Have yourself a merry little Christmas.

So who's up for a Christmas recap a week late? haha This week has been all about recouping-catching up on sleep, cleaning and laundry(!!!!), some more sleeping, and seeing some friends and family. Now I just need to find time to fit in the 30+ hours of DVR I'm behind on lol

Hannukah and Christmas were pretty good in my neck of the woods. My family spoiled me as always-nail polish, an Ipod hookup for my car, tea infuser, plus books, more nail stuff and a new bed-wahooo! No more sleeping on the floor for this girl!

We also got to see my Grandpa and his wife for lunch the Friday before Christmas and my mom and I were able to see my grandma one afternoon this past week.

Christmas day itself was pretty busy! I hadn't had a day off in about 2 weeks so I was really looking forward to some relaxing-which happened a little bit lol

We woke up early to Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls (seriously delicious-try them sometime. You won't be sorry!) and then headed out to see The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

Yes, as a family-I have a history of watching awkward films with my parents. Zak and Miri Make a Porno, anyone? :-/

The movie itself was pretty good-though not as good as the book, in my opinion. Rooney Mara, however, was excellent-she played Lisbeth *exactly* how I envisioned in while reading. Really, really amazing performance.

After the movie, we got some sushi like any good Jewish family on Christmas lol Luckily, our favorite sushi resutrant was open so we grabbed a bite before heading home for a brief nap, after which I headed out to see a few friends.

All in all, a pretty lovely day. The holiday season felt super long this year, and while I'm glad it's over (mostly just as far as work in concerned) it was nice to be able to spend time with friends and family. It's been a crazy, amazing, stressful, wonderful year and the last month has been no exception-yet through it all, I can't help but feel exceedingly blessed to be living the life I am.

Did you guys have a good Chirstmas? Is anyone else still trying to play catchup or am I the only one who feels that way? haha

It's the most wonderful time of the year.

So Christmas seems to have calmed down a bit and I finally feel like I can breathe. I thought I'd give ya'll a peek into what a bakery looks like around the holidaze, i.e. what my life has looked like for the past two weeks.

In the past two weeks I haven't:

• done laundry
• cleaned my apartment
• adhered to my GF diet (and man, am I feeling it!)
• been to the gym
• cooked a meal at my apartment

But I have:

• watched a lot of movies (no energy to do much else when I wasn't working lol)
• worked 16 days straight
• ....and that's about it haha

And now, for some pictures!

Lots of coffeecakes and brownies (most of the stacks are about 2 feet taller than me)

Cakes, fondant decorations (see the mushrooms for buche de noel?), some moon pies and more brownies

We fill two full size semi freezer trucks with our pastries, here's one of them

We also use two full size portable storage containers to store racks...and usually run out and have to run around town collecting from our customers haha




We make breads as well, but I wasn't able to get any pictures in the department-they were too busy and I didn't want to interrupt.

I hope you guys had a good holiday!
Have ya'll recovered from the holidays yet?

It's Christmas eve, baby, in the drunk tank.

I've been a bad blogger.

I'm sorry, ya'll.

I'll be back soon with lots of stuff, including a sneak peek behind the scenes of a bakery during the holidays (there's a reason we say "holidaze").

Here's a few of my fave Christmas tunes....

Hope you all are having a Merry Christmas!

Someday we'll find it,The Rainbow Connection.

By the time Thanksgiving rolls around, I'm pretty much dead. That week at work is so busy that when it comes time to eat dinner, I'm so exhausted I can barely form sentences. So my Thanksgiving usually involves me trying to hold it together and then sleeping, lots and lots of sleeping. Just one of the causalities of working in the bakery business, I suppose.

This year was no different, but it was nice to see family and then fall asleep at 9pm and sleep for nearly 12 hours. I definitely needed it!

Luckily, I was able to enjoy a little Black Friday shopping-nothing too exciting, but still fun :-) My mom and I woke up around 8 so we missed all the good sales and the crazies but we were able to get everything we wanted. After we did a little shopping, we met my brother and went to see The Muppet Movie.


It was adorable! I am too young to remember the original Muppets, but a few years ago, when they tried to bring it back, I can remember my whole family getting together to watch it. The music was great, I loved all the characters and Jason Segel looks like he's having such a good time. If you get the chance, you should definitely go see it!

This past weekend, my mom and I started to do some things in my apartment-even though I've been there a few months, we've both just been so busy that this was really the first opportunity to get any real work on it done.

So we hung some shelves...



and some wall stickers...



and started to work on the bathroom.
There's still a lot of work left to do, but here's a sneak peak of my new bathroom.

And now, I'm enjoying the quiet this week before the madness begins all over again for Christmas! Woo hoo!

But, I did have a nice distraction from the insanity-I went on a date and it actually wasn't a complete disaster! In fact, we even went out again! haha I was seriously starting to doubt it was possible! He's super nice and sweet and we've had a really great time together so far. We are hanging out again tomorrow and I'm really looking forward to it-so yay!

I hope ya'll had a wonderful holiday!

Heaven is whenever we can get together.

As soon as the holidays arr8ive, my life seems to get super boring. It happens every year-I mean, it makes sense considering in a few weeks I'll be too exhausted to do anything but work and sleep so I think I kind of psych myself up for a few weeks of nothing...but doing nothing early haha

But this week, I tried to get in some last minute fun before the Holidaze completely take over.

During the High Holidays, our temple always rolls out the new exciting things happening in the coming year, and this year there was one that caught my eye, so I joined a book club!

This past week was the first meeting, and even though I was by far the youngest one there, I really enjoyed it! We read a book about Heaven that was pretty interesting and even though I didn't speak much, I enjoyed just listening.

I'm really excited to read the next book and looking forward to going back!

After book club was done, I met up with a few friends to get some drinks-normally, not something I'd do, but I'm trying to cram some last minute fun in while I still have the energy!

We went to a few bars downtown and played pool. Before we started, I was talking about how when I used to be good, I was able to hustle pool, but as soon as we started I couldn't make any shot! Seriously, every. single.one. missed! But, of course, as soon as we decide we're done, and I start messing around, I hit everything perfectly! Guess karma was telling me I shouldn't brag lol

Wednesday, I attended a lecture at the local community college. I felt like a total nerd, but it was really interesting! A professor I'd had a few years ago was speaking about her sabbatical that she just returned from-she traveled to Egypt, Israel and Palestine. She was even in Tahrir Square during the uprising! She is an amazing woman and shared some really touching stories and photographs-I was really glad to be able to go! If you want to see some of her photos and stories, check out her blog-I just think it's fascinating!

Unfortunately, I didn't really get a day off this week, because my one day off was full of meetings and my second day off, I spent doing my new internship! I'm seriously enjoying it so much! The environment is so great and the people are too-I'm just loving it and feel so blessed that everything worked out so I'm able to do it!

I woke up in a car, traced away the fog so I could see the Mississippi on her knees.

That's literally what I feel like. It's as though I went I went to sleep on October 31st and woke up on December 23rd. A lot has happened in between then and now (obvs...) but here are the highlights:

My parents spoiled me for Channukah and got me three (yes 3!) new purses, fleece lined leggings (amazing), clothes, books and a lovely, comfy new Tigers hoodie. Basically, a bunch of awesome stuff.

Helped Hannah put up her Christmas Tree, which was taken down approximately one week later because her kitties terrorized it.

The Metrodome in Minnesota collapsed, leading to the Giants v. Vikings Monday Night Football game being played at Ford Field. They gave out free tickets at 9am the morning of the game, but I didn't get a chance to get down there because of work.

Luckily, my boss, Jaison, is amazing and let me use his stub from the Sunday Lions v. Packers game (which they won!) so I was able to go.

I tried to find someone to go with me and after calling/texting/begging about 15 people, I finally found someone. Clark and I ended up sat 12 rows behind the Vikings end zone.

The game was pretty routine, except that it broke Brett Favre's streak of games started at 321. By the end of the game we moved down to row 4.

It was pretty fun-made for a long night, but definitely worth it.

Spent the night helping my mom in Jackson at one of her trainings and ended up driving through the Holiday Light Show at the Jackson County Fairgrounds.

Recieved quite possibly the best cookbook ever from Kim, my friend at work. With the inscription "Now that you're all adult and shit, get cookin'!" Love it.

Made a "Pimp Cup" for Randy, our sales guy at work.

Attempted to make a fondant covered, two tiered cake with my mother...

"Attempt" being the key word.

Also, even though this happened before Thanksgiving, it's definitely worth mentioning. I met up with John and Scott, who are friends from high school (which was the first time I'd seen anyone since graduation) and headed down to Detroit to eat at Slow's BBQ. Oh. My. Lord. So good! I had a pulled pork sandwich and mac & cheese. It was delicious and I was so stuffed by the time I left! And now, they are one of my customers at work, so hopefully I'll be able to eat there more often hehe

After we went there, we drove around the city for a bit, before ending up at this really cool art deco, jazz bar called Cliff Bells. It was so cool-a really great vibe, beautiful architecture and art, and when we were on our way out the jazz band started playing. It was a pretty perfect end to the night actually :-)

All in all, it's been a pretty busy month, on top of finishing the semester and taking my finals (I ended up with an A and a B-whoo hoo!) and spending $900 on my car for new tires (planned) and a new catalytic converter (unplanned). We also had a record year at work and were pretty much way over our planned sales every week, which is great but tiring! But everything worked out and Holidaze 2010 are officially over! I'm basking in the post-Christmas lull, before we get busy again for Valentine's Day. There's no rest for in the bakery world.

We also had our first major snow/ice storm which put the entire state of Michigan out of commission for about 5 days. The roads were so slippery, my Jeep kept sliding around on the *surface streets*! I was too scared to even attempt to get on the high way. It looked really pretty though, but unfortunately, as soon as I have to shovel/scrape my car and thought of it being the tiniest bit pretty flies right out the window!

Christmas involved my uncle coming in from Chicago (to find a place because he's moving back!) dinner at my aunts with my grandmother Christmas eve (where I scored a few more vintage purses, including another Louis Vitton yippee!) brunch with at my grandfathers and then my mom's twin brother and his family coming in tonight. A lot of family stuff for sure, but on the up side I did find my Hanson Christmas cd, so all is well :-)

It's a wonderful life that I find myself living.

I have a few things to mention but first things first...

T-day.

Thanksgiving this year was pretty darn good actually. My Grandfather and his wife were in San Francisco visting her children and my grandmother decided she didn't want to celebrate, so we just did our own things at the house. My parents, little brother and I, along with my friend Rebecca who is going to school in Ann Arbor. She is from California and couldn't go home for the holiday and my mom was more than happy to have her over. Our neighbors ended up coming over for desert so, all in all, a low key, drama free holiday.

My mom made a *ton* of food. She brine-d a turkey, made green bean casserole (not the regular mushroom soup kind either, which I'm not a fan of. This one was actually really good!), Meme's sweet potatoes (my grandmothers recipe-actually more like desert than a side dish. So effing good), mashed potatoes and sausage stuffing. For dessert, we had pumpkin pie mousse with homemade whip cream and ginger snap cookies. We got most of the recipes from pioneerwoman.com. I wish I would have taken a picture of the spread-there was so much and it all looked so good! My mom is such a great cook-I can only hope to one day be able to cook food like her :-)

After eating all that food, I could *literally* barely move. Luckily, most some of my stuff is still at their place hehe Me and my mom got up at the leisurely hour of 8 am and were out the door by 9 to do some Black Friday shopping. My mom usually hates shopping, so I was super surprised when she suggested we venture out, but I am rarely one to turn down shopping, especially on someone else's dime! I ended up getting a new pair of black "boots with the fur" and we picked up the rest of Channukah presents, which are unfortunately still in her possession.

We went to a few shops, and were back by noon to eat some left overs, watch a movie and take a nap. Pretty much an excellent day after Thanksgiving.

Work slowed down a little bit this week, but it will be picking up again sooner rather than later. Luckily it makes the time go by quickly (as if it didn't to begin with lol) I'm finishing up my last 2.5 weeks of the semester, as well. Have to finish up planning and preparing for the next one...ugh.

Today was also our first snow fall, which is amazing considering I can't remember a winter where we didn't have any snow in November. But luckily, December 1st brought some.

This was the view from my office window at 9 o'clock when I got to work this morning.

And then 10 o'clock. By this time, I'm already dreading the drive home, and lamenting the fact that I need new tires and bitching about how much said tires are going to cost me.

But luckily, I live in Michigan and by 11:30, almost everything was gone. Meaning I can put off getting my new tires for at least a few more days :-)









And finally, a belated Happy Blog-iversary to myself!

I can't believe it's been a year already! I started this as a place to write poetry, because I am occasionally a 13 year old emo girl stuck in a 22 year old's body, and after me and my ex started having issues I stopped writing for a while. But I'm really trying to make an effort to blog more often, and I've been really enjoying it.

So here's to another good year of blogging!

Would you give it all up to live again?

The Holidaze have officially hit the baking world. We've been crazy busy, which is great. We had a few down years when the economy took a down turn, but it seems like this year, people have really been making up for lost time. Even though we've been so busy, my moments of feeling "stressed" have been few and far between thus far. Sure, I've been mad or frustrated with people, but it wasn't the normal "stressed out, I wanna rip out my hair and scream", which I'm really thankful for.

To keep my self somewhat sane, I've been doing a little shopping. But not the normal "Let's go shopping for holiday gifts for friends and family!" Oh no, it's totally been all about me lol

Let me preface this with I don't usually like flats. I'm short, like *really* short. So when I've been drawn to shoes, it's always 4" or 5" or higher, just so I'm of normal height when I wear them. But now that I work in an office and I can't wear heels, I've really taken to flats. Now, don't get me wrong, I still love me some sky high stilettos, but I've come to the (saddening) realization that I do not live in New York or LA and have fabulous parties to attend on a regular basis. In reality, I live in the Midwest and I often go weeks, if not months, without an occasion to get all dressed up for.

I ended up buy a pair of brown flats this summer so I could wear my sun dresses and not wear my Birkenstocks and boots like I had been all winter and spring. After I got over the initial breaking in period, I found that they were actually pretty comfortable! (For some reason, I've always been ok with my feet hurting if there's 5" heels involved, but flats I never found justifiable lol)

Side note, I've been pretty obsessed with leopard print ever since I saw these:

I die.

So fierce I can't even stand it. But because of that whole "I live in Michigan and don't go anywhere necessitating me spend exhorbanant amount of money on shoes that will still on my shelves more often than not" thing, I couldn't bring myself to spend the $100+ to buy them.

So one night at Target (i.e. my fave store) I stumbled upon these:
How effing cute are those?!?! They are a little uncomfortable to break in, but for these, I will suffer hehe

I also picked up some other stuff including these:

Zebra and sequins? Yes, please.

I'm not sure why, I just find those so cute!

After all this shopping, I really need to buckle down on the spending. Winter is coming fast and I need new tires-sometimes I dislike being responsible lol

Lord knows I'm weak and won't somebody get me off of this reef?

It's been a pretty eventful week, to say the least. It started out with a test in my Logic class (which I got an 89% on- Woo Hoo!), moved on to work being crazy busy (the Holidaze have hit, and with a fury!) plus some good stuff, but my hormones were crazy so I was one big ball of nerves (and tears) for most of the beginning on the week. Yay....or not.

Thursday I went to the dentist for the first time in like 3 years. I know, I know, it's bad. I just kept putting it off and since I knew I was going to have to get work done, and I couldn't afford it, I really put it off. But my wonderful mother (and father too, although I'm not sure if he knows it yet) are going to help me pay for my dental work, which includes one filling, one crown and getting three wisdom teeth pulled. I'm getting the filling in two weeks and I'm going to schedule the appointment for the crown for January probably and I have to go see the oral surgeon about my wisdom teeth. Blech.

I was feeling pretty domestic this past week and ended up baking some Butterbeer Cupcakes (yes, from Harry Potter) in honor of the premiere hehe

The turned out pretty well:

They are butter cake (with cream soda and butter flavoring in the batter-yummy!), filled with homemade butterscotch ganache and topped with butterscotch butter cream and a butterscotch ganache drizzle (say that five times fast-whew!) I had a minor melt down, when I couldn't find mixing bowls in my new place and had to rush over to my parents house with all my ingerdients at 9:30 at night. But they turned out pretty darn good! I gave a few to my family to sample, and brought some in for my co-workers and everyone gave the rave reviews-so yay!

And speaking of premiere, you know I was at the midnight show!

They look so old! I can't believe it's almost over :-(

I liked the movie for the most part. The special effects were cool, the action scenes were pretty sweet and the I actually really liked the music too. But, they left out my favorite part of the book (with Kreacher and the locket-that part gets me every time I read it. So sad) and they shortened a lot, I'm sure because the book was so jam packed and even with splitting the book into two movies, there was just too much stuff to show. So, all in all, I liked the movie but the book was definitely better.

I already want to re-read the books again! I just re-read the entire series before this movie came out, so before the next one comes out (in July!!!) I'm going amp it up- re-read all the books *and* re-watch all movies.

Me= huge nerd