Christmas post, finally

Hey friends and family! Welcome to 2010! We've been crazy busy and then crazy sick, so I'm just now getting all this up for you to see. We got to spend Christmas in San Diego this year and it was a wonderful time. We hung out with a ton of people and played a lot of games and laughed, a lot. It was great. We even got to extend our stay for an extra couple of days because Southwest Airlines is fantastic and will let you switch flights with no fee if it costs the same. All in all, a lovely time was had by all. And then Brad got sick and got an ear infection and ruptured his eardrum, and then gave his sickness (but not the ear infection, thankfully) to me, so we've been using a lot of Kleenex around our apartment the last week or so. But we're on the mend and both he and I are almost done with our grad school applications! Yay!

So there's the update for now, more to come later, but to tide you over, here are a few pictures from Christmas:

The classic Southern California Christmas picture



Me and my matching present, nicely designed by Brad's sister Michi



The random karate kick, of course



The Carters bought these "C is for Carter" hats when we went to the Cubs game out here, so we had to do the family photo with them



And a bunch of us went to Orfila so I could see everyone and finally catch up, and of course try out all the delicious wine!



There it is, Christmas 09 in all its glory. The regular recipes and cheap wines of the week will resume this coming week as well, never fear. And I still need to show you all the new view from our apt (hint, it involves lots of fluffy white stuff.) Have a great week!

Homemade Holiday

Hey friends. I thought I'd share this idea with you all. I'm sure Christmas is tight for everyone right now, but that doesn't mean that there are less people in our lives that we want to honor and thank and give something great to! I really wanted to give something to the other members of our small group at our new church, because they have been so welcoming and awesome by allowing us in their lives this semester. But with everyone in the group, giving a separate, store-bought gift to all of them wasn't probably feasible. So I decided to do something homemade. And these paint tins of brownies emerged.



I found this great Chocolate Chocolate Chip Brownie recipe on another blog (well, I'm assuming it's great, I've never actually tried it... if you're in my small group, let me know how they turned out). I just used the dry ingredients to make the layers (my friends will have to find their own butter and eggs). I found the paint tins at Michael's, and added some candy cane ornaments I had from an event I was part of at our old church a few years back.



The walnuts were an addition of mine into the recipe, but I left them in their own compartment so people didn't have to add them if they didn't want to. And I put a circle of wax paper in-between the layer of flour/cocoa powder and brown sugar so that it would help with the mixing process.



Lastly I tacked on the name tags with the recipe written on another card and voila! Homemade holiday goodness! I hope they all enjoy them, and I hope this may spark some creative juices in you for your friends too!