I am thinking back at some of the things I enjoyed in 2008:
– Family moments like going to the park with Trevor
– Anytime I am relaxed and playing with Trevor
– Biking to Carleton
– Going to movies
– Snuggling with Chris reading or watching TV after Trev goes to bed
– Baking with my new toys (stand mixer, mini muffin pan…)
– Lots of other things…
My Christmas tradition (going on four years now) is to bake a new type of cookie and make a craft.
For cookies, I used to make walnut vanilla cookies, but lately I am getting bored with them. I still made them this year, however, the cookie that I have been focusing on is the mini apple tart.
Last year I attempted to make mini strudels which was an utter disaster due to my lack of skills with phylo dough. I made tart dough this time. I think it turned out better but I must keep a few things in mind for next year:
– always wait a day before eating them. It will give time to dough to dry out a bit and be a bit more crust like
– do not use whole wheat flour. Though I am not sure about that, after a day or so, I did not think it was all that bad
– bake for 12 minutes at 445 degrees, or something like it
Overall, these cookies show potential, but aren’t too great. My nostalgia for apple strudel is probably why I like these. I don’t know if anyone else thinks they are any good. My mom liked them, but I think she suffers from the same strudel fondness.
My other craft turned out a bit better. I was making reusable gift bags from cloth. I combined useful with pleasant and had a few friends over to work on this and other crafts. It is great to have friends who are into making crafts. I have fond memories sewing and knitting with my grandmother so I always enjoy crafting with company. I always think about my nona when I make crafts, it is such a pleasant way of remembering her.
Unlike my cookies, bags were a success. It took me much longer to do than I expected and I had to run out and get more fabric and ribbon to complete the project, but it was all worth it. Sewing with a sewing machine was much easier than I thought it would be and I am much more confident about my sewing now. I am thinking of some future projects, but have not made up my mind yet.
I finished up my paper on Monday two full days before it was due. I then took two days to play with Trevor and go to sleep pretty much as soon as he did. I am starting to feel a bit more relaxed and the continuous slew of Holiday lunches at work is getting me in the festive mood. In fact, I am baking Christmas cookies right now, or I will, as soon as I finish this post.
I am not going to be working on my thesis until January, but I will spend some time getting everything set up. I want to install and configure CVS on my laptop and do a bit of clean up of the design.
Apart form that, I want to set up budget for next year, clean up the house, finish up my Christmas shopping, make my holiday crafts (I am making gift bags this year – goodbye stupid wrapping paper that people just rip and throw away!), bake and freeze a few bread loafs, catch up on reading, figure out how to make food in the slow cooker etc, figure out a new fitness schedule…
This is the first year that I will be working through holidays as my company changed policies. I used to look forward to the break because it forced me to relax right at the time when I needed it the most. I am sort of glad that I have more vacation days as a result of the change, but still feel a bit awkward about working during that time. I am bringing Trev to work on Christmas eve, because that’s the tradition in my department. There will be other kids there whose parents promised me they will entertain him.
The idea behind using films as my titles is to force myself to update blog regularly. I generally go to see a movie every two weeks or so which is a good blog updating tempo as well. Of course, I was stupidly busy doing the work/mom/school shtick this semester I haven’t gone to a movie since the time we were in Vermont. I have started thinking about going to the movies again. That is a start.
I am almost done with my course, I just have to rewrite this paper. I will have to spend two or three nights on it, but I have a good idea of what I am doing. And yes, if you have taken the time to read the paper, it is a draft, it will be better when I am done with it.
We just did the basic tree this year, Trevor helped decorate it though.
Finally, just a little thank you to my trusty web master and man-about-the-house for fixing up the hack that crashed my blog last week and updating all of our blogs to the latest version. It looks great!
Chris cleared up the garage yesterday and finally (after about two months of parking on the driveway) parked the car inside.
Then a tree fell right over my parking spot just clearing Chris`s car. I am so glad my car was in the garage…
I’ve made my traditional B-day cake last week. Everyone was polite and said that it tasted good, but I was not pleased with it. I was using my new mixer and got a bit loosey-goosey with the egg white foam which made the cake texture too dense. Also I used unsweetened chocolate for icing. Next time I should use unsweetened chocolate for the cake but semi sweet for the icing.
When I was planning my b-day I found another cake recipe but could not decide whether to make it (very risky) or the traditional one (which would not have been risky if I was more careful). I ended up buying ingredients for both and then only made the one.
This week I thought about the ingredients that were still in my fridge and decided to make the second cake, just to see how it would turn out. I am very glad I did, because it turned out to be the best cake I ever made. Apart from the fact that I made less than a dozen cakes in the whole course of my existence, this is impressive because I didn’t even get around to doing the icing and it was still amazing.