Happy Holidays...

Wow, I am on a roll this month with the blogging! See, I am trying to be better. Even without any real exciting news I am still trying to get some posts out. We've actually been pretty busy as of late. Phil has been working like crazy. Today is his 10th day straight, as he had to cover the weekend shift. But now he is about to enjoy a wonderful four day weekend, and I am sure that he is ecstatic about it. Or at least he will be once he's had the chance to catch up on his sleep. Also we are having a party this weekend! A little holiday shindig if you will. Unfortunately we have no decorations or anything to make the place look festive except for a few strands of clear Christmas lights that I am hoping still work. But maybe if we feed all our guests enough food and drink they won't care.

Since Phil was slaving away all weekend, I invited the girls over for a little Christmas cookie baking fun. Besides the fact that I woke up with a headache, my kitchen got trashed and Daneka's little boy had the stinkiest poops ever (birth control at it's best), it was quite a fun time. We even had Christmas carols to listen to! As I was forbidden to put Christmas carols on our I-tunes library before we left, I had to ask my dear friends to bring their Christmas music collections over. (Phil was mad that he had to work that day until I told him that we were going to listen to Christmas music the whole time!) So we listened to White Christmas and Jingle Bells as we measured, mixed, cut out and iced what seemed like a zillion cookies. We made traditional sugar cookies complete with brightly colored and slightly toxic looking icing, soft ginger cookies and chewy chocolate cranberry cookies. And they all turned out oh-so-delicious. And it made it seem a little more like Christmas, at least for the day. That is until we went outside and it was warm and sunny with nary a big tacky plastic Santa Claus in sight. (I so don't miss those. Just the sparkly lights. And candy canes. And trees. And stockings. And pretty much everything else.) Take a look at all our hard work......



The Cookie Bakers--Beth, Debbie, Me, Daneka and stinky Ben

So we will be busy the next few days preparing for our Holiday (Chanumus, Christmakkah, Festivus, whatever you want to call it) party. You know me.....I say I am going to keep it nice and simple but that never works out. I start with a small cheese plate and a few simple appetizers and before you know it I have enough food to feed a small army. I tend to get a wee bit carried away when I entertain. But I think it will be fun and it's even giving me an excuse to dress up a bit. I made sure to inform everyone that Phil would not be wearing his shorts and sandals that evening. (Hmmmmmmm.....I guess I better inform Phil of that too.) It's very rare that we dress up any more (like, pretty much never), so I decided to make it a dress up affair so that I could get out of my jeans and sweatpants. We'll see if anyone bothers to follow the suggestion. If not, at least we'll look good. And really, I guess that's all I really care about anyway. Happy Holidays to all!