2010: Awesomeness brought to us by God

The year started off pretty quiet and ramped up into something truly wonderful.
The blessings started when we got a big tax refund that went toward rent payments for most of the year, sending Sean to visit his mom and a couple of friends, and taking a trip to Oregon to see my family.
We then moved into the house-buying drama, then the remodeling saga, which led to settling into our wonderful little house.

I got a nice raise and have learned new skills at work.
Sean got work, which in this economy is a miracle. 
We celebrated our third wedding anniversary and happy marriage -

and adopted Jack into the family.

I've done more crafting than ever before -

and my love for cooking is growing as my attempts at making new dishes and desserts are successful.
 

I have to admit there is a tiny part of me that is afraid to go into a new year after having such a good one.
I have to keep reminding myself of Jeremiah 29:11-13

"For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ¹² Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. ¹³ You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.

Verse 11 is pretty popular and well-known, but I think the following two verses are just as important to remember - always seek the Lord with all your heart and know that He is listening.
No matter what happens in 2011, the Lord is with me, He hears me and He has a plan for me.
If that isn't comforting, I don't know what is!

Flattery will get you at least $10

"Cook's Country" is the first magazine to which I've ever subscribed.
I've had magazine subscriptions before, but nothing I ever wanted to pay for myself.
I like magazines, but can totally live without them.
That being said, when I saw that I had received a subscription offer from "Bon Appetit," I almost threw it out with the rest of the junk mail.
I figured that if I find recipes in "Cook's Country" to be a bit fussy then I would not get on very well with instructions from "Bon Appetit."
But I could feel that there was something more than just paper in the envelope.
Inside there was a magnet with a measurement conversion chart and two recipe cards.
Both very nice and the type of thing I would keep but still throw out the subscription offer.
As I was sorting through the envelope's contents to see what was keepable and what was tossable, a little yellow piece of paper caught my eye.
It said that they were offering me what really is a smokin' deal because, as a professional, I am their target audience.

I'm sorry, but did "Bon Appetit" magazine just call me a professional?
Whether I will find such a publication useful or not, such treatment must be rewarded by immediately subscribing.
I celebrated by prancing around the house singing "Bon Appetit" like Julia Child to myself.

Can't a girl have breakfast?

Ah, Christmas vacation.
How do I love making pointless plans for thee?

Christmas Eve
The plan:
Eat a giant breakfast made by Sean, master of breakfast foods, after sleeping in till about 11 or so. I'd wrap the last couple of presents before going to church and then have dinner with my parents. We'd go home to play video games online with the family until we were ready to pass out.

The reality:
I was violently awakened by my dog barking like a maniac after the doorbell rang at 9:30 a.m. Bleary-eyed, I answered the door in my Let It Snow snowman Christmas pajamas and full Medusa bed-head hair to find one of my neighbors holding a container of homemade salsa and a bag of chips. So sweet.
I love living in Mayberry - even if they don't sleep in, even on Christmas Eve.

But as I realized that I hadn't made my neighbors anything, nor had I planned to, a scene from "The Ref" flashed through my mind. A drunken neighbor dressed as Santa is yelling at a family for never giving them anything when his wife always makes them fruitcake.

Not that I was worried that I would later have a drunken Santa on my doorstep, but I just don't want to be those neighbors - at least not right off the bat. I might not care after a few Christmases.

Breakfast was canceled as I now needed to run to the grocery store to get stuff to make and hold fudge for six families on my block.
I am not the most organized or prompt Christmas shopper, but until this year, I have been able to say that I have never had to shop on Christmas Eve.
The insanely crowded grocery store didn't have enough marshmallow creme to make all the fudge nor any cute containers to hold it.
As if stepping foot into a grocery store on Christmas Eve wasn't crazy enough, I was now going to have to do the unthinkable - I needed to go to Super Walmart.
I don't think I knocked anyone down, but I moved through that store so fast that it is entirely possible.

I rushed home and made six Christmas-tree shaped pans of fudge in record time (not the prettiest packaging, but the fudge rocks); rushed to get ready for church; left immediately after the service; helped my parents rush to make dinner so we could watch online as my brother-in-law gave the Christmas Eve message at his church in Medford, Ore. (which was excellent!); then rushed home to collapse on the couch and kill zombies with the family.
It's no wonder I woke up Christmas morning with the makings of a migraine.
Um, that's not what I asked for, Santa.

Although a bit more hectic than planned, I had a really lovely Christmas. Hope yours was, too!

Candy or accidental scientific breakthrough?

Having a pretty severe fear of failure, I tend to stick to what I know.
So when baking, I generally stick to making cookies and pies because that's what I am best at.
I understand that one can't hope to improve without practice, and with each cake I make, I do improve. The reason I'm not afraid to keep trying to make cakes and cupcakes is because the end result is edible.
My one and only attempt at candy making scared me away from ever trying anything that must be heated to a hard- or soft-ball stage.

A woman participating in my church's Christmas choir (who I later found out is my friend's mom) brought in a giant plate of goodies to one of our practices. On this plate, was a pile of pralines - something I didn't know existed outside of pralines and cream ice cream, my favorite.
Figuring, it can't be hard to coat pecans in sugar, I immediately tried making this myself.
What resulted was awesome - not because it was tasty, but because I had created something harder than diamonds.
Had I not deemed it necessary to throw out the "sugarcrete" and the pan it had permanently affixed itself to, I'm pretty sure scientists would have been in awe of the product of my culinary ineptitude and still would be studying it and developing ways to reproduce it and use it for construction purposes.

It was with that disaster in mind that I set out to make fudge, and what could very likely further reduce my kitchen's sauce-pan population - pecan brittle.
I figured any failure could be blamed on Redshirt Tappan.

So last night, I busted out the Christmas apron, and just in case things got dicey, I spiked a bit of egg nog to help take the edge off.
The fudge was so easy to make, I don't understand why I've been so scared to try making it.
It turned out rich and creamy and just really, I have to say, perfect. This is a new holiday treat staple.
There was, however, a fudge-related incident. As I was cutting it up to put in a tin to take to work this morning, the knife broke - in the fudge. The denseness of the chocolate was more than the knife could handle.

After doing everything I could to put off starting on the pecan brittle, including a little side trip to save our neighborhood's subdivision sign (click the link to read about this on Sean's blog),

I set out all the measured ingredients and dove in.
I started to panic a bit when it seemed to take FOREVER for the mixture to reach 300 degrees, but like the fudge, I totally nailed it.

Maybe not exactly like my grandma's, but still pretty darn good.

Making fudge because I live on the moon

Sean and I bought our very first brand new range on Friday.
It's not super fancy, but it does have a few upgraded features and we got it in bisque so it matches the kitchen.

We got the best deal on the fanciest range we could afford. I know we got the best deal for a fact because I dragged Sean all over the Valley to nearly every appliance store - only to end up at a Home Depot a few miles from our house.
Getting this deal presented me with quite the shopping dilemma.
When is a deal not worth it?
Home Depot sold every last one of this particular gas range in white and bisque in the state, and it will take two weeks to be delivered from the warehouse in California.
I'm pretty sure the International Space Station can get an oven faster than that.
It was almost $100 cheaper than anywhere else, but the absolute slowest delivery time.
We chose to go with Home Depot, despite the New Year's Eve delivery date, because the salesman at the store that came closest in price and offered the quickest delivery lied to us about another store's warranties in hopes of stopping us from leaving and making the sale. If you're not honest with me about little stuff like that, what else are you lying about? I'm already concerned that as this oven's owner, it is doomed - I don't want to buy it worrying that it was put together using IKEA-like pictogram instructions.
That jerk cost me Christmas cookies!
After a weekend of feeling a little deflated by my no-bake status, I've decided to try making fudge and other candies.
Take that Redshirt Tappan, lying Easy Bake Oven salesmen and ridiculous delivery schedules! You will not keep me from making Christmas goodies, eating most of them myself and gaining enough weight to kick me up a pants size thereby forcing me into a New Year's weight-loss resolution.

A poor, but amusing imitation

Today's finished craft not for Laura reminded me of that age when the magic of Santa Claus starts to wear off. The pre-tween years when you ask for something kinda big and expensive, but are banking on a year of exemplary behavior to help get what you asked for. But then when all the presents are opened and that big expensive gift wasn't there, or you got a cheaper, knockoff version, you realize that Santa's gift budget isn't much better than your parents'.
So when Sean asked for just one thing - an iPad - for his birthday and Christmas, I knew the time had come for me to be the cheap Santa. Instead of just not getting him what he wanted and hoping that what he did get made him as happy as an iPad, I would try to curb any disappointment by making my inability to afford an iPad a joke.
This is the jPad - a $2 chalkboard.

It will update news stories as fast as you can write them and the graphics are as good as you can draw them with chalk.
Sean planned on making his iPad look like "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." The jPad's serious lack of storage capacity makes it so it can only function as the Hitchhiker's Guide to Marlette Avenue, and even the advice for that is limited to: "Don't do it - they'll call the cops."
It is decorated with the the Hitchhiker symbol and the word "PANIC" on the back, as the jPad is sure to be less helpful than an iPad or the "Guide to the Galaxy."

Never turn your back on Christmas

After the capes, the Trekkie ornaments and the R2D2 lamp, I was feeling pretty confident about the progress I was making on my list of Christmas crafts.

On Sunday, it dawned on me that I have only knitted one and a half mitts for Laura, and those must be shipped to New York. I checked to see when the deadline was to ship stuff by Christmas without having to pay extra - Dec. 15.
So today is the deadline, and did I get anything shipped? No, no I didn't. Worse than that, I didn't even work on any of her gifts.
See the problem is, the only thing I've wanted to do is eat ice cream and play video games after work. There's no time for crafting with those activities. And for the past couple of mornings, I've been staggering around the house until the last of the nighttime Theraflu wore off, and once I became a bit more coherent, I've worked on finishing off a few other gifts. Apparently I decided to give myself a cold for my birthday. I'm so thoughtful.

I think I'll blame my lack of motivation for these gifts on finding out that Laura will be visiting in January. I'll just make sure to have her mitts, hat and journal done by then.
In the meantime, I think I'll take my friend's suggestion of e-mailing her a picture of the finished gifts and telling her they're be here when she visits.
And I don't have to worry about the deadline to ship dozens of cookies to Rob, Roger and James because Redshirt Tappan has made that impossible. Depending on when Ensign New Range is delivered, New Year's cookies are still a possibility, boys.

This is the range that I hope to get and will inevitably destroy.
If I get this oven and kill it, it will be the first time I cry over a broken oven.

Ain't she a beaut'?
Pray for whatever oven I get. No matter what it is, it's not long for this world.

R2Blah2

Dear Penny,
I'm sorry I put ugly blue stickers all over the pretty lamp I got you for your Merry Birthday present.
All I can say is I tried, and it's the thought that counts, right?
Love,
Allie

P.S.
Don't touch it. The blue rubs off. :(

Again, not how I imagined this craft would turn out.
From far away, it looks OK.

But close up ... YIKES!

Sharpie does not work well on contact paper. Making mental note.
The lamp used in the tutorial was a task lamp that attaches to a tabletop. I wanted to get Penny a floor lamp so she can see better while knitting. This one was the closest to the right shape, but it turns out the angle is way wrong.
The stickers don't lay flat.
At this point, I have no other gift ideas for Penny, so I have to go with it. I'm not sure how I feel about giving something so obviously handmade. The only thing that saves this gift is that the stickers come off easily without leaving any residue and the lamp is nice - without the stickers anyway.

I am the harbinger of death

If Star Trek were life, I'm Capt. Kirk, my kitchen is the bridge and my ovens have been the Redshirts.
Sean would be Spock since he likes to point out that screaming at the broken oven and kicking it is not logical. 

I don't know why, but the oven has either sucked or broke every place we've lived. And for some extra special reason they break or perform super poorly during the holidays.

The apartment in Mesa had a freakishly small oven that barely fit a good size roaster pan in it.
The oven at the house in Surprise wasn't level and baked everything in the back faster than the front. My turkey was embarrassingly half browned, half freshly plucked looking.
The oven in the downtown apartment nearly broke me. I had to work Thanksgiving, but decided I didn't want to miss out on making and enjoying all the tasty Thanksgiving goodness, so I made my own meal the day after. The evil oven faked me out by cooking the turkey perfectly on the outside, but about an inch in it was still completely raw. After this debacle, I stupidly tried to bake bread - TWICE - with the same results as the turkey - perfect on the outside, doughy goo on the inside. Boo.

So holiday season 2010 rolls around and I should have been ready for it, but instead I planned on making Sean a fabulous birthday meal and chocolate peanut butter pie.
Basically, I made the success of Sean's birthday depend on Redshirt Tappan. 

Stove top operational? Check.
Oven operational? Uh... Scotty?
What do you mean it's not working?!?
Launch the torpedoes! FIRE EVERYTHING!

In my case, Scotty is a home warranty. I'm hoping the repairmen (if they ever come *shakes fist*) declare it dead and replace it with a new oven for me to destroy.
MMMUUAAAHHAHAAHAAAHAAA!!!

I'm sure some aliens are very nice, but...

Thirty-three years ago today, my favorite person in the universe was born.
I know that I've never met anyone from anywhere but Earth, but I just know that no other being in the universe can match my Sean.

Before meeting Sean, I didn't really believe in soul mates. I figured there might be someone out there who would tolerate me whom I wouldn't find completely irritating.

But because Sean has far exceeded those simple expectations, I'm pretty sure God made him just for me.

He can make me laugh like no one else. But more importantly, when things suck, he can laugh through difficult situations with me.

He's intelligent and can beat me at Trivial Pursuit. My intelligence doesn't scare or offend him - even when I beat him at Trivial Pursuit.

He's a creative genius. The stuff he imagines and creates blows my mind.
He's faithful, not just to me, but to God. The depth of his faith astounds me.
He has the most handsome face I've ever seen and he grew, and has kept, a beard just because I love it.
We've been together for nearly four years, and every day I find a new reason to love him a little bit more.
Whether it's how he takes care of me when I get monster headaches; how ridiculously much he loves and dotes on our dog; how he giggles like a kid when he gets a good present, when I'm baking him chocolate chip cookies or because it's Tuesday; or how he launches into Captain America mode to fight the good fight, my love for him grows constantly.
So today, raise your glass and celebrate the birth of one of the good guys.
Sean, I'm so glad you were born. I'm the luckiest girl in the universe.

Slowly learning what so many have known before

Thanksgiving Day is one of the newspaper's highest circulation days, if not the highest.
I was scheduled to design the Valley & State section for that day.
Now, I can put together a nice looking page, but what they were expecting was well outside my ability. Leaving the design up to me would mean the look of the paper would suffer.
So I punted.
I asked the designer who trained me to design the cover. This was a huge deal for me. She had work of her own to do, but she totally bailed me out.

I was kicking around the idea of making this for a friend after seeing it on One Pretty Thing, before I remembered she is not a Christmas decorator.
It would, however, be a perfect "Thanks for saving my butt" present for Keri, with whom I discussed Comic-Con, Star Trek and lots of other geekery during my training.

I got the materials to make her "Trek the Halls" ornaments while out on Black Friday.
After discovering that I have much to learn about painting while attempting to make another Christmas present, I knew to steer clear of an attempt at painting the faces, or anything really, on these.
I decided Sharpies would be my best bet.
Everything was going well until I tried drawing on the faces. The wooden peg people are not sealed and the ink bled.
Poor Uhura looked like she had been in a brawl or had done some heavy crying.
I busted out the gesso. Primer probably would have been a better sealant, but that is way out in the shed, and at this point, as frustration was mounting, I couldn't be bothered to take such a long walk.
This worked well, only now, instead of the natural wood tone, which pretty closely matched skin tone, I had created a Star Trek kabuki crew.
This is where I had to step back, look at what I made and tell myself, "I know it's not perfect, but it looks good. Stop. Don't try to fix or change anything. You will only screw it up."
I had already ruined one peg person as I realized that my brown Sharpie was way too dark for Uhura's face. Now that I was a peg short, I had to omit a crew member.
My mistake killed Sulu.
Poor Sulu.

Christmas, Round One - A Learning Experience

They loved the capes.
I'm not going to berate myself on how they look. I'm going to focus on the fact that Judah put his on right after opening it. He wore it all day, every day, everywhere we went. Ben wore his pretty constantly, but wasn't as in love with it as Judah.
My sister had to tell them they could not sleep in their capes.
Sunday we went to Castles 'n' Coasters, where, I'm told, kids were seen staring longingly, some even touching Judah's cape while waiting in line to get on rides.

Round One's crafts taught me that blasting through crafts that require a skill in which I have very limited knowledge is bad.
If I had slowed down and thought about what I was doing instead of assuming what I was doing was right, I could have finished much faster, with much neater results.

There are many holiday crafts left to make. Hopefully, I've learned to slow down.

Love for the annoyingly obscure

When I was little, my favorite superhero was Firestar.

She was the trifecta for me: A redhead who could fly and fight the forces of evil by setting them on fire.  
I wasn't big into comic books, so I only knew her from the cartoon, "Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends." I don't remember ever trying to find action figures or Halloween costumes of her, a search I'm sure sure would have ended in failure, but I do remember the quizzical looks I would get when I would try to convince my friends of Firestar's awesomeness. They didn't know who I was talking about. Poor obscure Firestar, and poor Allie, alone in her adoration of a completely underrated mutant hero.

These memories were sparked after my sister sent me a photo of my nephew's favorite character.

Owlman is a completely random villain featured in a few Justice League episodes. Oh, and he dies.
The boy has set himself up for disappointment. An obscure villain that doesn't have the potential to appear in new episodes isn't going to get the merchandising play of a Batman or Wolverine.

But Ben's dedication inspired me to try my best at copying Owlman's cape even though it posed a bit of a problem for me.
The tutorial I was using to make the capes was already stretching my meager sewing skills to their limits. To make Ben's cape look similar to Owlman's I would have to tweak the design on my own.
I had so little confidence in myself, I called in my husband, who is an artist but has even less knowledge of sewing and pattern making than I do, to help me come up with a design.
With his help, we came up with a solution - I said a prayer and cut the fabric.

After overcoming many obstacles (mostly stupid amateurish mistakes) in the making of this semi-decent cape, I feel like a superhero to this fan of the obscure. In wearing this homemade cape - very loosely based on his beloved random villain - we are thumbing our noses at the mainstream characters and all those who cheer on the heroes who are easy to adore.

(If you're thinking that this cape doesn't look that hard to make, you're right. It should be pretty simple. This project perfectly illustrates my lack of skill.)

The perks of being an "adult"

When you're an adult, you can have ice cream for dinner.
When you're an adult, you can stay up way past your bedtime to watch movies or play video games.
When you're an adult, if you can talk each other into it, it's OK to open birthday and Christmas presents from your spouse a month early.

Sean and I have not been able to wait until the actual holiday or occasion to give each other presents.
Like every other year, we exchange Christmas lists, set a budget, go shopping on Black Friday with the intention of bringing the gifts home to wrap and put under the tree where they will sit until Christmas morning.
We get home, pumped up from battling crowds and getting good deals on awesome stuff we know will be loved, and start bragging about how well we did and taunting each other about having to wait.
But do we HAVE to wait? We debate whether it'll ruin our birthday and Christmas if we don't have presents to open on the actual day. We quickly decide it won't. After going back and forth on it, we decide who cares? Merry Birthday!
We opened our birthday and Christmas presents Nov. 28. I think that's the longest I've ever held out.

Sean did his homework and got me fancy kitchen stuff from Sur La Table. I finally got a cake stand! It's so pretty. I'm not great with cakes, but I will fill it often with cookies, which are tastier than ever baked on my new baking sheets.

I also got a pizza stone,

some big copper cookie cutters

and a green marble mortar and pestle.

I also got pretty new numbers for the house. Yay!

Coming in the mail are a task lamp and a dutch oven.

Woo hoo!

Sean got a new hat, and a bunch of stuff for his shotgun. I don't really know much about the gun stuff I got him other than it makes it look really tough while making it more functional.
Bring on the zombies!

The way I like to look at our mutual weakness and impatience is that we have one more month to play with our new stuff than the suckers who torture themselves by waiting for Christmas Day. 

Judge me if you want, I don't have time to care - I have new stuff to play with, sucker.

We're those people

Sean is not big on holiday cheer, so when he offered to put up lights in the front yard I knew I had to take him up on that offer or it would never happen.

We are the first ones on the street with Christmas lights up. And the neighbors have noticed.
The next morning while taking Jack for his morning walk, everyone who was outside made a comment about us just having to be the first.
I really do live in Mayberry. Where else do neighbors talk to each other, take each other Thanksgiving leftovers and compete to be the first to decorate for Christmas? Love it.
I can't wait to see how decked out the street gets for the holiday.
Because we're STILL waiting to have our roof reshingled and the A/C and heat pump replaced, we just did the trees and some of the trim on the house that won't be in the workers' way.
Through our stained-glass front door, the lights sparkle like magic Christmas glitter.
As I gazed at the lights, with the space heaters at full blast and the smell of a bit of apple cider in the air, the gushing of holiday spirit began.