Cookie Day

We had our 3rd annual cookie day exchange today and it went very well, I'm just so tired! Scott's family came over here around 1130 ish and we baked cookies until about 15 minutes ago. We have so many awesome varieties of cookies too! I got up this morning and made our 3 batches from scratch....Sugar cookies, Peanut butter, and Ginger snaps. We also had white chocolate macadamia nut, chocolate chip, M & M cookies, peanut butter kiss cookies, and i'm probably forgetting some :)They went over very well and turned out amazing! All in all it went very well, now it's time to unwind, eat the mound of cookies we have, and call it a night.

Back to work tomorrow...man this 4 day holiday weekend went by too quickly!

Christmas decorating

Yes it's that time of year again! Time to decorate for Christmas :) And today we did just that. We cleaned, got all the Christmas stuff out of the attic, put up the tree, and decorated the inside of the house for the holiday season! It looks beautiful and smells so festive too, thanks to my yankee candles "Christmas Cookie" and "Balsam and Cedar!" Yum! Time to call it a night though.

Tomorrow we are hosting our 3rd annual "Cookie Day" with Scott's family. The whole family comes over and we do a huge cookie exchange. This year I think Scott and I might do Gingersnaps, Sugar cookies, and Peanut butter cookies from scratch. Mostly everyone else buys a big tup of batter and does it that way. Nothing wrong with that, but I love making my own batter and giving it that home made touch!

Black Friday

Black Friday was a blast because I got to spend it with Bee :) We had so much fun together. We met up @ 0530 got Starbucks to wake us up and were off for the next 12 hours! It was a blast! We hit the usual places, plus some different stuff like, Target (3 different ones), Kohls (2 different ones), Forever 21, Body Central, Rainbow, Auntie Anne's pretzels, Chipotle, Home Goods, Marshalls, Dicks Sporting Goods, Best Buy....Our shop-a-holic journey took us from Pasadena, to Baltimore, to GB, Ellicott City.

After 12 hours we called it a day, but not before I went to Starbucks again to re-fuel ;) We got a ton done, laughed and had a great time! I absolutely love black friday and can't wait for next year!

In the mean time, I ordered our photo Christmas cards last night thanks to Snapfish! And today it's all about Decorating for Christmas, and enjoying a nice dinner with the family :)

HOORAY THE HOLIDAYS ARE HERE!!!!!!!!!!

Thanksgiving

It's that time of year again already...The Holidays!!! :) We went to mom and dad's last night for Thanksgiving. The food was amazing, my mom did a great job as always. Over all it was a nice time, however I could have done without some people in my family's negativity over everything! Some people will just never be happy I guess. Aside from that it was nice.

Today we are cooking Thanksgiving dinner here for us and 2 of our friends. The house smells like Thanksgiving, the food is coming together and I just love it! I'm extremely grateful for the wonderful people in our life, and everything we have.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

So little time

And so so much to do! I'm still working on my photo project with a fast approacing deadline for starters. Then tonight I have to make food for our Thanksgiving lunch-in tomorrow at work, yum :) I'm debating when I'm going to have time to make the food for my Mom's Thanksgiving which in on Wednesday though. The reason is, is that tomorrow I work late, and we're meeting up with visiting friends @ 5pm for dinner, which leaves little time for anything at all unfortunately. My thoughts are to make the pumpkin bread and my broccoli/cheese/rice casserole tonight for Wednesday, but is it too soon? Hmm....decisions decisions.

All I can say is, thanks goodness it's only a 3 day work week! ;)

Festivities begin

Yesterday was a lovely lazy Saturday, but it has completely flown by! The gist of my day was relaxing, cleaning, laundry, cooking, and going to the grocery store for Thanksgiving food. Wow was it crowded too. I got a turkey and all of our lovely necessities for our feast :) I made a chicken pot pie for dinner last night too. Scott was hesitant because he didn't really like them as a kid. But like always I said "well let me try" and in the words of Emeril "BAM!" It was awesome and we loved it! What a perfect meal for this time of year, and we left the table overly full :)

Today we're off to Scott's parents house for his families Thanksgiving. We always celebrate Thanksgiving with his family the Sunday beforehand. I truly can't believe that it's this time of year already but I'm loving it! I made a dessert this year and I think it's going to be awesome. I made a chocolate "Take 5" trifle....It's brownies, chocolate pudding, cool-whip, and Take 5 candy bars chopped, and topped with drizzled caramel..YUM!

We have one of our friends coming into town so we're meeting them for dinner in Ellicott City on Tuesday night at our favorite mexican restaurant. We celebrate Thanksgiving with my family on the Wednesday before, and will cook our own dinner on Thursday. I'm so happy this week is only a 3 day work week yay! And then it's time for Black Friday :)!!

And I'm absolutely loving how the stores are decorated for Christmas already! However I refuse to decorate for Christmas until after Thanksgiving. I find it unfair to rob Thanksgiving of it's holiday time :)

Mission Chicken Tortilla Soup

I had a plan in my head ALL DAY! I wanted to get out of work early, run my errands, and make a surprise dinner for Scott and have a "date night." It was a very close call...

I got out of work LATE of course, go figure. I had the recipe for the chicken tortilla printed @ my desk on my laptop, but do my dismay I get out to the truck to leave work and it's not with me, it's lost! Arg, so I have to go back into work, reprint the recipe etc, run to the grocery store, run to another store, come home and throw this dinner together as a surprise.

Luckily, Scott called me and said he had to go run an errand of his own after work. (Sigh-thank goodness)! He ended up getting stuck in traffic, blocked in a parking lot, it was a whole ordeal, and while he was stressed out, I was secretly happy for the extra time ;)

So...He got home, I was dressed up, the Chicken Tortilla soup was done and hands down was the BEST pot of soup I've ever made in my ENTIRE life!!! We absolutely loved it! So after a good dinner, and enjoying wine, it's time to relax and watch our TIVO'd Ghost Hunters YAY!

Mission: ACCOMPLISHED!

Tuesday Ten

10 Things You are Thankful for This Year

1. Always my husband, dogs, family, and amazing friends!
2. My job that I love and my coworkers
3. Our ability to travel, went to Vegas this year and loved it
4. My health despite having CF I'm very healthy
5. My sense of humor and love of laughter
6. Enjoying good wine around our fire-pit..nothing like a campfire anytime we want!
7. Wii fit :) Grateful to have it, and lucky to have found one
8. Our home and the projects we are able to do in it
9. The gatherings of friends and family, entertaining, and cooking
10. My iPOD which delivers amazing music to me on a regular basis

Fun fun

We had an awesome weekend! So much fun I'm sad it's over :( Friday as you can read previously I was all about relaxing and we did just that! Stayed in, watched one of our favorite shows Ghost Hunters and chilled out by the fireplace. It was P-E-R-F-E-C-T in every way.

Saturday morning we got up kind of early (well considering I fell asleep so early on Friday I'm not surprised). Anyway went to Starbucks got a pumpkin latte, Scott got a coffee and we headed over to Yankee Candle for a huge sale! We cleaned up and got 8 candles for the price of 4! Needless to say we were able to get some serious Christmas shopping done too. :) We headed over to Bass Pro Shop so Scott could pick up some stuff, meanwhile I felt totally lost in the store. It's so HUGE and I have no idea what the heck I'm looking at. We then headed so Scott could pick up some new shoes, I of course on the way saw a cute store with awesome dresses on sale. Again needless to say I cleaned up! Got 7 adorable dresses for winter and 2 for summer for $70! Good stuff! Next we headed to lunch in Ellicott City to LaPalapa one of our favorite places. Then we took a nice walk down Main St. in which it started to pour down rain, but we had fun. Plus we stopped and got coffees so that warmth helped :)

I had to get back home because I had a work party to go to. One of our Anesthesiologists just beat prostate cancer so he and his family were throwing a "Celebration of Life" party! IT WAS AWESOME! Hands down one of the best nights I've had in a very long time. I got to wear one of my new dresses which was nice too, and we danced ourselves silly for hours. My feet were definitely killing me yesterday and even still a little today, but it was totally worth it. It was myself and most of my co-workers and we just simply had a blast. I know I've said it a million times but I am so grateful to have co-workers that I'm so close with in work and out of work. Well here's the start of a new week....

Friday Fill Ins

#98
And...here we go!

1. Please feel free to "Ask, Believe, Receive."

2. When I eat hot steamed crabs I can't help sniffing them occasionally.

3. My favorite thing to cook is EVERYTHING!!! I love to cook! :)

4. Laughing is something I can't get enough of.

5. That's the thing I love most about my personality.

6. Rude ignorant people always makes me think to myself, what the heck?

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to relaxing and enjoying the rain, tomorrow my plans include coffee, shopping, Chipotle, and a work party, and Sunday, I want to relax and hopefully hang out with our friends.

Slacker

I've been a blog slacker...unintentionally of course, but I have. I feel like things have been so busy recently (but they are always I guess). Anyway no excuses, I've just been a blog-slacker. It's been a good week for the most part. Wednesday was tiring. Busy day at work, Scott had the guys over for cards, and I was working on my project which has a very fast approaching deadline.

This takes me into Thursday which I found myself the "blah-est" I've been a super long time. Working on this scanning project made me miss my Pop so so badly. I went into work and my co-worker asked me what was wrong and I simply burst into tears :( It was awful. So needless to say I took a break from the project last night. I was definitely able to get my mind off of things by hanging out with my best friend last night. Beth and I met up and shopped for scrubs (both nurses), went to Starbucks, Homegoods, and then went to Don Pablos for some mexican happy hour food. It was simply perfect and exactly what I needed! It was so nice and It was a great way to get my mind off of a lot of things that are going through it right now.

Today was such a pleasant day at work. Most days are honestly but Friday's are so busy for us that I'm kind of used to the chaos and lateness. I was actually able to get out early, we had Panera bread bought for us, and had some of the best patients today. I really love when our patients have a great sense of humor, it just makes the day so great!

After work today since I got out so early I headed to the mall to look for a dress for a party tomorrow night. And I hit the jackpot woo hoo!!! Found something that I loved that I don't think normally I would wear and it was a great price, so good that I treated myself to 2 dresses :)

Tonight Scott and I were going to go out and run errands, eat, and go shopping together however we've changed the plans. It's so rainy and dreary out (which I don't mind) that we're going to "veg out" tonight and go out together tomorrow. Here's to a lazy rainy night and the end of a long week.

Inlaws dinner

Tonight we had Scott's parents over for dinner. It was a really nice evening and everything turned out so nice. I was definitely not having a good day at work and ended up having to work late so I was a little worried about times. They came over at 6, so when I got home I was in "race mode" cleaned up, cooked a 3 course meal w/ appetizer and dessert, and had about 5 minutes to sit down. I didn't even have time to change out of my scrubs...oh well. We had a nice cheese tray with different mustards and cheeses, wines, lasagna rolls, garlic knots, salad, and cherry crumble (ah-hem all from scratch I proudly add). Yummy! We are full and happy. A nice night of laughing, talking, and eating with great family. We're very fortunate. Weird thing of the night though...our Christmas lists are due!!! Wow it doesn't even feel like it's that time of year already, but it is!

Sunday

We had a really nice weekend. Friday night went to Fogo de Chao and it was amsolutely amazing! There are no other words to describe it, and little Italy's Vaccaro's for dessert. Hands down it was the best pumpkin spice chai latter EVER! Saturday we hung out and relaxed. I did some cleaning and re-organizing. At night we had our benefit to go to and it was an awesome turn out! I was so happy for them and we were so happy to be part of the supporting cause. Today has been pretty nice too. We got up early and worked outside on the yard for a few hours, leaves, putting Halloween decorations away, etc. The yard looks just lovely now, but kind of bare.

We also watched the Ravens beat the pants off of the Texans! WOO-HOO!!!!! It was awesome!! So after a nice pretty much relaxing yet productive weekend I'm finding myself already thinking about work tomorrow. Blah.

Lazy Saturday :)

Ahh every now and again I really love not having any plans. For the most part today is one of those days. Scott and I were supposed to sweep/clean the chimney out today, and he was going to work on the leaves too. However....we woke up to lovely rainy thunderstorms :) Hooray! (Not because of the delay in chores) but we really love lazy rainy weekends occasionally.

The only thing that we do have to do tonight is go to a benefit for friends parents of ours who were involved in a serious motorcycle accident this summer. All proceeds go to them with helping with medical expenses, and other bills. So I am very happy to be able to attend and support their cause tonight.

Other than that I'm hoping to spend the day cleaning, doing laundry, putting away Halloween decorations, and scanning the pictures for my project. My deadline is fastly approaching! Here's to lazy Saturday :)

Friday Fill ins

#97
And...here we go!

1. My blueprint for success includes what I've already accomplished, being a R.N., happily married, but I'd love to start a family now.

2. Skittles and a Butterfinger was the last candy I ate.

3. The best facial moisturizer I've ever used is nothing I can think of, I'm not a facial moisturizer person.

4. Relaxing with a glass of wine, enjoying a campfire, sitting by the beach, talking with those you care about, etc. can be good therapy.

5. I'd like to tell you about how I just ate the best dinner in Baltimore tonight at Fogo de Chao! YUM!

6. Laughter (well friendliness) is my strongest characteristic.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to Fogo de Chao and Little Italy (we already went tonight and it was awesome!) tomorrow my plans include a benefit for friends who were involved in a serious accident to raise money for them and Sunday, I want to relax and clean the house!

Posted by Janet at 8:34 PM 125 comments Links to this post

Surprisingly early

I'm so happy with myself for starting Christmas shopping so early this year! I actually started in September I believe, but I just keep on going and I love it :) I absolutely LOVE Christmas time, the shopping, craziness, Black Friday etc, however I love the feeling of accomplishment and early is even better! Tonight after work I ran up to Kohl's since there is a brand new one just blocks away from work (I'm loving it!). I ended catching a huge unadvertised sale and got some more Christmas gifts bought! I love when something is already on sale but when you get up to the register....SURPRISE it's on sale even more! WOO HOO! Let's just say I got some awesome jewelry for a steal! (WEll not literally of course) ;)

Here's to the holiday season just about among us!!

Election Day

After an busy and tiring day at work, I went to the polls and VOTED! Now is the waiting game to see who it will be...Hopefully everyone got out there today to exercise your right.

I thought ahead last night and made Beef Burgundy in the crockpot for dinner tonight. I'm in charge at work the next couple of days and we're very busy so it was so nice to come home to dinner already done! And the soup was AMAZING! We loved it and are ready to make it again. Now it's time to just relax. It's funny how it's pretty much already dark and it's just 530pm. Here's to an early night of nothing :)

Monday Peeves

RUDE PEOPLE: (Let me explain)



My boss is an extremely selfish person. She's "negative Nancy" hates that all the co-workers get along, she lies ALL the time, mean, snappy, and just not a nice person. She IS nice to me though, I guess since she knows that I'm her right hand, and lets face it, I pretty much run the place.

Still that's no excuse. She's just such a crappy person. I know that sounds mean, but it's the truth. If you call out, she usually gives you attitude and/or hangs up on you. God forbid you want a day off! She gets mad at you because she feels that she deserves time off more than we do. And whatever ailment you may have, like a cold, sinus infection, a bruised toe-nail, she will one-up your ailment everytime. She's always the victim and I can't stand it. I don't know how people go through life so damn negatively and pathetic. I just wish she'd retire and we all (including the doctors) would be so happy.

Oh and today she decides to drop the bomb on me of "oh by the way I'm having surgery tomorrow" What!!?? Come again!? The woman actually creates ailments and will get surgery. It's been this way for 5 years so why am I surprised? So apparently the new one is, suddenly over the past week she can't see and "needs" cataract surgery. What a crock. I can't stand people like this.

So there's my Monday Pet Peeve...my boss!

Busy Fun Weekend

This weekend was great, and very very busy. Halloween was so fun, we dressed up at work, and had a pot luck lunch. When I came home we handed out candy, had friends over got carry out, and had a campfire after the trick-or-treaters.

Saturday morning I was up bright and early for NYC!! My co-workers, and friend went and we had a blast! Did tons of shopping, got purses, jewelry, etc. Ate amazing food in the city too...Gyro's and went to and Irish bar at the end of our day to unwind, have some beers, and munch on appetizers. It was great!

Sunday has been great too. We had a football "Ravens" party today. And the RAVENS BEAT THE BROWNS WOO HOO!!! We had over close friends, and my cousins today. We had sooooo much food!! I'm pretty sure we'll be eating left overs all week. We had apples and caramel dip, buffalo chicken dip, pizza dip, chili cheese dip, artichoke dip, queso dip, pizzas, sweet and sour meatballs, brownies, veggies, and all the good chips and dips too! ( You know all the good football junk food) I can barely breathe I'm so full! There is something to be said about being surrounded by your family and friends and having a wonderful time. There is nothing like it. As I always say we are extremely fortunate to have such great people in our lives. Here's to the week....