Who doesn't love to Christmas shop? My only problem is if I add everyone I have to buy for and all of the amazing things I want to get them together it ends up costing a few months salary. To save ourselves from going broke my family and I have a few rules at Christmas. 1. Make the gift an outing. Every year my entire family goes to dinner and a play. Its a Christmas gift for everyone and we get to enjoy each others company at the same time. Life gets so crazy its nice to carve out time to spend together. Last Christmas we saw The Lion King. This year we will see Hamilton (in may). 2. White Elephant. My cousin hosts for both sides of her family every Christmas which adds up to over 15 adults and 8 kids. Instead of trying to buy for everyone we do a white elephant gift exchange. Everyone chooses a number and in order you pick a gift from the pile or to steal someone else's already opened gift. It can be tricky to find a gift that relates to a wide range of people but here are a … [Read more...]
Wine Tasting 101
My dad is a huge wine guy. He's in wine clubs, goes on wine trips to France, hosts tastings, etc. Growing up in a household that had wine every night for dinner, I was starting to feel a little embarrassed that I didn't know much about wine past whether I liked it or not. When I was home this past weekend I had my dad give me a lesson in wine tasting! I only like red wine, so that's all we tasted, but I thought it would be fun to share with you what I learned! When you get a glass of wine, you will first want to observe it's color. Is it a dark brown/red? Is any light getting through it? The color of the wine can indicate how heavy the wine will taste. Generally the darker the wine, the heavier the wine. After you have critiqued the wine's color, you should slowly tilt the wine to one side of the glass and bring the glass back to level. This allows you to observe the "legs" of the wine (i.e. the drops of wine that run down your glass). The wine's legs can tell you how much … [Read more...]
Baking Blunders
Well known fact. I cannot bake or cook. With a degree in engineering you think I would be able measure some flour and and follow simple instructions but I have quite the way of ruining a recipe no matter what I do. My sister and I attempted to make Caramel Apple Snicker Doodles. We Found a perfect recipe and I had a partner in crime. Perfect. Not. First problem - we could not find the apple cider mix required for the recipe. Oh well we will just make Caramel Snicker Doodles. Problem one solved! The recipe we decided to use can be found on Mother Thyme. Mistake number 2. I opted to use Truvia instead of sugar. Did it ruin the cookies? Probably because it has no calories and sugar is better than everything. Just kidding...maybe? First we mixed all of the dry ingredients. Yes if you are reading the recipe you found mistake number 3. The sugar was not supposed to go in this bowl. Luckily I quickly grabbed most of it (well as much of it) out to throw in with the butter. Cut to we mixed … [Read more...]
Giving Back
Its that time of year where people start to give: gifts to each other, cans to food drives, money to charities at the stop light and time to volunteer for coat drives. It is so important to us that we donate our time, money and occasionally some extra clothes (not like we have too many of those) to charity because we recognize how lucky we are in our lives. While the fall and winter season is a great time to get involved I think anyone who's ever tried to volunteer to serve a thanksgiving meal can attest that its a crowded time to give. There are so many different ways to get involved all year long. I love getting to support a cause and wear cute clothes! The main way I get involved is by serving on boards. The time commitment is so small and serving comes with a lot of great perks, the most important of which is helping others! I am currently lucky enough to serve on the Women's Transportation Seminar (WTS) Board through work and Children's Oncology Young Professionals Board outside … [Read more...]