Stirred

I know I'm a few days behind on the Christmas wrap up post. Here goes. It was a lovely, and as always with my large family, exhausting holiday season. While I enjoy the Christmas season lasting a good 6 weeks or so, the week of Christmas can really take it out of me with so much to see and do. I received many wonderful gifts and want to point out a few of my favorites, some expected and some less so. I'll start with the book Twilight. While I'm always open to reading some good teenage girl fiction (note: Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants series is my favorite) the idea of vampire fiction wasn't necessarily something I'd run out to get. When I received it as a Christmas present from Alex and Sandy though, I was ready to give it a chance. And so glad I did! I couldn't believe how sucked in a I got so quickly. (Did you catch my little vampire joke - sucked in? Get it?) It was remarkable and I could barely put it down. In fact, I only did twice. Once to go to bed one night, and once to go to Target and buy the sequel so I didn't have to wait a second when the first book ended to start the next one. I had no idea I'd be so captivated by this story. I also totally have a crush on Edward the vampire. He's intense.

Next up in favorite gift category was one I was really looking forward to, and that is my electric toothbrush. I've wanted one for years and would never bring myself to buy one. I love that it beeps every 30 second to tell me to move it around my mouth, I love that it shuts off automatically after 2 minutes, I love that it has the little sanitizer. It's a different feeling than regular toothbrushing, which is so vigorous. This is more suble with the pulsing bristles, but I'm pretty sure my teeth are getting clean, and that's all that matters.

Lastly, I'm thrilled to have some new cooking tools! My immersion blender and stock pot will be great to make yummy winter soups. I am so excited to have the big pot that I'll be able to easily fit corn on the cob or big batches of spaghetti in. And, it has that built in strainer which I'm more excited about than may be normal.

All in all, it was a wonderful Christmas with many generous and thoughtful friends and family sharing it with us.

The Cold

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today I'm most grateful for Adrian Soyers, the nice woman who is buying my Louisiana house. Happy Thanksgiving to you Ms. Soyers. I'm grateful for my perfect cat and my many friends. I'm grateful for my giant kitchen island that provided lots of space for cookie making & merriment last night.

Here are some pictures of how all that turned out:

The pictures are, from top to bottom, our sugar cookies, in mid decoration. We had a variety of icings to use last night and they came out so great! The second is hard to tell, but it's my pan of marshmallows before I cut them. I'll have to take a better picture now that they're cut. The last is Laura and I. Another very successful year of Christmas cookies under our belt. My kitchen is a disaster mess, and I'm pretty sure the secret to hard candy involves corn syrup and water and sugar because that's what is stuck in the bottom of my pot. (My fault for waiting until the next morning for dishes.) Oh well. I should also say that Laura was a trooper. When she arrived at my house last night to make cookies, I informed her that our first floor heat has gone out and it was 56 degrees in the kitchen. It warmed up with the oven and all, but still. Chilly night for making cookies.

Talking Points

I have a thing for toothbrushes. I'm fascinated by what I refer to as toothbrush technology. And I'm not talking about electric toothbrushes that feature sonic or infrared abilities or have built in timers. I'm talking about plastic sticks with bristles. Everytime I see a new toothbrush hit the market I think to myself, "That's it - there's nothing else they could think to add to a toothbrush," I am proven wrong. I recently picked myself up a new toothbrush and was amazed by my options. This is something I feel should be standardized. Why do we need so many different varities? I went ahead and bought this one. I beg you to click on the link. The Colgate website has a whole video about this toothbrush's features. It has this scrubby pad on the back of it that I thought was intended to clean your tongue, a nice feature. It's also designed that way to help (for lack of a better word right here) exfoliate the inside of your cheeks! Genius! Why haven't we had a toothbrush that's thought of this before? And what will they come up with next. You know I'll be watching.






I did a little blog hopping this morning. My friend Cyndi has found some of the most stylish and most interesting blog friends and I enjoy link hopping among them to see what they are loving at the moment. I ran across this picture this morning on Coveiter. It's a random package of numbers, letters, labels and more and can be found to purchase at the Uppercase Gallery. I think these are so fun and I can see eclectic little displays of these mismatched items all over my house. I love to decorate with words and letters and I'm so happy I stumbled across this on my blog hop. For those of you struggling with the perfect holiday gift for me for under $15 - let me help you out...I want this!




Lastly for today, tonight is one of my most favorite holiday traditions and that is baking Christmas cookies with my best friend Laura. We've been doing this since high school and the last couple years we've had to take a hiatus since I lived in Louisiana and she was in Chicago and we were only in St. Louis together for about 3 days and they were jam packed with family festivities. For many years throughout college this event took place in my mom's kitchen. My mom had a large tupperware bowl she kept in the pantry full of sprinkles and Laura started to comment after a couple years that she wasn't exactly sure what the shelf life of sprinkles were, but she was pretty sure some of ours had reached that point. We used these same holly berry sprinkles far past their prime. Those nights are full of good memories and old jokes that have managed to live on. We once tried to make chocolate covered pretzels that were sprinkled with peppermint. They did not come out quite like the picture and we have given them the affectionate nickname of "nappy-kins". (Laura explains it as "nappy" - because they were kind of gross looking, and "kins" because that made them cuter. It oddly works.) We have made them again, our skill level increased, and I made a version of the nappy-kins for her bachelorette party (imagine a pretzel rod dipped halfway in white chocolate and covered in a clear sugar sprinkle. Trust me, they were pretty, and delicious after a night of drinking.) The first time I ever tried to make fondue was one of our cookie nights and I went a little heavy on the white wine. I look forward to our adventures tonight, that will include homemade marshmallows (a first!), some chocolate peanut butter surprise cookies, our standard sugar cookie and a chocolate dipped chocolate cookie. Wish us luck!