at the end of the table and my Great-Uncle on the right demonstrating how to properly destroy napkin rings, probably to one of my younger cousins. Christmas Eve is always full of family, alcohol, holiday cheer and my Great-Uncle making fun of everyone and causing more trouble than any of us younger kids could ever get into.
There will be bottles of champagne, tables full of alcoholic beverages and my mother will pull off her magic trick of never running out of wine…
A table set, and decorated by yours truly, for ten people…
There will be gift giving and story telling. A game of balderdash and lots of smiles and laughter. My mother is making a lasagne for the big meal tonight, screw the ham we’re going to our roots–Italian that is. There will be snickerdoodles, gingerbread men, nutballs, sugar cookies and ciabelle cookies. A sherry trifle (that you could get drunk on), homemade eggnog and did I mention booze?
We’ll watch The Christmas Story and It’s a Wonderful Life on repeat, and play Christmas music during dinner. I will, of course, force everyone to listen to my favorite Christmast song at least a dozen times:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXQViqx6GMY]
and maybe this one once or twice:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yasSkqJBytk]
Christmas Eve is our big holiday here in my house. We don’t do anything for Christmas Day (unless you count two years ago when we went to my Grandfather’s wife’s family and I ended up with a PICKLE FORK). Christmas Eve is when we all gather around and forget that Ashley never cleaned the upstairs toilet and the fact that my Brother ate all the cookies made especially for that day. Where we forget that Ashley moved home and is unemployed and that my brother works at a recycling center, neither places either of them wants to be. All those can be remembered December 26th, but for now we can enjoy each others company and not think about all the pesky little details.
Now go read Peter’s A Blogger Christmas Carol and enjoy a good laugh. (I’m not promoting this because I make a guest appearance. Or that several of my favorite bloggers make guest appearances. I swear. It IS quite funny.) Merry Christmas, everyone!
It’s been nearly a year and a half since I was last on Match.com. I’ve been playing with the idea of rejoining since I’m new to Michigan and my profile has kind of gotten a lot of attention since moving here. Due to being unemployed and broke, however, I haven’t spent the ridiculous price they want to charge me for a membership. Instead I’ve been a little more active on Plenty of Fish, an online dating site that is free that I have also been a member of for a couple years, but haven’t met anyone off of it. When I said I was being a little more active, I meant I check my emails once a week as opposed to once a month.
Last night I received a treasure. It was so amazing, I have to share it with you right now. Keep in mind that he had emailed me just five hours prior and I had yet to read that email. I’m not changing anything, not even the awful spelling and grammar mistakes.
Subject: Right 2 judge?
i knew you wern’t going to return my message, and thats why guys like me judge women like you and know we dont stand a chance in hell. but no woman ever has any backbone just to be honest and say they’re not attracted to someone, so i’m sure you will make an excuse like we dont have anythng in common just so you dont have to look shallow
it’s funny how we always see women like you with the tall,athletic guys with the moosed up spiky hair or a ball cap backwards,(with an affliction shirt on as well)but we never see you with the kind of guys that look like they did well in science and math.( a harry potter look) pretty much the guys you were too cool to talk to in high school. and then again women like you never understand why you get judged. well i was right to judge you, because i was willing to bet my soul that you wernt writing back
oh let me guess again, you’re going to write me and tell me how i dont know you and want you go for. save it, i have yet to see a beautiful girl with anything less than someone that their friends would be envious of as far as looks. please dont take too much offense, i’m just getting sick of how women continue to go after te same guy that constantly screw them over. nice guys are constantly losing faith of why they’re nice. pretty soon there will be no nice guys left because they will have figured out thats how you dont get women
And this is from, I’m guessing, a self-proclaimed NICE guy, right?
At first I was a little confused because I was like, is this some kind of weird twisted way to hit on me? I mean, I get some pretty bizarre emails. I was married AND divorced in one (that one did make me laugh, I’ll be honest. It was clever.), and in another I was so hot flames were shooting out of my head and the guy would have to use oven mitts in order to shake my hand. There’s a reason I’m not very active on this site.
Then I see that he had sent an email earlier in the day. Now, not to brag but I get 20-30 emails a day and it’s hard to keep track of them all, especially when you’re only checking once a week. I cannot reply to every single one to tell them I’m not interested.
After wanting to write him a nasty reply back and get all stabby, I just started laughing. Hysterically. I mean, REALLY? I’m going to let this guy put a wrench in my perfectly nice day? Just read the email! It’s ridiculous! Not only is everything untrue, he’s desperate and had already written me off before he had even written me the first email. Why did he bother?
So then I had this genius idea. I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who are on dating sites and have gotten some pretty ridiculous emails. I should have people send them to me so I can put them up here. Great idea right?
*crickets*
Oh come on, it wouldn’t be that bad. It’d be pretty funny actually!
I can see the point you make about it being kinda mean to the people who put effort into these emails and then have people like me mock them on the internets. But really, they’re almost asking for it when they say things like “Are you on the naughty or nice list?”.
I’m on the naughty list, baby. Want to join me?
Sigh.
What are your thoughts? Awesome idea or should I just go straight to hell and not stop at Go?
I must have been on some pretty strong “I’m going to Europe” drugs over the summer to make me think moving in with my parents was going to be a ton of fun. Sure, it’s gotten better. I’m no longer angry and frustrated and since landing a couple freelance gigs plus some design work, they have been off my back about getting a job. We’re getting along pretty well, surprisingly.
But (and there’s always a but) I’m living with my PARENTS. While trying to have a social life and date. Explaining why you live with your parents to a guy you could potentially date is always fun and I’m sure is very limiting. I certainly wouldn’t date a guy who still lived with his parents.
Nevertheless, I’m giving it my best, even though it isn’t the best situation. So far I’ve learned a lot about my family. Like….
- My parents bought an intercom system and gave me one half of it so that they can call me without straining their vocal chords for dinner.. So far it has been used by my mom to check if its working properly (can you hear me now?) and by my dad to tell me the dog barked when he sneezed. When dinner was ready? They screamed up the stairs. Oh, parents.
- I definitely inherited my father’s ability to start a project (or ten) and not finish them before starting new ones. My father has, count it, THREE bathrooms that are in various stages of unfinished. My mom’s bathtub is still untiled, my bathroom is in the stages of getting fixed but my shower has taken 2 weeks to tile and I don’t think its going to be and somewhere in Ann Arbor is a bathroom he’s fixing for free that still isn’t done. Bravo, Dad.
- My mom has been hounding me for a week to do laundry. She doesn’t understand how I possibly have anymore underwear left or clothes at all. She must not have gotten the memo about how I constantly would go buy Victoria Secret’s 5 for $25 when I ran out of clean underwear and didn’t want to go to the laundromat. I got skills on making my clothes last.
- My mother only comes up to the third floor if she hasn’t met her daily quota of yelling. My brother and I live up here and my dad is sometimes working on the bathroom. Usually if my dad is downstairs she’ll get her yelling out of her system. But if my brother’s been at work, I’ve been hiding upstairs and my dad’s been up here working, she’ll come upstairs just so she can yell at someone. I think she got the intercom just so she doesn’t have to climb all those stairs just to yell.
- I have gotten extremely lazy and rarely get out of my pajamas until past noon (today is no exception!). Sometimes its three or four o’clock by the time I get jeans and an actual sweater on (just so when I reappear downstairs for food, I don’t get yelled at.). Luckily, I’m not alone. Its also rare my mother gets out of her robe before noon so at least we keep each other company.
- My parents have date nights on Friday nights which is really cute. Except they both forget and when it comes time for dinner my mother will then remember and yell at my dad for forgetting he was supposed to take her out for a date. My mom needs to take the yelling down a notch. Or twenty.
- The Christmas Tree is like the elephant in the room. It has sat there undecorated and ignored for a week and a half. We all ignore it, hoping someone else will decorate it and put presents underneath it. Christmas spirit is severely missing in this household.
- I have forgotten how hard it is to eat while my brother is around. It’s like the Amazing Race: Ashley’s Kitchen around here, with each family member trying to get at the food before the giant does and eats it all. I lose. OFTEN.
- My parents will ask me for help on their computer. A couple months later, when something goes wrong with the computer, they’ll point out the time I helped them then blame me for breaking it. Umm. Yeah cause THAT makes sense.
It’s only a couple more days til Christmas and while I’m feeling more festive, I still haven’t finished my Christmas shopping. And I still haven’t written out christmas cards, much less sent any. This holiday has been one big EPIC FAIL.
The New Year better bring back my motivation, a steady job and my own place.
This weekend, in an effort to try to bring some much-needed Christmas spirit into my house, I decided to do some holiday baking. That usually does the trick–along with snow, christmas tree decorating and holiday music. Since those three just weren’t cutting it, I decided to go with baking.
Round one was friday night and involved Gingerbread Bears. (Bears being the only stencils I had) I had bought a box of gingerbread mix from Trader Joes (cheating, I know!) and set to work in my mother’s large kitchen. Can I tell you how much easier it is to make things when I have about 5 million countertops?! That little teensy kitchen in my last apartment just doesn’t compare. I’m thinking my next apartment needs a gourmet kitchen. I’d never use it, but it needs one.
Once we got to the part of rolling out the dough we realized we had a problem: my mothers two rolling pins were missing. As in, she took them both to the lakehouse and left them there for the winter. Never fear, my mother had a genius idea. Let’s use a wine bottle! Coming from a family of Italian vinos, it wasn’t hard to find a bottle (or ten.)
My mother demonstrating how we are rolling out the dough:
That’s a Yellowtail Cabernet by the way.
The little bears WERE really ridiculously cute and really fun to make.
Once they were all baked, the fun really began. My mom and I made some frosting ourselves and added some food coloring for some festive colors. Unfortunately the red was more pink but I rolled with it.
My favorite was the hula dancer. The bear spoke to me and told me to put a grass skirt on it and a bikini top, who was I to deny it?
They all came out ridiculously cute, if you ask me.
Saturday night I brought a plate of these to my friend Steph and Joe’s house out near Detroit. I’m pretty poor this holiday season and what better way to spread joy than through gingerbread yumminess?
I hadn’t seen these two since Vegas and it was really nice to catch up with them over tacos and The Hangover. I shared stories of Europe and we talked about everything that had gone on in our lives since we last saw each other. And Steph and I may have drooled openly about Bradley Cooper in his black suit.
Luckily, the cookies were a success! I was really happy with TJ’s mix, it was spicy and just all around very yummy. Even my frosting came out not so bad! (I was a little wary of my powdered sugar and milk combo)
Sunday I was determined to get some christmas shopping done so I headed out with my dad into town but unfortunately came back empty handed. During another shopping trip I managed to pick up a book for my dad and a raging longing for a cat that I saw at the adoption center at Petco but still nothing for my mom. Sigh. I have five days left right?
My mom and I set about on our second round of cookies after a nice walk in the woods with my dogs and a yummy meatloaf dinner (I could get used to living at home. Mom’s home-cooked meals are SO much better than anything I could make!). We decided on two Martha Stewart mixes: sugar cookies and nutballs.
Once again we pulled out a bottle of wine to roll out the cookie dough (this time it was a Pinot Grigio) and I set to work decorating them once they were baked. Again, we made our own frosting and this time added some Almond extract for added flavor. I’m not a fan of almond but shh don’t tell my mom.
It was a messy process. We got a little lazy and decided not to put the frosting in ziploc bags like we had with the gingerbread bears. I was literally using the whisk and the spoons to create my little masterpieces. VERY sloppy.
But they came out cute and they were oh so yummy!
Next up were the nutballs. My mom was pretty much in charge of those but I got the really fun job of powdering them with sugar. By the way, I should never be trusted with this job. I got it ALL OVER ME, despite my wearing an apron. By the end of it I looked as if I’d dumped the bowl on myself. I rock at baking.
The balls, pre-powder.
This was like, pre-mess. When the powdered sugar was still IN the bowl. I wish I had a picture of me after the explosion but I didn’t want to risk my mom yelling at me for being incompetent in the kitchen (which she does regularly).
All sugared up.
It was overall a very nice weekend and I definitely found a little bit of christmas spirit, even if it’s not one hundred percent here and I couldn’t bring myself to decorate the tree. There are five more days left to get in the mood.
Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!
