Amish Friendship Bread

Last month I received a "starter" for Amish Friendship Bread from a friend. 10 days later when it was time to bake, I baked and brought 3 of my 4 additional starters to work. Then 10 days after that I brought a few starters to work and so did the 3 other people that I gave starters to. By the third go around, I was stuck with 2 of the 4 starters and had no other choice but to bake them on day 10. Last Thursday night was day 10, so I baked A LOT of friendship bread. Here is the final count:
4 loaves of cinnamon bread
24 cinnamon muffins
1 8x8 chocolate cake
1 13x9 oreo cake

The majority are in the freezer. And I think Tom ate the chocolate cake in 3-4 days. I think I'm finished with Amish Friendship Bread for quite a while!

Merry Christmas!!

Merry Christmas from our house to yours!! Sadly, we did not make it home for Christmas this year, but we managed to have a pretty nice day here just the two of us. We woke up and I popped a breakfast casserole in the oven. We enjoyed coffee, exchanged presents, and watched the Yule Log on TV. Bailey opened her presents and she has gotten quite good at tearing through the wrapping paper! I had big plans for Christmas dinner, but unfortunately spent the whole day feeling under the weather so I ended up having chicken noodle soup and Tom was left to fend for himself. We spent the day just relaxing, playing with Bailey, and watching Christmas movies on tv.

Ugh.....

Today was awful, one of those days I just hate. One of the bad things about interacting with so many people throughout the day is that occasionally you are required to interact with truly awful people. I try to give people the benefit of the doubt because you never know what some people are going through, but the truth is there are just some people out there who are rude and ignorant. It bugs me so much that people can act this way but it frustrates me even more that I let these negative interactions bother me so much! I also hate that I'm having one of these days so close to Christmas. I want to be happy and carefree but I'm feeling seriously depressed with all of this negativity replaying over and over in my head. Luckily, I have great friends at work that know exactly what I'm going through and I have an understanding, patient husband who lets me vent all of my frustrations and helps me realize all of the positive interactions that I have every day. It's a shame that one negative exchange can overshadow numerous positive events and weigh so much on your mind.

Yet another Fun Holiday Weekend

We had another weekend full of fun holiday festivities. Friday night we went to Matt & Kendall's house to celebrate at their annual ChristmaHannaKwanzaa Party. We enjoyed some homemade fudge along with other goodies. Bailey made out like a bandit with our Dirty Santa gift. Thanks to Stacy, she now has a brand new rawhide, a Christmas bulb squeaky toy, a "stuffingless" pheasant which she somehow managed to get some stuffing out of later Friday night, and multiple other doggy treats (Thanks Stacy & Casper!!)Saturday morning and afternoon was spent running errands, doing a little last minute shopping, mailing off some gifts, and finally writing all of our Christmas cards! Hopefully you'll get them before Christmas. Saturday night was my work Christmas Party. We played White Elephant and this time we weren't quite as lucky in the gift receiving department. Although we ended up leaving with 2 gifts, one of them being the gift we originally received, Boiley. The other being an ugly plastic "champagne" set with candles inside that was obviously regifted because the "To From" label wasn't even completely scratched off! It may or may not show up at next year's Christmas Party.

Sunday afternoon we headed over to Stacy's house for a Glad To Give Cookie Bake & Swap. We spent the afternoon whipping up a bunch of different cookies and holiday treats while enjoying some warm cider and watching the puppies play Twilight.

Currently

Excited about Christmas parties this weekend, Christmas "vacation" (and by "vacation" I mean being off work Friday, Saturday, AND Sunday! *note sarcasm*)
Worried about a friend and a family member who are going through difficult times
Reading On Becoming a Leader (Okay so I haven't started reading it yet, but I ordered it and it's sitting in The Oaks office waiting for me to pick it up...if I can ever get home from work at a decent hour!)
Creating documents in Google Docs...my new favorite application (since mini-lappy doesn't have MS Word)
Loving that it's almost Christmas!!!
Hating that we won't be home for Christmas....and that it hasn't really felt like Christmas yet
Wondering where we'll be in a year
Craving ice water
Hoping Tom will get up off the couch and get me some ice water :)
Watching on TV (currently) Family Guy and then Will & Grace, (recently) ABC Family's 25 Days of Christmas
Listening to Christmas music, All the Pretty Girls by FUN
Looking forward to watching all of the Bowl Games in Hi Def on the big screen!!

Happy 1 Year Anniversary with us Bailey!!

One year ago today, Tom and I left work a little early and headed to the shelter before they closed to pick out a puppy dog. We walked around and around, and then saw Little Miss Bails, sitting all pretty while all of the other dogs were barking like crazy because it was time for their evening walks. Tom said "Those dogs are good dogs" (meaning Bailey), so we asked to see her and before we knew it we were walking through SuperPetz letting her pick out a bobo. Here are a few recent pics of her! This first one is one of my favorites because I caught her in the act of switching from one rawhide to a second she had stashed under her leg.

Playing or sleeping...that pretty much sums of the life of Bailey for the past year. Oh, and she has definitely become a couch dog!

Holiday Happenings

We had an extremely fun Holiday weekend! Friday night we went over to our friend Stacy's house to celebrate with our friends Anne and Brian and their families. Anne's step-father is famous for his homemade margaritas.....it was a perfect way to end a stressful, busy week! It was so nice to hang out with good friends in a relaxed, cozy atmosphere. The puppies had fun playing too.

Saturday afternoon we went to Rojo to celebrate Brian's Graduation and Anne's defense. It was a pretty chill event, probably because everyone there was recovering from the above mentioned homemade margaritas from the night before! I didn't realize until we were leaving that I didn't even take any pictures! So I snapped one of Anne and Brian on the way out.

Saturday night our friends Erin and Angelina hosted a Christmas party at Angelina's condo. We got to hang out and catch up with a bunch of people from Tom's lab that happened to be there. There may have been a little too much wine drank during dinner where we came to the realization that none of us were wine connoisseurs.

It's going to be another busy but fun week! Stay tuned for updates!

Busy week/weekend

Just a quick update to let you know I'm still alive and I will have a lot to be posting about in the next few weeks! Our Google Calendar is packed full of fun Christmasy things! Yesterday was our friend Stacy's birthday so we went out to dinner at a fun little Italian place Leonardo's. They had a guy playing an accordian and he even came over to our table and serenaded Stacy for her birthday! He also had some audience participation from a group of older middle aged women complete with "noisemakers" and bad dancing :) It was a fun night!

Friday our friend Anne is publicly defending her thesis so we are going over to Stacy's Friday night to celebrate by grilling out and tasting some homemade margaritas! Saturday afternoon is Brian and Anne's "Congratulations-you-now-have-PhDs-but-we-are-so-sad-that-you-are-leaving-us" Party at Rojo. Then Saturday night we have Tom's Pseudo-Pathology Christmas party (you can read about last year's here - UAB stopped putting on a big Christmas Party so a few of the people in the program decided to take matters into their own hands and host their own party!) Then Sunday I will be baking all day for Tom's Annual Welch Lab Christmas Party held during lab meeting at 8 am Monday. More updates to come in a few days!!

Happy Holiday Weekend!

The first weekend in December has always been "Holiday Weekend" and it has been spent with good friends from college. This year, it was spent with good friends from Birmingham. I think as long as this weekend is filled with fun and exciting things, Christmas-y events, and good friends it can still be dubbed "Holiday Weekend."

Friday night we went out to dinner with a friend from work and her husband and then we went to see Train at Five Points Music Hall. Friday was one of those never-ending, crazy busy, have 3 minutes to eat lunch kind of days, so I was happy when we finally sat down to eat dinner! Serena Ryder opened up for Train, and they were both awesome. I was stressing out all afternoon/evening because I got out of work super late and the concert was supposed to start at 7. We got there around 7:30, and they didn't come on until after 9! It was worth the wait though because they both put on really good performances. Then, after it was over, we went outside, and it was SNOWWWWWWING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So we frolicked in the snow for a few minutes before going home.
Saturday morning we helped our friend Kelly move. (And we woke up to snow on the ground! It all melted in about 5 minutes. But still, snow in DECEMBER in Alabama is rare!) Anyways, I'm going to formally name this move the Best Move of All Time. There were about 10 of us helping out and from start to finish it was a little over 2 hours.

Later in the afternoon we had everyone over to watch the SEC Championship game on the big screen (and sorry guys - I didn't start playing around with the tv settings until after everyone left and I figured out how to make football look even more awesome). Stacy brought Casper over and her and Bailey wrestled and played "Twilight" while everyone else hung out and watched the game.
Today we went to buy our Christmas tree. Now, that was an experience. So, a few weeks ago when I was running errands I saw that some people had set up a Christmas Tree lot in a vacant building lot on Route 31. There were big signs up that said it benefits the Jimmie Hale Mission, which we like to donate to around the holidays, so we decided to go there to get our Christmas tree this year instead of buying from corporate Lowe's. Well, we pull up and there is only 1 other car in the parking lot currently getting a tree loaded on top. There are a couple guys standing around a giant trash can with a fire in it. We park and walk up. These 2 guys stop us practically at the start of where all the trees are and tell us they have a beauty for us - freshly cut. (The one guy was standing there holding it like they were waiting for some "suckers" to come walking up). They asked us what size tree we were looking for and I said "Um, 7 feet would be fine." And the guy said they the one he just cut is almost 9 feet. Tom said "Well, we do have a high ceiling" so we ended up going for the almost 9 foot tree he just cut. Then he said the price. Then Tom had to catch me because I almost passed out. Not really. Actually I just got really quiet and didn't say anything else until we were off the lot. I'm not going to tell you how much it cost because I'm kind of embarrassed that we paid that much for a Christmas tree (in all honesty it was only $30 more than we paid last year). And at least this benefits the Jimmie Hale Mission. Here is our pretty tree and here is what Bailey was doing while I was decorating the tree.

F-R-I-D-A-Y!!!!

It's FRIDAY!! It's been a busy week! And a good week. My tv was delivered on Wednesday. So awesome. It's so freaking big and I love every square inch of it! Also on Wednesday we went to the J. Clyde after work with a bunch of friends. The graduate student association at UAB was having some thing so we went, donated a toy, ate free food, enjoyed yummy beers, and caught up with some good friends. Tonight we're going to the Train and Serena Ryder acoustic show at Five Points Music Hall (I won tickets from Live 100.5!!) Tomorrow we're helping a friend move and then hanging out here all afternoon to watch the SEC championship on the big screen in high def and then whatever other games are on after that. Then on Sunday we're going to get our Christmas tree! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Hope everyone has a great weekend!

More puppy pictures!!

Because, who doesn't love puppy pictures???

On spoiling myself......

So, I didn't really mean to spoil myself, but with all of the things I have purchased/received this past week I can't help but feel a bit guilty! So....my big purchase on Thanksgiving that I mentioned in my last post? Drumroll please......................

• A 46" Samsung LCD HDTV!!!!!!! (On super sale, of course!) I've been eyeing up these bad boys for years now and finally decided this fall that I was going to get one. I searched websites, stores, flyers, and read countless reviews on different tvs. This little bundle of joy is scheduled to arrive on Wednesday.....just in time for bowl season!!

Also, earlier in the week I made a purchase from Dell Home......a 10.1 inch Dell Mini netbook! I'd been wanting a laptop for a long time, but couldn't quite justify buying one when my desktop works just fine. I got a really good deal on it, and decided that I would rather have this than the new digital camera that I had already saved up money for and was just waiting until it went on sale.

Then came Black Friday. I didn't really need anything and I really didn't want to purchase anything big (since I just bought a TV AND a laptop!) but there were some good deals on a few things that I'd been wanting for a while (and we've been holding off on buying, waiting for a good deal). So I got some new towels for $4 each and a new 600 thread count sheet set for $24. Yay :)

So on Saturday while I was lounging on the couch (watching football and picturing what it's going to look like on my new tv in a few days!!) I decided to log into my Capital One credit card account because I remembered getting a letter from them a few months ago saying they were going to be offering smaller denomination gift cardsfor their miles/rewards program. I had earned 10,000 miles from my credit card using days and decided that I will never earn the 30,000 needed for a one way flight, so I thought I would cash these in after I checked out the gift card situation. To my delight, they had a $100 gift card to spafinder.com which allows you to use their giftcards at various spas. Since I've never been the spa and have a really hard time justifying spending money there, I decided to use my miles to get the spa gift card!! I'm going to get the 55 minute Swedish Massage when I go and I CAN'T WAIT :D

There, I've confessed to the world that I'm selfish and materialistic :( (I'm really not, I just needed to publicly justify all of my purchases so I wouldn't keep on feeling insanely guilty about treating myself). And also, I'm not going to buy anything for myself for like a year!

****Edit: Immediately after writing and posting this blog I was going through my google reader and reading a couple of posts from The Simple Dollar, as I had been meaning to do all day. The third post I clicked on was this post about not feeling guilty about buying certain items. Trent says "Here’s the real truth of the entire story. If it’s something you’re passionate about, you plan for it, and you can afford it, don’t feel guilty about buying it. There’s absolutely nothing “wrong” with living your life and enjoying the things you truly care about." Granted, watching tv isn't as great of a hobby as cooking, but the overall point is the fact that everything else in that sentence is true. Thanks Trent!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

I hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving! A short list of things I'm thankful for this year:

• The health of my friends and family
• A job that is rewarding and that I love
• Having amazingly supportive parents
• Working with a great group of coworkers
• Having a nice apartment and a cute but sometimes crazy puppy
• All of our friends here in Birmingham that I'm going to miss like crazy when we start to scatter all over the country
• A husband who is patient and kind even when I'm crazy and neurotic
• Tom and I working right across the street from each other so we can get by with only one car
• My oven light being fixed just in time for Thanksgiving Dinner!

We had a pretty amazing Thanksgiving Day. We started the day off with a Breakfast Casserole and some fresh fruit. I then made dessert (had to be put in the fridge for a while) and then got distracted by some pretty good deals on Bestbuy.com. Stay tuned to find out what I bought ;) The puppies were getting pretty rowdy (we're dog sitting miss Bentley), so we took them to the dog park to play, with the hopes that they would crash for the rest of the afternoon/evening while I cooked (it kinda worked). Then I came home and cooked up a pretty awesome meal with a TON of food while we watched football in the background. My menu consisted of:

• Herb roasted turkey
• Mom's Baked Oyster Casserole
• Homemade stuffing
• Baked apples
• And I was going to make glazed carrots but we seriously already had so much food I decided to just wait until another day to make the carrots.
• And for dessert......Chocolate chip cheesecake muffins! (with chocolate chips mixed in with the cheesecake mixture!)

With the leftover turkey I'm going to make Paige's Best Ever Homemade Turkey Noodle Soup, Pioneer Woman's Turkey Pot Pie, and some turkey salad.

Awesome things of last week

• We went to dinner (Habanero's...woo wooo) with our friends Brian and Anne who were heading out of town for a conference followed by Thanksgiving visits with family. Brian gave me this book from his dad (Thanks Mr. Dranka!!!) from The Pioneer Woman's website which I love!! Her recipes are awesome because she gives you a step-by-step photo how to. Saturday morning for breakfast we made Egg-in-a-hole and Tom said it's the best thing he's ever eaten....although, he says that at least once every 1-2 weeks...he's easy to please :)

• My favorite radio station in Birmingham, Live 100.5 always has awesome give-aways that you can call in to win. I've been trying to call in from time to time and you usually have to be caller #5 to win. I've called in probably 10 times and 9 of the times I was caller #4 (once I was caller #3). I was beginning to think that there was a conspiracy against me. Last week were driving to work, listening to the radio, as always, and Reg started talking about an acoustic concert coming up that benefits Children's Hospital. Train is the band who is playing and in case you don't remember, I kind of love their new song "Hey Soul Sister." Reg said he had a pair of tickets to give away to caller number 17. Totally random since he ALWAYS gives them to caller #5. So I decided to call and guess who is caller #5??? ME! Too bad I had to be caller #17 to win! So I called again and I was caller #13 and then I called again and I was caller #17!! Wooooo! I won!!! So Tom and I will be going to see an acoustic show of Train and Serena Rider (sp) Friday December 4th at 5 Points Music Hall if anyone wants to join us!! (Tickets are only $15).

• The next day driving into work we were listening to my favorite radio station again and they were giving away a $50 gift certificate to a local spa!! I've never been to the spa so I was going to try my luck and call in to win. Well, guess what? I was caller #5, I won, but since I won the day before I couldn't actually win :( Reg said he appreciates my honesty so I'm hoping he appreciates it enough to slip a $50 gift card to the spa in with my free Train tickets when I go to pick them up ;)

• Every Sunday I go out and buy the paper. A few weeks ago a friend told me she got a good deal on the paper, 26 weeks of the Sunday/Wednesday paper for $1/week. I checked the mail on Wednesday when we got home and there it was, the same exact offer! It was so wonderful to just open the front door and have the paper be there this morning!

This week should hold more awesome things as Thanksgiving is right around the corner! Stay tuned for more posts! I promise I'll be a better blogger this week!

Jason and Nicole's Ridiculously Awesome Wedding Weekend

Last Thursday we piled ourselves in the car and made the 12 hour drive to Pittsburgh to see Tom's good friend Jay get married. There are a couple of things you should know before I get started in case you don't have the pleasure of knowing Jay:

1) He's crazy (in a good way, of course). Completely wild. Just to give you an idea, I think he has an airhorn located in every room in his house in case the Flyers score a goal while he's not in front of the tv and he jumped in the pool in his tux after our wedding.

2) He's one of the most dedicated Philadelphia sports fans I've ever met

3) Nicole is from Pittsburgh

4) Philadelphia and Pittsburgh fans don't get along

The drive itself was not actually that bad. We had nothing but open road ahead of us both ways and didn't hit any traffic at all. Tom drove and I got to sit back and enjoy the scenary. We passed some interesting things along the way (specifically in West Virginia), including Fayetteville, WV, apparently voted one of the "Top 10 Coolest Small Towns in America" (seriously - they had a sign), home of Marian McQuade, founder of National Grandparents Day (another sign), and the western hemisphere's longest arch bridge (thank GOODNESS I didn't know how high up I was when we were driving over it...I might have freaked out at little!)

Friday we got to catch up with our good friends Joe and Laura while we waited for the rest of the crew to arrive. Jay wanted to make sure Pittsburgh knew that there were Philly fans in town.

Friday night was the rehearsal dinner at a fun little Italian restaurant, DeNunzio's. Thanks to Laura and my awesome detective work (and google), we found the restaurant without a problem. Jay got all of the groomsmen Phillies jerseys (except for Nicole's brothers - they got Steelers jerseys).

After the party it's the hotel lobby........(50 awesome points for whoever can name that song!) We caught up with everyone else after the rehearsal dinner. There was a cozy fireplace, a serious game of poker, and some not-so serious games including "One Brown Bear" and "Yama-Yama."

The ceremony itself was really nice. Oh, did I mention there were 22 people in the bridal party?! Yeah, it was huge.

We got to the reception and had a few minutes to mingle before the real ridiculousness began. They served PEPPERONI CHEESE as an hors devour which actually had tiny pieces of pepperoni in the cheese. This was the best thing ever and I can't believe I've never had it before!! I'm very excited about it and hope to find somewhere to buy it soon!!

Then the bridal party made their entrance. OF COURSE all of the guys had their Phillies/Eagles/Steelers jerseys on for this part. Each couple walked in to parts of different songs and then Jay and Nicole entered to the Rocky song "Eye of the Tiger." And they didn't just enter, they had a choreographed knock-out entrance complete with boxing gloves and the Rocky champion belt (Nicole won).

Next came the best Best Man speech ever. Jay's older brother Steve gave a really funny speech, and after everyone cheers'd he had one more question for everyone. "What is the best thing to ever come out of Pittsburgh, besides Nicole?" Of course all of the Pittsburgh people in the crowd started yelling "Six superbowl championships" but they were wrong. The real answer is "I-76 STRAIGHT TO PHILADELPHIA!!!!" and then immediately the Eagles fight song started blaring and all of the groomsmen and Jay stood up on their chairs (at the head table) and strated screaming the Eagles fight song. Awesome.

Just when everything calmed down again, the bridal party was called up for the bridal party dance. They started out slow dancing to "I've had the time of my Life" when all of the sudden the music stopped, everyone looked quite confused, and Bust A Move started playing. Everyone in the bridal party formed 2 lines across from their partner and Jay and Nicole started to bust a move down the line, followed by each couple in the wedding party. Luckily I had the inside scoop so I was able to get the whole thing on video. *Video to be posted soon - Be sure to check back, you don't want to miss this, trust me!*

Later in the night everyone was enjoying themselves on the dance floor when the DJ called Nicole to the center of the dance floor and placed a chair in the middle of the giant circle of people for her to sit on. Next thing we know, Jay has the mic and is wearing some pretty ridiculous props compliments of the DJ and starts serenading Nicole with Baby Got Back. Yeah, the whole thing, start to finish. Classy ;) Somehow I missed the garter toss which included a rubber chicken and a ginormous pair of old lady underwear. The rest of the evening was comprised of some great music, fun dancing, and even more props provided by the DJ.

Sunday we said our Goodbyes and made our 12 hour journey back home. We stopped to pick up Bailey from her BFF Jack's house on the way home and she was super excited to see us. Jack, however, was whining to Paige (his mommy) because he knew that us being there meant Bailey was about to leave. I'll post some pics of their Best Weekend Ever as soon as I get them from Paige. It looks like they had a blast!!