Post holiday fun

Hope y'all had a great holiday and are maybe still enjoying that holiday. I had to go back to work unfortunately but in my strange part-time schedule, only had to work 3 hours today.

We had a nice holiday visit to Baltimore where we enjoyed a white Christmas (meets my quota for cold and snow for the rest of the year). We celebrated two Christmases - one in Baltimore, and then one at our house (where we opened our gifts and the gifts from my family).

We of course got some amazing cooking gifts and are on our way to trying them out. My favorites: The Flavor Bible, Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, Rick Bayless' Authentic Mexican (we made dinner last night from this and it was yummy), an ice cream maker attachment and grinder attachment for the mixer, a creme brulee torch, and my wonderful coworker Amanda got us some truffle infused olive oil!  I'm excited to try all of these things out and update you!

On another note - my dad is visiting this week!!  The husband and I planned the meals for the week and here's our menu. We think its a fairly good representation of the influences in this area of Texas. We'll hopefully take pictures of all this yumminess.

Tuesday: Vietnamese from Pho Thang Long
Wednesday: Adobo marinated Cod broiled in corn husks; white rice pilaf with corn and peppers; and creamed zucchini with corn and peppers. (This was yummy and our first foray into corn husk cooking)
Thursday: The Boat - I don't know the name of the actual restaurant but it looks like a boat shipwrecked in a parking lot so we call it the boat. They have amazing fish (lots fried), but also some of the cheapest, biggest, and best oysters you can get around these parts! :) Or so we've been told - we haven't tried oysters yet. But I know my dad will love it.
Friday: All Mexican again: queso, Mexican corn chowder and chicken tamales (all from Rick Bayless)
Saturday: Smoked brisket, coleslaw, and baked potatoes
Sunday: Taking it down a notch for roadside chicken (courtesy of our other Rick Bayless book) and grilled asparagus.

I love that we have the time to cook this week and that we have the patience (most of the time) to cook together. I may or may not do one of those new years resolution-y posts later but if I don't - have a great New Year's celebration!!!

Happy holidays

We'll be out of commission, celebrating Christmas over the next few days. So I wanted to wish you all a wonderful holiday. And here's a little bit of fun I'm leaving with you (please don't judge). This picture somewhat sums up our lives the last few weeks: mismatch craziness, with a little attitude on top. Merry Christmas! :)

Baking and such

One of the reasons I love the holidays is because its the perfect excuse to bake ridiculous amounts of sweets. Super! :)

So like I promised, here are pictures of the most recent sweet yummy treats - chocolate dipped biscotti and sea-salt topped toffee. Both are REALLY good. I have a container of fudge, toffee, and cookies sitting on my desk at work and it is literally killing me to not eat every last bit. But I'm doing a good job of keeping to no more than 2 pieces a day (at work)!

The finished wreath - simple but nice.

And the rest of our holiday decorations!

Have a fabulous weekend before Christmas! :)

Busy busy

Lots of fun has been had by our little family over the last week or so - thus making blogging a little bit more challenging. Anywho - we enjoyed a visit from a good friend this weekend and watched the Ravens beat up on the Texans in Monday Night Football. This was exciting for me because it was my first football game in more than a year - I know, sad.

Proof that we were there - the little camera on my phone doesn't do anything for photos!

I also made lots of yummy sweets - I'll post pictures later.

And for your amusement (because I got a little chuckle out of it).

Seen on Dwellers without Decorators - from Etsy here.

Done...

Well, we're almost done with the bathroom. The main components are finished and the husband did a wonderful job. We are both so excited to have it done and working, with the added benefit that we both like the end product thus far!

Here are some before, during and after photos for your enjoyment.

Original bathroom

Bathroom without wallpaper

Our remodel of the bathroom!

While the husband finished off the bathroom, I worked on some cooking craziness. We're a big fan of the bread-a-day blog recipes and this weekend I made the pretzels again. I also made some yummy fudge. So overall, we both had a really productive and great weekend!

Pretzel knots from Bread-A-Day here

Peanut butter chocolate fudge

Thought-worthy

The blog has been a bit random this week but it's where I am in the world.

I don't know if you like or dislike Gwyneth Paltrow. I'm ambivalent, as with most famous people. But when, a few months ago, I saw a mention of her blog and newsletter I thought oh why not waste a few minutes checking it out. (This was pre-job). I was pleasantly surprised. So I subscribed to her newsletter and have truly enjoyed it - its not fluff - not one of those emails that frivolously violates your inbox. In fact, I've actually saved it a few times. Today's Goop (the name of her blog) newsletter is particularly interesting - the title is Boundaries and it specifically speaks to women's boundaries. As a counselor, this is important to me, but as a woman it is even more important. Thought-worthy.

Counseling humor

I saw this on Elements of Style today - very nice. Original artwork found on 20x200 here.