Happy Holidays!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season! My Christmas was great. I was a bit exhausted the days leading up to Christmas Eve and Christmas. It was baking nonstop for me. I wanted to take pictures and post them on here, but I forgot to with all the craziness going on. I made Magic Bars, cranberry bliss bars, red velvet cupcakes, peppermint truffles, and persimmon bread - loaves and loaves of persimmon bread). Everyone in my extended family loves loves loves persimmons. They all have trees growing in their yards and even go persimmon picking somewhere in Escondido I think. My mom had asked me to make persimmon bread for her one day so I made one. My aunts had some and they all enjoyed it so they all gave me their bags and bags of persimmons they had which were starting to get over-ripe and there was no way they'd eat them all before they went rotten. I probably ended up baking about 30 loaves of persimmon bread. I was wiped out after that and now I don't want to bake for awhile.

I got some pretty great gifts this year. I got lots of make-up, some perfume, a couple of jackets, lots of gift cards and some money. I love that my aunts still think of me as a "kid" and still give me Christmas money. Makes me feel young! I hope everyone else got some good stuff. I spent Christmas Eve at my parents house with all of our extended family and The Boy. I love my family. Now that we are all getting older, we see each other less and less so it's great to see everyone together on the holidays. It's a night filled with lots of food, laughter, and love. We carried on the festivities the next day at my aunt's house. The Boy left Christmas morning to be with him family and I went up there Christmas Day night after the Laker game. I kinda didn't want to go though. It was raining and I didn't want to leave my family. :(

Tomorrow we are going out in LA! I'm very excited. I haven't been out dancing with the girls for awhile now. Happy New Year's everyone! Have fun and stay safe!

It's that time of year again

Are you ready for the holidays? I'm not. I totally thought I had all this time to prepare. I've been thinking about presents and cards and baking for weeks now. I just haven't made any concrete plans. I kept telling myself that I have tons of time and that I can do it all later. I don't know why. For some reason I just didn't want to be eager beaver about Christmas this year. Now I'm rushing to get things done. I just really didn't realize that Christmas is next week already. I think part of me just doesn't want to deal with the holidays this year. I was already pretty disappointed about the holidays this year since a lot of my extended family won't be around this year and then Max passed away which makes it even worse. Anyways, I'm almost done making my cards and I'm doing most of my baking next week. I had wanted to bake lots of stuff this year, but now I'm scaling back on my baking plans. Partly because I don't have time and partly to save money. :(

I am done with my present buying! It helped that I'm not giving out as many presents this year. A lot of my friends and I have decided to just do Secret Santa or White Elephant gift exchanges this year. We are all feeling the crunch of the economy this year. I did get some great deals on the presents I did buy. December is a great time for sample sales. This weekend I went to a bunch of them and scored big time. The best sale of them all was the Stila Warehouse sale.

Most of what I bought were presents. I only got a few items for myself. I regret that now though. Everything was such a good deal that I should have gotten more for myself. Oh well. There is always next time! Here is what I got:

Blanc Palette

Retail $32, Sale Price $10

Red Carpet Look

Retail $40, Sale $15

Chocolate Palette

Retail $40, Sale $15

Two Lip Glazes 

Retail Price $22, Sale Price $5

The Perfect Face Kit

Retail $45, Sale $20

The Stila Stars

Retail $55, Sale $25

Bronzer

Retail $28, Sale $7

Total retail price of all items comes out to $284. Actual price paid was $102. Plus there was no tax so that's even more savings! Woo hoo! I wish all shopping was like this.

Very late Christmas update

Awhile back I had promised an update of my Christmas festivities. Due to my recent sickness, I have yet to blog about it. Here it goes. I got a bunch of great presents. I got a couple of dvds, gift cards to sephora and coffee bean, Kiehls products, ca$h, and the following:

Speakers for my ipod


Dolce & Gabbana Parfum - The One



8 inch Digital Frame



Christmas Eve with the fam was great. All my aunts, uncles and cousins were there and let me tell you there are A LOT of us. There was lots of good food such as lobster, prime rib, mashed potatoes, cheesecake, and more. Christmas songs were sung. Family board games were played. Good conversation was had. Ever since we were kids, one of our dads would dress up as Santa Claus and pass out the presents. Now that we are older and there are a new set of young kids around the dad's have passed on the tradtion to our male cousins. This year, the boy got roped into playing Santa. He was such a good sport about it, made me fall in love with him all over again (I know, I know, cheesey). Christmas Day my family gathered at my aunt's house for more food and family time. Overall, it was a wonderful holiday season and I'm sad it's gone. Only 11 more months until the next one!

Target After Chirstmas

I love Target and I love getting good deals on things, combine the two and I'm one happy camper. Because I had work (BOO!), I didn't get a chance to go to Target the day after Christmas, so I missed out on some items that go fast such as hand soaps and dishwashing soap that have Christmas themed packaging that are normally half off. I did get some great gift wrap, boxes, and bags at 50% off. I went back a few days later to check out the 75% off stuff and I was able to score some more bags and boxes. Yesterday I was at Target again. This time I was there to buy non-Christmas items such as shampoo and bar soap. I decided to check out the Christmas stuff to see if I could scrounge up one or two items that were marked at 90% off. Unfortuantely for me, there was nothing left but bags of bows and some really ugly christmas tree skirts. There were a few bags and boxes, but those were damaged. On my way to check out, I passed by the stationary section. Since I like to make my own greeting cards, I decided to check it out. I scored a few super cute christmas items that were 90% off. Yay!


I got all of this for $1.15. Retail price would've been $11.82. Go me!

Holiday Baking

This year, I've been so busy. I had hoped to get a lot of baking done for the holidays, but sadly I did not. Christmas kinda snuck up on me this year. I did some baking though. On Christmas Day my sister and I made Cranberry Bliss Bars a la Starbucks (even though I'm not a big fan of Starbucks, but that's another post). They are SOOOO good. They were quick and easy to make too. Gotta love it. Here's a picture. Please excuse the poor quality. It's from my camera phone.



Here's the recipe I found from Recipezaar:

1½ hours 40 min prep
Cake
1 cup butter, softened
1 1/4 cups light brown sugar, packed
3 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla or orange extract
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup diced dried cranberries
6 ounces white chocolate, cut into chunks
Frosting
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
3 cups powdered sugar
4 teaspoons lemon juice or 2 teaspoons orange extract
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 cup diced dried cranberries
Drizzled Icing
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon milk
2 teaspoons vegetable shortening
orange zest, garnish (optional)
Not the one? See other Cranberry Bliss Bars Recipes
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Beat butter and brown sugar with an electric mixer until smooth. Add eggs, vanilla, ginger, and salt; beat well.
Gradually mix in flour until smooth.
Mix 3/4 cup diced dried cranberries and white chocolate into the batter by hand.
Pour batter into a well-greased 9x13-inch baking pan and spread evenly.
Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until cake is light brown on the edges.
Let cool.
Frosting: combine cream cheese, powdered sugar, lemon juice and vanilla with an electric mixer until smooth.
When the cake has cooled, spread frosting over the top of cake.
Sprinkle top with diced cranberries.
Icing: Whisk powdered sugar, milk, and shortening.
Drizzle icing over cranberries in a sweeping motion or use a pastry bag with a fine tip.
Allow cake to sit for several hours, then slice the cake lengthwise (the long way) through the middle.
Slice the cake across the width three times making a total of eight rectangular slices.
Slice each of those rectangles diagonally creating 16 triangular slices.

Quick present buying vent, er, I mean update

Remember my friend, H? The one that constantly makes me buy and return her presents. As I said before, this year she asked for a really good hair dryer for Christmas. I had no intention of buying it for her. I just planned on giving her the cash for it so that she could go buy it herself. I did not want a repeat of Christmases past. The past two Christmases I have purchased and then had to return her present because she changed her mind. This year I knew better and boy was I right. Two days after she told me she wanted a hair dryer she texted me and told me she changed her mind and didn't want it anymore. She no longer knew what she wanted. Annoying as all hell, isnt' it?

Merry Christmas!

I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. My family starts celebrating tonight. We 're going to mass at 6pm and then heading over to my parents house for dinner and presents. All of my cousins, aunts, uncles will be there. The festivities continue tomorrow morning at my aunt's house. I can't wait! I love my family and I look forward to fun times tonight. Be safe everyone and have fun! I'll try to post some pictures on Wednesday

Santa Claus is coming to town.

With the holidays coming up, I've been trying to come up with good gift ideas with the people on my list. I think I have just about the hardest people there are in the world to shop for. The boy buys everything he wants, so it's not like there's anything out there that he really wants, but hasn't bought for himself yet. My friends and family are sooooo super picky and particular about things, so its hard to shop for them. One friend will ask for something specific. I will go out and buy it and then a few days later she'll say she no longer wants it and to just give her a gift card to Nordstrom. Grrrr....annoying, isn't it? Everyone on my list pretty much just gets cash. It's so boring though. I love shopping for presents and then wrapping them up so nice and pretty. I think I need new friends. I'll probably just buy everyone something small and then give them cash as well. So far I'm getting a charging station for the boy from Bed Bath and Beyond that I saw Just Jenn talk about on her blog.



I also need gifts for a White Elephant gift exchange. I don't know what to get. Any ideas? The gift needs to good for both sexes and between $50-60.

oh the weather outside is frightful

It's raining in San Diego. It hardly ever rains here. When it does, it rains like crazy for a few hours (sometimes day) and then its clear skies for months. The rain this weekend is really putting a damper on my weekend plans (pun not intended). Today we were going to go get our Christmas tree. Usually we get it the weekend of Thanksgiving, but we've been so busy this holiday season that we've been putting it off. We were going to go early this morning, but with the rain it's a no go. Tomorrow morning I plan on driving up to LA to see the boy. That should be fun if its still raining. It'll make a 2 hour drive about 3 hours or more. I look forward to it immensly. I was excited to go to LA to see the boy AND our dog. I still get to see the both of them, but I was hoping to take the dog to the dog park. Again, a no go with the rain. I know I'm doing a lot of complaining about the rain and we need it and blah blah blah, rain is good. I guess I just need to have a new weekend plan. When its raining out, my favorite thing to do is stay inside and make a nice fire, watch a movie, and cuddle up with the boy. It should be a nice cozy weekend in for us.

Attention Target shoppers

I love Target. I'd live there if I could. Just like that one movie where Natalie Portman lived in a Wal-mart - except I'd be living there because I heart it so much, not because I had nowhere else to go. I probably go to Target two or three times a week and each time I'm very excited to be there. Tonight I went there to return a storage bin I purchased the other day (it was too big).
Since I was there I just HAD to take a look around. I decided to scope out the live Christmas trees in the garden center. Can I just say OH MY GOD! As soon as I stepped in the garden center it was like Christmas heaven. It smelled all piney and Christmas tree-y. If you couldn't tell by now, I love love love Christmas. I walked around and looked at the trees. I didn't buy one though. I need to go back when I am prepared to bring a tree home (read: 4runner and a male companion to carry the tree). I did purchase some Christmas decor. Here's what I got:

Stocking holders


Some gold ornaments to put in a cylinder vase.


I also got some garland like this, but with lights.