Christmas Shopping Guide

Not Everyone needs help when it comes to Christmas shopping, but I always like to see what is on "Gift Lists".  Below is my very own gift giving guide with the help of Polyvore.

Christmas Shopping Guide by firstclasspanda
Chanel Dress
Alice Olivia keyhole dress, $320
Markus Lupfer scoop neck t shirt, $185
Top Shop Knit top, $76
Ugg Pop Top Mittens, $75
Calvin Klein Underwear short top, $58
J Crew waffle shirt, $40
Forever21 crew neck top, $25
H M fur vest, £30
Alice Olivia scalloped skirt, $237
chasse tight lululemon athletica, $98
J.Crew Saturday pants, $50
Mimi Holliday by Damaris vintage bra, £38
Fleece lined legging pants, $18
Tory Burch leather shoes, $495
J.Crew patent leather shoes, $138
Steve Madden flat heels, $100
Rocket Dog shoes, $25
Ippolita rock earrings, $375
Dezso by Sara Beltran face ring, $290
Mulberry gold engraved jewelry bracelet, $270
Van Cleef & Arpels earrings $500+
J Crew knot jewelry, $50
Locket jewelry
Butter London Lacquer Nail Polish, $14
modern animal clock - elephant by decoylab at fawn&forest, $68
(STARBUCKS) Stainless Tumbler, 16 fl oz |, $1
COOLPIX S8100 from Nikon, $300
Opal Orb Ornament, $14

Power Tools and Powering Through Leftovers

Ahhh Thanksgiving is over, but the weekend continues - Hail Mary.

We had friends over Friday night and we were really weird and ordered pizza and Chinese food because nothing says "party in the 'burbs" more than multiple deliveries.  Also, nothing says Thanksgiving like vodka apple ciders - give it a try sometime.  Some of them stayed over extending the party - or really extending the doggie playtime.  Mia had lots of fun playing with the 2 other dogs, Mom got to sleep in, and Dad cut down a gigantic tree with a chainsaw and didn't hit the house so we all won a little bit today.

Cutting down a tree is a lot more complex than one might think.  Obviously you need to control the direction that it falls down while taking into consideration the direction that it's already leaning.  It also really helps to have a friend who has been certified in lumberjacking - I'm sure there is a more technical term for this but I can't remember what it is.  We have total trust in this guy when it comes to anything outdoorsy or like farmer-like, so when the tree was falling towards the house I only let out a very quiet and reserved "ahhhh....ahhhh... ahhhhhhhh" and then it was down on the ground 5 feet from the deck.  It turned out perfectly since anything that wasn't the house would be considered A-Ok.  We had a bunch of things to do today, although this giant tree took up Abe's entire day because once it's down... it took hours for him to cut it into big pieces and move them off the lawn and it's not even complete yet.  Why do trees have to be so big? 

It seems like everyone has post-Thanksgiving workouts on their minds.  For my workout I cleaned up what looked to be a woolly mammoth from the floors, did 3 loads of wash, cleaned up loads of beer bottles, did the dishes, and made a really awesome soup with leftovers.  Sure it wasn't a treadmill interval workout but since it was spread out for a long period of time I think it's worth something. 

Leftover Super Lazy Turkey Soup Recipe

Ingredients:
Turkey
Green Beans
Garlic
Onion
Chicken broth
Corn
Gravy
Pepper

Pour a little olive oil in a big pot, then add diced garlic and 1 onion stirring till mostly done, pour in 1 or 2 boxes of chicken broth (32 ounces each) depending on how much stuff you plan on throwing in.  Bring to a boil and add in chopped up pieces of turkey and green beans, add corn and stir.  I added in 4 massive scoops of leftover gravy, and some pepper to taste.  You can skip the gravy if you think it's too weird, but it does add a nice flavor.  Keep at a medium boil for 10-15 minutes and then you're ready to enjoy something easy but different than the same old leftovers.

Happy Turkey Day

Thanksgiving happened.  I have no photos of food or table settings or anything other than my new awesome koala hat that makes me look like a little kid because we were running around all day long (I took Mia out on her morning walk in this stunning ensemble).  The holiday went Ok overall -  The food was fantastic (fresh turkey is the only way to go), we had just the right amount of people over, the dog was Not very well behaved at all, and the pile of dishes was gigantic.  Hosting a holiday is no joke!  I am sure that it gets easier each time you do it, but having to hold your dog's leash as you're trying to get sides into serving dishes is a challenge.  Perhaps you have a more well mannered dog, a dog that doesn't bark at children, that would definitely be ideal!  At least we have a boat load full of leftovers to pick at today and they may be even more enjoyable without having people standing around watching you put everything together.

If I was worried about Christmas before, I'm 20 times more worried about it now.  The food we can handle, the kids we can handle, the dog with the kids is a whole different story.  I love my dog, but she makes some things very difficult.  We have 1 month to figure this out...

Holiday Stress Part I of Many Parts

One of my many character flaws is that I am really easily stressed out over the most ridiculous things.  At this moment I'm dying over us hosting Thanksgiving and Christmas at our house.  I've never ever in my life hosted anything more than having a few people over with beer so this is quite overwhelming to me.  The part that initially threw me into a frenzy was that we don't have like any of what we need as far as stuff - platters, things to hold side dishes for that large of a group, we don't have enough serving spoons or even enough flatware, tablecloth, thank god the dining room table came, we need more chairs, a roasting pan for a turkey, a turkey baster, brining stuff, a butter dish, gravy boats, a fucking case of wine.  So it's fine, I made a list of what we need and went to Homegoods and got what I could and came back and we're still sort of in rough shape, but oh well, what can I do at this point.  The best part about my multiple Homegoods trips was how many strangers I talked to about the effing turkey platter.  I'd hold something up and ask the nearest woman over 40, "how big of a turkey do you think this would hold?", or "do you think this could hold a 20 pound turkey".  The women were all super nice, very helpful, and really gave it some thought.  This was all so much better than calling my mother in the middle of a store in a panic and trying to figure out dimensions.

The next challenge of course is the actual food - we ordered a turkey from a farm and it comes with stuffing and gravy which is awesome.  All we need to do is pick all that stuff up on Wednesday.  I made a list of all the dishes that we are making, and who is bringing what, and from that list made another shopping list of ingredients.  You'd think that this organization would make me feel better, but it doesn't.  Sometimes seeing a huge list on paper just makes things worse!

The very last part of this anxiety ridden fun is that it will also be Mia's first holiday party, or her first time with a lot of people over petting her and there will be strangers and children.  Hopefully she keeps her cool and doesn't scare anyone, and will be well enough behaved that we don't have to lock her up for the day.  We'll see how it all goes soon enough...

Mid-Week Update

A few awesome things happened this week:

Mia is home and is doing fantastically.  Everyday she's showing us how far she's come.
Example 1: I took her a on long walk this morning and we passed another dog and owner, and while she wasn't exactly perfect there was no barking.  She did try to go over to them to say hello though.
Example 2: Delivery guys came today and she didn't bark at them or try to jump on them.  She was very nice to them even though they were huge and unfamiliar.  She normally would have lost her mind in fear but she was such a good little girl.

Our dining room set was delivered this morning which is great because without it we wouldn't have enough space for everyone at Thanksgiving.  This is the table without the two leaves, I wasn't able to insert them on my own... I think it's really a two person job to get the table open so it does appear to be a bit small.  The chairs are the best part of the set, the crossback is just so gorgeous.  The table itself is pretty nice too - I will Try to decorate this table top... and no I haven't done the coffee table yet either.

Last night for dinner I used some Trader Joe's Thai Red Curry sauce with our dinner and if you haven't used this yet and you like curry then you really need to.  This was the first curry that I've had in months and I thought it was just amazing.  A bottle is somewhere around $3 and there are no directions or anything, so this is what I did.  1 package of ground turkey cooked up on the skillet about 90% done, added sliced mushrooms and really skinny green beans in there, stirred it all up till things looked like they were cooking well, then added 80% of the bottle, stirred, and put the lid on to let the veggies steam a bit for 10ish minutes at medium heat.  I served it on top of white rice, you can use brown if you are feeling fat... in which case, I do not suggest this meal.  I'm going to go back and buy like 10 bottles, for the first time in a long time my craving for Thai was actually satisfied!  It feels so good.

During our lunchtime walk today, we went through this really pretty neighborhood down the street a bit.  There's a cul-de-sac and a little island that appears to be communally used for picnics and shit.  These houses are big and beautiful if you want to live in an area where all your neighbors have houses that look Exactly like your own, that was one very minor downside.  I could probably get over that pretty fast.  However, something that I could Not stand for is the sound of the elementary school recess echoing throughout the place.  It's probably a 5 minute walk away from this place but it was So Freaking Loud - Screaming children!  My biggest nightmare.  We only live a few minutes from this place, but we can't hear recess at all - or I'd die.  It made me feel really good about our house choice - because there will Always Always Always be a catch when you think you've found a really nice house.  Remember that when you house hunt, you really need to ask yourself: Why is this house less expensive than the awesome one down the street?  or This house is almost perfect Except... and make sure you can live with that exception.  I apparently can live with a 90s kitchen but I cannot live with loud noises!

And speaking of noise - I've just discovered Pandora radio, and I know that I'm probably the last person on the planet but I really am enjoying it while working from home.  Check it out if you haven't already.
http://www.pandora.com/#

My Pup is Back!

My sweet sweet dog has returned from her 3 week boot camp away with a dog trainer.  She had a lot of issues but the main ones were:

• Jumping on guests upon entry
• Barking at stranger or other dogs on walks and in the car
• Whining whenever someone left the room
• Anxiety in the crate if we had to go do an errand

She was just all sorts of crazy but overall a really good and affectionate dog.  We saw video progress reports of her on the trainer's Facebook page.  There is a video of her walking on the leash the first week and again walking on a leash during the second week where she had clearly learned the "heel" position (right next to the handler going at the same speed).  Walking with us is important, but what's more important is just her behavior in outside of the house situations...

When Jermaine brought her back, we went on a brief 20ish minute walk with her and he taught us how to handle her and use commands during the walking.  It was really good luck that we also walked by a little girl on a razor scooter thingy and before Mia would have lost her mind over that - barking, jumping, trying to run to the girl.  This time she looked...thought about barking - there were maybe even a teeny tiny start of a bark type noise, and then I corrected her and we continued on our way without incident.  This same thing happened when we walked by another dog and stranger.  She looked and acknowledged them, thought about barking but didn't, she was corrected, and we kept going.  When I say that I'm correcting her, I'm just giving her a short tug on the leash or saying "Hey" to get her focus back.  Jermaine was so great with her, we were both really pleased with the result knowing that she was treated very well and he really did seem awfully sad to see her go.  We are going to have him back over when we get a treadmill so Mia can learn to walk on it to get more exercise : )  -- not all dogs need this, but we have a very high energy dog.

Later this evening, Abe got Mia to sit - down (lay down) - and then stay for a good 10-15 seconds before she wanted to get up and look for him.  I was able to get her to come - sit - down - and then stay for a good 1 minute while I walked away and hid in another room.  When I got back, she was laying right where I left her and didn't move until I gave her release word.  If you have a psychopath dog, then I'm sure you understand what a major breakthrough that is!  She's obedient and she understands that we are in charge and she no longer runs this ship.  We will need to practice these commands on a daily basis with her to keep her sharp.

I'm so happy that she's back and our family is together again!  Abe will need to do some traveling at some point and it's so much better having her here with me.  Sure it's more work to do it all alone, but I'd much rather have good company and do a few extra things around the house.  Tomorrow, we test out her doggy seat belt!

Coffee With a Side of Anticipation

My caffeine intake for the rest of the week went a little bit better.  Like most things, the beginning is the hardest part and it makes you want to tear your hair out but it gets easier.

Thursday
Commuter coffee + 1 cup of work coffee = 285mg of caffeine

Friday
Commuter coffee + Starbucks tall skinny vanilla latte (75mg) = 265mg of caffeine

Saturday
A large mug of coffee at home...which is probably 2 cups + 1 diet coke = 230mg of caffeine

So as you can see things are moving along nicely.  I've been feeling tired the past couple of days but I haven't been sleeping well so it really had nothing to do with the caffeine intake.  This is a habit like any other, if you find a way to keep busy then you probably won't think about it too much.

This morning, I dropped Abe off at the commuter rail this morning so he could go into the office and I could keep the car and do local errands.  I went to Petco and Target, then returned home and it was already 11:30 which was too late to for me to have another cup of coffee anyhow.  Instead, I had a little lunch and went straight outside to finish clearing away the branches from the yard that have been haunting my dreams.  These damn branches have taken way more work than my time is worth but luckily my manual labor is free unlike hiring a lawn company (my friend with the same lawn size was given a quote of $600 to clear away her branches and she had less than we did! No thank you sir.)  After a couple hours of than nonsense, I headed back inside and immediately rewarded myself with a Diet Coke - my favorite way to have it is poured from a can into a tall glass with ice (delicious) and then began to strip off my dirty clothing straight into the laundry room when I noticed that I had yet another tick crawling on me.  I really don't understand how ticks are still alive right now in the middle of November.  Later, I found another one crawling around when I was sweeping the kitchen floor.  They were both definitely deer ticks so it's good that I wasn't bitten or anything, damn these stupid insects!  It's bad enough that I had to spend the afternoon dragging really heavy shit into the woods, and then I had to deal with thoughts of lyme disease swirling in my brain too.  Obviously I then I had to mop the kitchen floor like a maniac, but I guess it needed it anyhow.

Tomorrow is a big big day - my princess comes home from boot camp!  She is being dropped off at 3pm with our trainer and then we're going to have an in-home session with her so that we can learn how to keep her good behaviors going and how to correct her if she begins to slip.  Jermaine assures us that he has given her a sturdy base and we will need to work with her to keep all she learned going.  I can't wait to see her!  We gained a lot of freedom while she was gone, but we really didn't capitalize on it too much.  There are a million house projects that we didn't get around to, but we were able to conquer some of the smaller ones so whatever.  It will just be really good to have her home again!

Caffeine Addiction

Well, that weekend caught up with me.  I've been exhausted and sort of fighting some kind of illness ever since.  Also I decided that my coffee habit was Beyond being a problem, so I've started to cut back on that which may also be a source of pure suffering.  In the morning I take a commuter coffee into work with me which is probably around 14-16 ounces of coffee (2 actual cups) and then typically when I get to work I have 2 more Keurig 8 ounce cups totalling 32 ounces of coffee per morning.  That seems totally excessive, and luckily I have the sense to stop all caffeine intake by noon because it has ruined my evening sleep if I have any in the afternoon.  This week I've eliminated my second work coffee so I'm down to 24 ounces.  If I really feel Blah after my first work cup, then I'll let myself have 1 cup of green tea.  Ok, I've done that every day...

Just to get an idea of how much caffeine I'm talking about here below is a rough estimate:

coffee 95mg of caffeine
green tea 20mg of caffeine

I'm now down from 380mg to 305mg of caffeine per day and I'm going to keep this going through the weekend.  On Monday I'll take it down another level to 230mg.  I'm not really sure how it's going though since it was inevitable that I'd be really tired on Monday and Tuesday after a crazy weekend and I felt somewhat sick.  My tolerance for stupid people has remained the same and I am still tired at the end of the day.

The coffee itself isn't so much a huge problem as what it's doing to my teeth.  I have an obsession with keeping my teeth really white and lately I've been noticing that they aren't as nice as they used to be.  Step 1 identify the problem and Step 2 begin to fix it.  Hopefully Step 3 will be freedom from the need to have coffee all morning and whiter teeth.  It's not such a bad thing if I can just get through this process!

Too Much!!

O M G
This was the most productive weekend that we've had in a really long time - painfully so.

Saturday -
House cleaning top to bottom, even freaking mopping
Yard work: chainsawing the huge branches all over the yard
Lunch in Boston with friends at Sams (awesome restaurant)
Made dinner for sister and brother in law and 2 kids somewhat successfully
Went to Jordan's Furniture when they left at 8:30pm to buy a dining room set and second guest room mattress (furniture is now Done)

Sunday -
Woke up way too early and got coffee and breakfast
Hardware store
More chain sawing
Abe and a friend spent most of the day finishing up the repair to our shed which now looks great
I collected branches in the front yard and wheeled them all the way into the backyard to dump... 20 times but is now 90% done - woot!  Only the entire back remains.
Went to Home Goods and bought - dog bed, 2 serving bowls for the holidays, dog toy basket, a big roasting pan with rack for turkeys, a dog treat jar, a couple kids toys, an extra blanket for one of the guest rooms, and a cheese grater - all for really cheap.
Grocery shopped
Picked up lunch and sped home
Did laundry including all sheets
Cleaned kitchen from last night's entertaining
Raked 1/2 of the front yard which is really only 1/8 of the entire yard, and it sucked
Abe made beef stew for dinner

And now I'm waiting for our night of postponed trick or treaters and we seriously both want to die a million deaths.  We are both super freaking sore from all the manual labor and the only thing that would make tonight better is to just sit on the couch without having to get up to answer the door at all.  I think that makes me a lazy jerk but I really feel like Halloween should have been cancelled all together, having it a week later just seems stupid to me.  Then again, I'm not a parent, so maybe it's different from that perspective -- although I hear way more complaining about adults having to walk the kids around in the cold than anything else.

Since these past two days were packed full of ridiculous chores, the rest of the week is sure to be insanely lazy while we recover.  Hopefully we have some leftover candy to lounge on the couch with.

Christmas Hoarding

This Happened!
I know it's not even Thanksgiving yet, but I'm slowly starting to buy my Christmas decorations because 1. I'm batshit crazy, and 2. We don't have many at all.  My goal for these upcoming holidays is to begin to collect decorations and stuff like that without completely breaking the bank.  These awesome stockings are from Pottery Barn for $16 including the free monogramming and free delivery.

I also bought a very pretty white and silver tree skirt for $24 at Marshalls yesterday.  You can't really tell how truly awesome it is in this photo, it has really nice silver swirly detailing on the fabric.  It's one of those things that makes me feel like an adult.  23 year olds don't need to worry about shit like tree skirts, but people close to 30 certainly do. We tend to wait until the last moment to deal with tree skirts and end up buying the most hideous thing ever for like $45 and think to ourselves, "WHYYYY must our tree be so ugly?!"  Why do stores always run out of tree skirts, I mean it's so stupid.  So I'm ready this year, I'm not going to feel cornered into buying something over priced and ugly.

We have a really busy weekend ahead.  By 10am I had already had coffee, breakfast, mopped the floors, vacuumed all over, put stuff away, and Abe was outside taking a chainsaw to all of our fallen trees from last weekend.  We have lunch plans and dinner plans and then furniture buying plans.  It's better sometimes to not think about how busy we are and just like get through it.  At the end of the day, we have a fridge stocked with beer and a bar stocked with wine.  Cheers.

I could have lived without that storm...

We were sushi this year for Halloween.  I really loved this costume because it was comfortable, easy, and reusable.  Halloween in general this year was sort of... a challenge.  The weather dumped 6+ inches of snow on us and then our power went out when we had company.  This normally wouldn't be a huge deal except for the fact that we now live pretty far from most people and it was freezing outside.  It got pretty cold inside fast as well and even with a fire lit in the fireplace, it was way less than desirable.  Two of our friends got stuck here - literally stuck, they couldn't get out of the driveway.  Another two of our friends took 1.5 hours to get home during a normally 35 minute commute so yeah, it was one of those moments when we were like, "why didn't we just cancel this stupid party!"

The following day, still without power, we had to go over to my parents house for a family party.  We showered there and then got on with the party.  Later when we got back to our still powerless home we packed our things and headed back over there... where they too were out of power but at least had a generator to power the kitchen, 1 bathroom, and the family room.  Even though this was less than half the house, it was also Way more than we had in our house.  I mean they had heat for 1!  We stayed in my brother's old room and since it was super dark and there was Nothing else to do, we went to bed at 9:30pm.  I can't even remember the last time I went to bed that early!  I slept till close to 6am and actually did wake up feeling pretty refreshed.

My town is a complete disaster area.  The snow wasn't the worst part of it.  The trees were actually the worst part.  I've never seen so many down trees before and so many power lines down.  Just driving to work proved to be another challenge with detours everywhere.  Luckily for us, our power came back on mid-day on Monday so I could come home after work and get things back in order.  I didn't really do all that much but empty out the fridge, take out the trash and recycling and then deal with stupid stuff around the house that nobody even thinks of... like the alarm system.  My God, that took forever and a day to work out.  Also, the garage door took at least 10 tries to get back onto the track.  These stupid little things that homeowners need to deal with are so headache inducing!  Don't even get me started about all the trees in our yard.  The only good part about that is that we're hopefully going to hire someone else to handle that.  There's no way I'm getting out there with a hand saw or a chainsaw, there's just way too much out there.  I'm also quite sure that our shed got another tree to fall on it.  WHY did the previous owners put a shed right in the middle of a shit load of trees?  Who does that?!  Tip: don't put your shed under a plethora of trees where damage is imminent and moss is plentiful.

If this Halloween was any indication of the winter to come then sign me up for a fully operational generator!