I'm Thankful for...

... the 4.5 days I just had off!!

Thanksgiving was great. I made whole-grain, organic stuffing (or I guess technically it was "dressing" as I was schooled on later), cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, and a few pies. I'll share the recipes later. I came up with a great system of prep work the day before and using my Croc Pot that really made everything stress free. I also made organic apple and pecan pies. For the pecan I tried a new recipe that used no corn syrup, and substituted sucanat for the brown sugar and turbinado for the table sugar. For that particular pie I made a whole wheat crust and marbled in organic cocoa powder.

Personally, I don't like pecan pies, mostly because they are so flippin' sweet. I took a bite and it was pretty yummy. I made two and the second one I tweaked the recipe and added more milk, less sucanat, and more turbinado and that one tasted better. But they were both good.

For the apple pie, I tried a new recipe where you slice all of the apples, lattice the crust, and then melt the butter, sugars, and milk in a sauce pan into a syrup and then pour it over the crust.

I also made the crust for this one, but not whole wheat. I thought it would be to "heavy" since there are two crusts on an apple pie. I also used turbinado and sucanat for the sugars, and my special concoction of spices that I always use for apple pies. The flavor turned out great, BUT I decided that I wanted to mix 1/2 of the syrup in with the apples and pour the other 1/2 on top.

It cooled while I was latticing the crust, and wouldn't remelt the same. So, the top had more of a "crumble" on it than the syrup it should have, but it still tasted yummo.

Wednesday night while the first batches of pies and cranberry sauce were cooling, Jerad whisked me away to the movies to see:

Yes these are corny, but puh-lease, Jason Statham? Mmmmmm
There is all of the great high speed chases
And he always takes his shirt off. Eye-candy.
We had Thanksgiving dinner with my family and grandparents and it went really really well.


After that, Jerad and I headed over to his family's celebration in time for some dessert and visiting. We ended up being there until after 11:00pm :) Whenever we are hanging out with family and friends we take the "divide and conquer" approach instead of staying joined at the hip. That way I don't end up sitting with the men listening to hours of sports talk or something like that, and he doesn't sit through craft and birth stories. Not that that is all we talk about by any means:)

While I was talking with his mom Lucy and aunt Pam, we were looking at the Black Friday ads, and they had a Cricut Create going on sale for 50% off. I had never heard about them before. I won't bore you about the details, but it turns out they are freakin amazing. Instead of printing, they cut!!! Intricate designs, letters, shapes, whatever. You can change the size from .25" to 11.5". Pretty much a scrapbooker's dream.

You could tell that Lucy reeeaaaaalllly wanted one.

When we got home that night I explained all about them to Jerad, and how excited his mom had been, and how they were going to be on sale the next day. He got really excited and said that we should buy her one for Her birthday and Christmas which are just a few days apart.

Friday he worked at a side job, and then we hit Michaels before they closed and it had died down a bit. When we were there he spent like an hour picking out what printing cartridge he wanted to Lucy to go with her new Cricut. It was so cute. THEN, he was like, "this would be really great for you since you scrapbook and make cards..." and I said something about "yes it would, I'm sure your mom will share."

But, since he is such a sweety-petey, he bought me my own. I was VERY stoked. He said it would be a Christmas present, but then ended up giving it to me early so I could have it to work on cards and scrapbooks before Christmas.

That night we went to his parents house and gave his mom hers early too and she was so happy she cried actual tears. Very sweet:) And she thanked us by feeding us a 2nd Thanksgiving dinner that she had just made since she missed out cooking the 1st one. Niiiiice.

Saturday I had breakfast and saw Twilight with Tina who was visiting. For the second time. It was a lot better the second time.

And I got to stare at Edward for ANOTHER two hours, score!!!

Take me. Please.

While Tina and I were off having girl-time, Jerad had breakfast with Ken, and then wandered around Paso and bought me some bling randomly from a jewelry store going out of business:
It looks like that, except the bigger star is blue sapphires. LOVE it! When he gave it to me, I gave it back and told him to wait until our anniversary since it was beautiful, had stars, and shiny. He could save himself some shopping.

Apparently he wouldn't do it sine I'm wearing it right now:)

Since wehadn't seen enough movies lately (ha!), that night Jerad, Tina and I all went and saw:

which was really cute. Then we all went to dinner and Jerad sat through an hour or so of Tina and I talking about wanting babies and to get married. He's used to that and was just happy to have ribs for dinner which he never gets at home.

From there we all went back to our house where I had another engagement announcement from a friend. That puts the total up to 12 friends engaged within the past 11 months. Sheesh!!! I'm excited though, I've known this friend literally since she was born and her finance seems like a great guy. Speaking of weddings, Tina and I talked about her wedding which looks like it is going to be a lot sooner than we were thinking. Yeay!!!! I love weddings. LOVE WEDDINGS. And I will be attending a ton next year, starting Jan. 4th with Chelsea! Lots of weddings means lots of bridal showers and bachelorette parties.

Since I'm Tina's MOH, I get to throw hers. It has to be perfect. I did their engagement party a few months ago, and can't wait for a bachelorette!!! We have been best friends since 3rd grade. I love her, I love the guy she's marrying, I am soo sooo SOOO excited and now instead of being years off, it looks like it could be just a few months away!!!

Sunday, I woke up with the head cold that has been floating around my job for the past few weeks. BLAH! We kind of took it easy, worked on our Christmas decorations in the kitchen, and Jerad did the lights outside.

Tina called me to let me know that she had received a call that Tom was in the hospital with a throat obstruction and could barely breathe and couldn't keep anything down so she raced back to San Fransisco. Scary!

Sunday night we made stuffed shells, sourdough dough bread, and a greek salad for dinner. YUM-O!

And then it was back to work on Monday :( Its okay though, this is the only full work week I have all month. Next week, 3.5 days, the next week 2 days, and then I'm off for 25 days. Basically I "work" 9.5 days this month, and then don't come back till Jan 6th. And, it will all be paid. Because I love my life!

Also, 11 days from now, I will be in New York. I should probably make sure I have clothes for that...

Since I'll have so much free time this month, let the Christmas Crafting begin! I'm going to hand-make a bunch of Christmas gifts plus I am making Jerad and my mom each a scrapbook. Hopefully it won't be so tedious now that I have my own Cricut! Next Sunday Jerad's mom and I are getting together for a scrap booking session. That means I have less than a week to pick out what pictures I am going to use. Not. Easy.