kenny bloggins

aieeeeeee! the frenzy known as christmas is finally over. phew. things had been stressful and both andrew and i were busy negotiating a happy balance in our own lives rather than doing any christmas shopping. i was determined to make all presents for family barring a few purchases. andrew was on the hunt for a new truck, which had to happen before saturday. i was swamped with custom projects from etsy and other folks, and was knocking those out before doing my own sewing. it basically was really down to the wire. work was crazy busy, i was drinking coffee and eating cookies all day and taking sudaphed and allergy medicine for my insane congestion and burning eyes....somehow that combo made me invincible and productive, because i managed to get everything finished.
saturday was the start of my "holiday", i woke up early and immeaditely started working on stuff. there was pasta to make, cookies to be baked, and pretzels to be dipped in chocolate.
oh wait, things actually started friday night, after work! how could i forget!

there was an Etsy "home for the holidays" meet and greet, where the folks in NY that work at Etsy but who live here in Richmond were serving snacks and chatting to local shopowners. it was fun, lots of good friends and a few stranger faces.
okay....so back to saturday. i had seen a couple mice in the house and knew i needed to get on the task of getting rid of them stat. i am not opposed to kill traps, though i will never use gluetraps.

with that, i rang in the holiday with a gruesome sight.
yuck yuck, Dottie was HORRIFIED. she kept looking at it and sniffing but her little ears were down clamped tight to her head. cleaned up the mess and moved on.
started roasting TONS of garlic. like, three whole bulbs. thats how much it takes to make a half cup of mashed roasted garlic. thats an insane amount. made garlic pasta, pressed it through the extruder, and left it to dry. started baking cookies.

was interruped by dogs barking at the mailman. whats this?

you know you're getting a glitter packed present when this much glitter is present. i opened it outside, wasn't trying to make glitter pasta.

there is still glitter in the house, i'm sure it'll be there forever n ever.
roasted beets for the next batch of pasta, it made the prettiest dough maybe ever.


the noodles were practically day glo magenta. so cool. can't wait to make more of those.
somehow those two batches of pasta and the mega batch of cookies took me all day in combination with the sewing i was doing. i think it was the fact that i was also wrapping gifts, sewing things, doing laundry, cleaning, and in general being so ADD that everything was happening at once.

at about midnight i started making spinach pasta, after the first batch of it came out kind of bunk. finished it up and had my three types of penne all ready for gifting.
i woke up early on xmas day and made all the chocolate dipped pretzels. bagged and wrapped pasta and pretzels and cookies, took all presents to my moms house. gifting and snacking ensued.

came home and dottie had gone into the cubbies in the front room and taken one of all my shoes out and put them on the couch. she even walked past andrews shoes, took mine out of the same cubbie, and didn't disturb his! you can tell who she was really mad at...
wrapped a few more presents to take to andrews parents, and let the dogs have the wrapping paper tubes

probably a trick they shouldn't learn, but its hilarious to watch them launch into berzerker mode when it comes to shredding thin cardboard.
went to andrews folks house, had dinner and presents, and visited. then came home to UNWIND.

basically we were both fried, andrew tracked down a new truck and bought it on thursday night, didn't get home from the dealership until 1030. after a long day of work, nothing is more awesome than spending three hours negotiating loan paperwork. ugh.
with christmas finally over, i tried to simmer down. no dice. i felt the need to purge clean the house. put the dogs outside so i could mop the downstairs, and found them a little while later just going apeshit at the back gate. lo and behold, a classy neighbor had dumped a bunch of boiled bones right behind our gate in the alley. thanks, dude.

yesterday i did laundry, mopped everything, rented a carpet cleaner and did the whole upstairs, then steam cleaned my subaru's mats and carpet and seats, reorganized my craft room with a new desk, and in general cleaned literally everything. by 8pm i couldn't move, my back was broken from carrying the carpet cleaner thing up and down stairs full of 5 gallons of solution....ouchlife.

i sat down and almost fell right asleep. andrew and i hit up a new local place called "steak and shake", which seemed like a potentially terrible bellyache. it was pretty good, definitely will go back.
and with that its the work week again! dang! i need more time off...the cookie/coffee/sudaphedrine diet was making me insane but i was so productive. ha. and somehow i managed to shed a few lbs during the course of what seemed like a horrendously gluttonous week. a true christmas miracle...