A week until Christmas!? Really?

I just took this picture with my phone of the view from my desk. Its damp today, there are still brown leaves falling into piles and clinging on to branches, and not a snow flake to be seen. It feels more like the week before Thanksgiving than the week before Christmas. 

Where's my snow!? Its not like I'm asking for feet and feet of it, just a light dusting to make everything look like a winter wonderland...and possibly get me out of work early! :)

I'm done with my Christmas shopping...which was enough to make me feel like the Grinch. But instead of complaining, I think I just need to be better prepared. The problem is that I am the fucking queen of procrastination and put everything off until the very last possible nanosecond. Seriously, I can rationalize myself out of doing anything. I'm really going to try this year to buy gifts throughout the year and keep them in boxes labeled with that person's name. Hopefully, if I can stick to this plan, I will have a much less Grinchy holiday experience. How about you? Are you done with your shopping? Any tips on how to manage stress during this time of year?

Also, please feel free to use this coupon code for the month of December: BLOGDEC2011.

Holiday Coupon Code!

Where has the time gone!? I hope you have been well. I have been busy this week preparing for my first two small craft table event...things? Creating new things and preparing my set up has occupied most of my free time, but I think it will be fun! Plus, I have lots of great new ideas/things for the shop and I will be listing them soon! For now, here a is a coupon code for 15% off for the month of December: BLOGDEC2011. Enjoy!

New Painting: Rabbit and The Girl

I just added this painting to the shop!

Little Pumpkin Patch

Sadly, I have not yet made my way to a real pumpkin patch this fall, but I did create my own little one at home. I'm thinking about listing this little gnome-sized pumpkin patch in the shop later this week with a few small paintings I still need to photograph. 

Why oh why...

...are days at work so much longer than days spent at home? Seriously, the hours drag by when I am at work, but a day spent at home (not sleeping in, even) just zips by so quickly! Not fair at all.

Maybe if I didn't spend my free time at home consumed by Pinterest, I could get things done. But I am addicted! This is the face my cat makes at me when I spend too much time on Pinterest:

Loaded Baked Potato Soup

The weather has finally started to cool down here and I thought it would be a great night to try out this recipe for Baked Potato soup. I really love baked potato soup. Safeway (or perhaps Vons in your area) sells a great version of it with their signature cafe soups. This one was pretty good, though I ended up altering it a bit as I was cooking. Here is the recipe from the website:

Ingredients

• 3 bacon strips, diced
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 3 cups chicken broth
• 2 large baked potatoes, peeled and cubed
• 1 cup half-and-half cream
• 1/2 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
• Shredded Cheddar cheese
• Minced fresh parsley

Directions

1. In a large saucepan, cook bacon until crisp. Drain, reserving 1 tablespoon drippings. Set bacon aside. Saute onion and garlic in the drippings until tender. Stir in flour, salt, basil and pepper; mix well. Gradually add broth. Bring to boil; boil and stir for 2 minutes. Add the potatoes, cream and hot pepper sauce; heat through but do not boil. Garnish with bacon, cheese and parsley. 

 I ended up leaving out the dried basil, the fresh parsley, and the hot pepper sauce, and I added about a half of a cup more of the chicken broth and an extra strip of bacon, cause you know, its bacon.

I cooked the bacon in my dutch oven pot, cooked the onions and garlic in the drippings, and mixed in the flour and broth. It was at this point that I actually read the list of ingredients and realized that it calls for cooked potato. Derp. So I cubed my uncooked potatoes and threw them in the pot. It came out just fine anyway. I also added about 3/4 cup of shredded cheddar cheese as I was mixing in the cream. I garnished the soup with more cheese, diced green onion, and bacon bits. Noms to the max. I think this will be a great recipe for chilly fall and winter nights.

 Also, I recommend pairing this soup with some kind of raw vegetable. I went with a spinach salad. Its such a rich, bacon-y, creamy soup that I really felt the need to have some kind of healthy vegetable with it so my arteries didn't immediately seize up.

 

This week...mail surprises, sandwiches, nail polish.

On a particularly horrible day, I came home from work and was surprised buy this super, wonderful, thoughtful mail:

Our wonderful friend, Caleb, sent these magnets to us. How freaking cute are these, just look at the little ties and the tiny wands!? I love the beard on Fig and my hair. And the fact that he personalized it with our houses, too! I LOVE these and it was so incredibly thoughtful and meant so much to me on that particular day. I have the best friends. Seriously.

Another highlight to this past week were these awesome sandwiches and french fries I made. I had been craving a roast beef sandwich with Aus ju dip all day, but didn't want to spend the money to eat out or spend the time making a roast and creating the dip from scratch. So, I bought some sliced deli roast beef and a good french loaf. I added caramelized onions and a few bits of shaved parmesan, I think provolone or swiss would have been good, but parm was all I had. I buttered up both sides of the bread before slapping this all together and tossing it into the oven to warm and toast up a bit. The dip was just beef broth with a little Worcestershire, not the highlight of the meal. Also, I've never made fries from scratch (always used the frozen kind), but this was so easy I can't imagine not doing this way from now on. I just cut up the potatoes, tossed them with a little canola oil and lots of seasonings and then tossed them into a 425 degree oven for about 30-40 min. Yums.

And finally, I changed my nail polish, which is not really important to you, but it sure is making me smile. I'm really digging the glitter stuff right now, I also bought a gold glitter polish for the next mani. The down side is that I'm thinking this stuff is going to be a pain to take off. Derp.