Pre-Thanksgiving=Success!

So our Thanksgiving Prequel last Thursday was a total blast.  I've had the plague for the last two and a half weeks, so I wasn't so sure how fun it was going to be for me since we all know how fun it is to host a party when you're dying sick, but it totally worked out.

I managed to get a 15 pound turkey for $3, so it wasn't a super expensive venture for me, either, which was nice.  And I am now a HUGE fan of the turkey oven bags--the turkey was moist and sooooo delicious!  I called my dad super early in the morning before work and asked for some turkey advice.  I wasn't going to stuff it, so he said to throw a chunk of onion inside to add a little moisture.  Of course I didn't actually HAVE a chunk of onion, so I had to improvise.  I had some of those little on-the-vine tomatoes, so I threw about 3 of them in whole, shook in a bunch of dried, minced onions, added salt, garlic powder, thyme, and rosemary, and cut up about 3 little red and orange peppers we had leftover from my roommates engagement party, then added some whole peppercorns and sealed up the inside.  Then I greased up the outside with vegetable oil, rubbed in some more thyme, rosemary, salt, pepper, and garlic powder, and put it in the oven bag.  I set the timer on my oven to turn on at 2:00 at about 325 degrees, put the turkey in, and headed to work.  When I got home around 4:30, I checked it and it was definitely not done, but the house smelled AWESOME.  By 6, it was done and soooo delicious.  

The tomatoes added some good moisture and delicious flavor, but didn't really make it taste tomato-y, if that makes sense.  It was awesome to spend a few minutes prepping it in the morning and then to be able to come home to an awesome, already cooked turkey!

I seriously went the easy route due to having the plague (normally I would go wayyyy more homemade, but I just didn't have it in me this time)--I bought frozen dough from the store and made rolls the night before, made Stove-Top stuffing but spiced it up with some sausage and other more homemade touches, bought gravy packets (but made them with juice from the turkey and from cooking the gimlets instead of just water), and bought a Marie Calendar's pumpkin pie.  I did make garlic mashed potatoes from scratch (with red potatoes and real butter and cream--delicious and oh-so-healthy, right?) and had to cook the pumpkin pie (but I made real whipped cream from scratch).  I also whipped up a couple healthy appetizers that went over really well.  And we did use my homemade blackberry jam on the rolls.  So I guess it was about half homemade, half spiced up store version.  All in all, it was still awesome.

People brought sparkling cider, pop, ice cream, broccoli, etc.  We had lots of fun, and it was a very chill evening, just hanging out, chatting, eating, and then vegging on the couch, watching TV.  It was a really fun evening, and a great way to kick off the holidays!

Happy Thanksgiving--a few days early!!  :)  

Christmas Has Come to Portland.

It's true.  And with no further adieu, here are the top ten reasons I know Christmas has come early to Portland:

10.  On November 1st, the day after Halloween, for crying out loud, I watched TV for about 20 minutes and saw FIVE Christmas commercials.  It's gotten worse ever since.

9.  We've all seen them, right?  The Christmas displays in the stores?  I've seen them in Costco, Fred Meyer, KMart, WalMart, Target...and some of them were up well before Halloween.  Oh, man.  And I've already gotten several e-mails from Bed, Bath, and Beyond, Crate and Barrel, and several other stores about Christmas sales.

8.  "The Wizard of Oz" was on TV this weekend, and it was on at least 2 different stations, for multiple nights in a row.  And we all know that if "The Wizard of Oz" or "The Sound of Music" is on TV, the holidays are right around the corner, right?

7.  The "Holiday Hours" schedule has been up at 24 Hour Fitness for at least 3 weeks now.

6.  Not last weekend, but the one before that, the Trans-Siberian Orchestra was in town.  (Someday I SO want to go to that!) That same weekend I also went to the Holiday Food and Gift Festival.  No joke.  And it was glorious.  And I only bought...well, like 3 things.  Maybe some of you will benefit from these purchases.  I know you're excited.  Which leads me to my next point...

5.  My Christmas shopping is already well underway.  'Nuff said.

4.  I bought my plane tickets!  (See previous post!)

3.  One of the local radio stations had a "Christmas Preview Weekend," where they played nothing but Christmas music from 5 PM on Friday through first thing Monday morning.  Yes, that was the weekend of the 7th, 8th, and 9th of NOVEMBER.

2.  The official Christmas tree was delivered to Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland last Friday and is now being decorated for the big Christmas tree lighting the day after Thanksgiving.  (If you've been watching the news, you probably also know the Christmas tree was delivered to Rockefeller Square in NYC.)  And as I've driven home through downtown Portland the last couple weeks, I've noticed the trees lining the streets are decked out in white lights, and there are giant snowflakes on all the lampposts.

and finally...

1.  As of last Friday, November 14, at about 7:15 AM, the Portland radio station K103 is playing nothing but Christmas music ALL the time from now until Christmas!  (It's also streaming on their website if you don't live in the area but are looking for a little Christmas spirit.)

Woohoo!!  Bring on the Christmas cheer!  If only it snowed in Portland...

"Healthy cupcakes?" OR "SURPRISE!"

About a month ago, my roommate got engaged!!  Her boyfriend (now fiancee) proposed at the top of the Space Needle in Seattle and it was a total surprise to her.  They came back like a day or two later and one of Joey's cousins threw them an impromptu engagement party.  There was basically no notice, so even though many of Analisa's friends were invited, only one of them could make it.  She was pretty bummed out that none of her friends showed up (I was even busy--Erik's sister and brother-in-law were in town that weekend), but all of Joey's family were there.  

Analisa is from Utah, too, and her best friend had plans to come visit this past weekend.  I started thinking about it, and decided it might be fun to throw them a surprise engagement party that her friends could actually come to.  Through the magic of facebook, I got in touch with her best friend, Amy, and together we planned a little party for them to take place during Amy's visit.  So even though I'm not feeling too hot, we threw a party last night, the surprise worked out, a good number of people came (some of Joey's and some of Analisa's friends--phew!), and even though I barely knew anyone, it was really fun.

Joey is a pretty big health nut, but what is a party without dessert, right?  So I made these cupcakes, and they turned out awesome!!  I just used a chocolate cake mix, added the water the mix called for, and instead of eggs and oil, I added about 15 oz (1 small can or 1/2 a big can) of pumpkin, and they turned out moist and delicious!!  And even if you don't like pumpkin, they don't taste like pumpkin at all!  So they have about 1/2 the calories and fat of a regular cake, but they're just as moist and delicious.  :)  And they were a HUGE hit!!  I laughed because everyone thought I was so creative and clever to write the message with cupcakes (I thought it was pretty boring, actually), but then people had fun rearranging them into as many different words as possible as different letters gradually got eaten throughout the night.  It was fun.

So the party went off without a hitch (despite a few scares), and it was a great time.  Congrats, roomie!  :)

Beautiful Autumn in Portland.

It has been sooooo beautiful around here for the last month or two!!  I didn't take any good photos until these, which is kind of the beginning of the end, but they kind of give you an idea of how awesomely beautiful it's been.

Traffic was crazy slow, so I took advantage of the stop and go conditions to snap a few photos of the beautiful fall colors in Portland.  Apparently this year conditions were exactly right in every season to make the leaves the brightest and most beautiful they could possibly be. (P.S. You WIN if you can tell me where these were taken!)

Soooooo pretty!

Traffic was SO bad, and this was at 1 PM on Halloween!!  A few days later I was talking with my roommate, and she had been driving that same route home at about 12-12:30ish, and saw the accident that created this traffic nightmare.  She said RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER a van crossed all 3 lanes of westbound traffic, bounced off the median, then skidded back across all the lanes of traffic and skidded into the median on the right shoulder and stopped.  The passenger immediately got out of the car and started running away.  Weird, huh?  And weirder that she saw it, and I saw the aftermath an hour later.  Ugh.

This is the tree outside my office window.  Isn't it gorgeous?

Just a sampling of the beautiful leaves on the ground.

Orange and Black.

Yep.

I'm not a huge fan of Halloween.  When I was little I liked it okay, but I have a long string of bad days on Halloween, so it just isn't my favorite holiday.  My mom and my sister love it, but it's just not my favorite.  Especially since in a lot of cases, it seems to be a good excuse for girls to dress skanky and go out in public wearing lingerie.  Ugh.  Anyway, we got invited to a Halloween party by one of our REACH friends and her fiancee, so we decided to go.  Erik LOVES the color orange and happens to have a full orange suit that he only gets to bust out about once a year, so I decided to play off that.  

Yes, that is my real hair.  And the gray hue is finally wearing off.  So no, I probably wouldn't recommend doing this to your blond hair, but it was fun while it lasted.

Insomnia.

And no, I don't mean I can't sleep!  There's a cool coffee shop in Hillsboro, OR, called Insomnia, and they have live music a few times a week.  The boys played their third show (second as the headliners) there a few weeks ago, and as usual, it was really, really fun.  Their shows are always a good time, and my roommate and her fiancee were finally able to hear them.  They did a great job.

Our friend Deborah opened for them.  

She's awesome--we sing together sometimes, and it's always lots of fun.

Johannin in action.

Puddy, aka Dave, the guitarist.  

He sings harmony and back-up vocals sometimes, too.  He's cool.

Erik, the lead singer/beatboxer/tambourine-and-other-random-percussion-player.

I bought him that shirt.  (MxPx is his favorite band.)

Randy, the bass player.  He's fun, and an incredible musician.

Evidently there was a little photo shoot at the end.  

Obviously Randy didn't get the "look hard core" memo.

Fun With Plywood Cutouts.

I've been really pitiful about posting lately, and since I just loaded the photos off my camera and into my computer, I realized I actually have a few things worth posting about, so I'll put up a couple quick posts.

The photo above was from a trip we took to the pumpkin patch with a local high school choir.  Erik and his roommate, Puddy (aka Dave), were asked to be chaperones for the trip, and they asked me to join them.  It was lots of fun.  The kids were cute, and it reminded me of being in HiLites.  :)  (The lady on the far left is the director.)

There were lots of these silly things around, so we took a couple photos.  Apparently Erik was grumpy about being in the photo.  :)

And the coolest thing was the pumpkin launcher!!  :)  They had a whole huge crate full of those itty-bitty mini pumpkins, and you could pay a dollar and put the pumpkin in a slingshot, then try to launch it way out into the field to hit a big plywood pumpkin target.  Both the boys tried it, and neither of them won, but it sure was fun!  :)  (This is Erik's roommate, Puddy, giving it a whirl.)

Thanksgiving: The Pre-Quel

So, I've already told you that I love Thanksgiving, and that I'm more of a little social butterfly than I care to admit.  I started thinking about it and realized we all usually spend Thanksgiving with our families, but don't really get that same opportunity with our friends, so I decided to have a little pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving.  :)  I'm really excited--I think it will be really fun!  We're having a bunch of friends get together for a lil' Thanksgiving dinner this Thursday, a week before the actual day.  I think it's going to be a blast!!  I'll let you know how it goes.  :)

"I'll Be Home For Christmas..."

It's TRUE!!  I bought plane tickets the other night, so I will be heading to Utah for Christmas--yay!!!  Unfortunately it's going to be a SUPER quick trip, but I'm excited!!  

The two upcoming holidays are TOTALLY my favorite!!  :)  I LOVE Thanksgiving--I have believed for a long time that it's really important to thank people who have had an impact on your life or made a difference in your world, and I think it's awesome that we have a holiday to celebrate exactly that!  Sometimes I think, just like with Christmas, we get so caught up in the hype of the holiday that we forget what it's truly about.  I love seeing some of my friends who are doing awesome things with their families to get in the right spirit--we have so many blessings, and this is a perfect time of year to remember it as we begin to get ready for Christmas.

Plus, as we all get older, I think I realize more and more how important my family and friends are, and I LOVE getting together with people for the holidays.  I think, secretly, I'm more of a social butterfly than I usually am willing to admit.  I haven't been home for Thanksgiving since my senior year of high school--NINE YEARS!!  Luckily, I've been blessed to have family in the Northwest who have taken me in each year for this special holiday, and it's always a blast.  One year I went to my grandparents' house in Montana, most years I've spent Thanksgiving with my aunt and uncle and a random assortment of other various people (cousins, friends, siblings, etc.) in Seattle, and the last two years, I've headed to Kennewick, WA, to hang out with Erik's fam.  Even if I couldn't be with my immediately family (I think I've spent Thanksgiving with my folks twice since high school), the awesome people in my life have gone out of their way to include me and make the holiday special and enjoyable.  This year promises to be just as wonderful!  I seriously CANNOT WAIT until Thanksgiving!!  :)

But back to the topic of this post...I'm going home for Christmas!!  Granted, I always go home, but for some reason, I am SO READY for a break!  I can't wait to go frolic in the snow and sit by the fire and chill with my family.  My sis and bro-in-law are heading to Peru the day after Christmas for a mission trip with her in-laws, so our visit will be very short, but it will be super fun to see them!  So, in case you're interested, I'm flying into Salt Lake on Tuesday evening, December 23rd, and flying back out of Salt Lake on Sunday, December 28th.  If any of you happen to be headed to Vernal, too, I'd love to see you!  :)  Happy Holidays, everyone!

Really, Monday? Already? Really?

Oh, man, one-day weekends are SO not long enough!!

So, I have just enough time to give you a quick update before I drop off into dreamland, which will inevitably be much too brief anyway.  I have been pitiful about posting these last couple weeks, partially because it hasn't felt like I've had anything worth saying (or reading, for that matter), and partially because I've been ridiculously busy!

I've FINALLY completed my CPR/First Aid Instructor re-certification.  A word to the wise: when you get complicated certifications that take DAYS of boring training, DON'T let your cert lapse!!  My gosh, it was annoying to sit through those classes when I already know the stuff, I've taught the stuff, and frankly, it's not that difficult in the first place!!  The people in my class were nice enough, but apparently experience is super important in teaching, because what came super easy to me seemed pretty tough for them--even though one lady was a retired teacher, she still wasn't any good on the teachbacks.  Oh, man.  Let's just say I am happy to be done giving up my Saturdays, but THRILLED that working Saturday means I get an extra day off at Thanksgiving.  Sometimes being busy has it's perks (especially when you aren't yet eligible for vacation time!!).

Today was an awesome, fun-filled, jam-packed day, but sleepiness is setting in, so I'll have to fill you in on it later.  It was a blast.  But one day is SO not enough to have off!!  Oh well.  So here are just a few quick thoughts before I go:

*I am SO glad the political ads are over.  And I don't even miss them at all.  Hip hip hooray for a little break in the madness.

*I am SO glad the election is over, and I hope we have at least a little time (like until January, when it will pick up again) for people to take a break talking about it.  Let's call a time out on the political talk.  What do you say?  (I'm SO glad I work at a place where we've all agreed just not to talk politics at all to the greatest extent possible.  Yay for that!)

*I'm so proud of Audri for being a poll-worker!!  Way to show people that you don't have to be a little old lady to work the polls!!  And way to represent the young adults!  Good job, Audj!  :)

*If you want to see something amazing and beautiful, click here.  Beauty exists in the midst of extreme poverty.  And that's all I'll say about that.  (And yes, I was directed to this video through thepioneerwoman.com.)

*Have you heard of the book "The Shack"?  Have you read it?  If you haven't, you should.  And then you should tell me what you think.  And we should talk about it.  No matter what, it definitely will make you think, and that's good all in itself.  And after you read it, I'll tell you something else about the book that makes it cool, too.  :)

*Christmas has come to Portland.  I'm serious.  And at first I wasn't ready for it, but now I think I am.  More on this later.

Good night everyone!  Sweet dreams, and have a good tomorrow!

Toy Story?

Just in case you know these folks, I thought you might enjoy the following photo--it pretty much made my day:

Janna, Ryan, Ben, and Joseph Remien...as Toy Story.  :)

Miss you guys!