063. Christmas Tree Disposal.

So, how do you get rid of a dried out, dying Christmas tree when you live in a second floor condo without making a mess through the entire building?

Why you throw it off the balcony of course!

Some how I managed to not take a picture of the tree in the yard. Here's where it landed though.

Tomorrow is trash day so we needed to get the tree out tonight.

Tonight my dad and brother came by to install my new dishwasher. They were in my kitchen when dinner was done so I didn't snap a picture (too much going on), but I made a really yummy quiche. Chris love quiche, and I think it's a great way to use whatever produce I have hanging out in the fridge. Tonight's quiche included broccoli, a chopped onion, a couple cloves of chopped garlic, spinach, and Dubliner cheese I picked up at Trader Joe's. The quiche tasted awesome!

My dishwasher is currently doing it's first load. We'll see how the dishes come out in the morning (and if this dishwasher can handle my oatmeal bowls!), but for now, here it is in all it's dishwashing glory.

I didn't make it to yoga tonight due to dishwasher installation, but I did stop slacking and Whittle My Middle. Unfortunately, while I was doing my core work, I discovered there's something wrong with my wrist. When I did my first plank, I collapse almost immediately from a sharp pain in my right wrist. I'm going to ice it tonight, and see how it feels over the next couple days, but if it doesn't start getting better a trip to the doctor may be in my near future. In the mean time, I'll be doing some modified planks.

040. Christmas Recap!

Happy Boxing Day to all my Canadian/ British blogger friends! I've got about 3 posts to get written up today, but I figured I'd start with the Christmas recap.

Christmas started Wednesday afternoon. I got out of work early and headed home to spend some quality time with my future sister-in-law Nicki. We baked cookies, got sushi, drank wine, and watched Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. (We're both HUGE Harry Potter nerds.)

We made chocolate dipped shortbread cookies, chocolate covered pretzels, and Snickerdoodles.

Triple chocolate shortbread cookies - dripped in white chocolate and then drizzled with dark chocolate and milk chocolate. Talk about yum!

Somehow, the Snickerdoodles went unphotographed.

Nicki and I enjoyed a couple pretzels before going out to get sushi and sitting down to watch HP. The goofy looks can probably be attributed to the bottle of wine we polished off.

Christmas Eve

My family used to spend Christmas Eve with my dad's family because it was my Grandma Ruth's birthday. After both my grandparent's had passed, we started the tradition of having the most indulgent dinner ever on Christmas Eve. Every year we have Alaskan King Crab legs, steak (filets), and creme brulee for dessert.

This year we added lamb to the mix. Nicki's mom and brother Jon joined us for dinner as well.

Sitting down to eat dinner.

This is one of the reasons I love Nicki. She is always a great time. Nicki! Don't play with your food!

The chaos and carnage.

My dad schooling us all in how to torch creme brulee.

My dessert plate. My mom's amazing creme brulee and a Snickerdoodle (the ones that didn't got photographed on Wednesday.) I was only able to eat about 1/4 of the creme brulee because I have a pretty low tolerance for dairy.

After dinner we opened one present each and then headed off to play some Wii and entertain ourselves (or in my case nap) until it was time to go to midnight mass.

I got a double boiler. I assume my mom got this because I stole hers on Wednesday to make my cookies.

Nicki got a page-a-day, brain teaser's calendar from Alex.

Nick was really excited about his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Wii game.

A little Wii Bowling tournament. Nicki's mom kicked our butts. Beginners luck?

And a few Wii Tennis matches. Look at Nicki's mom's form!

I came home after church and Chris and I exchanged gifts before going to bed. I bought him Rockband 2 for XBox, and he got my a new computer monitor which I really needed. Mine had one foot in the grave.

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning Chris and I headed over to my parent's house for presents and Christmas Day brunch which, you may remember, I was making. We got to my parent's just after 9am, and I started cooking while Chris played Wii with my brother. The menu for the day was Peanut Butter Yogurt Dip and Pumpkin Spice Stix, from Angela over at Oh She Glows. I also served a fruit tray of slice apples, pears, and grapes. All of these went really well with the dip. The main course was a breakfast casserol I made based on a recipe I found over at SparkRecipes.com. We also had mimosa's with a splash of passion fruit juice. Everything was delicious and thoroughly enjoyed by all family members.


I did have a bit of a kitchen mishap while making the casserole. You needed to bake the hashbrowns for about 10 minutes and then pressed them down into the bottom of the pan before adding the meat, veggies, and eggs. While I was pressing the hasbrowns down, I caught my wrist on the edge of the pans, and burned myself! I got it under cold running water right away, but it's a little raw and definitely stings a bit!
We opened presents while the breakfast casserole was baking. Santa was very nice to me this year. He brought me a Wii, with Wii Fit Plus and Wii Play. He also brought me some various Wii accessories. My brothers and Nicki got me a box full of Christmas kitchen/ dinner room stuff all matching the snowman placemats I currently have. I got a cookie jar, salt and pepper shakers, two placements, a couple hand towels, mugs, and a serving platter. I'm really excited about this stuff. I love snowman stuff because you can leave it out all winter long, not just during the Christmas season! Chris got some large cereal bowls (so he can stop complaining about how small ours are), a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, and a really nice Columbia fleece jacket.

Other gift highlights from the day were Nicki got a new wakeboard and bindings from my brother, my dad got a Snuggie, my mom got muffin top pans and an iPod touch, Nick got new wakeboard bindings and a new computer monitor, and Alex got a new stereo complete with a giant sub-woofer.

Christmas Evening

After spending Christmas morning at my parent's house, Chris and I came home so I could shower and get ready (and he could play some Rockband) before we headed to his mom's house for Christmas dinner and more gifts. Dinner was all the traditional holiday dishes - turkey, ham, stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, seven layer salad, cranberry sauce, corn casserole - and a few other dishes - polish sausage, pierogis, sweet and sour carrot salad. Desserts were even more Christmas cookies!



Santa brought Chris and me even more cool stuff. We got wine glasses, a wine chiller and electronic bottle opener, a Christmas tree serving platter, some other white serving dishes, a set of 6 Pyrex bowls, and a Chris got some clothing and other fun stuff.

Grandma got a Snuggie too. It must be the year of the Snuggie.

Nick was jealous he didn't get a Snuggie so he put his robe on backwards.

Chris and I were nearly buried alive by our (really heavy) gifts.

The post gift unwrapping chaos.

So there's my lengthy Christmas re-cap. I have so many more photos. They're all over on my Picasa site if you want to take a look.

My mom's going to be picking me up to go to yoga and the gym soon. I need to start working off some of these Christmas calories! My ringworm is nearly cleared up, and it doesn't itch when I sweat so running starts again today. I think I'm going to revise and get back on track with my 15K training plan. I abandoned that about 2 weeks in.

I also plan to get caught up on blogging. I'm going to be on a blogging roll today!

Still to come...

• My brother's engagement
• My 10 in 2010
• My re-focused fitness plan
  

039. Merry Christmas!

I've been a horrible blogger lately, and I apologize to you all. I've just been SO busy. I feel like I barely have enough time to do what needs to be done let alone the things I want to do.

Hopefully now that the holidays are winding down, I'll be back in full force. Until then, I wish you all a Merry Christmas, and I leave you with a couple photos of Christmas Eve with my family.

030. Gingerbread Fest 2009

Saturday was Gingerbread Fest 2009. I talked a little bit about Gingerbread Fest in this post which included some of the pictures from the prep work my mom and I did Wednesday night. We started around 10am Saturday morning.

Bring on the photos!

We fueled up for Gingerbread Fest on homemade Belgian waffles. Mine was whole wheat, blueberry.

Nicki enjoying her waffle.

Alex not looking too happy about being awake or photographed.

You can't tell from this picture, but I loathe rolling out dough (of any kind). It find it incredibly frustrating, and it makes me want to cry. One time I almost through my rolling pin across the dining room while rolling out pizza dough.

Clearly, Nicki doesn't mind as much.

Nicki had to cut out her pieces. Look at that focus.

In case you're curious, this is what approximately $50 worth of Christmas themed candy looks like.

Various pieces in their stages of decoration/ construction.

The gingerbread chaos!

Nicki and Alex working on getting his house standing. Judging from the look on her face, I think Nicki has eaten too much of the candy and the sugar mania is starting to set in.

Building gingerbread houses is hard work so mom made us wraps to refuel.
Here's mine - turkey, cheddar jack shredded cheese, spinach and bacon bits. It was delish!


My mom is the gingerbread queen. She actually does this as a project with the students in her Culinary Arts (advanced foods) classes.

Shortly after the above photo was taken, the disposable pastry bag exploded in Nicki's hands. See the picture below for the end results of that.
This is the small, individual house I made to bring home with me. It's currently residing on my coffee table.
My house.

My mom's house.

Nicki's house. She did a Chicago Bears themed house. It's angry because the Bears suck this season.
Alex's house. Every year Alex makes it a point to build the ghetto/ white trash house. This year he went for the redneck theme.

The completed village.

This is about half the photos from the day; the rest of the pictures can be found in my Google Picasa album. Gingerbread Fest 2009.

Gingerbread Fest was kind of a mess this year. We had several broken pieces. My mom and Nicki's houses both broke, but those were able to be "glued" back together with frosting. I was not as lucky. I had to re-cut and bake the front of my house for the village as well as the front of the small house I made to take home with me. We also ran out of merguine powder so we couldn't make enough frosting to finish on Saturday afternoon. I ended up going back Sunday afternoon to finish things up with my mom.

I definitely consumed more sugar than necessary on Saturday, but I know it was less than in years past so kudos to me!

Despite all the trouble we had this year, we came out with a very nice village to display in my parent's living room.

I'm going to post the recipes for the dough and the Royal Icing as well as the template for the pieces when I get home tonight. I think it's a great tradition to start with kids or cousins or siblings! - I'm going to have to post this later. Apparently my mom didn't actually give me these recipes in the binder she put together for me like 5 years ago. I'll have to get them from her.

As a side note: After posting all these pictures, I am convinced I need blogging software. Anyone have any suggestions? The freer the better. I'm kinda broke right now.