Family Portraits

Okay, okay so these people aren't family members (what a diverse group of siblings I have? ;) ).  However, they pretty much could be.  I've known all of these people for quite some time now, some ever since first grade and I love them.  I really do.  Sometimes I give them a hard time, but I love them.  I also love taking goofy pictures with them... 

 

Awkward portraits, ::ahem::.

Gingerbread

 

We baked some gingerbread cookies tonight.  And by some, I mean A. LOT.  Somehow the dough never ended, so we just kept making more.  Multiplicity!  We used a few different cookie cutters to make an assortment of gingerbread men and women.  Oh, and a few hearts too!  One "guy" cookie cutter has a little pot belly that I find adorable (see top photo!).

 

So far they're still cooling, but as soon as we frost them, people need to come over... and help us eat them!

 

Merry Christmas!

this is my wish for you this christmas

and all year round!

Nothing But Christmas

Nothing But Zero had their Christmas concert downtown last night.  They played a variety of songs and threw some Christmas songs in as well.  My heart skipped a beat as they played the opening to Wonderful Christmastime.  I love that song.  (I'm pretty sure it stems from my love of Paul and Linda dancing in the music video. So sweet and fun.)

For some videos, go here, here, here, and here.

An Evening on Mt. Crumpet

The Christmas festivities started off with a dinner party hosted by Adele, the ultimate Grinch.  (Ironic that she would host such a thing since she's a grinch, right?)  Attendence in an ugly christmas sweater was required.  Our friend Matt took the cake with his ensemble.  He got out his dad's varsity bowling sweater and then proceeded to find the goofiest/creepiest/ugliest christmas ornaments he could and attached them to said sweater.  So there he was all night, a living christmas tree of sorts with ornaments hanging off him.  It was great!

***

Today we had our first snow of the season. 

I woke up and looked out to see the yard covered in white. 

Winter really is upon us. 

And right in time for christmas... :)

 

Now I want to go sledding...and skiing...and make snow angels.... 

O' Christmas Tree

Tonight we celebrated my friend Laura's birthday.  She turned the big 2-1 yesterday.  We kept it pretty small, as Laura requested, and simply went over to Adele's.  While we were at Adele's house, I got sooo jealous of the Christmas spirit that radiated from her tree.  Isn't it gorgeous?  We don't even have ours up, let alone decorated and lit. Sigh.

 

Isn't the glow magical? 

I'll be basking in it til we get our own tree up.

P.s. They even have gifts all wrapped up and packaged under the tree! ^^

Baking Cookies

Adele and I stayed up til the wee hours of the morning last night baking!  We baked cut-out cookies in traditional christmas shapes: trees, reindeer, candy canes, angels, etc.  I decided to take a knife and hand cut a special one for Adele...a grinch!  She seems to identify with him around the holidays.  (However, I'm not quite sure I believe this completely because would the grinch bake and frost cut-out cookies? ;) ) 

 

Side note: Adele's recipe for the perfect cut-out cookies is originally from a 1940s lifestyle magazine.  How cool is that? 

 

We also made nutter butter balls. yum!  Plus, they were ridiculously easy to make, which surprised me.  But I'm not complaining!  You basically just crush a package of nutter butters, combine with cream cheese to make into balls, and then melt chocolate to cover them.

^^Rudolph!!  And here's a few phone pictures:

 

 

Newtown, CT

<3

Caffeine Addict

As nice and easy as this semester started off, it's definitely taken a turn. :/

So I'm living off sugary, flavored coffees at the moment.

Luckily, some time off is right around the corner.  (yay!)

Have a happy weekend!

 

 

P.S.  I'm still trying to figure out what happened to the picture quality. hrmpf!

Lincoln Park

These are some last few snapshots from our day in Chicago.

Again, our friend MD was the ultimate host.  He was the sweetest. The sweetest.

We spent the remainder of the day in Lincoln Park walking around, having lunch at a Hawaiian restaurant, and nibbling on cupcakes afterwards.

We can't wait to go back this spring and hopefully stay for a whole weekend!

 

The Field Museum II

Dinosaurs! Egyptians! More Dinosaurs!

That is exactly what we encountered on the rest of our tour through the museum.  They have quite the plethora of dinosaurs.  And when we weren't looking at dinosaurs, we were being dinosaurs in the gift shop with their dino merchandise. See those awesome teradactyl wings?

 

We also spent a large chunk of time in the ancient egyptian section.  This was for my own needs, so a big thanks to Becca and MD for their patience.  (They amused themselves by trying out "egyptian" pronunciations of the displays.  Linguistic professionals. ;) )