today is kelsey's birthday

and she's now officially twenty one! this weekend we celebrated by having all her buddies congregate at cpk (california pizza kitchen if you didn't know... but if you didn't know that, you probably aren't all that tight with kels... she and cpk are on a nickname basis)

party of twenty eight? we've got it!
stressed out waitress? we've got that, too.
twenty eight different pizzas? in the bag.
fruity drinks for the girl of the hour? of course!

you're twenty one today, kels! live it up

it must be christmas

in the past two days our kitchen table has become overtaken with cakeballs, gingerbread men, snickerdoodles, caramels, and rice crispy treats laced with crack. yep, must be close to christmas.

i have posted very little about christmas.... i mean, obviously i've been to busy eating the heads off gingerbread men and picking at snickerdoodles. i promise, though i have been doing christmas-y things!

last week i spent some time making hot chocolate mix and cherry hazelnut biscotti. i've also spent a lot of time explaining what exactly biscotti is. i'll tell you what- delicious. growing up, i've got fond memories of making all kinds of christmasy things to take to neighbors around christmas. my mom is a caramel corn fiend, so that was always on the menu, along with cutesy reindeer cookies. thumbprint cookies i couldn't get my hands off of.... and  a very memorable year of "christmas fudge" aka hershey's candy and a cutesy song to go along with it my mom made us sing at every. single. door.

anyways, making the stuff brought back good memories... homemade gifts are fun.

alton brown's hot chocolate mix.

2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup cocoa
2 1/2 cups powdered milk
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cornstarch
sprinkle of cayenne pepper (really.)

mix all the above ingredients, heat up milk (almond is delicious) and add desired amount. mix. sip. rinse. repeat.

********
cherry chocolate hazelnut biscotti
from real simple magazine

2 cups flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 c toasted hazelnuts
1 c dark chocolate, chopped
1 c dried cherries

preheat oven to 350. line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside
mix first four ingredients in a mixing bowl and set aside
with an electric mixer, mix eggs, sugar, and almond extract for 5 minutes
gradually add flour mixture to liquid. fold in hazelnuts, dark chocolate, and cherries. get your hands in there and mix it all together
on parchment paper, form two logs of dough, side by side. bake until golden brown, 30 minutes
remove from oven and let cool. when cool, slice each log into 3/4 inch strips. turn them on their side, then return the biscotti to the oven for 8 minutes, flipping halfway thorough. remove from oven and let cool. eat with above hot chocolate.

there is some tension in the air.

can you feel it?
even though i am not participating in school, i can still feel the death grip that finals week has on my provo people. can i say i'm glad i'm not one of them?
can i say that my biggest worry today was that the biscotti that i was making would crumble and fall apart?
that i wouldn't make it to cycling on time?
that i'd lost the mail key? (found in a coat pocket in the trunk of my car... don't ask how that happened...)
how about that i might be developing an addiction for this jar of crack? street name: biscoff spread.

 i think this was actually my only feasible worry. it's delicious. it's peanut butter and gingersnap's love child.

and all i know is that if this is the worst of my problems, my life is pretty good. and i need to remember this when i have to go back to school in less than one month.  meh
ps i go home in two weeks. yaaaaaaaaaay

thirteen hours and a little star struck

i brushed elbows with fame today. welllll kind of.
there is one doctor in my office who seems to be the pediatrician of all the on-the-cusp-of-provo-famers. if that makes sense? anyways, today i checked in yet another one of the lot... the mother of a certain gledhill baby. mindy gledhill, herself!
i was a little tongue tied as i tried to explain her preventative care benefits. i stumbled around trying to find a questionnaire for her to fill out. i wanted to ask her about all her famous blog pals... like good ol c. jane, who i want to be best friends with, or natalie, who i just want to show me the nyc sites. instead when she was about to go sit down i told her i liked her music like an idiot. greeeeeeeat.
we'll just leave the talking and singing to her. (ps, if you're reading this mindy, you never called me back to give me your insurance info. i forgive you)

its the great christmas stick, charlie brown.

no, i'm not expecting. this was not supposed to look like a decoration for somebody's bridal shower... 

 pinterest gives me crazy ideas. an utter lack of monetary resources possesses me to yank branches off of neighboring apartment complex bushes in the middle of the day and go scavenging for rocks. sales at craft stores bully me into buying bags of plastic ornaments for 1.99.

but in a strange way, i am a fan of the christmas stick... its one plant that this girl can't kill.

saturday night christmas cheer

tonight was our work christmas party.
of course, sweaters were encouraged.... and, of course, whitney and i won best sweater awards. (please hold your applause) i'm really glad this xxl hug me bear sweater has come in so handy the last three years...

we probably ruined a perfectly good picture right here, but still, it was great.  i like my job... and those coworkers of mine, too.

on another note, i am obsessed with the lower lights christmas album.... well, maybe just the five songs i can stream online for free until i break down and buy the album. it is so good. if you've got five minutes, fast forward to the last song. it is wonderful.

i've been knitting so much i think i might purl.

that was a knitting joke. a purl is a stitch.

remember last week how i said i was busy knitting all week? well it wasn't a joke. and that trend has carried over into this week. so maybe i've been to michael's three times this week. maybe i downloaded their app..... maybe i go on my lunch break? it's fine. i'm learning a trade all thanks to youtube dot com.

you might wonder what i have been doing when i am not knitting, since i haven't been doing much blogging.

i've been cultivating plants.... a term of which we will use very loosely. pretty sure this is the amaryllis (i just had to ask kelsey, my personal botanist what the heck it was called)  for dummies. my grandma swears by them. she bought me one and i potted it myself. (again, a term used loosely....) it came with a compacted disk of dirt and all i had to do was add water... and watch it exponentially grow into real dirt. mystifying.... anyways, i planted it, and it hasn't died yet.  i'm kind of a plant murderer. my friend corey had all these amazing plants in his apartment freshman year. when he left on his mission he told me to take care of one until he returned. pow pow! dead. i tried to grow basil on two different instances this summer. it never worked. aaaaaaaanyways, third time is a charm? i certainly do hope.

 what else, you ask? well, yesterday night i went to see this!

savior of the world. its a biannual production at the conference center theatre in slc that the church puts together. one of my coworkers performs in it, so when my boss offered me a free ticket last night to tag along, i just couldn't decline.... plus a free ticket totally justifies a stop at paradise bakery on the way out.  per the weird face i'm making in this picture, i think my excitement was quite obvious. (notice my knitted scarf oh yeah)


so yeah, that's life. i paid rent today so i'm poor again. i'm making huevos rancheros for dinner with anita and doing a double feature of cycling and yoga the the gym later on... that is, if the high speed winds utah is experiencing don't blow me away in the process.
if they do, maybe i'll just sit at home and knit.
happy december, ya'll. go get a salted caramel hot chocolate from starbucks and listen to harry connick jr on repeat.