Saturday, December 18, 2010

Because Calories Don't Count When It's a Holiday

I'm so impressed with my fiancĂ© today that I thought I'd share with everyone the goodies we've been baking all weekend, (I use "we" loosely...it's mostly been him...he does not like to share kitchen space and also I'm kind of lazy).  The first one is Mike's favorite and the one that has me the most impressed because it included him making his own marshmallows from scratch.  It's hot chocolate on a stick found here.  Marshmallows are actually incredibly easy to make, but Mike is still amazed at how awesome his first try turned out.  We're still waiting for our fudge to set, but once we're all done, this is what the finished product should look like:



Now we just have to figure out how to give those to people without making a huge mess.

The second recipe we've done today that I can't wait to gorge myself on is peppermint bark found here.  This is what our finished product looks like so far:


One little note on this recipe, it says in the end to "break the bark into small irregular pieces."  That is way easier said than done.  We accomplished breaking it up by chopping at it with a huge knife, it doesn't just simply "break up."  Tastes delish though!

We're also making regular fudge from Mike's old timey recipe book that he loves so much and white chocolate macadamia nut cookies that we admittedly bought pre-made dough for.  But I think we should still get credit for baking them since I bought them from a client to help her son go to camp.  Good deed outweighs laziness right?

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Groomzilla

Now, you all know that I love my groom-to-be.  He's the ying to my yang, the calm to my crazy, the clean to my messy.  Usually he's the one telling me to pump my breaks and tone down the crazy.  I'm usually the one having massive amounts of mini-freakouts.  My, how the tide has turned.

Mike has been having a rough time picking out the suits for him and his boys to wear in our wedding.  Early on, he decided that he wanted to buy all 4 suits rather than renting tuxes or trying to rent suits.  He's a bit of a clothes horse, (he would call himself a dandy), so he's been scouring the internet and magazines for suits he likes and sending me link after link.  He finally decided on a store he loved thanks to one of the groomsmen Owen and we set a date to go check it out and HOPEFULLY leave with our hands full of pants and jackets.  After a three-way argument between Mike, the mo-in-law, and myself about whether or not Mike needed to call ahead and check on their stock, (Mike voted no and mo-in-law and I staunchly voted yes), Mike caved, called, and realized that they were NOT in stock at the closest location, (told-ya-so's abound), and we'd have to schlep to the downtown LA store.

Little-known, (?), fact about me...I hate driving on freeways.  I wasn't always like this, I used to be rational, but lately it scares the bejeesus shit out of me.  I get super paranoid and yell at Mike to slow down the entire drive.  It's incredibly unpleasant for me and my stress level and equally unpleasant for Mike since he'd rather sit and listen to Glee music and drive in peace.  So needless to say, the drive to LA was not a pleasant one.  We finally got there in one piece and found the store.  Zara was great.  Super cool clothes, hipster staff wearing fancy suits with duckman shoes, loved it.  The first suit Mike wanted was going out of stock and didn't have enough sizes so it was a no-go.  Our awesome hipster lady helper with her, I'm too cool to ever work a job where tattoos are not acceptable, peacock feather arm tattoo, ran her ass all over the store and called multiple locations to find us all the sizes we needed.  Mike loved the suit, big goofy grin loved it.  After over an hour in that hot ass store standing on my feet holding jackets and pants looking like the least hip and fattest chick in LA, we were leaving...suits in hand!

We had a great rest of the day, French restaurant, sandwich with an egg on top, British waitress with fake diamond on her tooth, event-less drive back.  Then we got home.  And the groomzilla freak-outs started.

Mike spur of the moment decided that the suits were too tight and started WIGGING out. Soothing voice did not work, hugs did not work, tough love did not work.  Normally, all Mike has to do to talk me down from a good wig-fest is to tell me to pump the breaks and then he walks away.  This did not work on groomzilla.  We finally called the mo-in-law and she temporary talked his crazy fest down.  Until about an hour later when the freak-out mutated into a pout-fest.  This continued until well into this afternoon when  he finally tried on the suit in question for mo-in-law who also happens to be master seamstress-in-law and they all decided that the suit was actually too tight and Mike has to return all of them and start over from scratch.

Dear God.

This happened around 1:00 this afternoon.  Since then, he's made me look up 3 separate suits online and we just ordered one for him to try on and send back if it doesn't fit.  He's also continuously all day stressed out about "ruining everything."  Who's the crazy one now?

The positive thing to have come out of this weekend long suit-gate is that Mike now admittedly understands me better since he has finally experienced the fun that is a mini freak-out and I get to act like the sane one for awhile.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Demon Dog

I've had some love/hate relationships before, but this one is currently taking the cake.  I love our dogs.  They're our furry children.  I would jump in front of a car for them, I would kill for them, I've stayed up nights for them.  Some days though, I want to kick them.  Christmas has been rough on me this year for many reasons, but Gizmo, my dear youngest furry child, decided to make it a little bit harder today.  I came home from work at lunch to a living room floor covered in ripped up wrapping paper and destroyed presents.  Awesome.  Instead of kicking Gizmo, (I currently have him locked outside so I don't), or complaining about him anymore, here are some pictures of my lovely demon dog.  Love him or hate him, he's pretty damn cute.