The holidays

I absolutely love the holidays. I look forward to spending time with my family and simply being around so many people that I love and who love me. It's funny because the holidays used to be the worst time of year for me. I don't want to speak on the behalf of my brother and dad but I personally used to dread Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks. Now it's the absolute best time for me. I feel like I'm finally "in" on the reason why everyone likes the holidays so much.

The holidays kind of sucked when I was growing up. My mom always had good intentions on making Thanksgiving and Christmas nice for us, and I do have some really good memories of us all together opening presents Christmas morning (I would always be the first one up and have to wake up Jamie so I could open my presents.) She just put way too much pressure on herself to have the perfect Thanksgiving or the perfect Christmas that she would totally shut down. I didn't realize until very recently just how low of self esteem she had, on top of the fact that she was probably the most nervous person I've ever met. I've mentioned this before but I have some of those nervous, perfectionist traits that I continue to work on daily. My mom also talked down about herself which I will catch myself doing, especially when it comes to relationships, because it's what I grew up hearing: women talking badly about themselves. She wanted so much for us to have enjoyable holidays but she just couldn't figure out how to do it.

At the risk of sounding cheesy, my holidays now are full of love, laughter and happy people. I'm just so thankful my dad's around to enjoy it with us and that Tiffany and her boys are a part of our family. Tiff's the woman my mom was trying so hard to be. She makes everyone feel comfortable, relaxed and happy. She loves her kids with everything she has and they love her in return. My brother loves and respects her and they have a great relationship that I hope to have some day. Granted, it ain't perfect, but that's what makes it real. She's been able to make us feel like a functioning family unit and she's the reason I look forward to the season.

I try to keep this blog light and fun for the most part but I wanted to share what the holidays really mean to me because my mom passed away 4 years ago today. We were planning her funeral 4 years ago today. It feels like such a long time ago because so many things have changed in all of our lives since then but it really hasn't been that long. My heart breaks every time I think of her. Sometimes I get angry she left us and is missing out on such great memories. Our family is not complete without her. However, I realize she's at peace now and that's all I ever wanted for her.

I know I've written about my mom before, on her birthday, and I sincerely don't mean to be a Debbie Downer. In fact, I hope to be just the opposite and express how thankful I am for the people in my life. Losing my mom is a huge part of who I am today and I'm just trying to stay true to myself. This blog was started as a way for me to really say what I'm thinking without having to actually say it aloud. I truly appreciate everyone who reads this and I will continue to be as honest as possible.

Happy holidays to you; I am thankful for each one of you and I hope you all are able to spend the next week or so with great people.

Festive weekend

I had one heck of a festive weekend! It started on Saturday afternoon making white chocolate-dipped Oreos for a party that night as well as one of my favorite treats of the season: peppermint bark!!

Peppermint bark started my obsession with chocolate and peppermint. My grandma bought our family the Williams-Sonoma bark one Christmas when I was a kid and ever since then I look for it around this time of year. Every once and awhile I'll have a craving for it in the summer and get bummed because I can't get any. Well, my girl a PBF must have been reading my mind (again) because she shared and posted a recipe for the bark! It's my turn to bring in a snack for work on Tuesday so I made the bark to share with my co-workers. I'll let you know how they like it.

Saturday night I went to Cincinnati for an ugly sweater party hosted by one of my college friends, Brittany. I became friends with B and her college roommates through our business fraternity at OU. I don't get to see my Cinci gals nearly as much as I'd like but it was nice catching up and having some fun.

I got back to Columbus early on Sunday because Tiff and I had big plans: Christmas cookie baking sesh. We made peanut blossoms, white chocolate cranberry macadamia nut cookies, (not pictured) cinnamon sugared almonds, and peanut butter surprise cookies. Wanna know what the surprise is? Snickers! Tiff also made chocolate peppermint cookies the night before so I included some of those on my take-home plate. Even though I can't technically eat the cookies because of 4D, I'm having some friends over on Thursday for book club so I can share my cookies with them.

Speaking of 4D, I made it through the weekend ok. Not great, but not horrible. I had two cheat meals this weekend instead of my allotted one cheat meal a week, and yesterday I loosely followed the plan. I don't feel too guilty because I still ate all my other meals according to plan Friday and Saturday. I usually eat whatever the hell I want on the weekends so at least I'm making progress on that front. I'm nervous/curious to see what I weigh tomorrow at That Gym to see how much damage my two cheats did. Fingers crossed it's not too horrible!
Here's hoping for a quick week: my two-week vacation starts Friday!

Thank You cookies

Happy December! I cannot believe it's December. Literally cannot grasp the concept that it will be 2012 in 30 days. I feel like Halloween was just last weekend. It's crazy how fast the end of the year goes because it's so busy trying to wrap up everything. I've been looking forward to December since like July because I'm taking the last two weeks of December off from work so it's going to be a short work month! Now I'm kind of freaking out about getting four weeks worth of work done in two. I'm sure you'll hear all about how that goes!

I made my co-workers a treat last night because they helped me with a very annoying and heavy job yesterday. It took 5 people an hour to unload a truck full of cardboard boxes. 11,000 cardboard boxes and 550 shipping boxes to be exact. The lady who delivered them didn't have the right equipment and of course we're a non-profit and we don't have any un-loading-trucks-full-of-boxes supplies, so all we could do was use manpower. Like the olden days. Because I took up so much of their time (and muscles), I made my work pals white chocolate-dipped Oreos. I saw these on Peanut Butter Fingers a few times and they looked delicious and easy enough, so I went to town. And I was right: they are amazingly tasty and simple as can be.

White Chocolate-Dipped Oreos

Ingredients

1 package double stuf Oreos
1 package (6 squares) Baker's white chocolate
Toppings for chocolate, optional

Directions

Melt the chocolate according to package directions. Once melted, dip one end of each Oreo in to the chocolate and place on wax paper or aluminum foil. Add toppings while chocolate is still warm. Let Oreos sit at room temperature until chocolate has cooled and firmed.

I wanted to use the holiday Oreos with the red filling but I couldn't find them. That would be really festive! PBF used crushed peppermint candies as well as sprinkles for her toppings. Unfortunately, I didn't have anything fun laying around so I just used red and green sprinkles. I want to do this using pretzel twists because nothing beats pretzels and chocolate together! Party in my mouth!

I'm also attending my first ugly sweater party of the season tonight...even if I don't really believe it's December yet, it sure is starting out with a bang!

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