A Snowy Adventure

This week my family decided to take advantage of all the lovely snow and nice weather further up north and go for a whirl around on our snowmobiles. It was the first time that my sister and I went on a trail system and we loved it!

 With three machines, my sister and I had to ride along behind my brother, dad and her boyfriend. After 2.5 hours of riding on the back I was a little bit stiff the next day but it was fun.

When we arrived in the town, my sister's boyfriend had his own method for getting his machine off the back of his pick up truck....he just backed up to a snowbank.

 Once we got driving through the trails it was gorgeous. The snow was freshly fallen and clung to the little trees.

We drove through forests, provincial parks, large fields and beautiful orchards. We saw wild turkeys, rabbits and even a little mouse. Up on the mountain, the view of the land was breathtaking.

Here is a video from us zipping around through the forest.

A few times my sister and I hoped onto the machines and tried to go around a bit, but we just couldn't seem to get the bodyweight to do the sharp turns very well.

New Years Eve Ideas

Tomorrow evening I am helping a friend host a New Years Eve party. All week I've been meaning to come up with ideas for food, decor, etc but I've been lazy. I think its that post-Christmas slump where you just want to sleep and rest up from all the holiday mayhem. The thought of more eating, drinking, socializing was just too much. Now that its getting closer, I'm more excited about getting together with my friends for a fun night ringing in 2011!

Its down to the crunch, so I am starting to look at ideas. Our theme is Old Hollywood Glam. Ladies in cocktail dressed and gentlemen in shirts and ties.

I love these printables from Fabulous Features by Anders Ruff Custom Designs. It has that old school look, with some fun modern touches.

For food, we're leaning towards simple dishes that can be made in advance, such as my Spinach Parmesan Dip, fresh fruit trays, festive hors d'oeuvres and some fun cocktails.

I'm off to pick up some goodies and party favours! If you have any fun ideas, please leave them in the comments section!

Festive Earrings

Look what I found in my stocking this year...

Cute little Chihuahua Christmas earrings that looks like Whiskey!

I love the little details, like the sparkly white fluff and cute little buttons. I'm not sure if I'll wear them as earrings, but I've been thinking about turning them into cute little ornaments.

See the resemblance?

Now I'll let Whiskey get back to his favorite activity....watching squirrels out the window!

Rest and Relaxation

Now that the chaos of the holidays has calmed down, I'm using the time to get a little bit of rest. Its been a crazy year and its nice to take some time at the end of it to relax and be reflective of what has happened this year and where I'd like to go in the coming months.

I'm trying to keep up doing at least one thing physical a day, but most of the time I'm using to visit friends, catch up on movies I've missed, read books that have been on the bedstand for months and indulge in some holiday goodies.

Its nice to wake in the morning and have no plans. Its a rare treat and I'm thankful for the break its giving my mind (and stress levels). I know that January will be an action packed month with work trips, a bachlorette party, a wedding, moving my entire office to a new location and focusing on moving forward in my career. Knowing the demands that will be coming up soon is making me all the more appreciative of the time I have off right now.

Well, I'm off to cuddle with Whiskey and get caught up on Dexter. I'm so close to finishing this season!

Leftover Mashed Potato Pancakes

Have leftover mashed potatoes from Christmas that you just don't know what to do with?

In my family, the tradition is to mix in a few ingredients and make delicious potato pancakes.

For every 2-3 cups of mash potatoes that we have, we use:
1 Egg
1 small Onion
2 tbsp Butter

Dig those mashed potatoes out of the fridge.

Finely chop up some onion.

Melt some butter in a large frying pan.

Saute up the onions in the butter until soft.

Merry Christmas!

I hope that you all have had a wonderful Christmas morning!

Last night I took the dogs out for one last final walk and as I walked back down the driveway, I looked at my family home, that only hours earlier was bustling with family and friends.

I looked inside and caught my dad in the window setting up gifts and filling stockings.

By the time I came back inside, most of the family had gone to bed, but I sat for a little while looking at the tree with Whiskey on my lap, thinking about all that we have been blessed with this year. An evening with your loved ones can do that to you...remind you about what this holiday really is about.

Of course, I did take a peek under the tree to look at some of the presents too. How gorgeous is this wrapping paper that my mother found in the States?

Almost too pretty to unwrap. It sparkles when lit up by the tree. I used it to wrap a few special gifts :)

It wouldn't be Christmas Eve without piling on the couch with my sister and brother to watch Its a Wonderful Life. I always get a little teary at the end when the whole community gets together to help George Bailey. Oh how I would love to live in a place as pretty as Bedford Falls.

I'm looking forward to a quiet, relaxing day with the family. We did our big family dinner last night, so now its just time for leftovers and watching movies.

Hope that you all have a wonderful day. Merry Christmas!

The Sights and Sounds of the Season

Today I'm up early finishing the baking and helping with the cooking for our big family dinner this afternoon. Its our tradition to do the big meal on Christmas Eve with the whole family and then all the grandparents and great aunts stay over for Christmas morning brunch. I know that some year my mother wants to go to Hawaii or Florida for the holidays, but right now I can't picture Christmas without lots of family and lots of snow.

All week I've been getting into the holiday spirit, cooking, baking, humming carols, doing a TON of wrapping and of course, looking at all the Christmas light displays.

The boyfriend and I decided to bundle up and head out on a little Christmas date to take in all the sights and sounds of the season.

We drove to the town of Newmarket to see their Festival of Lights at Fairy Lake.

 All through the scenic park there are displays by some of their local businesses.

 I practiced my hoop skills with some jolly reindeer ;)

Christmas Bootcamp vs. Baking Marathon

This year my friend Amy and I decided to do something a little different. Instead of spending most of our holiday days lounging around on the couch watching movies and eating chocolate, we decided to commit to a self-imposed Christmas Bootcamp. In other words, we agreed to motivate each other to workout most days during the two weeks we have off at Christmas......

....however, we had ALOT of baking to do this week as well.

I'm not kidding when I say "alot". Amy has been a baking fiend lately and she is so sweet about taking extra care to make things safe for everyone. She makes nut stuff, but then she dedicates a day to going nut-free for people like me and diabetic safe for people like her father. The time and energy to do it all just boggles me.

On this day we made 6 recipes, putting one in the oven and starting on the next one right away. With two blondes working in the kitchen we ended up making little mistakes on every recipe...twice as much green food colouring in one recipes, and extra cup of coconut in another. But they all seemed to work out great in the end.

These little guys are basically mint sugar cookies with a chocolate filling inside and a mint chocolate on top. They smelled amazing while they were baking. Mint chocolate has to be one of my favorite flavour combinations.

This is where things got dangerous....the extra pieces of chocolate.

We can't just let them go to waste, right?

Morton Family Strata from "The Family Stone"

On Christmas morning we often have a slew of relatives who have stayed over from our Christmas Eve dinner the night before, and we always try to serve up a nice brunch to get everyone started on their day of traveling to other family events. So last year I wanted to try something new for a change and I remembered that there was a recipe on the DVD of The Family Stone for a delicious looking strata.

In the film, Meredith Morton (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) prepares her family's recipe for strata to serve to the eccentric Stone family on Christmas morning. If you have seen the movie, you undoubtedly remember the scene where this strata is dropped all over the kitchen floor! 

Despite being accident prone myself, I managed to avoid spilling this anywhere. It was a great dish to prepare for a brunch because it needs to sit in the fridge over night, so you get to make it well in advance and just pop it in the oven when you wake up on Christmas morning.

What you'll need:
8 slices of White Bread
8 ounces Mozzarella Cheese, sliced or grated
14 ounces Tomatoes, sliced
13 ounces sliced Mushrooms, drained (or sauteed fresh)
1 medium Onion, thinly sliced into rings
5 Eggs
3 cups Milk
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Oregano
1 pinch Garlic Salt
Parmesan Cheese
Black Olives, sliced (optional)

 Using a cookie cutter, donut cutter or lid from a jar, cut bread into shapes or circles. Set aside.

 Place bread scraps in bottom of buttered 13' by 9' baking dish. 

 Layer half of the cheese over bread. 

Home for the Holidays

This morning we celebrated my sister's 21st birthday with some mimosas (its was her champagne birthday after all, 21st on the 21st!) and some of my family's favorite cinnamon rolls.

What a perfect way to start off a morning on my vacation. However, the champagne went to my head and I've been feeling sleepy all day, which in all honesty was probably more likely from getting up in the middle of the night to see the lunar eclispe.

I've been officially on vacation since last Friday, but its been a whirl wind few days, full of family, friends, baking and shopping.

The only break that I took was to read in bed for a little while....but even then I wasn't alone. The dogs had to surround me. (As you can see, I'm in full vacation mode...comfy sweatpants, check. holey socks, check. old hoodie from university, check!)

Since I've been back home I've been in cars for almost 6 hours, driving through snow covered towns that makes the snow we have in Toronto right now just look like a light dusting of icing sugar.

But what makes road trips more bearable? Tim Horton's of course ;)

....And hanging out with cuties like this. Yes, that is chocolate around his mouth, and, Yes, that is a candy cane shaped rice krispie treat stuck to his t-shirt.

I had better get back to a mountain of wrapping to do, sugar cookies probably burning in the oven, and a stack of Christmas DVDs with my name on in. Ho ho ho!

Homemade Peppermint Bark Jars

Every Christmas my family makes delicious Peppermint Bark. Its something I look forward to every year, so when my sister came up with the idea of giving it away this year on gifts, I was on board.

She found small glass jars, decorated them up and made handwritten cards with the recipe inside (with the leftover materials from last year's Holiday cards).

The ribbon was picked up on clearance at a local craft store. I like to check out the sales at the end of every year and pick up amazing post-Christmas deals.

We have plenty of little vintage wired pinecones at my parents' place, which made for adorable additions to the ribbon bows.

Afternoon Naps

 

What is one of my favorite things to do on weekends?

Cuddling on the bed with these two guys. Weekends are made for afternoon naps.

 Whiskey seems to love them too. Enough to fall asleep with his head up.

But it doesn't take long for his head to get very heavy and fall to the bed.

Whiskey really is a champion napper. I wish I could fall asleep as fast (in such a variety of situations), as he does with ease. Here's to many afternoon naps now that I'm on vacation for two weeks. Gotta love 'em!