Christmas, Christmas time of year

Our holiday parties have already started! Yesterday we went to Kevin's aunt's house to celebrate with his entire side of the family. We had a great time - watched the kids open their gifts, had our white elephant gift exchange, visited with everyone and ate way too much food.

I think the big kids (Kevin and his cousins -- all age 30+) had more fun with the foam guns then the little kids they were given to! It may be an idea for the white elephant for next year :)

I love my white elephant gift - a Houston Texans snuggie. I've made fun of them since they came out, and I know that last year was the year of the snuggie but I am often slow to pick up on fads and I stand corrected - I used it last night while we watched a movie, and it is great - keeps me warm and my arms are free! Now I just have to keep Kevin and Smokey from claiming it as their own!

Its a busy time of year, we have another gathering today and a party on Tuesday night, and we'll celebrate with my side of the family after Christmas. Hope everyone else is having a wonderful Christmas season!!

I brought this layered greek dip to the party. Its a recipe I got from my friend who got it from her mother-in-law, and it is SO good.

8 oz block of cream cheese or neufatel cheese

juice of one lemon

1 tbsp of Italian Seasoning

Hummus (make your own or store bought) - (my notes: I made mine)

medium cucumber

chopped tomato (about a cup) – (my notes: used 2 tomatoes)

kalamata olives or black olives (1/4 or 1/2 cup) – (my notes: buy sliced NOT chopped)

chopped green onions (about 1/2 cup)

feta cheese (1/4 or 1/2 cup)

Let the cream cheese soften for about 30 minutes or so at room temperature. Mix with lemon juice and italian seasoning. Then layer. First Cream cheese, then hummus, then cucumber, tomato, olives, green onion, and feta. Serve with pita chips or cucumbers.

Hummus recipe -- I use a recipe that doesn't call for tahini so I can use things we usually have around the house, and think it tastes just fine :)

I do think it tastes better if its made the night before, so I made it the night before and refrigerated, it seems to 'mellow' the cumin flavor.

1 can garbanzo beans/chickpeas
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon cumin

In a food processor, blend all ingredients together until smooth and creamy.

Product Review

It is long overdue, but I've finally done the product review I'd mentioned earlier.

I used my gift certificate to buy shoes from CSN stores - they were super cute (black, mary jane style), but even though they are my usual size when I got them they were too big so I had to send them back. CSN's service department was really easy to work with, which was a relief since
I HATE having to return things, especially online. I just filled out a form online saying why I needed to return it and had a mailing label emailed to me. I was able to pack it back into the original box and send it back via UPS, at no cost to me - hooray!

This experience confirmed why I don't buy shoes (or clothes) online - I need to be able to try them on to make sure they fit how I want them to. I'm still amazed that Kevin can just pull a shirt or pair of pants off the shelf and buy it without needing to try it on. I did consider ordering the next smaller size of the same style of shoes, but decided not to push my luck - I'll stick with buying shoes in person. Instead, I bought some kitchen items. loooove kitchen items.

I bought a gravy separator (I call it a fat separator) and am waiting until I get a chance to use it. I wish I'd had this item at Thanksgiving! We had Thanksgiving at our house so when we worked on breaking down the turkey, we didn't have all of the items we usually have at my parents' house. My dad and I went to TWO different stores trying to find a gravy separator without success. We had to settle for a plastic cup and poked a small hole in it, its not pretty but it worked. Next time I'll use this item - it has a strainer on the top to make sure only the liquids get into the cup and the spout is at the bottom so that the fat floats to the top and you can pour the broth off from the bottom. I love the way this one looks - it reminds me of the glassware from chemistry lab.

I also bought a melon baller, I love watermelon and cantaloupe and love the way that melon balls look.....mmmm melon, almost makes me ready for spring (almost). I did try to use the melon baller the other night when I was making spinach balls, but the baller is too small to use for that purpose, oh well it will work well for melon. I have a great melon salad recipe that it will come in very handy for, and they look so much cuter as balls then as cubes - making CUTE food is a valid argument for kitchen tools.

While I was ordering from CSN, I went ahead and got a second garlic press for my dad. I love the one I got so much, and he used it at Thanksgiving and said its better than the one he has at home. I have found that it works better if I go ahead and peel the garlic - that way the skin doesn't get stuck in the place where you put the full clove, but it does work either way. I love getting to be LAZY and still having fresh pressed garlic.

Wrapped house

On Saturday morning, I looked out the window to see that our house got wrapped overnight. My first thought was s%$, I really needed one more thing to do this morning. and where was our fearless guard dog? He must've slept right through it, because we didn't hear a peep from him all night. Guard dog fail!

Its the first time our house has been wrapped, but probably won't be the last. I have to think we're the perfect target because - since we don't have kids - we're unlikely to find out who did it and won't 'return the favor'. Toilet paper is harmless fun, at least it wasn't eggs...

Looking at it a little bit more I realized whoever did it, did a pretty good job - we were tempted to leave it up (could we call it our Christmas decorations?), but figured the HOA wouldn't look too kindly on it.

Clean-up was easier than I thought it would be, we just dragged out the trashcan and picked it all up off the ground and from the low parts of the trees. One of our neighbors even came over with his little boy and helped us to clean up, really nice of him to do that, and it gave us the opportunity to meet them. A couple of neighborhood girls also came over to help - they had fun trying to lift each other up to get the TP out of the trees. One of them mentioned that their PTA will 'flamingo' a person's yard as a fundraiser - 300 plastic flamingos in a person's yard, glad THAT didn't happen!

The people who did it used the good stuff, I think it was nicer than what I buy for the house, and they used a lot of it - we found 9 rolls scattered around the yard. If the parents didn't know about it, they were in for quite a surprise when a full package of good TP disappeared overnight.

Seeing the toilet paper in the trees reminded me of when I went to a slumber party and we wrapped the birthday girl's next door neighbor's house. My parents' house also got wrapped several times. I spent more than one morning helping clean up the mess. Kevin said it never happened to his house growing up!

Anyone else remember wrapping a house or cleaning up their wrapped house?

Here are a few photos.

I try really hard not to be materialistic, but have to say I LOVE my new phone! Our contract was finally up on our phones, and since I was ready to throw mine out the window we went last weekend to pick out new phones.

We've been using blackberries that we got when Kevin's work wanted him to get one. Another job and a semester of school later, we were finally able to get rid of them for some FUN phones.

Its amazing the difference of what you can do on a phone made for fun vs one made for keeping up with work. I still don't know how to work all the features on the phone, and have made a couple of oopsy phone calls (and not known how to STOP the phone call once), but we're having fun learning them, and I LOVE that since we both got the same phone anytime one of us figures something out we can show the other one....really helps to make it easier to learn the phone :)

Song critic

We love music and love to listen to the radio and to CDs (and in Kevin's case, records) at home.

A while back we noticed that a certain song would make our dog howl and howl. Recently, the list of songs that make him howl is getting longer, and its to the point where we can't even listen to the song because it sounds so sad I just have to turn it off. Here are the songs so far:

the first: "Let it Die" by the Foo Fighters At first we joked that he must've been a Kurt Cobain fan and was in mourning

Add to that:

"Break" by Three Days Grace its the song with the lyrics, "at night I feel like a vampire" (what does that even mean?)

"You're Going Down" by Sick Puppies <-- this one is the worst, and he starts howling before I even recognize

the song there may be one more, but those are the big three

Is he trying to tell us he's a country fan?

The worst was when we were in the car and one of the songs came on, he already cries in the car and add to it the song, poor Smokey Sometime we need to video it so you can see how bad it really is, or win money with America's Funniest Home Videos. I can't believe that show is still on the air, I see commercials for 4-hour blocks of it, I can watch it for a bit but no way could I take crotch shots and falls for 4-hours..