Tag: Christmas

Auld Lang Syne

Well, I’ve slept away most of my day away, the only one I have this week, other than Monday. But that’s okay, since I don’t have much else to do and need rest to get rid of this sickness I have. I do think I’m feeling better. The mucous is definitely loosened and easier to cough out and I’m not dying so much overall.

As promised, I would provide a retelling of my week up in L.A. with my friends & family that was more positive then the last two posts I provided.

Tuesday was one of my best friend’s 25th birthday. Her boyfriend planned a wonderful surprise party for her at a sushi bar. I was late, unfortunately, and she was already wasted, but the night was fun nonetheless. After that was over, her older sister and I went to the bar I frequent up there to finish up with Porn Star Karaoke and she was a hoot. She loved it.

Amber's 25th

The next day, my friends from the Marinara group got together to do our Secret Santa gift exchange and make a Hanukkah dinner. We called it Chrismukkah, of course. Our out of town Vanessa was in town from DC and she, along with the other Vanessa, Ryan and Alissa, provided quite a delicious dinner of tri-tip, latkes and matzo ball soup! The rest of us just stayed out the kitchen since we wouldn’t know what we were doing. We lit the menorah for the 3rd night of Hanukkah and exchanged gifts. Of course, we finished up with some highly offensive and questionable rounds of Telestrations.

Chrismukkah Chrismukkah

Christmas with the family was different. We celebrated with all the extended family on the 25th, instead of the 24th like we have done for forever. So, for Christmas eve dinner, it was just the parents, brother and I and we enjoyed tri-tip1, homemade mashed potatoes 2, Yorkshire pudding3, and baked asparagus. The brother and I watched most of Forrest Gump before receiving our traditional Christmas Eve presents of PJs from mom & dad. He got a set of Angry Bird PJs and my mom got me a 3-piece set of pink ones with pants, shorts and a long-sleeved top. I tried trading my brother for his, but he wouldn’t go for it ;)

For Christmas day, my brother woke me up around 8:30 in the morning after he started making coffee. I started the day with some coffee & Bailey’s, followed by champagne. After opening presents and finally drinking the Civet coffee I bought my dad for Father’s day4, we got ready and head over to my uncle & aunt’s house. We were the first there in regards to those who weren’t already staying there. Over the course of several hours, my grandma counted at least 37 people in the end, who’d gathered to share Christmas in that house. We had our usual tamales, refried beans, salad & ambrosia dinner and a lot of wine. Nobody suffered from any accidents, there weren’t any fights, everything was very nice as usual. That’s why I love my family. Although, I do wish I still got presents from everyone like I did when I was little lol! That’s okay, I was able to give most of my close extended family something and that made me happy :)

Now, here’s my Christmas haul:

  • Navy scarf (from Sandra)
  • Lindt Lindor chocolates (from Sandra)
  • Handmade necklace & earrings (from Vanessa, my Marinara secret santa)
  • Handmade bookmarks (from Vanessa, my Marinara secret santa)
  • Tiltpod (from Jenn, my Lavish secret santa)
  • Box of liqueur filled chocolates (from Jenn, my Lavish secret santa)
  • USAF sweatshirt with the Hap Arnold on it (from dad)
  • Pink PJs (from mom & dad)
  • $15 iTunes giftcard (from brother)
  • Burt’s Bees lip balm, tic tacs, coffee mug, lotto scratchers, nail files (from santa)
  • Check for $$$ (from mom & dad)
  • $30 cash (from grandma)

The end :)

  1. Again. ↩
  2. Thanks to me. ↩
  3. That was my first time ever having it and except for the under-cooked middle, it was good. ↩
  4. It’s definitely not as bitter as regular coffee. ↩
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Hack, Cough, Sputter

I spent the last week up in L.A. with friends & family. As much as I love being up there, it was so bittersweet with what I’ve been going through. Christmas just didn’t feel so much like Christmas, not only because of that, but because my extended family get-together was to happen on Christmas day as opposed to eve. It’s not necessarily a bad change, but it just made for things to feel less like it had in previous years. The gatherings are definitely getting larger, though. I think my grandma counted 37 people! There were a lot of people I didn’t even know their names! Thankfully there’s no drama with our gatherings. No fights, no animosity, etc. I’ve always been grateful for that and still am!

I’ll talk about my gatherings with friends in another post, but for now I just want to whine about how I’m feeling sick now. I started feeling it on Monday, but I just figured it was due to my getting drunk on Christmas. Nope, it was the start of the all too familiar settling of mucous in my lungs, and with that comes the labored coughing, trying to get it out and burning from trying to do THAT. Ugh. Monday, my sinuses just felt raw. I presumed it was from the dry air1 and maybe smoking more than I thought I did. I slept with my humidifier on last night, but that didn’t seem to help much. Either way, it’s time to load up on the Mucinex and Theraflu, as well as continual sleeping with the humidifier.

The one thing that made me feel better was Gunny missed me enough that she slept with me for quite a while last night, at various points. She doesn’t do that on an everyday basis, so yay! haha

I’ll post more positive things later, I’m sure. I said I wanted to whine, and I did, so now it’s time for bed. Thankfully I get to sleep in, as I don’t work until the evening tomorrow!

  1. A con of having central air at my parents’ house. ↩
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A Merry Christmas

My Christmas holiday was enjoyable. I spent it at my parents’ house, spending a lot of time with family this year. My mom’s older brother and his wife were down from Oregon. I hadn’t seen them since New Year’s Eve in 2005, just a few days after the husband and I eloped. There was a mini-family reunion Thursday afternoon for lunch, with my mom’s twin1, his wife and son, the oldest brother and his wife, my brother and his girlfriend, myself and my parents.

From there, I headed over to my friend’s apartment to meet up with my group of friends known as Marinara2. I was a little late so I was only able to participate in one round of Telestrations, but afterwards we headed over to a part of the SFV3 where a bunch of homes in one neighborhood really go all-out with their yard decorations – they call it Candlight Lane. One house had a giant inflatable bear, decked out in Hanukkah garb. We immediately referred to him as Jew Bear. There were people selling light-up toys up & down the streets and it was quite the popular spot that night! I can’t imagine being a homeowner in that neighborhood. It was especially awesome, since one of our friends was in town for the holiday from D.C., where she’s working & going to school right now.

Friday was the usual tradition of going to my uncle’s house for tamales with my dad’s family. Everyone got a baggie of big, chewy chocolate chip cookies, a reindeer ornament and the recipe for the cookies. We sat around the giant fire pit in the backyard they just recently put in for most of the night.

Christmas day was opening of presents, breakfast by my parents and then a visit with some of the husband’s family.

Speaking of the husband, he drove me up to L.A. on Wednesday, drove back down to S.D. Thursday morning, back to L.A. Friday night and we drove home to S.D. together Saturday night. Talk about a lot of driving! I had planned on staying out until Sunday, but I thought I’d give the guy a break.

Wait, what happened to having my wisdom tooth extracted? It got postponed until the end of January. Although I was eager to have it over with, I’m grateful I was able to eat over the holiday. Not to mention, it’s our wedding anniversary on Wednesday, so to be able to for sure eat solids for a decent dinner is something I’m happy for. We’ll be celebrating 5 years of marriage! Wow… Not that the last one has been particularly great4, hopefully there will be MANY more, and they’ll be LOTS better.

I made off with:

  • A sewing machine
  • An IOU of help towards the trip to Costa Rica for the husband’s dad’s wedding.
  • Harry Potter behind-the-scenes book (thanks, Tay-Tay!)
  • Long john PJs
  • Cashmere scarf
  • Various bath products
  • A decent amount of cash & gift cards
  • Chocolates

If you celebrate Christmas, how did it turn out?

  1. Didn’t you know? She’s a fraternal twin! ↩
  2. We’re saucy! ↩
  3. San Fernando Valley ↩
  4. Do-over, please? ↩
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Bake The Season Away

One of the staples of Christmas time for me has been the cookies my mom makes & bakes for the holiday season. Her usual cookies include rumballs and hedgehogs, and there’s a third cookie of random choice and origin she usually throws in there as well. Rumballs are self-explanatory… Nothing like a little ball of chocolate & nuts that taste like they’ve been doused in some spiced rum! Hedgehogs are made with nuts, dates, brown sugar & coconut. They’re a little on the unorthodox side as far as “cookies” go, but I’ve loved them growing up. The last several years included me helping her form the rumballs and making cute little platters of the cookies to give to family & friends as easy, delicious gifts.

I’ve kept the tradition alive in the way that I baked some cookies. Regular chocolate chip cookies from scratch, à la Alton Brown! The recipe I’ve used yields some awesomely chewy cookies1, but each time I’ve made them, it takes one test batch before I can come out with a batch that looks, tastes like and has the right texture that the recipe is supposed to give. My first batch ended up being a little flat, too dark and a little too crispy. I almost forgot to add in the brown & regular sugar, for starters! One of the things about Alton Brown recipes is the order in which ingredients are mixed in together – and he explains why2. I also hand-mixed everything3 and I didn’t chill the dough long enough. See?

The 2nd batch turned out much better since I mixed the ingredients in relatively the correct order, picked up and used a hand mixer, and chilled the dough for quite enough time4. As you can see, they’re much more chocolate chip cookie-looking ;) See?

Since chocolate chip cookies are pretty much your every day type of cookie, I came up with the awesome idea of dressing them a little more for the Christmas season with a ring of white icing and dipped in holly berry sprinkles, which makes it look like there’s a little Christmas wreath on them. I don’t like cookies with a lot of icing on them, so I went with something minimal but effective. Pretty much every bite will provide just a tad of the sprinkles & icing ;) but not too much that it’d overwhelm. I’ve never been a fan of icing or frosting on anything, really, for that matter. I usually scrape off the icing on cupcakes or eat around it when it comes to a slice of cake.

BTW, the only camera I have is the one on my Blackberry, so I don’t have awesome food porn-type shots to give you ;) But I’m sure you’ll enjoy looking at these yummy cookies regardless of photo quality. And now you know what to give me as a gift if you have an extra unused camera lying around that needs a new home *cute* I don’t even consider myself an amateur photographer, so any camera would do ^_^

  1. Brown sugar helps with this! ↩
  2. Nothing like some science education to support your cooking! ↩
  3. Preferrably a stand-mixer would be used. ↩
  4. Maybe a little too long… at least 6 hours! That made it quite hard to scoop. ↩
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Ah, To Sleep…

I sleep a lot. This is no joke. I guess it started with my existence in utero since my mom likes to tell stories about how I slept through the entire pregnancy, how they’d have to wait for me to turn over during check-ups to make sure I was okay and I guess I slept past my due date by a month. On average, I sleep 10-12 hours a day/night. I’m totally fine with sleeping that much, but there are times when I let it get to me just how unproductive it is to sleep for so long. The past several days have been just those kind of days.

Part of it is, I just don’t want to get up and out of bed, so I end up falling back asleep until hours pass by and I finally force myself awake and out. Other than work, there’s not much else I have to do. Basic housework and cleaning always needs to be done but… meh.

I should update you on my wisdom tooth situation. I’m scheduled to have it extracted on the 23rd, so I get to enjoy a liquid-diet Christmas dinner apparently. Currently, the infection is being treated with some antibiotics.

It doesn’t feel like Christmas. The extent of Christmas in this apartment is a string of lights around the valance of the vertical blinds and my wine cork reindeer ornaments I’ve been manufacturing for my mom. The husband has to work both Christmas Eve & Day, but I’ll be recouping from my wisdom tooth extraction for a few days at my parents’ and spending those days with my family… who actually enjoys celebrating Christmas. I kind of wish the man I was going to marry was a grinch, than maybe things would be different lol. *sigh*

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