Cookie Party

Today I hosted my first ever cookie party!  I have been wanting to do this for a few years but have either been too busy, or just not had the right timing/groups of people to do this with.  In my family, it was a tradition to make my grandmothers sugar cookie recipe, frost them, and hand them out to family and friends.  My dad will never let me forget the year that my brother and I both reached into the oven with bare hands to pull out cookie sheets.  And it wasn't like we did it at the same time.  My brother had reached in to grab it and burned his fingers and then shortly after I managed to touch a pan that had just come out of the oven.  Those are the kinds of memories that really stick with you.  :P

For today's event I decided I wanted to recreate the basic idea of the cookie decorating that I used to do, so I made up a batch of grandma's cookies, rolled out the dough, and cut them all out.  I ended up making two batched of cookies so everyone would have the ability to take home a dozen cookies if they wanted.  We had cookies everywhere!  

Playing with the dough and adding flour to make it not super sticky so I could roll it out

Working the dough to get it all rolled out on my way to small counter.  You can see the tub of peanut butter cookies I just had baked yesterday. 

A few samples of the cookies I cut out.  The F-22s were big hits.  Of course some thought it was a two legged Christmas tree or Sponge Bob Square Pants side kick.  :)

The party was really for the ladies to get together and socialize as much as it was to frost and quality control test some cookies.  We had lots of frosting options and decorations to add on.  Our creations were definitely one of a kind.

I think everyone had a pretty good time.  I hope that this can become and annual event.  It reminded me a lot of all those holidays where my family used to do this.  I think it's a nice tradition to have and one that doesn't involve technology gadgets and hi-tech toys; well unless you count my mixer (god help me if I didn't have that!)  I did learn that I probably made too many cookies, but honestly, is this ever really a problem with you live with a cookie monster?

Company Cheer!

One of the perks of Rob's job is being invited to a real office Christmas Party.  This is the first one that either Rob or I had ever been invited to, so we were pretty excited about it.  Not knowing what to wear, we inquired about the dress code and found out people get really decked out for this event.  Nifty! 

His company threw quite the bash at the Hilton near the airport this Saturday.  The party started at 7pm with a proper cocktail hour and mingling.  I was able to meet a lot of Rob's co-workers and other people at the company.  They had nothing but nice things to say about him.  During the cocktail hour, they had a photographer taking free professional photos of everyone that came.  We didn't know they were going to do this, so I took a few minutes to grab a proper photo of us before we left the house.

 

The dinner was really delicious and was followed up with dancing and door prizes.  We didn't win anything, but it was a lot of fun to see others winning.  I guess we are going to have to buy our own TV.  Oh well.  :)

Hung by the Chimney with Care...

Our holiday sewing activities continue with the making of stockings.  Rob and I had set we bought from Target or some place that were the generic red fuzzy stockings which were cute and all, but lacking some personality.  When we bought the material for the tree skirt, we also decided to use the same fabric to make some stockings.  We thought it would be nicer to have homemade ones that we created.  Years from now we will tell our kids, "We made those the first year we were married."  And it will be all "awww" and stuff.

Having made many Halloween costumes without a pattern, I had pretty good confidence I would do it with these as well.  I used an extremely scientific measuring device to make sure I had enough fabric.  I hijacked a store stocking that was completed and flopped it onto the fabric and then flipped it and told her to cut "about there".  I think she was somewhat amused by this tactic. 

I decided to try and document this process through the wonders of digital photography. 

I didn't buy the store model I used to make the initial assessment of how much fabric I was going to need, but I think I did alright.  I mostly followed the stocking we owned (remembering to allow for seams) and made it a little taller.  The fabric we found was amazing on many counts because it was pre-quilted, two sided fabric.  That left a lot of middle steps out once again and allowed me to pretty much just sew them up.

 Then I hired an assistant.  She was more interested in the pin cushion than anything.

Although she did monitor my cutting progress pretty well.  And she kept track of my stockings after I was finished.

Ok, so maybe the cat was a pretty big distraction in my sewing project, but it was totally worth it.

The cut projects look pretty similar to the model.  I guess we are on track here.   I sewed them up with a 5/8" seam and left the tops open.  

Then I decided to cut the top folds of the stockings and add the bias tape.  That stuff is awesome!  What is not shown here is the added embellishment of the gold squiggles again.  After that, I sewed the top part into a circle and lined it up with the base to sew it together.  I am not kidding when I say, this took my 15 minutes to figure out which way to sew this on.  I couldn't for the life of me get the flipping from wrong side to right side figured out because of the fold down of the top part on the right side.  If you understand that, then A+ for you.  Eventually I made it, because I did get a finished product.

I think they turned out pretty awesome and are now completely unique items that will hopefully stay with us for many years to come.  Now if I could find stocking hooks that I actually liked, I think we would be in business!

Holiday Sewing Adventures

For as long as I have owned my tree (now going on 5 years) I have always wanted a tree skirt.  I find this kind of odd because I never had one in my house growing up.  We used to make do (and my parents still do) with a white bed sheet that always serves this purpose.  That aside, I thought it would be relatively simple to find one.  The first year I was just happy to have a tree, so I said, "next year."  Since then it has become the running theme.

Most of the ones I do find fit into one of the two categories; Ugly and/or Expensive.  Since I wanted neither of these things I thought I could wait until the after Christmas sale to find one that was at least Used to be Expensive, but pretty.  It never quite worked out that way.  Oh well.  So here we are at year 5 of putting up my tree (which I love) and I decided I had enough hunting with pitiful results. 

The wonderful thing about owning a sewing machine is you can make most anything you need to if you want to. A quick Google search revealed many options for tree skirts.  I was surprised by how many of them still fell into the Ugly category.  I finally found one that was really generic which was perfect.  I am not sure I am really a Sewing 4 Dummies kind of person, but their pattern/instructions was exactly what I wanted.  Nothing too terribly complicated, but ideally spells out all of the things I would need and did some math for me.  I learned the C=2*pi*r, but I really didn't want to figure it out.  Off to the store we went!

I do have to mention we went on Saturday after Black Friday so I was worried the place was still going to be a zoo/really picked over.  They were having a 3 day sale, so the prices were still really good.  So we wandering to the Christmas fabric and started to browse when Rob spotted some pretty awesome fabric.  It was a doubled sided pre-quilted fabric with shimmery red on one side and shimmery green on the other.  The pattern had said that I would need two fabrics to sew together, but with this one, that step was eliminated.  Wohoo!  We located the bias tape we would need and Velcro to keep it closed.  We even went one step further and found some gold bric-a-brac to run along the edge of it.

I am really glad that my grandmother taught my how to sew all those years ago and that it's a skill I have kept in fairly decent use even today.  So assembling this project together took a couple of hours, but that was all.  The finished result looks better than anything sold in the stores (in our opinion) and it was really easy.

So here's the materials needed:
1 1/4 yards of material for each top and bottom - can be the same fabric (2 1/2 yards total) or different ones
6 yards of bias tape
Velcro Strips - found a package of 2 3"inch long pieces
Appropriate thread

We added 12 yards of gold bric-a-brac found in the ribbon aisle.  We had some left over, which is being used in the matching stocking project.  They also mention adding appliques and other embellishments as you see fit.  Anyone who has even limited sewing skills can pull this off.  :)

Total Cost for Project - $22.50 - Thank you sales and coupons!

Deck The Halls

We have paused and given Thanksgiving it's proper recognition and now we can charge onto Christmas*!  And Christmas isn't Christmas without a few sparkles and nick knacks being put up.  It's my tradition to wait until the Friday after Thanksgiving to pull out decorations.  It just seems wrong to do this beforehand, even if there is only one month between the two holidays.  It's bad enough the stores push it, it can wait to come to my house.

I thought it would be a fun idea to put up all the decorations and transform the house while Rob was at work (with his consent), but that didn't exactly happen.  When I was living on my own and decorating my own place, I had everything up in a few hours.  But Rob and I both love this holiday a lot and we have a LOT of decorations.  I am not talking about a couple of boxes.  We take up exactly one entire closet just for the stuff we put out for Christmas.  This equates to six 20 gallon totes, a 7 1/2 foot tree, plus a few paper box style boxes for the over flow that wouldn't fit in the totes.  It's a little overwhelming. 

I woke up on Friday around 10am, got all excited about the day ahead of me and immediately got side tracked by The Hunger Games book.  (Fabulous read btw and thank you Meghann for suggesting it!)  Around 12:30, I decided I need to eat and take a shower.  At 1:30 I figured I would pop in Love Actually and start in on my task for the day.  At 3pm, I still hadn't found all the boxes.  The lights were missing and weren't in the designated closet.  This is when I realized we didn't fit in one closet.  We have some serious issues.  Rob arrived home right around 4pm and found me with half opened boxes, kind of staring around and wondering what to do next.  I unwrapped a good many things I knew we wanted to put out, but I couldn't bring myself to organize them in any sort of fashion.  I did manage to arrange the ceramic Santa's along the mantle above the fire place.  That was my greatest accomplishment. Not exactly the progress I wanted to make.  Truthfully, I was also enjoying being a down right bum. 

Needless to say, I hadn't managed the winter wonderland look I was going for, but felt much better with the idea of reinforcements.  We puttered a bit more and between the two of us got the tree set up properly.  I was having trouble with the lights which seemed to just come on for Rob at the touch of his hands so he fed them to me while I worked them through the branches.  We called it quits and left the ornaments for Saturday.

On Saturday we tinkered with some more decorations and I left the house for the first time in days so we could pick up some books at the library and go to Jo-Ann Fabrics so we could create our own tree skirt.  (Stay tuned for Holiday Sewing Adventures.)  There was still some daylight left after out errands so I decided to put up the outside lights.  Really this is nothing super fancy, just some white lights between the porch rails, but I like it.  This sounds like the simplest task, but I have a way of complicating things to make myself do this twice.  That and I am prone to be a perfectionist.  I started with the lights going straight from my bulb to socket converter with about 7 feet hanging between it and the railing.  I figured I had enough to still do the front of the porch (trying to remember back to how wide my porch was in Atlanta).  I got through all 4 strands before I realized that was way wrong.  So I went back inside, got an extension cord and proceeded to redo the whole thing.  Did I mention that it was about 40 with whipping winds and I seem to misplaced my gloves?  BUT the porch looks fabulous and is brighter than the runway at Dulles.

On Sunday I believe we finally finished putting up everything.  So instead of 5 hours, it took 3 days, but it looks lovely and we were enjoying the process, so who cares?

*For those of you who do not celebrate Christmas, fill in whatever decorating holiday that falls around this time of year that's most appropriate to you.

Black Friday

I thought it would be seasonally appropriate for me to chime in on what is being touted as the "busiest shopping day of the year".  I will go ahead and agree that it is probably the busiest day for the shopping centers aside from the final days before Christmas when people again loose their minds and decide they need to buy 300 other things to make the "perfect Christmas". 

Many people asked me if I was going shopping on Black Friday to which I replied, "Hell no!"  The reactions I got were bipolar in nature.  I either got the people that gave me the sympathetic nod of understanding or, "Why not?!" as if I was some kind of alien.  Let me tell you why not.  First, I hate crowds.  I avoid them like the plague.  There has to be a really good reason for me to deal with crowds (see this post).  Secondly, I would have to get up at 3am or earlier to wait in line in the cold and throw elbows to make sure I wasn't stampeded.  And lastly, I would have to deal with the rude people which when coupled with crowds is toxic.  I tell people I wouldn't be able to handle it and I would be hauled away and convicted of murder before the day is out.

So why do people get all crazed up and brave the hysteria?  I think there are is a small percentage of the population that really targets the stores they want to go to and exactly what they want to buy.  A+ for you guys.  You take advantage of the sales that apply to the things you really need to get.  I believe the rest of the crowd is out there for the "good deals".  And this, I have to say, is really stupid.  There are only a few really super awesome good deals that the stores have which are generally sold out moments after opening.  The rest of the sales from what I could see were good, but not really all that different from sales at any other time of the year.  For instance, the Micheal's ad (I realize this isn't Best Buy but bare with me) that came Thanksgiving day was filled with 40% off sales.  They are always having 40% off sales.  They did have a small selection of items that were on really good deals, but it's nothing I wanted to buy.  The Bed Bath & Beyond was just a 20% off your entire purchase.  Um, ok really?  I have about 20 of those 20% off coupons and if you get the right sales person they will let you do multiple transactions.  No deal.  Saving $150 off a TV, hmm, tempting, but again, you won't have it in stock by the time I get there and well, my sanity is worth $150 to me.  The $1.39 DVDs at Wal-Mart were tempting if you really wanted to own Ice Age 2 or Lord of The Rings (non box set).  The other things I really considered was the $70 Cuisinart Food Processor that was on sale from like $150.  Clearly I didn't make it.

I shop to the lists that people have given me for what they want for Christmas.  I am not getting out of bed at 3am to save on wool socks for my dad.  It's just not going to happen.  Which brings me to another point on these sales.  The sales are on things that no one asked for or on things I don't really need.  The sales on clothes I might go for, but it would be for me and not other people, which just seems wrong this time of year so I don't bother.  I always tell myself, other people are getting me stuff for Christmas and just to be happy with that (not to mention if I still want something after the holidays the sales after Christmas are even better).  They can come out for the super dupper awesome deals, but again, nothing I have asked for is going to be in those ads.  Wait, I take that back, they might be able to use the 50% off at Borders (which goes all weekend) to get me a book.  Also both of our families (Rob's and mine) are born deal hunters and have never relied on the deals of Black Friday for their Christmas shopping.  I don't know if they ever have in the past, but certainly not as of late.  My dad has actually really gotten on the whole on-line ordering.  He says, "If I can shop from the comfort of my own home and get everything delivered to me, why would I bother standing in line at some store?"  You might see where I get my attitude from.

This opinion on Black Friday might change when I have kids and there's some Tickle Me Elmo that will break my kids hearts if they don't get it.  As far as I can tell though, that's a good few years down the road.  For the first 5 years of their life they don't really care what they get because they don't have school friends to tell them what they are missing.  Until then I will enjoy decorating my tree and eating leftovers while watching holiday movies. 

Appliance Logisitics Management

This blog title and my job title are pretty similar so you might think there might be a transferable skill or two that might make Thanksgiving Day Chaos in the Kitchen a little less so.  I have given this all of 5 minutes of thought and decided that yes, there are some skills I have that could be put to good use to determine what to cook when and where.  However, the thought of making a project schedule for Thanksgiving is a little too dorky, even for me.  But if we aren't going to use a project schedule to get everything cooked on delivered to the table while it's pipping hot, then how in the world do you do it?

Magic.  That's the best answer I can come up with.  Given the amount of time the turkey takes in the oven which very few if any other dishes can be cooking at the same time (in us single oven homes) and limitations of a 4 burner stove.  Then there is the question of when exactly the turkey will decide it's done.  Pretty much all of dinner hinges on how finicky your bird is.  Generally you can ball park the half an hour to an hour it will be done given the handy dandy decoder ring that comes on the back of all turkey packages.  But that doesn't help if you guess wrong by 45 minutes.

If you think about it, it's kind of like a race.  There is a decent warm up period where you wash the bird and get it all "happy" as Emeril would say.  Stretch the birds legs, rub it down and toss it on a rack on the oven while trying not to ooze raw turkey germs every place.  Once that oven door closes, it's like the shot is fired and you are off!  You only have 4 hours to mash potatoes, stuff the stuffing, make green bean casserole, bake bread/rolls, get the gravy going, make some sweet potato casserole, find room for all of this in your kitchen, set the table which includes finding serving spoons and dishes for everything you are making, watch 4 pots, and make 3 pies (if you have no sense and didn't do this a day or two before and if that's the case, I really pity you).  Let's not forget the how many times you are going to need to wash/rinse and reuse measuring cups and spoons unless you are crazy and have 2 or 3 sets like Rob and I do.  Oh right, and then calmly come to the table gracefully without hair full of flour or bits of potato on your clothes and preferably not sweating like a pig.  Thanks Martha Stewart.

Some of these things can be done the day before or by innocent bystanders, but they always seem to be really into the game on TV while you are frantically chopping away at the carrots and potatoes.  However, even with all your prep work, that final leg is like a give it your all to win the race finish.  Things are moving in an out of the oven like a revolving door at Macy's on Black Friday, dishes are getting added to the sink as if it should be bottomless and people start to hover in anticipation while things fly to the table.  It's amazing it all comes together (usually) in the eleventh hour.  I do remember one Thanksgiving where my mother had everything on the kitchen table and we ate the whole meal before we realized the stuffing had been left in the microwave.  You win some, you loose some.  More for leftovers later.  :)

So while we are all racing to the finish this Thanksgiving, remember to set a good pace and just finish strong.  Graceful would be a plus, but getting the turkey on the table is all that really matters in the end.