Category Archives: christmas

Ho, Ho, Ho!!

Merry Christmas!  What a wonderful day we had.  John and I were up fairly early – 6:30  😀   Poor John LOL!  It was nice and quiet and we made a pot of coffee and opened our gifts to each other.  This is probably the most unique thing I have ever gotten in my stocking:

Star fruit!  I am excited to try this when it gets ripe.

Plus some new slippers!

Do you like my Tweety jammies?  Why yes, I am 41 :mrgreen:

After presents, I made us some pumpkin oats for breakfast.  Normally we don’t eat the same thing, as John eats breakfast when I am at the gym, so it was kind of fun cooking one of my favorite brekkies for him.

After the oats digested – I went out for a run!  The temp was about 24 degrees and the funny thing is, it has been zero degrees lately in the morning, so 24 felt pretty warm.  It’s all about perception isn’t it??  Anyway, I was going to do 5 miles, but decided I was a little tired from doing 5.5 yesterday, so I cut it to 4.5.  Good enough!  I listened to Christmas music, too 😀

You all know how I love my eggnog and that I could bathe in the stuff?  Well now I can!  My mom gave me this last night:

Eggnog bodywash!  Yay!  So that was my wonderful shower after the run.   John and I then set to cooking Christmas dinner items for the feast later.  I made some candied pecans:

Easiest recipe ever!  I will share a post this week on these.

We set up the table:

Dinner menu for 8 included roast beef, potato croquettes, savory sweet potatoes, cornbread pudding, brussel sprouts, cranberry sauce.

My plate:

Yum!!!!

After this was the present opening.  A sea of wrapping paper:

Fun gift for me – know what it is?

It’s a gorillapod for my camera.  It’s so cool and no more shaky breakfast pictures!  After we climbed out from under a mountain of wrapping paper (to be recycled) it was time to break out the sweets.  Not like I wasn’t already noshing on these all day:

Plus my grandfather’s cake:

My grandfather’s birthday was on Christmas and we had this cake every year.  My mother made it this year.  It’s a white cake with almost a praline frosting.

Now this is what I’m talking about!

This about put hair on my chest!  Had to cut it with some regular nog :mrgreen:

We tried playing this game:

It had too many confusing instructions, so we just gave up after a while and read some trivia cards.  And had more cookies…. and nog…..

A good time was had by all.  Family, fun, food, and togetherness.  🙂

Everyone has gone home and now it’s relaxing time in my new robe with John and Pixie.

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

What has been your most interesting gift?

Merry Christmas Eve!

It’s Christmas Eve!  This is really my favorite day of the year.  It’s the anticipation at its peak 😀

I was up wayyyyy early today at 5:30 so I got up and worked for a while before heading to the gym.  I had a Zone bar before and hit the treadmill for 5.5 miles!  It felt great!  There are those days where it is just easy and flowing and today was one of them.  John walked to the gym to meet me (brrr….) as it’s only 1.7 miles from home and took me out to breakfast afterwards.  I won the football picks last week (finally), and I chose brekkie!

This was at Cafe on The Park and just a few doors down from the gym.  I was so ready for breakfast.  I actually brought a change of clothes with me so I would having something dry to eat in.  Couldn’t do anything about that hair, though! Can’t believe I am in public looking like this

I had an eggbeater omelet with wheat toast and home fries.

When you have worked up an appetite, food just tastes sooooo good!  I ate it all.

John had eggs and toast and a grilled blueberry muffin!  It was good.

Need to try this technique at home.

Work is slow today, so I am posting this early.  We are going to my folks house for dinner and then preparing for everyone coming over tomorrow for the Christmas feast!

I thought I would show the oldest ornament on my tree for the last feature.

This was done for me by our “Aunt Betty” when I was 13.  Everyone calls her that even though I think she would be my great aunt?  Look at the year on the other side!

Have a most wonderful holiday!  I appreciate so much all of my readers, whether you ever comment or not, and I love reading all of your blogs as well!  Stay safe and have a super day!

Festive feelings!

Boy was there ever a windstorm last night into today.  Gusts were up to 60 miles an hour!  It wasn’t cold, but I certainly wasn’t in the mood to run outside.  I sat around at home and ate a balance bar while I waited for my gym to open.  Then I did 4 miles on the treadmill.  I have to say with just doing cardio while taking a break from strength training, it has been a breeze!  Lifting really can take it out of you.

Came home and made some oats:

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  • 4o grams of oats
  • PB2 added during cooking
  • apple butter on top
  • a sprinkle of granola for crunch.  Yum!

Not sure where the rest of the morning went, but somehow it became lunch without me noticing!  I had another waffle sammie with turkey, cranberry and laughing cow.  luch1128

Not sure if it was the run or what, but  I need more food, so I had some of these:

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If you have not tried these, you must.  Go now.  I’ll wait…..

We then went to the open house at a local artist building called the Troy Shirt Factory (think I mentioned this last year).  This place houses potters, painters, fabric artists, jewelers, metal smiths,  yoga studio, woodworkers, photographers and more.  Plus a tea shop!  It’s a cool spot and I would so love to have a space here.  John, my mother, and I went and both of them managed to find Christmas gifts for other people and I just came home with 2 ounces of tea LOL!

After spending several hours there, we stopped by the Chocolate Mill for a snack and coffee.  I had an apple pastry:

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This was very good.  Quality baked goods are one of my favorite things.

Ate a quick dinner.  I love how things can be on the table in 15 minutes!  Frozen clam strips done in the toaster oven with some broccoli and apple sauce:

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Needed to eat quick to get down to the yacht basin for the annual lighting of the memory trees in Fort Edward.  Each tree is decorated by a family for a loved one.

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I met my mom there:

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It so festive and beautiful.  I love lights!

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It was pretty chilly, though!  I had walked there, but hitched a ride with my mom to get home 😀

I am so excited that we put the electric blanket on the bed today!  Yay!  And the flannel sheets.  I don’t care if that makes me lame for being excited about that :mrgreen:   It’s one of those simple things in life to get into warm and cozy sheets.

Saw this today looking at how people get to my site.  This has to be the best search string so far:  “all good things to share and enjoy a simple happle life”  on Baidu and my site came up first! Sweet!

There is another blogger out there that is doing something incredibly generous.  266 is going to be giving away food to those that need it based on how many comments she gets.  Let’s get her up to the 100 she has set!  Check out her post here

Cookies


Here is a picture of just some of the cookies. I should have plated up some to make them look pretty. This isn’t even all of them, there are 2 other containers!
My mistake was in thinking I would get less cookies back for the exchange….. duh. Yes – I divided what I made into thirds (and kept 1/3), but didn’t even think that I would be getting those other 2/3 back as different cookies! We had nutmeg logs, russian teacakes, Santa’s surprise cookies (with a piece of snickers baked in), spritzes, shortbread cookies, florentines, gingerbread, macaroons, peanut butter kiss cookies, some type of cream cheese coconut balls, and a few others that I can’t even remember now because I am so blinded with sugar!

John is taking cookies to his poker game tomorrow, and the rest are freezer bound. John is also keeping out a secret stash for himself LOL!

I ate too much the last couple days. Back on the straight and narrow tomorrow! I actually don’t want anymore sweet stuff for a while.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all you readers out there!
Planning a wonderful family meal at our house tonight and then Christmas dinner with my folks tomorrow.

I will post cookie pictures after the exchange 😀

Happy Holidays!

Well, I did eat too much on Christmas eve. That was the day of our big dinner.
However, I got right back on track on Christmas day! Ate 3 nutrisystem meals, and even did not have any cake or pie when we went to the family’s house.
I had some coffee and a couple clementines. So proud of myself. I did not feel deprived at all – since I honestly had no desire for any more rich food. Yesterday was about all I could take.

We do have some cookies left over, and I received some food as gifts. We froze all remaining cookies and petit fours, so they are at least out of sight.