The Gift of Giving

H A P P Y   F R I D A Y !

This week has gone by so painfully slow. Got a full weekend ahead of us but at least there will be no work or office for two full days! This weekend, we'll be going to Neil's (boss) housewarming and Miriam and Scott's baby party (not to be confused with a baby shower, lol). 

Last night, we went to so many stores and bought so many things! We went to a few home stores -- Home Goods and World Market for Neil's housewarming presents. I wanted to buy e v e r y t h i n g! Getting very anxious and excited about our home situation. I just want a home so I can decorate with all these festive unnecessary things like snowman pot holders and reindeer kitchen towels! Anyways, the office decided to get Neil a complete bar set with lots of glassware, a decanter, etc. Bought a basket and some ribbon to make it pretty.

Then we bought so (so so so) much baby clothes for lots of different babies. Everyone's nursery theme is very different and easy to shop for. Here's a picture of sketchy holding about 1/3 of the baby clothes we bought: 

All the baby clothes are so frickin cute. I never thought I'd find baby things so cute. sigh. Anyways, between Cyber Monday and last night's shopping spree we're completely done with baby presents for showers and Christmas! 

Then after shopping, I was feeling a little depressed about it only being Thursday and not wanting to go to work the next day so Sketchy said we could go drive around and look at Christmas lights! I love love love festive homes. Naturally, I suggested driving through our soon-to-be neighborhood. I was surprised that not many people had decorated their homes. I'm going to justify it with the fact that we drove through around 9:30-10:00 and maybe people had turned their lights off by then. Here was my favorite home -- not excessively decorated with too many lights or reindeer on their front lawn, but i loved how simply pretty it was (especially since house was white) with a few lawn decorations and the red/green in the windows! So prettyface.

Now that most items are purchased for other folks, I'm going to start focusing on Sketchy's Christmas/Anniversary gifts and my Secret Santa gifts!

Count Down to Florida: 12 Days

Day 4: Slow Cooker Lasagna -- End of an Era.

Yesterday was a super win. Got a lot done at work (which is starting to get downright OOC before the holidays), completed Day 4: Slow Cooker Lasagna and made it to Yoga!

Post Yoga, Catherine reached into her goodie bag and pulled out magical treats for Kelsey and me. She gave us each a huge plate, but because they were delicious, sketchy and I (okay so really just me) ate all but one before I remembered to take a picture! It was some crazy baked good -- bottom layer: cake mix cookie texture, middle layer: peanut butter cream top layer: semi sweet chocolate? or something delicious. 

The picture really doesn't do it justice. They were so cute looking and delicious. I had left some in the fridge overnight... omg they were soooo good cold!

Day 4: Slow Cooker Lasagna:

Sketchy claims this was the best meal so far. I think my favorite was cilantro and lime chicken! He actually packed some for lunch today which means he actually did like it. Sketchy refuses to eat left overs unless it is absolutely amazing! I do agree the lasagna was good but I think I like baked lasagna better, if only for the crunch pasta on the edges when baked. 

Pictures:

So, I think day four is going to mark the end of this challenge. I have got wayyyy too many leftovers in my fridge. Cooking until midnight has not been good for anyone (both eating late and having to clean the kitchen that late when it's already past my bedtime). I think this challenge got off on the wrong foot from the beginning when I forgot to start in the morning and then continuing a vicious cycle since after cooking a large meal I'm not motivated at midnight to clean the cooker and prep for the next morning's meal. I underestimated prep time for slow-cooker meals and underestimated the amount of food you get. So with too much food and way too much energy that I just don't have this week especially with a very large to-do list before the holidays, I'm giving up the 7 straight day challenge. I'll still be making the remaining three meals, just not all this week! 

Yoga:

Amazing. I always get really lazy and reluctant to go to yoga, but once I'm there and definitely afterwards I always feel like it was the best idea in the whole world. The classes are an hour and fifteen minutes long. As I said yesterday, this was my first Hatha class. It was different than what I'm used to -- much slower paced but definitely still challenging. Holding poses for longer periods of time are excruciating for the muscles! I'm feeling the burn today but I think I actually may like Hatha better than Vinyasa. The breathing exercises and the relaxation during this particular class was just what I needed this week. The instructor was pretty sweet too. I love when they give different variations of poses so that everyone can feel comfortable and practice at their own level. 

I also like the Meridian Yoga DC building and set-up. Seemed verrryyy put-together and easy to drive to and find parking. The people were all very friendly.

So now, instead of rushing home to cook a meal, I'll be hitting the shops. Lots of Christmas, Baby, Housewarming, Wedding Present shopping to be done! 

Countdown to Florida: 13 days.

Day 3: Chicken Tikka

Yesterday was definitely better than Monday. Maybe this week is looking up? 

Day 3: Slow Cooker Chicken Tikka happened last night. I've only made Chicken Tikka one other time, but this was definitely better. This dish's texture and color is not really conducive to pretty pictures but here they are: 

Chicken Tikka is one of Sketchy's favorite indian dishes to get when we go out. He gave it a slightly higher than mediocre rating which I'll agree with. I'm not sure what was missing but something was missing. Overall good though. 

I'm signed up for Yoga today at 7:30. Hoping I'll be able to run home and throw a dish together in the slow cooker before heading off to Yoga. I'm interested in today's class as it's a type of Yoga I've never done before. I'm a fan of vinyasa. Tonight's class is Hatha (focuses on breathing -- maybe extra good for stress relief?). Tonight will be the first time I try out Meridian Yoga DC. 

The past couple days have been such a blur, I've slacked on festive holiday cheer! Let's fix that and talk about festive things: Secret Santa. I'm doing two secret santa gift exchanges this year. One with friends and the other with Sketchy's family. I'm excited about my person in both. I have ideas for presents but haven't purchased yet, need to get on that! I love secret santa. For the friend's group, we're going to exchange presents over dinner out at a bar or while watching football on a Sunday -- perfect setting for this group. I expect lots of funny gag gifts. For family secret santa, we're going to go down to Fredericksburg, put up stockings/tree/lights and then exchange gifts the last weekend before we head to Florida! 

Also, in big news, today, James closed on his house! Super super excited for him and Kaitlin who gets to help decorate just in time for the holidays! I get so very happy for people when they make big changes/take big steps in their lives. Can't wait to see the house when we're in Florida in just 2 weeks!

Official Florida Countdown: 14 Days.

Day 2: Cilantro and Lime Chicken

Okay so real fail on yesterday. Complete fail. I ended having a huge ordeal with the AD that kept me at work til about 7-7:30. Got it in the day after without issue. Not one of my better Ads so a little disappointed but such is life.

Failed at yoga since I had to stay at work super late. Anyways, signed up for Wednesday yoga class. Hopefully that happens.

Did not end up doing Rockville football because 1. Late day at work and 2. Realized a sale at Lowe’s was going to be over at midnight and we needed to get lots of stuff! Turns out that was a fail as well since we could not figure out what material and how much to get, so we missed out on football and the sale. Very upsetting Monday evening.

I did get home around 8:30 after stopping by grocery store and throw together slowcooker Cilantro Lime Chicken. This meal was actually one of my favorite dishes I’ve ever cooked! Very easy to do too.

Here are some pictures from Day 3:

I ate it over a bed of cilantro and lime rice with some cheese sprinkled on top!

At least one thing was successful (and delicious)!

Here’s to hoping today is much more productive. 

Getting Back on the Yoga Train

A real to-do list today. 

1. Play in Illustrator and create a new AD, due by COB today! (I really love this part of my marketing job)

2. Run home and throw together Day 2 of CrockPot week. Thinking Cilantro Lime Chicken tonight since I have the necessary ingredients for that meal.

3. Rush over to Yoga this afternoon from 6:00PM-7:15PM

4. Trek up to Rockville via metro to meet up with AJ and Sketchy for MNF! Stupid fantasy. I need RGiii and Santana Moss to completely screw up in order to win this week -- a win I really need!

Yoga is something I never tried until a random summer in college. I went to one class and absolutely fell in love. At the time I was also running regularly so was somewhat in shape to get through a yoga class. I did Vinyasa yoga which is just constant flow between poses/stretches. I always describe yoga as the one and only time in my life when my brain is seriously completely blank. It is the most incredible and stress-relieving feeling one can have. I then went on to take semester long classes at GW which made life a lot better in all respects! Then two years ago I just stopped yoga and running and everything! 

Trying to get my shit together again and starting with something I know I once loved -- Yoga. A couple weeks ago I reached out to a couple friends (one of whom got me INTO Yoga in the first place -- Catherine) to see if they would go to a class with me. I feel going with other people makes you more motivated to actually go! I was so disheartened to see how much had changed in two years with my body. I could hardly get through the first half of the class and was very far from being able to do the stretches properly. The next couple of days I was super sore. 

BUT this made me even more motivated to get back on the Yoga bandwagon and challenge myself to get back to that place I was so long ago! Catherine regularly attends classes and passed along an amazing Cyber Monday deal from the place she goes -- Meridian Yoga. I bought some deals and now have about 17 classes to use. I'm signed up for today and Wednesday. Hoping things get better by the 10th class. I feel that is a reasonable goal. At any rate, there are awesome introductory deals: http://www.meridianyogadc.com/. Hopefully once I build up the breathing and endurance aspects through Yoga I can start running again. This past weekend I registered for a simple 5K Color Run at National Harbor for mid May. I'd really love to be able to run that race by then. 

Here's to making goals, sticking with them and accomplishing them (also to getting my ass into gear to be able to wear something amazing for the wedding and to love my wedding photos!). 

CrockPot Week Kickoff

In all the excitement of yesterday, I completely forgot to go grocery shopping and did not have my Day 1 ingredients handy. As I was sitting in the bar getting ready for 1:00PM kickoff I realized I completely dropped the ball on CrockPot week! Determined not to postpone the challenge I decided to head to the grocery store after the 1:00PM games (stupid rainy football games) and put something together that could cook in 4 hours vs 6-8 hours!

Day 1:

I went with slow-cooker Chicken Stew. Kind of made up my own recipe.

Ingredients:

-chicken (thigh meat/dark meat)

-celery

-carrots

-red potatoes 

-packet of gravy mix 

-chicken broth

-cream of chicken

-green onions

-red onions

-cilantro

-random spices

Of course there are pictures:

To add to my excitement, I decided to break out some festive dishes I bought last year at an after-Christmas sale (been waiting a whole year to use these!). It's an entire 24 piece set but just using the bowls tonight:

Finished product:

Verdict: So this was definitely more of a "Hearty Chicken Soup" rather than "Chicken Stew." Note for next time: more cream of ____ ingredient and less broth/water to make it thicker! But as far as soups go, it was pretty good! The veggies and potatoes were very tastey independent of the broth -- I can taste that the veggies/potatoes were infused with flavor of the broth/spices! 

December!

I have no idea when it became the last month of the year. I swear this past year has flown by! I am looking forward to so many things this month. Getting LSAT out of the way is a great way to begin this awesome month of festive merry happiness!

Because I'm a 5-year-old child, these (pictured below) are what I used on my test -- and what kept me pushing through the damn thing with a smile on my face. The judge-y looks from fellow test-takers were great. Meh.

Then I spent a couple hours shopping for festive things for the Tacky Sweater Bar Crawl. Went to Ross for the best cheap ugly sweaters and a random party store for hats, garland and various jingly things. The final product was beyond amazing.

Sketchy (who was not at all thrilled by his outfit I put together):

kind of a dark picture but I love the Bow-Tie!

Now, me (extremely thrilled to be a festive reindeer!):

First picture is kind of dark but I was trying to show off my garland bracelets and jingle rings!

AJ was the best sport ever. He wore a crazy ugly sweater vest and elf hat -- worked very well with his Movember Mustache!

I don't really like this last picture but I think it's the only one of all of us:

Exciting first day of December. SO.Very.excited for all the other festive events to come this month!