Goodbye 2008

I can't believe that another year has gone by. It feels like everything has changed and nothing has changed. This seems like the perfect time to quickly look at some of the events of the year, both the highs and lows.

Highs

• Experienced the genius of Dexter for the first time (and second, and third).
• Had the most amazing vacation in Tulum ever.
• Had some great times with Marianne: Bodies Revealed, shopping, and Disneyland.
• Rediscovered the raw power of Oz.
• Downloaded Ms. Pacman onto my phone and became exponentially more awesome.
• Refined the qualities I'm looking for in a man. And found an outlet to search for Mr. Not-Horrible.
• Baby Miabella was born.
• Fell in love with Don Draper.
• Finally bought a Wii and became the most awesome person ever at Mario Kart.
• Traveled for work with Dyena & Laura
• Vince Vaughn

Lows

• Became annoyed with people who insist on taking pictures of themselves sleeping in on holidays when I have to work.
• Became annoyed with people in the bathroom.
• Became annoyed with my boss.
  
• Mourned the loss of good TV for far too long because of the writer's strike.
• Sprained my ankle and had to hop around for a month.
• Lost my work buddy.
• Vince Vaughn.

All in all, it was a great year! The good far outweighed the bad. I'm looking forward to an even better 2009!

And yes, this entire post is the equivalent of a TV clip show. Be glad it wasn't a very special episode about our changing bodies.

I just died a little

I may never recover from this.




















My world is crumbling.

Cookie Party 2008

This Saturday was our 6th Annual Christmas Cookie Decorating Party, and Molly and I had a great time, as always. Friday night we made the Cream Cheese Roll-Out Cookies since they are the cookies everyone decorates. Here are the 2 huge pans of plain cookies.








We also ended up making the dough for some of the others since they needed to refrigerate anyway.

We both woke up early on Saturday, eager to get started. Here we are before everyone showed up.














See the aprons? We're such professionals!

We got started baking the Maple Yule Logs (since those also need to be frosted) and setting up the living room. My house is pretty small so I had to move some furniture out so I could fit all the tables and chairs in.














We only put out about half the sprinkles that we had and they still didn't make a dent in them. Maybe we can stop buying sprinkles this year.

Our Pre-Party started around 11:30 am when Kim arrived. She's our favorite decorator and she is fantastic at baking as well so we recruited her help early. I think she's doing dishes here.














See why we love having her around? She helped frost the Maple Yule Logs, made the Santa's Thumb Prints, manned the oven for long periods of time and was in charge of the icing. She was in charge of the icing last year and did such a great job that it might now be her permanent job. Anything we need done, Kim's right there ready to help out. Plus she comes up with some really cute cookie decorations!

This year we tried something new. Kim made a big batch of icing and then we transferred it to small containers to mix in the color. Then the icing was funnelled into squeeze bottles. It was a brilliant idea that either Molly or I got from some one's blog (and unfortunately I can't figure out which one so I can't thank the genius who thought of this). Here are about 1/2 our icing bottles.














You would not believe how much easier it was to decorate the cookies with the bottles as opposed to tubs of icing and knives and toothpicks. Plus it was much less messy!

Here's Matea showing her 2-bottle method.














I should also mention that Tea was a huge help as well. She was a champion icing mixer and stamped most of the Stamped Butter Cookies.

Mia even stopped by for a while.














She was wearing the most adorable pink boots. She came ready to party!

Here are some of the final products.














I believe these beauties are Kim's creations.














By the end of the day, we had made Cream Cheese Roll-Out Cookies (the ones with the cute colored icing), Gingerbread men, Santa's Thumbprints (peanut butter cookies with a Hershey kiss on top), Dipped Pretzels, Molasses Crinkles (I think they are really called Big Soft Ginger Cookies), Maple Yule Logs, Stamped Butter Cookies, and Amber's Award Winning Snickers Fudge (which we made and then forgot about so it all stayed at my house- Darn!).

We had a fantastic time and were so glad we could share that time with friends. Thanks to everyone who helped and we'll see you next year!

Oh one last thing. Of course we had to make the penis cookie. I told you last year that it's a tradition. One of these unlucky little dudes ended up losing a ball. He was still delicious. Plus it just seems mean to fault a guy for only having one ball.














We also made penis cookies out of the gingerbread dough (technically I made a toad stool). Sadly, after tasting them, we decided we actually could go back. (Get it? The dough was black).

No fun at work?

I wasn't anticipating any fun today at work. We're having our Christmas lunch which means I'll have to spend extra time fake smiling and pretending to care about my co-workers. Plus I have to look really appreciative when my boss gives me a $20 Borders gift card instead of a bonus. Oh joy! But we do get to go home after lunch and if I have a drink or two then I'm sure the work peeps will seem much more interesting.

I've been sitting here for 2 hours dreading this lunch and generally being a scrooge, until I saw this video:


Now I can't stop giggling! And I have the words "Jizzed in my pants" on a continuous loop in my head.

This is going to be the best work lunch ever! (But it would still be better with Dyena)

P.S. How did Andy Samberg suddenly get hot? He was hideous in the daredevil crap movie of his. Maybe it's the haircut. He was out of control before. Hmm. IMDB says he's a native of Berkeley. Figures. And since when is Jeffrey from Project Runway his side kick? I didn't see that coming.