Category Archives: Holidays

Pre-Christmas partying


This was the week of parties.

It started out Tuesday when I took my department at work out to lunch at Pacifica Del Mar. A friend of mine recently bought into the restaurant and has turned it into a really lovely spot. Been hearing so many good reviews and was finally able to have a good excuse to wander over. Lunch was so good that I already promised them a February visit for all their birthdays. Here’s my Ahi salad – fabulous!

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Wednesday night was the first of two cookie parties. This was with the Leg Up group and even with two no shows there were PLENTY O’ COOKIES to exchange:

LegUP cookies

Poor lighting, but you can see those chocolate truffles up at the top? Yeah….my downfall….they are AMAZING!

LegUp cookie party

Even though we had enjoyed a pretty good dinner, we still dove into the treats afterwards!

So, those truffles – I purposely took in more than half of my haul of the truffles in to work the next day. Even though we would only be there Thursday and then half a day Friday, I had to offload some of them. Because they are SO DAMN GOOD that I would have chomped them all down by myself. As it is, the half that I kept with me? There is only one left. I’ve rationed myself to one a day after eating about four on Thursday and at least that many Friday. No self control with those!

Thursday the big bosses upstairs took out the managers to another fancy spot in town called Burlap. Another relatively new spot that I’ve been wanting to check out and it was also really nice. Atmosphere is really fantastic and the food was a hit with everyone. My favorite was dessert (since I’ve clearly not had enough sugar in my life!)…an espresso/ice cream blend with whipped condensed milk concoction on top. Oh my WORD was that good!

Friday was a short day at work and I thought it would be fairly easy to slide on over to the closest mall for a couple of holiday gifts.

I left work at 12:15….and gave up at 12:45 when 20 minutes of circling resulted in no parking spots! Then I sat through ridiculous traffic just to get AWAY from the mall and over to another area off to the north. At 2pm I was finally eating lunch after having purchased ONE item on my list. I was frustrated and fearing what the weekend would bring so I vowed to get out early Saturday.

Which would be kinds hard since cookie party #2 was Friday night. Thankfully just next door :-) I actually managed to come away from that one without a huge number of additional treats! I’m down to two cookie containers now (and the lone truffle).

Saturday I managed to get out at the perfect time. Back to the dreaded mall with a parking spot secured immediately – yay! That was at 10am and I was home by 3pm with all items on my list procured. Then I tackled the wrapping and by 5pm I was finally done – yes, it took me that long because I was being very creative with the containers I used and the left over wrapping paper from prior years. Plus, there was the inevitable feline “assistance”.  They are not too thrilled that one of their favorite napping spots is now blocked off:

Tree gifts

So the presents are wrapped, cookies baked and consumed – now what you ask?

Time to run some of those damn cookies OFF!

Sunday morning trail run today we set out to explore a new spot – Lake Hodges. It was COLD and a little wet but still just perfect. 6 miles later I felt a little less guilty about the week’s food intake.

Lake Hodges

Of course, later on tonight we will start it all over again :-) I’ve got beef stew/soup in the crock pot and the ingredients for a pot of glogg and we will fill our bellies, fill our mugs, and then head out to walk the neighborhood ooohing and aahing and Christmas lights. Wherein I will gather ideas for next year :-)

One last photo – Lake Hodges was gorgeous today – glassy and calm providing the perfect reflection of the hills around it. Which, from the right angle and distance, look like a sleeping brontosaurus. This is the hump:

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Happy Festivus!

Merry Christmas Eve!

and Merry Christmas (if I don’t get back in here again until after)!

More ornaments!


 

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OK, well, just one since I don’t have time for much more, but this seems to The Color right now. When I put events or meetings in my calendar I use a color coded system to organize them by the type of event. Purple happens to be the color I assigned for “Party” and given that it is December, my calendar for the next two weeks (starting tonight) is exploding in PURPLE!

So, here is the prominent purple ornament from the tree. Yes, it really is that big! I love sprinkling some non-conforming colors into my tree. Purples, blues, pinks to brighten up the more traditional red/green/gold/silver patterns. Another one originally from my mom – it’s not quite as old as the first two but it is also probably a good 10-15 years old at this point.

Anyhow, off to the first purple event – 16′s end of year football team party. If I approach him properly I may even get a picture of him and with him tonight – in dress clothes! A tie! A button down shirt! Shhhhhh….keep your fingers crossed that I can pull that off :-)

Merry Go Round


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It’s a tree ornament AND a state of life!

Another old classic, though not as old as the mouse. This one has been around ever since we started using white lights in a tree – which I think is pretty much when my parents bought the first fake tree we owned and my mom and I perfected the art of “wrapping” the branches with over a 1000 lights. Yeah, really. It was pretty obnoxious – and very very bright!

This ornament is almost more entertaining in the daylight. What you do is remove one light from a strand and plug in the merry go round instead. And then, it spins. Hence the slight blurring of the black horse. The mirrored bottom and top accents reflect the lights all around it. But, when positioned properly on the side of the tree nearest a window that gets direct sunlight at certain points of the day…it also catches THAT reflection and then bounces light all around the surrounding wall.

Given that the ornament is at least 25+ years old, I am quite impressed that it is still going strong!

Me this week? Not so much :( Started out feeling a bounce back from the cold and other stuff on Monday & Tuesday. Even baked a batch of chocolate cookies to follow up on the first jello spritz batch. But then the whole car sharing with 27 got a little complicated this week and started weighing on me Wednesday. As did the news that my dad had chest pains and was in the hospital. That meant spending Thursday with my mom while we waited for those tests though still with lingering transportation issues covering 27′s work day. He got a ride into work at the last minute, but I still had to muddle through worse than ever evening traffic to pick him up after a long day of sitting around.

Thankfully my dad is OK. Nothing major to fix or surgery needed. Just some new medications he should take to help his heart work more efficiently. It’s not working at 100%, but after bypass surgery and at his age, they don’t expect it to do that. It’s a relief that nothing more invasive than the tests had to be done, that’s for sure!

But yeah, it was a long, out of sorts week and I was very happy to know that today I could have a ‘normal’ day and have my car the whole time.

Yes, I am a super independent control freak who needs to keep certain things in order so that I keep a grip on sanity. Sue me. It works :-)

Tree Ornaments


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A twitter friend is posting daily photos with short descriptions of the ornaments on her tree and I thought I would copy that. Though maybe not daily and probably as add ons to regular posts :)

Yes, the inside is done, and boxes are put back away. The first batch of jello
Spritz cookies are almost gone & I’ll need to bake another batch tomorrow night. My neighbor just sent out her invite for a cookie exchange – two days after mine! I’ll be ready with plenty of treats to share for sure.

So – let’s start at the top shall we? The bow topper is not the subject here though it is integral. But, the topper changes per my mood & lights burning out. No, the real star here is the mouse on the ladder “holding up” the tree topper.

If my mom had made a habit of taking pictures of our tree way back when (you know, the days of Polaroids & real film cameras!), I am sure we would see Mr. Mouse in this same spot.

Yes, that cloth & plastic ornament is easily 40 years old.

And as far as my memory serves, it had been displayed either on my moms tree or mine every single year.

That’s pretty cool considering that my tastes in overall tree decor has bounced all over the place in the last 25 years! Somehow I always manage to fit in the mouse.

Someone has to hold up the topper. And in my current household, Mr Mouse wants to stay up as high off the ground as possible! There’s cats down there at the bottom after all ;)

Baking List for the year


I’ve started a tradition a few years ago of baking cookies and bringing them into work during the month of December. My next door neighbor sometimes also has a neighborhood cookie exchange party. Last year I was a cookie elf bringing treat plates to Renee & Eve and Renee & Quyen (yes, the two couples in my training group are female, and, there is one Renee each). It is not confusing AT ALL! Anyway…I suggested that this year the training group have our own cookie exchange party and I volunteered my place for it. We’ve set the date for the 19th so I’ve got lots of time to prepare, but I would also rather make sure I plan ahead for all the baking I want to do and get the right combination of ingredients to take advantage of free blocks of time. So today I sifted through recipes, scoured Pinterest…and made my choices. Oddly I didn’t end up with anything new from online sources but instead chose a combination of staples and some older recipes I’ve had in my folder and never tried.

I need to save this someplace so I don’t forget:

  1. Ricotta Cheese
  2. Jello Spritz (use existing jello packets only)
  3. Chocolate Sugar
  4. Cranberry Cheesecake Bars
  5. Chocolate Raspberry Thumbprints

I figure that’s a good blend of chocolate & sugar varieties along with some fruit themed flavors.

Starting off with some blue raspberry jello spritzers tomorrow per 16′s request :-)

A Spectacularly Explosive Fail


Photo by benballer on Instagram

Over the San Diego bay last night, there was a bit of a..shall we say…premature ignition….of Every. Single. Firework set to explode for their 4th of July show.

Check out this post on the snafu, complete with a couple of utterly hysterical videos on Grist

I do believe this is as close you will ever get to a visual representation of the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air, don’t you think?!

My favorite pictures from Christmas


More to come later, but we are truly a goofy bunch as proven by these candid shots The Boyfriend (and I) took:

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I was one of THOSE people this week


You know the ones.

People who don’t do a stitch of Christmas shopping until the days of December begin with a ’2′.

It was just a horrible combination of time + money availability not lining up until after the 15th of the month.

Then because my company is so generous with the holiday time off, I looked at my last day being 12/21 (ending at noon mind you) and thinking that 3.5 days was somehow PLENTY enough to get things done.

Sure, I am hosting lunch as usual which means cleaning and meal planning but NO WORRIES right? 3.5 whole days!

OK, then I remembered I was invited to an old friend’s house on the evening of the 24th. Which is GOOD since Alex is gone and I am quite used to sitting at home on the 24th watching It’s A Wonderful Life and waiting for his dad to drop him off here. Which isn’t happening this year since they are in Sweden. So rather than possibly sitting at home feeling blue it is good that I have a change of routine that takes me out of the house.

Except I have to leave here at 3:30 tomorrow.

So now I am down to 3 days.

And then Nick calls to remind of the 3 appointments he has Wed afternoon, Thursday evening and Friday mid-day.

All good and necessary as he FINISHES his DUI classes (finally!) and also gets some much needed medical visits in. He got himself a JOB starting next week – just part time but it’s WORK and that’s awesome.

But – this means chunks of time taken out of each day.

And suddenly, 3.5 days doesn’t seem quite so much!

I shopped locally Wed afternoon and marveled at how crowded it was. Not horrid, but surely more packed than normal in our local shopping center.

I had to hit the mall Thursday and it truly was PACKED. I was mostly surrounded by men or men +boys shopping for their women. I even was asked to consult with a couple of them on purses! Even though it was packed I was able to check out pretty easily and zipped out of there feeling not too stressed.

The roads were just teeming with cars though. Many zipping around as if no one else was on the road. That part was kinda scary.

Another outing early this morning  to another packed to the gills store where the checkout line wound just about half way back into the main aisles. It moved quickly thankfully and the gal noticed that a picture frame I had picked up had been cracked. Of course, what she didn’t know is that it most likely was cracked IN my basket as I carried it through the store along with a wine bottle which clearly rolled into it one too many times! Oopsie.

Got out of there and then had to take Nick to the doctor and then we went to Wal Mart. Yes, Wal Mart on December 23rd. THAT was fun! So many people were cruising through those aisles that I swear we were breaking a capacity load of some kind. And I only had to get ONE thing!

The checkout line Gods smiled on me again though and we got out of there largely unscathed (there was the shopping cart that clipped Nick’s ankle, but he’s recovering nicely).

Another sort of stressful drive home past a fully engulfed big rig fire and YAY – I was done!

Then the wrapping began.

It’s still not done.

3 more boxes.

And I still have to get a few things at the grocery tomorrow.

And clean the house.

But I took the time tonight to make a pot of Glogg and Renee and I wandered around looking at Christmas lights.

New traditions.

But – I would be quite happy to never again be the last minute shopper driving around between 12/21-12/23 pulling her hair out to find everything for everyone on her list.

I suppose everyone has to do it once and that I am lucky it took this long to hit me.

I much prefer ordering online in November & sitting at home while UPS & Fed Ex deliver the gifts!

I’ll be the one sleeping all day Monday for sure :-)

Merry Christmas!

Outdoor Christmas lights 2011 edition


Thanks to my new camera that actually captures the light display rather decently (except for the odd purple glow in the backyard with all the multi-colored lights surrounding it) – here is the 2011 edition of my Griswold-like yard. As always, this was put up in one day. This year my eager helper was Renee who objects to being called a jolly helper elf. I don’t know why – she was a boat load jollier than either of my boys would have been (and have been in prior years!) She fully supported my notion that we should leave no lights on the shelf – old school or new. I’ve largely replaced all the strings with LED’s now anyway so the few old style lights aren’t going to burn that much more electricity. So we dangled the old red bows on the palm trees and hung the other displays on the corner bougainvillea.

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That’s 4 strands of C7 LED’s on the side wall & 2 on the back wall

5 strands of C6s strung together from the edge of the front wall, around the corner and then along the hill – ALMOST to the end. Will be all the way when I hopefully received 3 more thanks to another SDG&E light exchange program.

12 strands of multi-colored icicle style LED strands on the back patio and roof line and in the peach tree

8 strands of snowflake LED lights on the main roof line

4 large LED snowflakes on the wall posts

2 LED shaped displays on either side of the garage

4 strands of white icicle LED lights on the front hill

6 candy canes

3 LED figurines

1 old school see-saw

4 old school red bows

4 old school rope lights on the hill

2 old school displays hanging from the bougainvillea

Set on two timers to run from 5-11pm

In other words – a shit-ton of Christmas lights! All strung up by two people over 5 hours. Woot!

 

 

The warmth of lights


I know, I know – it’s not even Thanksgiving yet! But…it’s dark when I get home now. And I am hosting Turkey Day this year and I want the house to look festive and nothing says festive like LIGHTS!

Besides, Alex will be gone at Christmas this year so this is the bigger family event of the season.

(This is where you may fairly point out that Alex doesn’t give a rats butt about holiday lights. Shut up. Let me use him as an excuse!)

And I should point out that while we DID play Christmas music while we decorated the girls’ condo on Saturday – we did NOT play music while we decorated my house on Sunday. We had a football game on the TV instead :-)

Anyway, here’s the results which I am thoroughly enjoying and I must say, VERY impressed with the photo quality. Feeling hopeful about getting decent representations of the outdoor display this year.

Dining room

Oh, I should also mention that these are pre-strung green garlands from Wal-Mart. Fingers crossed (and so far, so good) that the cats continue to ignore such things as they do with the tree and mantle and piano lights from years passed. I think they are mature enough now to leave these things alone.

Living room

Yes, the extra chairs and table that I put out for the August Moms visit in October are still out and about. Which is fine since I will need them next week.

View of all three from dining room

As you can see – there were no other lights on in the house when I took the photos. That is how we have it most nights after the dishes are done.

OK, so yes, the TV might be on but this is still a lot prettier overall.

And those who know me – yes – this is just the beginning :-)