Friday, December 30, 2011

In List Form

1. No blogging for three weeks: blame SAD. If only the damn sun would come out...

2. I met PCL! I had a three-hour layover in Detroit on my way to Boston and we met up at the airport hotel restaurant. The food was delicious, the service semi-crappy, and the company awesome. I made her a scarf!

3. Christmas, Christmas, Christmas. I got some wonderful gifts from some wonderful people. Lots of yarny gifts, too!

4. I have a massage scheduled for tomorrow morning. This is a Christmas present from Scott. I am SO excited!

5. I will now begin catching up on my blog reading. If I haven't left you comments in weeks, I'm really sorry. I'll get it done! Starting NOW!

Friday, December 9, 2011

Shirts (And Spanx) For Boston

I have a trip to Boston planned around Christmas. Li's getting married! That plane ticket was SO expensive...

Anyway, I have only like two shirts that fit me (besides my tee-shirts) and I want to look presentable. My family doesn't care what I wear to holiday gatherings, but hers might. Besides, the last time she saw me I was about 50 pounds lighter, and I don't want to look as bad as I feel.

So I went into Macy's, and everything was on sale. Everything. That was a stroke of luck! Within ten minutes of starting to look around I found five shirts I wanted to try on, and two were cute and flattering and half off or more. Here they are:



They hide the pudge. Mostly.

I got a new phone and the pictures are terrible on it. This disappoints me greatly, since the camera on my last phone was nice and sharp.

Anyway, next I needed some shapewear. My bridesmaid dress fits me just fine, but my tummy does bulge a bit, so I was hoping to find something that would squish me in in the waist area and perhaps have a built-in strapless bra sort of situation, but Victoria's Secret was completely out of things in my size and had no idea when a shipment would come in. I leave in two weeks, so I'm running out of time.

Next I decided to try Target. I found the perfect generic brand Spanx sort of thing, so that's all taken care of (Thanks Sarah for the tip!), but then I went to try on a strapless bra and that's when the holy-crap-how-did-my-stomach-get-this-squishy-and-flabby panic hit, and I decided to call it a night and get the rest of what I needed tomorrow.

So. Tomorrow I need to find: a strapless bra, a nice coat (that doesn't smell like chemicals), and I was thinking a few more shirts but Kwiddens just texted me and said I could borrow some of her shirts, and the woman has amazing fashion sense, so I trust her to dress me completely. Seriously, what would I do without my Kwiddens?

I'm starting to feel better about this trip. And after all, it's more about Li and her wedding than about my looking good, so I really ought to forget about it.

(But I'll obsess over how I look anyway. It's just the way I am.)

Monday, December 5, 2011

Buster's Thanksgiving Feast

Once upon a time a girl named Anna made the turkey for Thanksgiving dinner almost all by herself. Okay, not so much. But it ended up being the best turkey we've ever had!

The REAL star of the show is the brining mix I bought at Williams-Sonoma:



All I had to do is boil it until all the salts dissolved:


Then I let it cool a bit, poured it into the cooler outside on the deck (okay, so Scott did, since it was heavy and he's a strong man-type person), and then put the turkey inside (once again, Scott did the lifting):


We secured the cooler with bungee cords in case of raccoons:


Then we let it sit from Saturday night until Thursday (Thanksgiving) morning, checking every day to make sure it was still cool enough in there and adding ice when necessary.

THAT, my friends, is the secret to making the best turkey ever.

After we pulled it out, I rinsed it very thoroughly, put it in a roasting pan, completely covered it with foil, and roasted for several hours at a low temperature. Then I pulled it out of the foil, increased the temperature, stuck in a meat thermometer, and started basting it with melted butter every half hour until it was heated to the right temperature and nice and golden on the outside. Kwiddens helped quite a bit, too! Of course, I forgot to take a picture of the finished turkey...but it was pretty.

Now, Buster got his very own Thanksgiving feast, as well. The turkey came with a little packet of guts, of course, so we boiled them and then stripped the meat off the neck:


Buster was a very good boy and waited until we said it was okay to eat his treat:


And then we said "Okay!" and he ate them all in about a minute. I think he was pleased.


Also, the day of Thanksgiving, he got three cans of wet food instead of his normal dry food. Happy Thanksgiving, Buster!

And the tardiness of this post can be attributed to Seasonal Affective Disorder, which makes me want to lay in bed all day and hibernate.