Merry Christmas To All, & To All A Good Night

This year Andy and I did not encounter bad roads or airport nightmares as we did not head back to Wisconsin this year for Christmas.  This is the first year neither of us spent the holiday with our families.  We chose to stay in Arizona because this was an extremely busy year of traveling for us and something had to give, so it was Christmas.  This sounded like a good idea to begin with because it would allow us to have a stress free and quiet holiday with no family drama.  However, I did miss the get together's with our families to catch up, laughter and the snow.

Since we decided to stay in AZ I wanted to try and start some traditions here that we normally would do back in Wisconsin.  On Christmas Eve after football was over Andy and I had a nice ham meal and watched National Lampoon's Christmas while we shared a bottle of wine.  We also got to Face Time with Andy's family back in Wisconsin.  I also was able to talk with my family as well, but unfortunately I was not able to Skype or Face Time with them.  After the phone calls and movie time Andy and I made a cherry cheese coffee cake for our Christmas breakfast.  This coffee cake is so yummy and my mother makes it every year for our Christmas breakfast and I wanted to do the same thing here.  It is very easy to make and I was extremely happy how it turned out.

The awesome coffee cake I made.

We woke up on Christmas morning and we had plenty of presents to unwrap.  Between presents for each other and presents that were shipped to us we definitely felt loved.  Once we got through all of the gifts it was time for Christmas breakfast.  Normally my mother makes a very large breakfast for Christmas morning, but since it was just the two of us I had to scale it down.  We had the coffee cake from the night before, eggs, bacon, toast, fruit and orange juice.  Yummy! 

After our stomachs were full we headed to the movie theater.  I have never been to a movie on Christmas day, but apparently it is common.  Anyway, we saw the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  If you have read the book, you must see the movie.  I have read the series and just love the books and now I love the movie. Can't wait for the next movie.  Seeing a movie on Christmas morning is nice to do and could become a tradition...that is if we stay in AZ again.

After the movie it was time to get ready to head to our AZ family...the Seifert's to top off our Christmas holiday.  I decided to make a cheese board with the platter we received from my mother-in-law and the cheese signs we received from our friends.  I was so proud of this cheese board that I had to take a picture of it.  We packed up the board, crackers and gifts to head over to the Seifert's.

 

My cheese board that I was so proud of.

Andy and I in front of the Seifert Christmas tree.

All-in-all it was not a bad Christmas this year.  It definitely was not a typical Christmas that we are so used to, but it was not as bad as I thought it could be.  I am not saying we will stay in AZ every year for Christmas, but if we have to do it again I know we can make it work so that it is a nice holiday for the two of us.  It does help that we have plenty of loved ones that kept checking in on us to make sure we had a special holiday.

We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and we wish you a happy 2012!

Update to Doggie Photo Shoot

Now that our Christmas cards are out, and you all should have received one, I can provide an update to my blog post Doggie Photo Shoot.  Here is the photo I finally was able to take of the dogs in front of the Christmas tree wearing their doggie hats.

I do believe this is the cutest picture ever of doggies wearing a santa hat.  This picture was definitely not easy to get.  I think we tried on three or four different evenings to get this photo, used many treats and took many snaps on the camera.  I am not one to give up on an idea and this was no different.  I don't like to get defeated and when I have an idea of something I want to do I make it happen.  I was hoping for something a little more picture perfect, but knowing our dogs I am extremely happy that I even got this photo. 

Captain on the other hand was much easier as once the tree was up he lounged underneath it day in and day out.  He acted almost as if we put the tree up for him and now it has become his hang out.

Happy Holidays from your family in Arizona...Andy, Jaimi, Madison, Izzy and Captain.

It's All About The Cookies

This weekend I decided to make Christmas cookies.  Never really made them before, but I thought it would be good to do as it might help us get in the holiday spirit.  Especially since it's around 65 degrees here.  In the past years Andy and I made sugar cookies, well maybe Andy made them and I just assisted.  This time we did not make sugar cookies, but instead we made peanut butter blossoms, crunchy peanut butter balls and chocolate pretzel sticks...and I was the sole cookie maker this time.

We fired up the Christmas music and started with the peanut butter blossoms.

Huge bonus here is that we got to use items from our wedding registry just like the Crate & Barrel baking bowl above.

The peanut butter blossoms are usually made with Hershey kisses on top, but I learned a trick from my mother-in-law as she uses dove chocolates instead.  She makes some VERY YUMMY blossoms and so I decided to go for the dove chocolates instead of the kisses.  My first batch of cookies turned out HUGE.  The dove chocolate practically got lost in the dough.

Apparently my balls were overly large.  After the first batch I got the rest of the dough balls correct, but since my first batch was so large the recipe didn't make as many as it said.  Good thing my mother-in-law sent down a container of them as they are oh so yummy. 

Next up we made crunchy peanut butter balls.  These are my absolute favorite holiday cookie/candy.  I was nervous that they wouldn't turn out because I really didn't want to be disappointed in my cookie making, but they turned out just fabulous.  The best thing about these is that they are pretty easy to make.

Then we made chocolate covered pretzel rods per Andy's request.  He really wanted these so we made sure to make them.  He really didn't think it was necessary to pick up the sprinkles at the store, but I thought if we are going to make them then we will make them the right way and festive.

We had a great time making Christmas cookies together on Saturday.  While the baking was going on Andy came across one of my secret santa gifts from work...a penguin and a santa candle.  Like a little kid he thought it would be fun to light the candles to see which burned faster.  I decided to join in and we both bet on Santa burning faster; however, we were both wrong and the penguin won.

Santa is ahead, but he didn't win.

This was so much fun with Christmas music in the background that I might just make it an annual tradition.

Making A List & Checking It Twice

This weekend I feel like we got a lot accomplished as we Christmas shopped, wrapped, sent out cards, prepared to ship and I got to see a couple friends.

Friday night started with Andy and I doing a little Christmas shopping and then after that we decided to check out a wine and pizza shop in Desert Ridge.  It was a place we had driven by a million times and always said we should check it out and we finally did.  It was called Humble Pie and it was pretty good.  It was a cute place that was extremely busy.  I would go back.  Following dinner we headed home for more wine and to get our Christmas cards finished.  I know Miss Manners says you should hand address the envelopes, but who has that kind of time these days?  Andy and I decided to send our envelopes through the printer to get it done faster.  We had them printed, stuffed and stamped by 10pm...that is not without Andy whining through the process.  I will give it to him for helping me though.  I am very proud that we got our first Christmas cards sent in the mail on Saturday.

Our Saturday started with errands around town to try and finish our Christmas shopping.  Well, we didn't finish, but I would say we are about 90% done.  We then headed home where I wrapped all of our Christmas presents.  We finished off the day with Chinese food and a bad movie from Netflix.  Yup, we rented the Invention of Lying and it was horrible.  Of course that is our fault though for even putting it in our que.

Sunday morning I woke and headed down to Old Town Scottsdale to meet my ladies for breakfast.  The ladies would include Amber, Kim, Stella and Ella.  It's always good to see the ladies and have chit chat, but it's just as good to get to see their little girls.  However, Ella is not so little anymore.  She is growing up so fast and she is turning into a little lady.  Following breakfast I had a chance to give Stella and Ella their Christmas gifts and Stella her birthday gift.  We did this in the back of Amber's SUV.   We got Stella an Elmo Play-doh Color Mixer.  This is where Stella can take her play-doh and mix it together in the machine to make new colors.  She can use the machine to learn about colors.  Andy and I figured Amber and Stella will have tons of fun with it together since Stella is just starting to play with play-doh.

Here is Ella helping Stella open her birthday present.  It was too cute!!!

For Christmas we got both of the girls princess dress-up outfits.  It was so cute to watch them open their Christmas gifts together.  Ella was so excited she wanted to go home to play princess.

Stella handing the wrapping paper to her mom as they finish opening Ella's gift.

I then went home to finish wrapping and start to package our gifts to ship off to freezing cold Wisconsin.  Tom and Karen came over to watch the Packer game and it's always nice to sit and visit with them.  Karen brought over some Christmas cookies, which makes me think we should make them too.  I have never made Christmas cookies, ok, we make sugar cookies a few years ago, but that is it.  I want to make sugar cookies, the cookies with the chocolate kisses and the peanut butter balls that I love so much.  Mmmm...we will see what next weekend brings.  This weekend I also got my workouts in so I am going to say it was a pretty successful weekend.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

What do you do with all of your Thanksgiving leftovers?  Since it was just Andy and I we had a ton of leftovers.  Of course we reheated the food for lunch for days on end.  My favorite Thanksgiving leftover food is making turkey and gravy over biscuits.  I look forward to this meal every year.  It is definitely one of my favorites.  I have made it other times of the year before, but it's just not the same.  If you don't have leftover gravy or not enough, just run to the store and pick up a jar of the Heinz turkey gravy.  Poor the gravy in the pan and chop up some turkey and toss that in the pan.  Heat that up and poor it over biscuits when done.  YUMMY!

My other favorite thing to do with Thanksgiving leftovers is make turkey, cream cheese and cranberry sandwiches.  I put it on the whole wheat sandwich thins.  Very yummy!

Tonight, Andy is making turkey enchiladas.  It's going to be yummy!

Black Friday

We are definitely not Black Friday shoppers.  I know plenty of people who join in on the craziness of shopping in the middle of the night and standing in long lines, but not us.  That does not sound like fun to me.  We decided to sleep in on Black Friday, but then Andy found an ad for a Christmas tree at Home Depot for $50 and said the store opened at 5am.  We were definitely in the market for a Christmas tree and I really wanted to get one this weekend to get it decorated.  I thought $50 sounded great, but 5am does not sound so great.  I thought there was no way anybody would rush to the HD at 5am for a Xmas tree so I told Andy we could get there at 6am and that would probably be ok.  He set the alarm for 5:30am and as everyone already knows, I did not get up.  I told Andy that I was tired and a tree isn't worth getting up that early on my day off of work.  Since he was already up he went to get the tree and arrived at 6am to find out they were already sold out.  Bummer! Kudos to Andy for going though.  He then decided that he didn't want to spend a day with me checking out trees in various stores to find a good price and the right tree, so he went online to Sears and purchased one for pick up.  The tree he purchased already had white lights on it. 

By the time I got out of the bed our tree was purchased and all we had to do was pick it up and get decorations for it.  Our first stop was the annual trip to Ryan's Pet Warehouse to get the animals plenty of toys and treats.  It's been two days and they already tore through three of the new toys.  I did save a couple of the toys for the girls to open on Christmas morning.  Such spoiled puppies!  After Ryan's it was on to Sears for the tree and then Target for the decorations.

I always like the trees that are decorated in two colors and have somewhat of a theme.  So, I went with various gold and red bulbs, gold beads to string and then I decided to make a topper out of red ribbon.  I figured it would be easy to make the tree topper...right?  We got home and decorated the living room and got the tree all put together and it was time to make the tree topper.  Hmmmm....I had no idea what to do.  Thank god for YouTube where I could find an instructional video on how to make a bow.  All I needed was the ribbon, twine (or twist tie) and scissors.

Here is our tree all decorated for the holidays.  I am pretty proud of this tree as it is my first every Christmas tree and it is my first tree with Andy as well. Our first tree together!!!! 

Notice the homemade tree topper!

All lit up!

We are hoping that all animals stay out of the tree and don't cause any damage to it.  So far so good.  Captain likes to use it as his hiding grounds as he likes to lay on the tree skirt in the back and stalk the dogs.  The dogs just sniff it...so far!

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving yesterday.  We did as it was a very relaxing Thanksgiving day for us.  We decided to stay home, relax and make our own Thanksgiving meal for just the two of us.  Now some might think that sounds sad and lonely, but we both really enjoyed it as it was a very stress free holiday.  We woke up and made the traditional grandma's buns.  I blogged about them last year.  I don't think they turned out as great as last year, or as good as grandma makes them; however, they were still very yummy.  We doubled my grandma's recipe so we were supposed to end up with six dozen rolls.  I know that sounds like a lot for two people, but Andy thought it would be great to freeze them to have them around for a while.  One thing is grandma's recipe is for dinner sized rolls and we made more sandwich buns so we ended up with about three dozen rolls, which was definitely plenty.

Andy took care of the turkey, stuffing and mashed potatoes while I made the cranberry sauce, corn and sweet potatoes.  I am very lucky to be married to someone who likes to cook and likes to take over on Thanksgiving and make the main items of the Thanksgiving meal.  I have never made cranberry sauce before and I grew up with the canned jelly stuff on the table for Thanksgiving, but I wanted the real deal.  I don't like, ok I hate, the canned cranberry sauce...sorry mom!  I looked on the Food Network and found a few different recipes I thought were interesting and so I took pieces from each recipe to make my own.  It's very simple to make...hey, I made it and it turned out awesome.  I was very impressed with myself.

Not only did we get a turkey meal, but so did the doggies.  They went nuts when Andy put a small helping of turkey on the floor for them.

My very yummy turkey dinner complete with red wine! I hope you have a relaxing and nice Thanksgiving dinner like we had.

Pinterest...What?!?!?!?

Ok, so I keep hearing about this website called Pinterest.  I keep hearing my friends talk about it, seeing comments on Facebook, etc.  It was time to check it out.  Plus I hear people find great recipes on this site and I am always looking for new recipes to try.

This website is apparently a place for people to "pin" things they like on their page.  Hmmm...interesting.  I check it out and I spent some time perusing the site and left the site very confused.  I just didn't get it.  I then decided to give it another chance.  Nope, still don't get it.  On a positive note I did find two new recipes to make.  I still don't get the site though so I can't really say much else about it.  Since I found new recipes I will give it another chance.  Until then here are the two I found and made.  These are not my photos since I forgot to take pictures of the dishes before we ate our dinner.

The first was a Hawaiian chicken that was BEYOND EASY to make.  I loved it, but Andy thought it was way to sweet for him.  Here is the recipe.  It calls for the Hawaiian BBQ sauce, but I used the marinade instead.  Again, this is not my photo as I took it from their website.

I also made a beef mac bake that was extremely yummy.  This taste even better the next night for leftovers.  I baked for about 20 minutes and then broiled for almost 10 minutes since I did not make ahead of time and chilled like the blogger did.  Here is the recipe.