countdown to christmas

the rest of the holiday season went by pretty quickly for us, as it always does.  in early december we attended an awards ceremony where the bean received recognition for her "humility," which we all found pretty comical, as well as her continued presence on the principal's list for maintaining a 4.14 GPA.

with lots of leftover inventory from the boutique (which was actually pretty successful, we just happened to make a LOT of stuff), i took advantage of an opportunity at our yoga studio.  the owner had put out an offer to local small businesses to set up their wares for sale in the entryway, which worked out perfectly for us.

aerial yoga is still one of my favorite classes, by the way.  the hour goes by so quickly and i'm always the best kind of sore the next day.

while i still suck at it, i'm really having fun with the peloton.  it was fun taking cody's holiday-themed class, with all of the best christmas songs from the likes of n*sync, mariah carey, you get it.  i was a puddle of sweat about halfway through but still managed to finish the class without dying, so i call that a win.

one morning, the hub woke up and said "we should go get our booster shot."  and by 10:00, we did just that.

and more exciting stuff - invitations for the old lady's shower, hosted by the bean, went out to all of the ladies on the guest list.

for his annual ugly christmas sweater party at the lounge, the hub borrowed pieces of the bean's santa costume.

mmm...gingerbread cookies.  no further explanation needed.

so...i had no idea that using buttercream frosting for decorating cookies was a thing.  one of my favorite cookiers posted about it on instagram one day, and i was instantly intrigued.  she linked to a whole bunch of other cookiers who use it exclusively for their orders, and i just found it amazing.  i decided to give it a shot and made a batch to test out.  and once i tried it, i was hooked.  it's delicious and it's so much easier to work with than my glaze frosting that i've used for years and years.  not to mention, it holds its shape much nicer - somewhat like the royal icing that i detest so much - and it makes for cleaner, crisper lines for decorating.  this was just my test cookie so it's not cute or anything, but YUM.  

i'll be using buttercream from now on, and letting everyone who inquires about orders know as soon as they contact me.  the handful of folks who've already placed orders seem to be pretty open to it, so hopefully everyone else will be on board too.

the bean and i got to meet up with dailygluttony and lilcee and their minis for korean bbq one evening, which was fun as always.  we usually exchange little presents at christmas time, and this year i decided to share my newfound buttercream love by making them little DIY cookie decorating kits.  my presentation needs work as i struggled a little with filling the bags with the frosting, but that's okay.  i've already read up on all the little tips and tricks for making it look cleaner for next time.

lilcee gave us bags of the most addictive, delicious snack ever - furikake chex mix.  i'm not sure if the bean even got any of it, but i knew as soon as i started shoveling fistfuls of it in my mouth that i was going to look up a recipe to make a batch of it for us.  it takes four whole boxes of cereal plus a few other items, with a butter-soy sauce mixture mixed through and baked on low, and it's SO good.

and here's a few towels i embroidered for the season.  silly, fun, festive.

it's kind of funny to be writing about christmas when we're staring valentine's day in the face, but whatever.  gives me a chance to relive it and remember how much fun we had, and that's never a bad thing.

squeezing in our last disney of 2018

with the annual two-week blackout period for our disneyland annual passes looming ahead, we decided to try and squeeze in a couple of weeknight visits to soak in one last bit of disney holiday magic.  thursdays seemed to work best, and so we headed down to anaheim after the old lady got home from work.

it was, as is typical for the holiday season at the parks, really crowded - even for a thursday evening.  that's okay.  we were just happy to be there at all.

we headed straight to the festival of holidays area to use up some of our food vouchers that were left over from our last visit.

i always love the view from here when everything is lit up.

we repeated our favorite items from the kiosks, so we didn't take pictures of our food except for this one...the milk chocolate candy cane pot de creme.

and then we found out that we'd arrived just a little too late to catch a photo op with santa, who'd headed home at 6:30.  so bummed.  at least we got to ride one ride:

the following thursday, we went back and this time headed into the disneyland side and arrived just in time to catch the christmas parade.

santa usually brings up the rear with his reindeer, but had had a mishap with his sleigh the week before.  did you hear about that?  the sleigh broke and left santa hanging from his safety harness until cast members arrived to cut him loose.  in the meantime, he sat and waved and called out holiday greetings to everyone, and then when he was finally free he walked the rest of the parade route.  what a trooper, that santa.  and so he rode in an earlier float while his reindeer closed out the parade without their leader.

 we'd been excited to see the "mary poppins returns" exhibit, but we got assed out here too.

 that's okay.  we got lucky with the soft opening of the new tropical hideaway, located where the old "aladdin's oasis" used to be.

lots of new dole whip options!  the bean was stoked.

there were three kinds of steamed bao - chicken, bulgogi beef and spiced vegetable.  we took one of each, but it was too dark for decent photos.

there was also a dessert lumpia - cream cheese and pineapple with a dipping sauce that the old lady and her special friend swooned over.

ramen shaker salad that was pretty tasty.

 and we were seated next to rosita, from the tiki room.

i managed to snap this of the castle as we headed towards it.  what you can't see is the bazillion people crowded around it.

at the red rose taverne, the old lady's special friend happily sipped on this frozen eggnog.  he's the only eggnog fan in the group.

our last ride of the night was on dumbo.

both visits were short but sweet, and now we won't get back into the 'land until 2019.  thanks for a great year of fun, disneyland!  can't wait to see what next year will bring (besides star wars land, that is)!