F-O-O-D Food Food!!

This week I made Chicken Verde Stew with Hominy. Holy deliciousness. This is definitely something worth trying if you're a stew/Mexican food lover. I really had no idea what this was going to taste like when I started making it but you can't go too wrong with stew, in my opinion.

I followed the recipe pretty exactly. I would recommend that you have everything cut up first. The process I will use next time is to make the tomatillo and amarillo sauce first, cut up veggies, then begin sauteing things.

We've had it for dinner twice and there was still enough left over for both of us to bring for lunch. So it's a great week night meal or for having dinner guests over.

Enjoy!

Notable Muppets from around the world

For Dusty's birthday we went to see Being Elmo: A Puppeteers Journey and since then I have been very interesting in learning more about the muppets from sesame street and the story behind them. I always assumed they were cute and entertaining. But now that I'm older and have a more analytic brain (sometimes) I understand that they all mean something and teach kids important social skills. They are cute and cuddly but they also stand for something.

Below you'll meet Samson. He's from the German Sesame Street. I chose him because his name is Samson, very close to my maiden name. Also, he's cute and inspirational. There's a link to the rest of the article at the bottom.

Samson is one of the main characters on Sesamstrasse, the German coproduction of Sesame Street. In appearance, he looks like a distant relative of Captain Caveman, and is the only holdover from the original Sesamstrasse lineup. His signature song goes “Ich bin Samson, und ich schaff’s!,” which may sound German and vaguely menacing to our untrained American ears, but actually means “I am Samson, and I can do anything!” Inspirational.

Read the full text here: http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/107202#ixzz1hvy2w7rO
--brought to you by mental_floss!

2011 Christmas Photo Re-cap

Mint M&M cookies. Deelicious! (hint: if you keep your batter cold, your cookies will be thicker and basically better)

Present time!

Dusty's new Toms

Playing Bananagrams with 2 people? Quite difficult.

My brothers and Dusty all got remote controlled helicopters for Christmas.

Guster just hanging out.

Ice skating! Looks like my mom and Dusty are in the penalty box.

Boys. Hanging out.

Little brother and Dad doing a triple double axel.

Since when is using a gift bag and tissue paper not proper gift wrapping?

A whirlwind weekend

Wooosh! The holiday weekend is over. It's a bitter sweet feeling.

Let's recap:

• Friday I left work around 4 (woot woot!). Made a pit stop at Trader Joes for a few last minute items (wine, cheese and flowers). Dusty and I made dinner, took a walk around town, stopped at the dog bakery, finished wrapping gifts and then unwrapped gifts! For the two of us, we put a limit on the amount we spend. Turns out this year we both received 3 gifts! For me: a watch, Paul Simon record, and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros record. For him: Toms Shoes, Dave Matthews Band wine, and a winestein.
• Saturday morning we woke up and hit the pavement, driving 2 hours to join in the Decatur Christmas festivities. First up, Grandma Frey's for pizza and games. Next stop, Amber's to deliver gifts for Lucy (her new dog). And lastly, dinner with the other set of grandparents.
• Sunday morning we opened gifts with Dusty's family, baked homemade cinnamon rolls and played a quick game of DELUXE SCRABBLE!! ...a Christmas gift, the board is on rollers, it's awesome!
• After that we made the 2 hour drive south to my parents house where we were greeted with more food (sorry, I've neglected to mention all the FOOD that is involved in this) and Xbox Kinnect. Have you played this before? I don't know what game we play but I was sweating after one round. This was followed by more food, gifts, dinner, drinks, games, games, games (we play Sequence, Catch Phrase, Banagrams, and now, Kinnect). And then everyone fell asleep watch Christmas Vacation.
• Monday morning we had breakfast and loaded up the car with gifts and Gus and headed back to the homestead, but not for long. We had one last family party, ICE SKATING! And then we crashed on our couch, and talked about how amazing our families are and how lucky we are.

And now back to the regularly scheduled programming. I had to go to the grocery store yeseterday (bleh) and had to come to work today... But I have wonderful memories to look back on from a great Christmas weekend with family!

Merry Christmas from Sarah, Dusty & Guster

Doing everything in my power to NOT give a gift card this year

Something to remember for the holiday season

“I think that is why we stay close to our families, no matter how neurotic the members, how deeply annoying or dull- because when people have seen you at your worst, you don’t have to put on the mask as much.”

― Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies

Monday Check-in

Working on: End of the year stats and next year planning. Evaluation of 2011 goals, objectives, etc.

Reading: Finishing up Brave New World so I can move onto A Visit From the Goon Squad.

Watching: Home Alone 1 & 2 on repeat in this house!

Loving: that I was able to spend this past weekend with my family.

Drinking: Just bought some new red wine for our husband/wife Christmas dinner on Friday.

Eating: homemade pizza! Dusty had it waiting for me when I came home yesterday. What a man, what a man, what a mighty good man.

Stressed about: trying not to let it get the best of me during the holiday season.

Excited: My parents are going to keep Gus for the weekend so when we get there on Christmas he'll be there too! No animal should have to be alone on Christmas.

Feeling: blessed, lucky, joyful.

Obsessed with: This huge comfy, warm robe I left at my parents house and finally brought it home with me!

BIG Family Christmas this weekend!

I'm ashamed...

I did something very bad today and I don't know why but I got let off the hook.

I was driving south on College to a meeting downtown this morning. I had my iphone in the cup holder, and I decided to check twitter. WHY?! I don't know. I promised myself I would only check my mentions. (that's an easy way to justify breaking the law)

I look up and HOLY SHIT TRAFFIC STOPPED!!!!!!!!!!!!

BRAKES!!!!!

SCREECHING TIRES

TURN THE STEERING WHEEL

BRAKES

...crunch

Yep.

I motioned for the lady to pull over in the parking lane because south on College is one lane. We got out of our cars. I immediately said how sorry I was begging for forgiveness, shoving my insurance paper at her saying I'll pay for any damage. I'm crouched on the ground looking at her bumper thinking Dusty is going to kill me. WHY OH WHY did I look at twitter!?

I stand up and say I'm sorry again and she says...

"It's fine. I'm actually running late. You didn't do any damage. Don't worry about it. Merry Christmas."

I went over and hugged her. And then pulled on her bumper one more time to make sure it was OK and that everything seemed secure. Wanted to hug her again but she was running late...

I didn't hit her hard. I didn't do any visible damage. But I could have.

It could have been a lot worse than it was. A LOT.

I slowly got back in my car as she drove off.

I looked around wondering if any neighbors had come out side to see what the commotion was. A man had come outside. We made eye contact and he gave me a look that said "shiiiit, you got lucky."

Don't mind me

Just trying to get through...

Shit Girls Say

I can't lie. I've said so many of these things before. A little embarassed, highly amused.

Monday Check-in

Working on: Getting our Christmas cards printed and in the mail!

Reading: Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

Watching: We watched Hescher (Rainn Wilson, Natalie Portman, & Joseph Gordon Levitt) Have you seen it? If you're into sick and twisted life lessons and you have a very very open mind, watch it. But I will tell you I wanted to turn it off the ENTIRE time.

Loving: Having our apartment rearranged and decorated for the Christmas season.

Drinking: Water, coffee, water, repeat daily.

Eating: We went to Bazbeaux's on Saturday and I wasn't that impressed. Did something change there? I thought it used to be delicious?!

Stressed about: being an adult...get used to it buttercup

Excited: It's almost time for the most wonderful day of the year!

Feeling: really good, thanks for asking!

Obsessed with: find the next perfect hair cut!

Christmas Update!

Our Tree has arrived!!

We rearranged the living room this year to accommodate the tree a little better. The living room is OK right now. It looked a bit more spacious before but now it's cozy and what better time of year for cozy than Christmas?

Guster is inspecting the new object in the house.

Any squirrels in there? Nope. Ok. Proceed.

Guster is instructing Dusty on what to do next.

"Well you see here, I would probably get that rope with my claws."

And up go the lights!

If you've been to the tree house this is a good shot to see a little of the rearrangings.

He's taking a break from bossing Dusty around.

This is where I step in.

I think this gold garland really accentuates the ornament colors we have.

Ta-Da!!

Quite the beauty if I do say so myself!

Christmas @ Our House

This is our second year celebrating Christmas as a married couple, so we naturally are starting to make our Christmas (just the 2 of us) a tradition.

It all starts with the decorating the apartment. We'll be purchasing our tree tomorrow evening. Dusty will put on some Charlie Brown Christmas vinyl, She and Him Christmas, and I'll light the Christmas candle. We'll watch Home Alone on repeat, on mute of course because we have records to get through this year.

Then, we try really hard to hide the gifts from each other but it's hard when they are wrapped in a box with the name on it and he gets home from work first...I mean.....

And towards the end of the month (before our bigger family's Christmas) it's time for Dusty, Sarah & Guster Christmas. This is a very special Christmas for us! When we wake up it's present time, in our pajamas, in bed, warm and cozy.

After that it's back to the usual drill. Driving to d-town to spend time with the the in-laws and then down to the soufside to spend sometime with my family.

So far we've been dividing Christmas with our families by Christmas Eve one year and Christmas Day the next year. Pretty simple. It's works for us right now.

These are our traditions and I'm so excited to see what other traditions our family of 2 + kitten comes up with.

Me December - March

Zen Habits

Are you a Zen Habits reader? You should be. Or at least keep it in mind for "life lessons"

Today's is about self talk, The Secret Rule to Change Anything.

I've noticed more and more lately how easy it is to live in my head. It's funny to get out of my head and look at all the things I can convince myself of (along with a little webmd...). It's crazy how powerful the mind can be, eh?

When you are aware, you can change it.

Bossy

Lately, Dusty and I have had a hard easy time with telling each other what to do, which is so easy to do. When you are the observer it's simple to see an outsiders perspective and know what to do and to think ahead. When you are the person doing the chore, cooking, cleaning, driving, etc you aren't always going to tell the observer your next move.n Am I making sense here?

Example: Dusty's driving and we come up a car on the side of the road that we have to go around on a one lane road. Instead of trusting that he knows what to do I say "Make sure you stay far enough back so you can see around and know when you can go."

Did I need to say that? Probably not. Was he going to do that before I said it? Probably.

More often than not, it's really easy to be super critical of people. It's easy to look and say "well you should have..."

As soon as someone tells me how I should have done something I shut down. Is that me being hyper sensitive? Maybe. Is there a better/more helpful way for people to approach the subject of constructive criticism? Yep.

I think we need to work more on helping each other rather than criticizing. It's always easy to point out the bad things. But I wonder what would happen if we started pointing out the good things?

Also, plain and simple, don't worry about what I'm doing, worry about what you're doing.