Seattle At Night

Seattle At Night

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Christmas Postpartum

I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas and is ready to begin 2012 with positive energy and good grace.  As you can tell by my lack of entries, the season has kept me very busy!  I am not back at work for a couple days between Christmas and New Year, which most people have off or they just don't want to do work, and therefore have some free time this week!
I thought I'd do a silly photo blog of some of my Christmas blessings! This includes activities and gifts!
Here we gooo!
My letter to Santa, written with my left hand for authenticity!  Also a plate of the homemade sour cream cut out cookies we made on Christmas Eve starting at 10:30 pm!  Delicious! We had lots of willing decorators to help our with the frosting and sprinkles!!!
Captain loved to pass out in front of the fire and dream, so we painted his nails!! poor poochie!
Me in my wonderful new ski coat!!! I couldn't be happier with it!

I bought the wonderful poopers real cow bones from Local's sustainable meats in New Buffalo, MI.  I also bought flank steak for our Christmas dinner and myself discovered that no, grass fed beef is not tougher than corn-fed, in fact everyone told me it was the best flank steak they have had and that it was super tender!
I made Caprese but also my sister for a fish eye lense for Christmas!!! This photo shows how great it is, along with the next photo of our whole living and dining room at the cottage packed with people!!!

 My parents found me this awesome retro popcorn kettle!  I can't wait to use it!!
 This summer granny and I went to the Saginaw Art museum and met this artist and loved his work and its ties with Saginaw even though he is from Japan!
 I love to knit so this yarn has me all excited to start several new projects!
 These light up needles might attract a new kind of knitter with that catch phrase!
All in all we had a lovely Christmas at the lake!  As you can see above, the weather was gorgeous, not the ideal snow storm, but at least there was some sunny beauty and not just the drabby overcast.
Hope you liked your peek into the Morley Christmas!!!!
Happy New Year!  I'll probably catch you then!
<3 Suz

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Time for the Holidays!

I can't believe it is already December!  I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving, stuffing your face full of delicious home made goods!  I help out every year by making the green bean casserole! I've also recently started to help out with the pies as well!  But once the turkey is all gone, it is time to start thinking about Christmas!
  My family is pretty big in Christmas traditions. We have a lot of them and they are important to us.  Last weekend I brought a tree to my apartment along with my ornaments box which is an assortment of ornaments I made in the 90's, my baby ornaments, the ornaments my grandma gets us every year, and other random decorations and nativity sets.   My parents have saved this for me since I was an infant, and I'm pretty grateful for it.  I think my tree looks great with all these miscellaneous ornaments on it!  Some of my favorites were my beauty and the beast bulb, the big bird that you can see in the bottom of this picture next to a wonderful picture of Santa and I from 1996!  I'm working on getting a tree skirt to complete the look!


Our family is also good on making lots of delicious treats to give away to friends and family.  Normally I'm at home to do this, but this year I wasn't sure when I'd be home to do all of this, so I tried one of our favorites and specialties, peanut brittle, on my own!  Apparently it is kind of odd that we stretch our peanut brittle, but that is how I was always taught to do it, and I like it not being so thick that I bust my teeth.  Here is a close up of my final product of making peanut brittle for the first time without my dad!

and yes, it is as delicious as it looks!  That batch was PERFECT! I'll post more about my family Christmas Traditions!  There will be many more in the coming weeks. I'll be conquering them either alone or with my family due to the fact that I have no vacation days yet so I will not be spending the 2.5 weeks I'm used to spending at Higgins Lake with my family.  So to feel involved  and in the holiday spirit, I can take some of these on by myself!

Also wanted to show you my new ride!  My old ride was great! but it started costing too much to keep up with repairs, so we sold it in 3 days and I got this gorgeous Honda Civic on a lease.  It has a computer in it that took a half an hour tutorial to learn how to use!  Big thanks to my parents for helping me out on this wonderful ride.  I'm so thankful for it!

What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?

Take care!
Go Blue!