Nothing beats good leftovers. J Well, I suppose that’s not entirely true, but I’m enjoying some high quality seconds right now. The DH, puppy, and I hosted two meals for Christmas day; the in-laws for brunch, and my half for a late-afternoon supper. For brunch, we prepared: baked French Toast, a Denver omelet casserole, cheesy hash brown casserole, cornbread casserole, muffins, and a spinach quiche, plus two kinds of salads. The words “Martha Stewart” were tossed around. For supper, I marinated chicken cordon bleu in Italian dressing and drenched it in cheeses. Not too bad. Now I’m enjoying the remains of the meals and man, I must say… I’m a good cook! J Not to brag or anything…
It was an excellent Christmas, but it was a very long day with all the family and cooking. My nephew is 20 months and has the accompanying patience (or lack of) of a toddler, so we had to stop opening presents to eat the second meal. Ryker spent a good portion of his evening barking at my grandmother, who was unfortunately enough to be sitting next to the bag of dog treats my mother brought him.
I was super proud of myself for not cheating this past week – I had directed my family to my Amazon wish list for gift ideas and I managed to refrain from looking at it all week to see what they’d purchased. Therefore I was pleasantly surprised to receive a wireless router for my netbook from the DH, and several craft book from my brother and his girlfriend.
Tonight we are going to Mahoney State Park, where my dad rented cabins for the weekend. We are meeting my cousins out there; I think this is actually the first time we’ve ever attempted a family get-together that didn’t just involve meeting at my grandparents’ house for a few hours. I’m excited about this gift exchange as well; instead of the usual $10 gift exchange, we all were instructed to spend our $10 at the Goodwill – this way, when you get a crappy $10 gift, at least you know the money went to a good cause, and you also don’t have to feel bad about re-donating it if you hate it! And who knows, you might get something great! I did the GW shopping for the DH and I last weekend and I really stretched our combined $20 (plus picked up some great refashioning stash additions for myself).
I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and here’s to a good weekend!
