Year in Review...a little late

So much happened this year. And that is an understatement!

The pictures are a little hard to see...but SO much happened that I had to try and fit them all in!!

2011 was a great year. A truly GREAT year. The best of my entire life so far!

Let's begin at the beginning shall we...

We love her to bits and pieces...can you tell?

Many friends got engaged, many friends got married, and many friends had babies.

My most favorite day of all! 

Had some fun vacations this year! SoCal, Philadelphia, Portland, Disneyland, Cabo, Puerto Vallarta, San Diego. We were very blessed in 2011! 

And to top it all off I started nursing school too.

Well it sure has been an amazing, incredible, whirlwind of a year...and I wouldn't have traded a single second!! Here is to a new year, that probably will not top this one...but I hope it come to a close second!

You trip, I trip, we all trip for ROADTRIPS!

Sleepy boy

Churchill's Pub, love the sign, and the red telephone booth. It was 40 cent buffalo wing night. SCORE.

Boba tea at Boba Tea House in San Marcos

Hotel Del Coronado Christmas tree

The Hotel Del Decorate a MASSIVE tree differently every year. The Santa in front was a little unsettling looking, but then again when is Santa not a little iffy.

Rosemary fries. Delish

On Christmas Eve we ate at the R-Gang eatery in Hillcrest in San Diego. The chef was on the Food Network and the food was DELICIOUS! Apparently they were supposed to be closed on Christmas Eve but forgot to check if they had any reservations on Open Table...guess what...they did. They sent all their staff home and the chef and his mom waited tables, mixed drinks, poured beers, served us and made all the food. They were such troopers.

Christmas morning. Happy Boy.

Guess what we got Greg's parents for Christmas?! We were wired ALLLL day.

Goodbye SoCal (and Happy Birthday Jesus sign cracks me up!)

Hello NorCal. I have missed you.

So there you have it. Christmas with the Hortons. It was amazing, very restful. There was a massive storm the first 4 days we were there so it forced us to lounge around by the fire with a good book, a cup of coffee (or ESPRESSO!) or just watching a movie. Something we never do. I hope your holidays were wonderful, now back to real life!

Christmas Tradition-Baking with momma.

 My favorite Christmas Tradition.

My family doesn't have a lot of Christmas Traditions. My mom being a nurse and my dad being a fireman means that one or both could be gone for Christmas Eve, Christmas day or both! This has had a lot of downs, but also some pretty neat and unexpected ups. : ) It means we don't take ourselves too seriously around this time. We flex with schedules and rearrange shopping trips and dinners to be together as a family and celebrate each other when we can! Since Greg and I will be spending Christmas with his WONDERFUL family again this year, there has been even more flexing and rearranging to fit everything we need to do before we leave in. But one tradition that I look forward to every year and is baking with my mom. Like I said, we flex, so sometimes it is the week of Christmas and we are scrambling to toss cookies and fudge into cellophane at the eleventh hour, but this (like so many years before it) was a nice relaxing 2 weeks before. We took our time. We made thumbprints and sugar cookies and peanut butter balls and mint chocolate cupcakes. And we didn't even stress or break a sweat, but we did make a heck of a mess. Thank goodness we weren't baking at MY house my dad works 48 hours at a time...like I said it has it's ups too. : )

p.s I used butter and not shortening. ; )

I used an amazing recipe out of a vintage cookbook called "The American Woman's Cookbook" given to us by an elderly neighbor before she passed away that she had gotten as a wedding gift! So precious. I'm gonna shoot straight with you though there is a recipe in it for how to properly cook a turtle. I thinks I will stick to the cookie recipes in it.

Remember I said i would share the successes AND failures. Failure. i literally forgot about these and found them when I put the cupcakes in the oven. The picture does not give their burnt and unappealing-ness justice. They were burnt.

 

I Shared my favorite tradition...what's yours?

Roomates, family, and friends...oh my!

I want to take this time to introduce a couple important people in my life. I love them.

This of course is the wonderful Boyfriend. I think the polar bear hat suits him. : ) You can find his blog here.

This is one of my fabulous roommates and partner in crime. Watch out.

The third member of my household and also coincidentally a member of my family. My little sister, who as you can tell was super psyched about this picture being taken. : )

 And here is the whole fam.

You will probably hear me talk about all these people (and more...) and it is always nice to put faces and names together. Like salt and pepper.

Caroline the Christmas banner tutorial will be up in a jiffy.