I want....

This rug. How awesome is it???!!!

28 Goals....

To follow suit (and more importantly, to hold myself accountable). In no particular order....

1. Read for fun more often. In the last year I have bought so many books, that are just waiting for me to read!

2. Maintain my work website, and make sure people are using it! It really has the potential of being helpful to teachers and parents, if only they would utilize it.

3. Improve my half marathon time. I am not quite sure what I want that time to be, but I know I can improve it.

4. Master some dinner "staples". I dont want my future kids to think drive thru cooks are better than mom :)

5. Keep up with Tae Kwondo. This has been a fun endeavor, and I am really enjoying all the things I am learning.

6. Exercise more. I love the classes at the Y, but I am not great about utilizing them.

7. Drop the weight I put on while in grad school. I have no excuses anymore!!

8. Hike a mountain, or two.

9. Take a cooking class.

10 Take a cake decorating class.

11. Cut soda out of my life! I started drinking it in my schools for no reason other than it was a quick "break" from my work, and now its stuck.

12. Drink more water.

13. Remember to use my reusable bags when I grocery shop.

14. Organize all my photo albums.

15. Take a multi vitamin daily. I always forget to take it!

(holy moly this is hard.... thats what she said, er. maybe that should be goal... act mature!)

16. No snacking after 9pm. Yes Jen, that includes your obsession which chips and salsa after 9pm.

17. Start a flash mob. (okay, a girl can dream, cant she?!)

18. Organize all my recipes.

19. Be better about taking "me" time.

20. Floss more often. My dentist would be so proud.

21.Follow the food pyramid.

22. Take more pictures. I have been seriously lacking in this department.

23. Take time to edit the photo's I take.

24. Spend more time in my day focusing on what went right, instead of all the things that go wrong.

25. Plan ahead for Christmas gifts this year, instead of waiting until December to start my planning.

26. Get rid of the cookbooks I never use, and invest in ones I will.

27. Be better about staying in touch with old friends. As convenient as technology is, I often find myself only using it to communicate with my "new" friends, when I should be using it to keep in touch with my older friends too!

28. Meet all 27 of these goals within the year! ( Is this cheating?!?!)

Holy cow, I am turning 28 this year?? Can you hear me knocking 30??

More Baking...

Holy macaroni, its already the end of December? Seriously, where did this month, well, this YEAR go???

December is always such a fun month. There's decorating for the holidays.....

(okay so its not a picture of our tree, but its still a cute one, right?!)

...seeing our good friends put on one heck of a fun show called Yesterday and Today. If you like the Beatles, even one iota, this show is for you! Click here to see some awesome photo's done by a good friend of mine.

Other highlights from December? The Canadian invasion, for sure. A good friend of mine is from Canada eh, and her parents, sister, grandparents and two best friends came to Omaha. What a blast!!! I was especially excited because Sarah and Julia love to bake, which means we all got together and had a night of baking. Again, I forgot my camera, so photo's can be found here. We traded recipes- Sarah and Julia taught Christine and I to make butter tarts (so yummy!!) and Christine taught them how to make crackballs (oreo balls, oreo truffles, heaven, whatever you prefer to call them) and I made carrot cake cupcakes from scratch. (not my best by the way, but I am my own worst critic!) I left before the decorating fun happened due to an ice storm :(

Another highlight would definately have to be blizzard NUMBER TWO. Yes, two ridiculous blizzards a week and a half apart from each other. The first blizzard was fine because I was sick with the flu, so I would have been holed up in my house anyway. The second blizzard singlehandedly ruined Christmas for most of the midwest. Mike and I stayed back in Waterloo a couple extra days, and thankfully were able to have Christmas with my family a couple days late. Here are a few "fun" pictures of the blizzard....

Our house from the neighbors driveway....

Looking out our front door....

drifts on our deck...

and a picture sent to me by a friend in Western Nebraska. The snow drift in this picture is taller than a semi! Crazy!!!

This has definitely been a december to remember :)

Uh oh!

As previously posted, I have started baking pies... and LOVE it. Each time I make one I get a little better the dough is just right, the edges look prettier, etc. Because of this, my mother in alw asked me to make two apple pies for Thanksgiving- I was so excited! Now Grandma could see that pie backing was not obsolete.

Of course schedules always get a little hectic around Thanksgiving. To accommodate this, I planned on making the pies on separate days so I didnt have to find a whole day to make pies. The first pie turned out well. The second pie was amazing. Seriously. The crust was the best I had ever made, it laid in the pan well, and the edges looked amazing. I laid the top crust over and holy moly it was beautiful!!

I put the pie in the oven and hit my thumb on the 450 degree rack and immediately pulled my hand away, with the pie in hand. In this moment I did something I will never live down... I let go of the pie. Thats right, i dumped it upside down in my 450 degree oven.




This is what i could get out of the oven before it burned to the bottom. There was only one homeade pie at Thanksgiving this year.