Soooo over 2009....

Well it's New Year's Eve and I'm ready for this year to end! And it's ending on a sour note. I got in a little riff-raff with another car last night, Cobalt vs. Hyundai, plastic crushing plastic...aka car accident (and I can't exaggerate 'accident' enough)! First off, let's state for the record that my Chevy beat that Hyndai's BUTT!! Anyway, back to the story, I guess you might want to know what happened, eh? Well, before you start blabbing about girl's being horrible drivers *ack...cough* and saying the blonde's can't drive *!!!!!!!!* I would like to say that I am indeed ....wait for it  .....a good driver.  Even if my husband questions this many times throughout his life. 

On to the story, I was headed out to meet a friend for dinner at the Clubhouse (mmmm....lounge fries). The Clubhouse sits on a 4-lane highway (aka Rt. 8) and was on the left side of the road from the direction I was coming.  As I'm approaching where I have to turn, I slow down, have my left turn signal on, and come to stop and wait for approaching traffic coming in the other direction to pass, before I can make my turn.  After a good 5 seconds, I see a clear, 'CLEAR AS DAY, nada comin' my way, not even a gust of wind passing me by' break in traffic for me to make my turn.  As I'm almost pulled into the parking lot, I hear tires SCREACHING, and then BAM WHAM KAPOW! .....it was like a japenese cartoon.... I even saw the words flash before my eyes in sparkly glittery word bubbles :)  APPARENTLY, my CLEAR AS DAY break in traffic was not so, and another guy was coming right towards me, and slammed into the back of my car near the gas tank.  I pulled into the parking lot, as so did the guy that hit me, and we traded information and yada yada yada....all that fun stuff. So now, my Cobalt is bumped and bruised and I won't drive it until it's fixed b/c something feels "off" .....for lack of better car terms.  But the other guy's Hyundai?! Not so pretty.  His front passenger side headlight completely broken, front bumper cracked and falling of the car.  It was pretty ugly. So for now, I'm waiting to here from my insurance company and see what a pretty penny this will cost, besides my insurance rates going UP! But like everyone says, at least no one got hurt....except Cobey :( aka....my car.  Yes, I named him....strange, no?!

Moral of the story - Cobalt 1, Hyundai 0   

That's right...sucka! Eat my American-made car :)

And if you care to know....it IS technically 'my fault' since I was crossing traffic. Hmph!

Merry Christmas!

I'm finally ready for Christmas (er...as soon as I finish buying Ross' stocking stuffers tonight!) after coming home from work yesterday and acting like a madwoman in order to accomplish all 100 things on my list! I had to finish a few presents, wrap them, give Ross another wrapping tutorial (hehe), run to the grocery store, make dinner, try to clean up the mess in our apt., update the check book, balance the checkbook and so on! I got to bed at a little after 10:00 pm, and I was exhausted! And of course, my wonderful husband also helped out with a few errands since he was only working a half day, and I can't say how much I appreciated it! AND if that wasn't enough, he's willingly doing some laundry today, that I need done before Christmas so that I have some clean clothes to wear. He's a pretty great husband, huh?! SO, I can finally slow down and look forward to Christmas being only 4 days away rather than stress over it. Oh, it's a love-hate relationship the week before Christmas! So Merry Christmas to everyone and I hope no one procrastinates as much as I do :)

Christmas Meltdown

Well, it's 9:34 p.m., Sunday night, and it's safe to say that the weekend is over, yet I have no idea where it went! I spent the last 3 days baking Christmas Cookies, and trying out a few more new recipes for Christmas treats.  I succeeded in baking 5 different kinds of Christmas cookies, as well as chocolate pretzels, and one last treat that didn't go quite as planned.....Homemade Turtles.  First, I had to place wax paper onto a sheet, and spray with non-stick cooking spray.  Next, I were to place 3 pecan halves in a triangle arrangement, and drop some of the homemade caramel (that you made from their recipe) onto the pecan halves.  So far, so good! :) Don't they look great?!

Progress was coming along nicely, and I had about 5 more of these cookie sheets, all set-up with the pecans and caramel.  Next, I had to place them in the fridge to let them set.  Okie Dokie! I came back about 3 hours later after a tasty dinner of white pizza :) and decided to finish these.  The recipe said to melt the semi-sweet chocolate (which I decided to use milk chocolate instead, and was a much better choice) and "frost" the pecan arrangement.  Hmmmm.... Frost?! Like, just cover the tops of these with chocolate? Wouldn't the caramel on the bottom still stick to everything?! Well, I can't see that working, so instead, I tried dipping them into the chocolate.  Well, first of all, the caramel was never going to harden, but still stayed its good-ol' caramel constitency, so it was still quite "gooey", if thats a word.  So dipping them in chocolate was quite a task.  They didn't stay the nice pretty shape that I had arranged them in, and ended up just being clusters of pecans & caramel and now chocolate.  Ok, fine.  But after about 10 of these conconctions, my chocolate looked like this:

Can you see it? It looks lumpy and gross. (And do you see all the chocolate NOT in the pan?! Yup, my kitchen was a chocolate nightmare!!) I think its safe to say most of the caramel ended up in the chocolate, and not in the turtles ....ho hum. Now what?! This chocolate really isn't quite "dippable" anymore since its lumpy.  Lumpy chocolate is probably a no-no. I'm sure there's an easier way, but I haven't figured it out yet! If you know, please pass it on :)  But for now, I ended up with about 15 finished and edible turtles.

They don't at all look like what they started as, but they are delicious! I wish all 5 baking sheets of turtles had worked out.  But for now, I'll just savor these 15 turtles :) What a great Christmas present this could have been! Who could resist homemade turtles?! I plan on trying these again in the future, and hopefully figure out a better way to dip them in chocolate, and maybe then I will succeed!

A lil' Xmas cheer...

I might've decorated 3 weeks ago, but it's taken until now to add a little more charm to our christmas decorating. Even when I get a  head-start on things, I still find a way to procrastinate on just about anything! Anyways, without further ado, I finally made my table centerpiece a little more 'christmas-y.'

I inherited 3 hurricane glasses from Michelle's wedding, that are 3 different heights, and added some silver & a select few gold bulbs to cheer them up with some christmas-y goodness! The bulbs were from the dollar store so it only set me back a few dollars.  Also, I needed some red placemats, so I bought two, because I figured I could use them in the future as well, since red is a re-occuring theme in our house, and used them with the centerpiece.  These puppies were $3 each at walmart, so another $6 was well spent. Lastly, I bought some wired ribbon that I was planning on using elsewhere, but ended up using a strand in the one hurricane glass, entwined with the bulbs, and then a piece of ribbon sitting out side the hurricane glass holding one more bulb.  I love it and my table finally looks like it belongs with the season :) Total cost = $10

Lastly, I wanted to find a cheap and cute way to display all the Christmas cards we get every year without them piling up on our TV unit, like they usually do, and instead, showcase them in a fun way. Especially when people send pictures with their cards, I would love to have them up to look at all season, rather than stashing them away somewhere.  So this is what I came up with....

Yup, either you hate it or love it.  I personally love it (Ross hates it).  I just used some thick hemp cord, and tied it to a nail on each side.  I tied it on the end like a shoelace too so that there's a cute bow on the end with the leftover string hanging down :)  I think it feels very cottage-y.  I even hung a few random words like "snow" and "brr" and "happy holidays" in a cute font to add some cheer.  And once this puppy gets filled up with some more cards, it'll look even better.

If you hate it, welp, sorry, not your apt. :)  Or let's just say, the pictures don't do it justice.  Or maybe I'm just so excited to finally not have a big blank wall staring at me anymore!! (Sadly, it's taken me 3 years to finally get something up on that wall!)  And the best thing is, that once Christmas is over, I can just hang some random pictures on it, or take it down completely, since the nails holes are so small, you probably wouldn't see them anyways. Either way, I'm excited to finally get to see all our Christmas cards at once & in one place :)

Some elf fun....

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

My Ross....what a lovely figure you have.  And those moves!! Where o where did you learn those moves?! Too bad our wedding dance wasn't quite so 'awesome.'

Tis the Season

Good thing I didn't post something yesterday like I attempted to do, b/c I was in a crabby mood after being back at work after a blissful 5-day weekend and who wants to read about my bad mood?! I sure don't.  Anyways, I had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend, visiting with friends and family, some who I haven't seen in awhile, and one who I got to meet for the first time (*ahem* Hazel....who is absolutely adorable, to say the least!), eating great food and a lot of it(!) and sleeping in for a whole 5 days in-a-row! Whew! It's hard to be back at work but all good things must come to an end, and now that I'm back in the swing of things, it's not so bad.  Now I can finally start my countdown to Christmas.  My christmas shopping is almost finished, I was on a roll when I first started about a month ago, and now I'm struggling to get just a few people that I have left finished with, but I'm excited to still be ahead for once! I'm also starting my countdown to Ross graduating from IUP.... only 15 more days. I think he started this countdown about 6 months ago, so I know he is also excited to be done! So all in all, December is starting off on a good note, and will proably end on one too with the christmas/new year holidays :)