Christmas Time

Its Christmas Eve at the Beaverton Carey's this year. Buckle up kiddos its gonna be a bumpy ride.

The hubs and I are hosting My grandparents (2), parents (2), sister (1), cousin + fiance (2.5) that is a grand total of 9 people at my home that I will have to feed. HA. I pre-ordered a 8 pound bone in ham that I will pick up 12/20. I will make mashed potatoes, I think I will go with garlic mashed because lets face it, I am a garlic enthusiast. I will make green beans. I think just sautéed in, you guessed it GARLIC and olive oil. Simple, quick and healthy! My grandma is going to bring a fruit salad which is her specialty and my mother will bring green salad and the gravy making ingredients.   Of course I will try to make a traditional desert as well, pie? I don't know about that one.....

I am not concerned about the food I am mostly worried about seating. We only have the kitchen island which has 4 stools possibly could hold 6 and then our round dining table that holds 4 possible 6. I just don't want anyone to feel excluded.

Christmas eve at my house and then christmas day at MIL's. I am excited. I made her a homemade heart felt gift that I am pretty proud of. I am also excited for this because I will be enjoying the last day of a large breasted woman. AHHHH I am so ready for this.

Christmas time this year, (is awesome).

Happy Holidays everyone!

Pinterest food completions

I am one of the many Pinterest obsessed individuals out there. Not to mention I drool over the food pictures on there. Lately I have taken on two mouthwatering recipes.

Sticky buns. Look good. I was sad that they aren't from scratch. Pre packaged biscuits, syrup, cinnamon and brown sugar is all you need.

http://stamps4fun.blogspot.com/2011/10/traditions.html/

Mine

Then I made lasagna

Cooked noodles

Fresh onion

Italian sausage

Pressed garlic

All together in a sauce

Ricotta, mozzarella, parmesan

 Yummy Lasagna. On our first date to the Old Spaghetti Factory for Freshman homecoming hubby ordered "lasaGna" for years I thought he didn't know how to pronounce it right.

As a side I had to try the Hasselback bread.

http://pinterest.com/pin/73746512617969868/

Mine

 I used smoked Gouda. Delicious!

 As this recipe was from scratch I was much happier with it and will most likely make it again. I am a sucker for anything garlicy.

More sickness!

As you may have guessed by the post title, I am taking another sick day. I swear I have the cold from h-e- double hockey sticks!

On top of this horrible sickness I am experiencing, last night my sister called with what she thought was a broken foot. Yikes. My parents were otherwise occupied so Hubs and I were volunteered to take her to the ER. She hobbled up the front porch with an enormous ankle. We gave her ibuprofen and an ice pack and drove her AWD vehicle to the ER.

After only an hour and a half of waiting the x-rays determined that she did not have a fracture but an acute sprain on her ankle. A sprint and crutches later we are released. We got home only an hour after bed time. Yipee. My sister is taking pain meds and doing great now. Wahoo!!

Back to today-

Today I am home alone, hubby is well enough to attend work half day, holiday party the rest of the day! Lucky him.

I took the opportunity to clean the house HEAD TO TOE. I swear I cannot relax for the life of me. After 8 hours of sleep I wake up and can not rest. So 6AM this morning alarm goes off, cant breath due to mucus build up, call in sick again....and start cleaning. What is wrong with me?

I washed windows, dusted shelfs that haven't been touched since installment and swept hard surfaces. I took clorox wipes to every handle in the home. Seriously, multiple wipes on all door handles, knobs, keyboards etc. Hopefully nobody gets my sickness. I don't know what it is about cleaning but I LOVE IT!!.. The thrill of organization, knowing that every belonging has its place it makes me giddy and happy all at the same time! Does anyone else feel that way about organization? I have so much crap that I feel organizing it makes it all better.

This week marked the one year anniversary of us "meeting" our home. We were doing only saturday visits on potential homes. 10+ homes a saturday beginning in December 2010. Three weekends of home tours and we made the decision. Our house was the first house on the second weekend of tours. Any way, just a tidbit of nostalgia I experienced this week. Can't believe we spent every saturday for a month with our wonderful realtor and haven't seen her since. I bring this up as we just got a christmas card from her today. I absolutely adore her. She even sent a starbucks card, yum. Nothing better than free stuff....Moving on to what brought this up.

Last year hubby and I were saving up for our down payment to purchase this lovely home so we weren't in the space to buy everyone a present. His siblings partake in a name drawing so you are only responsible to purchase one person a gift. We felt awful being unable to do so due to our financial situation. My solution was to bake cookies for all families. Easy enough. I love to bake and everyone loves sweet treats. We had hoped for our financial situation to improve but alas, this year hubby's tuition is more than expected and we unfortunately aren't able to participate in name drawing again =( wah wah. So cookies again! I got all the necessary ingredients out as you can see in the messy prep station area. Oh how I wish my island was ready...No joke, I day dream about the work I could be doing on this island. Or how a party could be layed out with the help of said island.

 Hubby had requested chocolate chip, snicker doodle and mollasses cookies but while perusing the cook book I happened upon "Best Ever Sugar Cookies" so choose to tackle those, snickerdoodles and molasses cookies.

 They turned out well if I do say to my self. Even Dweet was enjoying them and the sun we had today.

Dude knows better than to sniff the human food.

I really hope to be well enough to attend work tomorrow. I have clients I NEED to help and really dread calling in sick. I feel guilty calling in. I went to work two days this week and almost dripped all over the office yesterday.