2013

Hope you all had joyous holidays and a happy first week of 2013! Let me tell you; 2013 is going to be a great year folks! I have some big plans for this year. Lots of travels and hopefully lots of changes! 

The holidays, as usual, were filled with lots of family & friends. Cleveland for Christmas and Chicago for NYE! Thankfully the construction on our kitchen re-model was complete in-time for Christmas Eve dinner!!

Here are some highlights :

{ my brother and i : Christmas Eve }

{ after dinner chit-chat with the fam }

{ dad & brother sleeping off dinner... not sure why they thought this was cozy! }

{ i love this little girl }

{ Rock & Roll Hall of Fame visit with family }

{ Pocketbooth iPhone App-fun with Meg }

{ puppy-dog getting cozy }

{ check out that snow-dino kids }

{ cousins & brother with our giant snowman, it was a busy day }

{ my dayton friends in chi-town }

{ NYE with my roommates... tradition 4 years strong }

{ NYE: Courtney and i }

Some of my resolutions include; 

1. Understanding more of what I am putting into my body. This means: Splurging on the organic stuff, ridding my freezer of the frozen junk, & drinking more tea ( no I cannot abandon my love of coffee. not a chance – lent was hard enough! )

2. Less couch time, aka watching TV, more reading!

3. Portfolio, portfolio, portfolio!!! Which then brings job searching... in Cali :)

4. Create a web-presence for myself

5. Start selling on Etsy

6. Stay positive!

Cake Ball - Attempt

Christmas is almost here! I cannot believe how December has flown by... Christmas is in 3 days and NYE is in 10 days! There is a lot of Christmas cheer around the office — decor and little gifts!

Charlie Brown kinda Christmas

Co-workers have also been spreading the Christmas cheer! I've gotten multiple little surprise that have made Christmas this year extra special!

Speaking of crafty things, I decided to bake for the office as my little gift! That is the one thing I am missing the most due to the working world... baking cookies and holiday preparations at home with my family! Every year my mom, brother, and I spend hours baking and decorating almost a hundred cookies... I hope they are doing ok with out me this year :( So I baked as if I were at home! I attempted red velvet cake pops (found here)

The balls them selves went quite nicely... as pictured here in part one

It was the whole putting them on a stick and dipping them where it all went downhill! I'm a little bit of a perfectionist when it comes to these things and I was getting flustered as the balls were falling off the stick into the chocolate! I resorted to dipping them solo and adding the stick later.

 I also didn't have enough chocolate to dip them all so some of them are drizzled... should still be good, right? I hope :)

I am happy with the end result, but I need to try these out a few more times before they can be juuuust right!! Happy Holidays :)

Home sweet home

Oh home... my mom sent me this picture of our house all ready for Halloween and it made me miss home a lot! I love that she decorates for every holiday under the sun. Even in college I would get frequent care packages for Valentine's day, St. Patricks Day, etc. full of little things to decorate the dorm or my campus house with! I'm hoping she continues this tradition forever because it makes me smile!!