Happy New Year

Lots of people in the blog world are doing year-end recaps. But, I'm not going to do that. I can't possibly remember everything that happened over the last year. Like everyone else, I went on vacations, I had some really awesome shit happen to me, I had some really bad shit happen to me and I gained great insight about the direction of my life. Or something like that.

2012 resolutions are going to be to: eat more fruit, take more pictures, get photos hung on my walls, cook from my cookbooks more and destress my life in a major way. Will I fail, will I succeed? Who knows and who really cares after February?

I wish you all the best in the upcoming year! Yay for 2012! I think it's going to be a good one.

Best Meal...Ever

I really loathe the term foodie. I don't even get what it means. I once was at a restaurant with someone that I didn't know very well who told me point blank that she was a "foodie" and so was her husband. Then she ordered a hamburger at a seafood restaurant. Dumbo.

Anyhow, I enjoy going to really nice restaurants as a treat every now and again. Some of my local favorites are: Forepaugh's (best bread), Heartland and of course Luci Ancora. Some of my most favorite meals, however, have been out of towners. Off the top of my head I'm thinking of this place I went in Beaver Creek, CO that I think was called The Golden Goose, this seafood platter that my mom and I had in Ireland at a little restaurant called The Point, another seafood lunch at a restaurant in Lahaina, Maui, HI with my mom and at Boma in Disneyworld. I also enjoyed every single restaurant that I visited in Charleston, SC with Michael. I'm sure I'm leaving some off the list, but you get the idea. Bitch likes to eat.

When Michael and I decided to go to Vegas for a few days this fall, I told him that I really wanted to go to Bobby Flay's Mesa Restaurant at Caesar's Palace. I have always wanted to try his food and we would be so close. Michael agreed that we should probably add it to our list of things to-do! Yay!

I loved the ambiance of Mesa, although we really had to search for it in Caesar's Palace which is the most jumbled casino of them all! We originally weren't going to order an appetizer, but hey, when in Rome...So, we got the Tiger Shrimp and Roasted Garlic Corn Tamale.

I had never had a tamale before. Let me say right now that people need to be eating tamales more often. I think tamale eating could cause world peace. The shrimp weren't bad either. I scraped every last bit of the tamale filling out of it's little corn husk and had no shame in looking like a complete pig while doing it. Oink, oink I shouted!

Now for the food, Mike had the Sixteen Spice Chicken (at least I think that's what he had, it's the picture above). It was divine. The flavor on everything was amazing. Bobby really knows his shit. As I recall, the meat was also very tender which is another plus because there's nothing worse than dry chicken. I had the Ancho Chile Glazed Salmon pictured below. It was so wonderful. There's something about the sauces that were on each of the plates that really made the dish.

Because the server twisted our arms, we also ordered sides. This corn dish (I can't remember what it's called, but it's corn, cheese and cilantro) and mashed potatoes. If all we ordered for dinner was this dish of corn, I would have been happy. I would have swam in that little dish of heaven. The mashed potatoes were also wonderful, but let's be real, it's hard to eff up mashed potatoes, right?

And that was it. We were too stuffed for dessert. I absolutely loved Mesa Grill. Everything we had was divine, although I think the best was the appetizer and side dishes. The one downside was the prices. I mean, I know fancy restaurants are expensive, but Mesa was a little excessive for this midwesterner's tastes. We didn't even order drinks. So, even though the price wasn't super appealing, I'd still go there once just to say you've eaten Bobby Flay's delicious food.

If I were an Iron Chef judge I'd let him win every time!

Mockingjay

Alright, let's finish this series out, shall we. Mockingjay is the last book in The Hunger Games series. The first of the movies is set to come out in March of this upcoming year. So, let's get to brass tacks. Mockingjay is intense and kind of confusing. Definitely the most poorly written and conceived of the three books. But, that so often happens, doesn't it?

Our heroine Katniss is now somewhat safe in the rebel District 13. But, she's finding that the rebel district isn't offering up nearly the type of freedom that she thought it would be. It's a no-fun zone filled with strict rules, curfews and lots of classes. Katniss is all "This sucks", but she's got bigger fish to fry in the form of rescuing that cute buttercup Peeta.

Peeta, however, has been brainwashed into hating Katniss and the rescue isn't exactly what Katniss had intended. And now they are in the Capitol, under full assault, so Peeta's problems take a back seat.

They quickly realize that the Capitol's President Snow means business. Creepy, disturbing business. And people die. I'm warning you now that people you don't want to die will die and it will be sad. Sad to a point where you need to put down the book and have yourself a good cry about how terrible the future world is. But, then pick that book right back up because there's no crying in baseball and futuristic war stories.

Okay, back to the Capitol. Katniss finds President Snow, but then she realizes that he isn't the ultimate enemy and that District 13's President Coin is actually worse. So, she serves up some justice Katniss style and then life is perfect for basically everyone but her and Peeta. Their lives will forever be haunted by The Hunger Games.

And that's the ending. This series is short, dramatic and sweet. Although, I'm not going to lie, there's a lot of plot twists in the end that were not fully fleshed out and got super contrived and confusing. So, in hindsight it's like "Is this the best you got?"

I'm still giving it high stars because I couldn't put it down. 4/5 or 8/10 stars.

Advice From an Old Bat

When I first started in the working world, I remember being totally unprepared for the fact that my Christmas break was shortened from three weeks to one day. Since I was the newbie in the office, I had to work on Christmas Eve day which seemed sacreligious to me since Christmas Eve was my more favorite of the two days. I worked a full day, went straight to my mom's house where relatives were already gathering and had to jump from my working girl grumpiness to a festive holiday mood in eight seconds flat. It sucked. Then I had the next day off, but it was so busy that it didn't really feel like a vacation day. Then the following day, the 26th of December, I had to jump out of bed and go back to work. All of my Christmas joy was shattered.

Since that time I have realized how precious Christmas break truly is. It's 2-3 weeks of doing absolutely nothing. You can go to a movie at 11:00 A.M. You can go to the mall anytime you feel like it. You can spend several hours at lunch with friends. You can stay up late curled up in an armchair reading Pride and Prejudice and sipping hot chocolate. You can spend an entire day in your pajamas playing with your new toys.

Kids (and college students) don't realize how lucky they have it. Christmas break is the most awesomest thing in the entire world. If you have it, use it wisely.

P.S. Is it too late to become a teacher?

Santa Was Here

This Saturday, I spent the afternoon wrapping gifts. I am a terrible gift wrapper, so it takes me a long time to get everything all wrapped up. Part of the problem is my anal retentiveness. All packages have to be wrapped in only red, white and green.

I'm really particular about wrapping paper. This year I couldn't find exactly what I wanted, so I had to settle for what I could find. I'm not sure it all meshes together as cohesively as in year's past.

When I had them all stacked up, I couldn't even see the Christmas tree over the top of the stack. I wanted to lay them out to get a better picture.

Voila! Here they all are. The photos turned out a little bit dark. I've been experimenting with camera settings and obviously this was a fail. But, you get the idea. Can't wait for everyone to open up their gifts and see what they got! I had some really good gift ideas this year!

Tis the Season

Some may remember that one of my majors in college was Marketing. I think my specialty was retailing. I wouldn't be a great face-to-face salesperson due to my extreme awkwardness, but I'm really good at the more subtle types of marketing. Things like product placement and atmospheric marketing. Those things I'm really good at.

In college and law school, I worked for a small retail store and I liked to do their window displays. I'm not sure anyone else really loved for me to do them, though. I kind of obsessed over them. I'd create a theme like "Limes and Lace" where everything had to be lime green or white lace. It was probably super obnoxious, but I got a lot of sales with those window displays. More than once someone called the store and said "I was just driving by your store and I'd like you to put the outfit in the window on the right on hold for me." Now, that's good marketing.

Anyhow, a good friend of mine snapped the above pic of a recent holiday window display. What the duck were these people thinking? Nothing says holiday spirit like two well-dressed and polished mannequins holding a large red phallic object right at their crotches. I'm not sure that this imaging will help with their sales either. Then again, sex sells.

The lesson here is that when creating a window display, sometimes it's a good idea to take a step back and actually look at what we've created. And if it's what's seen above, maybe find a different spot for that random red oblong package.

Photo credit: My friend Christina.

I Am a Crafty Bitch

Recently, my friend Grace and I got a bug up our rears to do some crafting. We decided on Christmas wreaths. There were many decisions before us, do we use jingle bells, candies, natural things, large balls. Based on pinterest, the possibilities seemed endless. We decided on pine cones and I spent a few days in a local park picking pine cones, which I'm not really sure is legal. But, I did it anyways.

Our method was to get Styrofoam wreath outlines, wrap them in ribbon and then hot glue pine cones to them. Easy enough. All of the supplies came from Michael's. As you can see, we snacked on Triscuits, hummus and cheese.

This is my wreath in production. I used some of the larger pine cones mixed with smaller ones. Grace focused on the smaller cones. I ran out of ribbon, so there is a large portion of my wreath that isn't covered, so don't look too closely at it if you see it in person.

Here is Grace's in the midst of completion. It's coming along very nicely. The pine cones were pretty easy to glue on with the hot glue gun.

This is Grace's finished product. We added a wide red velvet ribbon to attach it to the door and then a red sparkly bird. The bird was an impulse buy at Michael's, but I think it adds a little more pizazz to the wreaths.

And here is my completed product. I got one of the sparkly birds in green and glued it to the bottom.

I love how the wreaths turned out and they were so easy. They were not as cheap as I thought they'd be, but the big expense was the glue sticks and I won't have to get new ones for the next time I make a wreath. We also bought some large pine cones that we ended up not using because they were too big and bulky.

Next up for my crafting adventures will be a Valentine's Day wreath. Anyone have good suggestions for materials?