Fever

Of course I have to get really sick while on my winter break. I have a fever. Which basically means I spent the day in bed crying. It's been awful. Really. Anyways, so as to not be a total bum I gathered some photos of some fabulous whimsical/quirky wallpapers :) please enjoy!




Carnival


Birds and weird clouds


Flock of birds


Deer skulls


Billowy petals


Squid and jellyfish!



Pastel clouds with random faces



Birds with flag pieces


Running zebras and their reflections


Flowers


Not sure. But it'd be good for a stylish man


Musical forest critters!


Proper ladies with unrealistically large insects


Different mustaches


These are sumo wrestlers! Another manly one :)


This is supposed to be for a baby's room?... Creepy for baby I think... But cute for little boy who no longer thinks there are monsters under his bed :)

It's Christmas Time!

Ok so I have been so busy around here lately. I have been battling either really bad headaches or migraines almost everyday for the past two weeks. I don't know why its worse than normal! Anyways, yesterday I woke up early and started my Christmas baking! I made some wonderful treats that I've never tried making before. So it took me hours and hours to finish. But all in all I am happy with the outcome :)




These are my salted caramels. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!!! I had to make myself stop munching on them while wrapping them up! I had some left over (after setting some aside for myself and for gift giving) so I left them on a plate in the kitchen. They were gone before nightfall!




This is them wrapped into individual tootsie roll type shapes. Its supposed to make it so that its easy to eat one serving, but I really doubt thats going to happen!




These are the snowflake sugar cookies I made. I bought a snowflake cookie cutter just for the cookies, but the dough was being a pain and so I ended up just making round cookies and making snowflakes out of the icing!




And last but not least these are my cranberry and chocolate (dark chocolate chips inside and a layer of white chocolate on the top) biscotti. These are yummy, but not as flavorful as I thought they would be. Next time I think I'll add some sliced almonds and vanilla extract :) But they are still yummy as they are.




I also finally mailed out the last of our Christmas cards. I didn't send out cards to friends this year like I normally do, so please don't be sad when you don't get one! I had such a small amount of time on my hands this year with school and all and I decided to just send cards to family.




Oh my Christmas gifts this year. I am so happy with the wrapping. It just makes me smile. I did use the same paper for almost ever single gift, but I like to think that you almost can't tell. I used a lot of fabric ribbon, lace, stickers, and glitter :) Instead of using name tags for the "to" and "from" I just used some vintage looking initial stickers and made sure to keep track of the ones that are for people with the same initials, or just used middle or last name initials. It took more time then if I used more modern wrapping means, but I like the glamour of this vintage look :)


I even wrapped up at least 8 more gifts after this photo was taken!


So how are your Christmas preparations coming along? I am pretty much done. Which is good because ofter tomorrow Jake will be off work until after Christmas and it will be nice to not have to run around getting last minute things ready while he's home :)

Winter is over?

Now now don't get too excited or upset. This cannot be true of course! But it sure feels that way to me. Let me explain. A few weeks ago I was so cold in my room during the day that I felt like I couldn't feel my toes! So I hauled our heater into our room from the garage.




And I used it for a few days on and off. But the past week its actually bee hot at night. I've gotten so hot that I woke up sweaty and had to take my blanket off in order to fall back asleep. What the heck Winter? Stop playing games!

So Shelly decided to end her coffee addiction and apparently she overnighted it to my house! I have started having at least one huge cup of coffee per day. I don't dislike this new addiction. But I don't like being addicted to things. Because when I stay over at someone else's house and I can't afford to go out and buy that coffee I am going to get a huge headache. And thats just dumb. Nonetheless I am writing this post while drinking a huge cup of joe.




P.S. I have gotten so good at eyeballing my sugar and milk that I don't even taste test it anymore before heading out the door! I feel like this is some kind of accomplishment. It doesn't matter if its a big cup or a little one, I have it down good!

Finals week is upon me! I am so excited. I was ready to take some of my finals last week and it was torture to have to wait until this week to get them done with!




This morning I have my Biology final. I am not worried about this one at all. I am nervous about my Psychology test. But thats just because my teacher is whack. Believe me, I have studied hard for this test. I am not just blaming my teacher for my laziness! She has some issues. And I'm a little nervous about my calculus test. But mostly I'm just excited this semester is almost over and then I can do my Christmas shopping and preparations!

Yesterday my life path changed again. And I'm excited/scared. I can't ever seem to make life choices even if they seem small and trivial without having a great fear that I am making the wrong choice and that I will regret it one day. I don't think I will regret this though. We'll see.




I am not going to go to school to get a degree anymore! I am still going to take classes. Mostly for fun and to just learn. Its just that I wouldn't use my degree right after I graduated. In fact I probably wouldn't use it for 25 years or so afterwards. And by then I won't remember all the things I learned in the first place. So it would practically be like starting over again anyways. So if I want to work after I have kids and such then I might get a degree then. I know it would be harder to do then. But I can do it, if its where my heart is. I could do it now. I just don't think it really makes sense. But don't get any ideas Mom, and Grandma! I'm not settling down and having kids right away! I'm still waiting for a little while on that one :) However this does probably mean that I will be blogging more! Yea!

Ok well I'm not done with this semester yet, so I better go do some more studying :) I hope you're all having a wonderful day!

Uneasy

It makes me kind of uneasy that some people read my blog and NEVER comment. So it's like a secret that they follow my post regularly. Kind of like a stalker. It kind of freaks me out. At least say hi once in a while, or just don't follow my life. It's weird. I don't mean to be rude, I'm just pointing out that I feel like you should make your presence known or something...

Live Thanksgiving Day Feed

Ok I'm going with Heaven's idea of live blogging today to give you a walk through my Thanksgiving day :) I love Thanksgiving day! So this morning Jake and I woke up at 7:30am to get started on some cooking. He started his preparations on the Turkey and I started snapping some photos of our decorations :) Sorry if the photos are bad quality, I am using a phone camera.

7:30am














This is the view from the living room into the family room.
















The little Autumn village above the tv and fireplace. And also the other Fall-ish decorations.
















The kids table. I put Autumn die cuts on the back of all the chairs to kind of dress them up a little bit.
















The adult table.
















The china and rest of the place setting.


8:30am














My Pumpkin and Cream Cheese Muffins. I never follow a recipe to the dot, I have this thing about having to just glance at a recipe and just doing whatever I want :P Which is what I did this guys and they were AMAZING!!!
















This is them rising in the oven...
















And the final product! Like I said, they were AMAZING!

12:30pm

I guess I really like doing things at the half-hour mark :P













I had to go out to the store. MISTAKE. I drove down to Trader Joe's - CLOSED. Then drove to Target - CLOSED. Then I drove to Walmart - OPEN... but they didn't have everything that I needed. Safeway - OPEN... but they also didn't have what I needed in stock. I know, you may think I must have been looking for something strange, but really I was just looking for some celery! Then I drove down to our sketch creepy Win-Co - OPEN and filled with a ton of people! I finally bought my celery. I also picked up some wine while I was out. EVERY single store I was able to look in was sold out of Pinot Grigio. Weird right? I guess it was chosen this Thanksgiving as the "it" wine ;P I picked out a Sweet Red, Shiraz, and White Zinfandel.













Jake finally got the turkey on the grill! Seriously people this is going to be the best turkey I have ever had. It smelled amazing before he even started cooking it! Plus he made the most delicious looking turkey stock that I have ever since in my life! I can't wait to show you some photos!













I made my homemade stuffing mixture. You see all store bought stuffing box kits have some form of corn in it. So I decided to make my own because its seriously my favorite dish at dinner. I couldn't just not have stuffing on Thanksgiving! I cubed some buttermilk bread and browned it in the oven at 350deg. Then I chopped some onions, celery, and mushrooms. I also added some parsley, garlic, salt and pepper. I think that's all. Then when I'm ready to cook it up I'll add some stock :)













Then I had to hand snap the ends off of all these green beans! Then cut them all in half because they were super long! These are for the Green Bean Casserole.

That's it for right now :) Everyone is on their way over from SF as I type this :) I'm watching MythBusters!

2:30pm










Checking on the turkey...










All dressed up and ready :)

4:00pm







I have decided it's about time for some ibuprofen... I think I'm getting a fever :(

8:20pm




Beewee and I ready to start munching!!!




My final stuffing :)




Anna's apple pie! I couldn't eat it because there was corn of some form in it...




I had some champagne that grandma brought over!




Jake SLAVED over this turkey! He was even up at 1:30am to check on it while it was in the brine. Then up at 7:30am to start the other preparations. It was sooooo yummy!




Close up of the turkey




Jake had a mishaps with the tin foil...




The table with the food!




And the other table :)

Now I'm enjoying some sweet red wine and watching a tv show called Pumpkin Chunkin with the fam bam. I love them!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!