Fill in the Blank Friday!

1.   I wish       I could find some more fun things to do around here and make some friends.  And stop worrying so goddamn much.  Also that my sister would move here and stay with me forever in sisterly happiness.

2.  Yesterday I   Had sushi with Chris and Cynthia, beat my stupid Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Gamecube game, and watched some TV.  Chris after insisting that we watch Twilight Eclipse, fell asleep during it and then begged me to turn it off.

3.  Today I will      work till 5, possibly return some things via UPS, bake something for tomorrow, and have a few drinks with my manfriend.

4.  Tomorrow I will   go to trivia finals and compete for $1000.  Not that we're really going to win, but it would be a pretty awesome after party if it were to randomly happen.  Then meet up with the trivia people at Jon & Sara's house.  Yay for being invited to a party!  I thought we'd never make any friends!

5.  Maybe      I got some Christmas gifts in the mail that I can wrap this evening.  Wrapping presents is easily one of my favorite activities ever. 

6.  Someday        We will get a puppy.  And redecorate and re-floor our condo. 

7.  I love       lamp.

Fill in the Blank Friday!

1.   Holiday spirit       makes me happy.

2.  The holidays are incomplete without   Bing Crosby, White Christmas, a family member saying something inappropriate when mom is reading a bible passage at dinner, and dad sitting on the floor and handing out presents.

3.  My favorite things to do around the holidays is      baking and singing and drinking wine with Elise!

4.  A holiday tradition my family and I have is   complaining about whatever mom has cooked for Christmas dinner.  Getting into a fight about vacuuming the house.  Complimenting the green wreath that Jaclyn and David colored when they were little.

5.  Holiday music is      Pretty freeking awesome.  I love the Christmas CDs that my mom puts in every year and singing at Church.  Also Handel's Messiah sing in is always fun.  I'm not a huge fan of radio Christmas music, they seem to always play the same five songs.  Sleigh Ride, Baby It's Cold Outside, The Christmas Song, Silver Bells, and It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas.

6.  This year, I'll be spending the holidays        at my house with my parents.  This year is the first time Chris and I will actually be spending the holiday together.  We'll have fake Christmas with his parents at some point afterward.

7.  Holiday wish list       My renewed sanity.  A decent night's sleep.  A non anxious day and night with my man friend.

Pre-Thanksgiving Post

I do not have much to report here this week.

This weekend, Chris and I went to his parent's to put up their Christmas tree, do some decorating, and some holiday baking.  We played pool for a bit, drove all the way home to bring back the correct type of walnuts (I wasn't aware there was a wrong type of walnut), and went out to dinner.  I like going out to dinner with the in-laws.  It's usually at a really nice place and we eat and have some wine and usually have a very serious conversation about whatever, which ultimately boils down to a hilarious relaxed conversation, but always only after we've paid the bill.  I don't understand why his parents suddenly get hilarious at the end of a meal, and we start having a good time, then it's time to go home.  Very odd.

I'm doing really good on the calorie counting this week.  I'm down a whole 3 pounds in one week.  Not too bad if I do say so myself.  The goal is around 2 pounds per week or at least 5 pounds a month, which would put me at 50 pounds lost by the time our wedding rolls around in one year.  That leaves me with eating about 1500 calories a day, which is really not very much.  Granted, we were eating a ridiculous amount of calories before, but I'm in a bit of a cranky-hungry mood this week.  I'm thinking it will start to get better and pass altogether once I get my body used to it.  Also, I'm planning on joining a gym after Thanksgiving, so if I do any exercising I can up my calorie intake a bit that day and still reach my weight goal for the week.  I started this journey at 220 pounds.  I'm at 214 right now, and hopefully will continue to drop steadily from now on. 

Elise and Jason are coming for Thanksgiving!  I am so very excited to do all of our holiday baking.  I have so much fun when my sister comes to visit and we have a lot of wine and dance around the kitchen.  Our baking list for Thanksgiving is as follows:

• Apple Pie
• Pumpkin Pie
• Pecan-Caramel Cheesecake
• Chocolate Mousse Cake
• Cinnabons for Friday morning breakfast

It should be majorly delicious.  Jason is planning on moving in with us when his lease is up at the end of the year, so we will be planning a trip down to Virginia to help him get his stuff and put most of it in storage.

I'm really feeling the Christmas spirit and have started listening to Christmas music already.  I know it's early, but I was in the mood. I'm dragging Chris with me to Target later so we can buy a tree and put up the ornaments that I brought from home. 

I checked out one of the local Roman Catholic churches on Sunday.  I need to become a parishioner somewhere around here so we would be eligible to sign up for our pre-cana or pre-marriage classes that are required for us to get married at my church back home.  It was epic and modern and so strange.  Much different from things at St. Raymond's.  There was preachy music played by a guy that sounded like John Denver, 2 jumbo trons and video cameras everywhere showing slide shows of the readings and whoever was talking at the time, inspirational videos shown before mass and as part of the homily.  There's a cafe that looks like a Starbucks in the lobby and a lounge with a fireplace, and they had so much staff.  There was a person like every 10 feet with a little ID badge on.   There was a street entrance that looked like the big stone facade thing of a country club.  You could tell that they had a lot of money to blow on updating and maintaining the place.  I e-mailed the info address to find out about becoming a parishioner and they said they already responded to me.  They have a program set up for you to hear about the church and have dinner before filling out your registration.  Seriously, it's intense.  I'm going to take Elise with me to mass on Sunday for moral support while I sign up for the program thingy.  It should be pretty interesting. 

Can it be Wednesday yet?  I miss my sister.

Julibean <3

Holy Crap Frosting to the Max!

Today my sister and I decided to make all of the cakes and frosting needed for all of our future Wilton decorating classes at once. We ran to Michael's, Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and the Supermarket to get all the necessary supplies, which included 16 pounds of powdered sugar and 4 huge canisters of shortening. We made 3 - two or three layer cakes each and threw them in the freezer. Our teacher explained to us the proper way of preserving cakes and frosting in the freezer to be defrosted and decorated at a later date. Apparently freezing things keeps everything wet and creates nice moist cakes, but refrigerating dries everything out so it's not really useful for stuff like this or bread, etc. Who knew? We used boxed cake mixes because it really doesn't matter what the cake is like, this is a decorating class, not a baking class. Then we had to make 16 batches of butter cream frosting.




We needed to make stiff consistency frosting for when we do our decorating. When I say stiff, I mean stiff. We nearly broke our mom's professional stand mixer. It got seriously overheated and made this awful noise and we had to turn it off and figure out another way to mix it all up. Long story short... we were in the kitchen for about 7-8 hours today while watching the Super Bowl here and there as things were baking. I think if I'm actually doing this for a living I'm going to need one of those squishy floor mats so my feet don't feel like they're about to fall off every evening when I finish working.

My dad gave me one of the old digital cameras we have lying around the house and I plan on taking pictures of the things I bake and decorate and posting them up here. Once I have something worth taking a picture of, I will figure out how you actually get photos up on here. My CALI classes start in two days and I'm so excited. My syllabus sounds amazing (and delicious) and I can't wait to get started.

Tomorrow I will be de-Christmasing the house some more. Our house has a serious clutter/mess problem. My mother is a bit of a hoarder and we have trouble getting things organized or throwing anything away. The house is always covered in papers, books, magazines, laundry, shopping, coats, etc. We consider it an achievement if our Christmas tree is down by Super Bowl Sunday, I think the longest we ever made it was Valentine's Day, possibly even St. Patrick's Day, I really can't recall. So Elise and I took it upon ourselves to de-Christmas the house this weekend. There's only so long into February that you can look at a nativity scene, menorah, and ornaments without wanting to kill yourself. Also, the sheer amount of Christmas paraphernalia we have in the house is astonishing. Crates and crates, and tupperwares and boxes galore. I would estimate that half of the attic/basement is full of decorations. Not only that, but my mother has an entire set of Christmas china, glassware, serving dishes, etc. The set has a billion pieces and takes up a hell of a lot of room, and there is quite a production of switching the china in the cabinet from regular china to Christmas china so it can be on display during the season. I shit you not.

This Christmas things got severely out of hand. I don't know if I've seen in this bad in a really long time. Mom has been trying to clean out as much of her classroom as possible since the school she teaches will be closing this year. This means that there is even more junk that we never even knew existed infiltrating our current war zone of a living space. As Elise and I went through all of the boxes, making sure to label everything and match the labels up with the corresponding boxes as to make the process as easy as possible, I came upon a box that said "outdoor icicle lights and garland". Inside I found: unopened packages of Thanksgiving plates and napkins, fourth of July place mats, red white and blue lights, two ceramic pumpkin dishes that were being stored inside a Christmas bag, an Easter faberge egg, and a Snoopy figurine with bunny ears and an Easter basket. There has been an explosion of holidays and it has to stop.






Mom has been dying to get a puppy for about two years now. I still maintain that we should only get a puppy if the house is entirely cleaned so that there is nothing on the floor in any room that a dog might eat or destroy. This has probably not happened in my home since my parents moved into it in 1983. If you ever wonder why my siblings and I are so anal about organizing or frequently spout sonnets about how clean our future houses are going to be, you need only take a look at our family home around the holidays. It is a nightmare of epic proportions. My brother barely bothers to come home for Christmas any more because he mentally cannot handle the mess. So here's to finishing the de-Christmasing process tomorrow... for once and for all.

Julibean <3