Christmas Party in AZ!

That's right, I am in Arizona. Let the vacation begin. To start it off, I had a dinner party/gift exchange for a group of my friends here. Good food, good laughs, lots of fun. Here are some pictures:

AZ Christmas Party 2007

FOUND!!!!

I found my diamond earring today! It went missing last week, just fell out of my ear. I was really bummed since they were the earrings my parents gave me (and my sister) when we turned 21. I was almost late to console last week because I was so busy crawling on the bathroom floor trying to find it. But tonight I saw something sparkly and there it was! Yay! :)

The BEST news EVER!!!!

My aunt had her surgery today and the surgeon believes he got ALL the cancer! There are a few "sandy" spots, but they will be taken care of with her final three rounds of chemo. Also, the doctors had believed it had spread to her colon as well, but it hadn't! Praise God for His mercy! Words cannot express how thankful I am...

Eat your heart out, Rachel Ray

By the way, "eat your heart out"? Where did that saying come from...it's kinda icky Indiana Jones-ish...



Anyways, I just spent the last 10 hours doing my Christmas baking (well, minus the hour when I had to run back to the grocery store to get zucchini for the zucchini bread...yeah I know...and then the lady in front of me ran into a car that was zooming across 6 lanes of traffic (Darwin anyone?) and had to wait for the cops as a witness since Darwin lady was trying to argue that it wasn't her fault). Today was the only day I had to get the baking done...mission accomplished (hope the pool tournament was fun!). Now for the random cooking stories:

Someone needs to invent a candy cane crusher...yes a hammer works fine- except when you can't find yours and the recipe calls for "finely crushed candy canes". I tried the food processor, which worked like a gem until the candy cane pieces got stuck under the blade and knocked it out of place...so onto the new blender...well, I pretty much had to feed it itty bitty candy cane piece by piece (again, they wedge up under the blades), but it finally churned out the required 1 1/2 cups...I decided, next time, I don't care if people break their teeth on candy cane bits. Oh and by the way, inhaling candy cane er...dust...not fun.

Do not try this at home...it doesn't work...

So then it was on to the chocolate coconut balls...I truly hate making these things. It is so tedious, but they are sooo good. Once the batter chills, you have to form little balls and then coat them with melted chocolate. Since I do not possess a double boiler (neither does my mom- and she's been doing this for 30ish years), I get to mickey mouse one together and then try to outwit the steam that comes from inbetween the cracks of the pans...it's kinda of a contest between me and the steam- how many times can it get me to fling my hand out of the way- leaving a fine spray of chocolate over me, the floor,...my cats...

The finished chocolate coconut product

Oh, and when is someone going to invent a hood (like those from chemistry class) to use when working with powdered sugar?- and how the heck do they make powdered sugar anyways?

Puppy Chow cooling...

Oh well, when all is said and done, I have 3 batches of Puppy Chow, 5 loaves of zucchini bread, 5 loaves of lemon poppy seed bread, 6 dozen chocolate coconut balls, and a pan of candy cane fudge...church people and office people...bring your sweet tooths...uh..teeth?

Zucchini bread....in case you've never seen bread before :)

Personal Best!

So today Lisa, Kevin, and I ran the Christus St. John's Hospital Annual Reindeer Run 5K (quite a mouthful isn't it?). And I ran my personal best! My goal was to run a 12 minute mile. Lisa was timing our run and she said it was ~34 minutes and 40 seconds!!! That means I ran about an 11:33-34 minute mile or so! Lisa was my motivation, because I stayed a little bit behind her and she keeps a good pace. Thanks Lisa! I am so excited! I am even more excited because I ran 3 miles on Monday, 2 on Wed, 3 yesterday, and 3.1 today! That's 11ish miles this week. Whoohoo!! And of course, we all forgot to bring our cameras, but thanks to Santa, we did get a picture to capture the event.

Black Friday

Walmart, Circuit City, Target, Michael's and the mall...those were the stores I visited this morning starting at 5am...

I met up with my friend Erin at 7am in Michaels and after gathering lots o' decorating tidbits, we fortified our energy at Panera and then hit the mall. At Bath and Body Works, a lady asked us if we were all done with our Christmas shopping...Erin and I laughed, cause we really ended up shopping for ourselves (I did get my sister a pink vacuum cleaner (hence the Walmart trip)- as she requested, and my Dad gets something too...eh, I'll do my shopping in AZ).

Here are some pics of my now-festive casa/dom/house...

Christmas decorations 2007

Thanksgiving

Well another Thanksgiving come and gone. Mine was great, how was yours? I spent the day the Miller's house...they are one of my surrogate families here in Houston...they didn't really have a choice, I just adopted them :). I so love hanging out with them. Good food, lots of laughs, energetic games of Catch Phrase and Scrabble and us gals pouring through the Black Friday ads...what more could you ask for? So many things to be thankful for...

Thanksgiving 2007