So this is the New Year and I have no resolutions, for self assigned penance, for problems with easy solutions

My New Year's was completely different than what I had imagined (and to be honest, kind of wanted...) but I'm so happy with the way it turned out! I ended up having about 10 or 15 people over to my place and we had such a great time! We played Apples to Apples which is the best game ever, watched some football and had a sparkling juice toast at midnight.

My day started at 6 am to work out then off to Meijer and Target for some last minute supplies. I got home about 11 and immeadiately started baking and doing some *much needed* laundry. (Seriously, during the holiday season I may have done 5 loads tops and four of those were probably my jeans).

While the cupcakes were baking, I worked on the dips. I made a Jalepeno Popper dip, a recipe from a friend at work, and a Garlic Feta dip, from my room mate. They were both sooo delicious! I'll definitely be keeping the recipes handy for more parties.

After the cupcakes were cooled, I decided to be adventurous and pipe the frosting on to them.

They look pretty good, huh?

My mother loaned me all sorts of serving dishes and decorations so I made a little table scape.

I was really happy with how it turned out :-)

But I think the best part was watching all of this:

Turn into this:

All in all, it looks pretty darn good, I think!

I was pretty much in the kitchen from 11 am till 4:30 and then finished up cleaning shortly there after. I did get to give myself a nice New Years Manicure though:

(I know it looks like I have some sort of deformed foot, but oh well)

I got two new polishes from the Sonia Kashuk at Target line. The base is silver-it almost looks like tin foil on my nails! The top is black and it has some silver sparkles in it that are kind of hard to see.

Last weekend my mom's brother and his family were in town. It was bearable at best, but we did get to see True Grit, which I really, really liked. Besides seeing the movie with them, I didn't see them too much. I had to work and stuff and they were only here a few days. I know my mom was pretty happy they were here though.

My January 1, 2011 was spent working and following the Michigan and Michigan State games on ESPN.com. After work, I jetted home, packed up mom's stuff to bring back and went over to watch the Winter Classic with my dad. The Capitals ended up beating the Penguins 3-1. I fell asleep before the end (I'm old! :-( I was so exhausted and I was in bed before 2!). I ended up falling asleep in the guest room haha

Also, we've had a pretty crazy winter so far. We've only had one snowstorm, which was more like an ice storm. We had about 6inches from that, so it wasn't too bad at all. Then, n Dec. 31st, it rained and all the snow melted!

So weird!

It's snowing a bit now, but nothing's sticking. I just can't believe it's December and we have basically no snow on the ground.

To sum it up, it was a pretty good NYE/NYD. I wish I would've been at home watching football, instead of at work, but besides that everything was A+!

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

'Cause only in the movies can you replay every scene until it comes out clean.

I'm usually not too big a fan of movies.

For most of my life, I couldn't sit still long enough to watch a full length movie. I usually got distracted, or started day dreaming, or more often than not, fell asleep. It happened at home, at friends, even in the theater. It was bad. But the past few years, I've gotten over my movie ADD and started to enjoy movies a lot more.

The past few weeks I've seen some really good ones that I thought I'd post about.

First up:

City of God.

I saw this one the night before Halloween at the EMU Student Center Foreign Film Night. Leto convinced a Hannah and I to go see it. It's in Portuguese, with subtitles. It's about drugs and gangs in the slums of Brazil. It was way intense-lots of guns, and drugs, and blood. But really, really good. It could have ended up being a typical "redemption story" (boy grows up poor, experiences drugs/violence/etc, moves past it and becomes successful) but the cinematography was really great, as was the acting, so luckily, that set it apart from other films.

Secondly:

Due Date.

Zach Galifinakis is effing hilarious. I was late seeing the Hangover, but after I saw it I (along with the rest of the country) just fell in love with him. He's so odd, and his humor is kind of out there, but it works for him (probably because that's the roles he keeps getting cast in, but whatever). So him along with Robert Downey Jr, who is definitely having a career revival at the moment, were a pretty good pair. It was your average "cross country buddy movie" but I swear I didn't stop laughing the entire time.

Last but not least:

RED.

My mother and brother convinced me to see this. I wasn't that into it when I saw the previews. Action and action/comedy just usually isn't my genre. But mom was paying so I couldn't really say no :-) Luckily, I ended up liking it. It wasn't anything too spectacular-the action was exciting enough, the comedy was funny for the most part. Morgan Freeman pretty played his usual "wise old black man" and Bruce Willis did his best "action hero." John Malkovich was decidedly creepy, which isn't anything new but he was a close second to the best part of the movie. Miss Helen Mirren. I just love her-she's just so fierce. And pretty. And funny.

Oh, Mary Louise Parker was in the movie too. But I can't look at her without thinking of Nancy Botwin and Weeds. Blah.

At the moment, I'm having a study party and am almost all studied out. I mean, there's more to study, of course, I just don't know if I can do it! haha Hence, the procrastinating by writing this :-)

And I'd like to say, "I'm sorry", but we lived to tell about it .

I know I'm a little late, but I wanted to post a picture of my Halloween "costume". Halloween this year was pretty low key. The only parties that were going on, were on Sunday and since I had to work both Sunday and Monday, I wasn't really that interested. But, I did promise my co-worker I'd do my hair for work so....

I present "Walk of Shame Snooki" haha

I had a dress and stuff all picked out since I thought I was going to a party, but when I didn't I ended up just doing up the poof, throwing on a men's button down, and my Uggs (hence, the "walk of shame" designation). Surprisingly, I got a lot of compliments about my hair, which was kind of weird lol

This past Friday, my mom and I took a baking class at work where we got to make these:


We learned how to make fondant, then roll it out, cover the cake, dye it and make decorations and we left with a nice little 6 inch cake. I knew if I took the cake home to my house, it would go to waste, so I brought it with me to some friends who were more than happy to eat it. I still have about half of it left to eat, along with 3 lbs of fondant to use...oh my lol

Work is pretty crazy right now. It seems like as soon as Nov. 1 rolls around, everything goes insane. I've already had a mini meltdown so hopefully I got it out of the way and the rest of the holiday season will be smooth sailing. I can hope, right?