Happy Holidays

Happy holidays everyone! This past week has been full of hectic baking, shopping and LOTS of eating. On Christmas Eve, I was invited to Christian's house mates' dinner gathering, where I experienced my first western-styled homemade feast complete with lit candles and the fun toy crackers. I couldn't believe how much food there was; apparently it took 2 days to cook it all, from the turkey and roast to the mashed/baked potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing and an abundance of vegetables and salads (and there was even a bit of rice made for me)! I brought my yummy Candy Cane Cake, which was a great hit again, and some Christmas sugar cookies using a new recipe that turned out pretty good as well. (Continue reading for the sugar cookie recipe.)

Among some of the Christmas gifts I received were Designing Interactions (yes, I'm a geek), Cook This: Recipes for the Goodtime Girl, Quick & Easy: Meals in Minutes (hmm, am I supposed to take a hint?), super duper soft bathrobe and socks, and a cute Eeyore plush toy.

On Boxing Day instead of heading down to the Eaton Centre as I usually do each year, I headed to Yorkdale, and what a pain it was. The traffic was bumper to bumper on the highway just heading over to the mall, and parking was another story all on its own. After all that trouble I didn't come out with anything but a calendar. I really just had 3 specific things I was looking for that I had problems finding even before Christmas: the brown Aline Aldo bag, a brown RW&Co sweater in small, and the new wave of Disney Treasures DVDs. None of them were even sale items and yet they were all sold out. I did manage to find my bag the next day at the Aldo underground by my workplace- I was so lucky to have snatched the last one there :)

Coming to the close of the week, I'm so terribly exhausted. I really think it's all the food I've been eating that's making me feel sleepy all day, yet I still go to bed late. Eating out every day can really take a toll on a person, especially if there's 2 buffets in the week. I definitely need to go to the gym tomorrow!

Hope you all have a safe and happy new year!

Sugar Cookies

2/3 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour

1. In a large mixing bowl beat butter with an electric mixer on medium to high speed for 30 seconds. Add granulated sugar, baking powder, and salt. Beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in egg, milk, and vanilla until combined. Beat in as much of the flour as you can with mixer. Stir in any remaining flour. Divide dough in half. If necessary, cover and chill dough 30 minutes or until easy to handle. If using margarine instead of butter, quick chill in the freezer for 10 minutes.

2. On a lightly floured surface, roll half the dough at a time until 1/8 inch thick. Using a cookie cutter, cut dough into desired shapes. Place 1 inch apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.

3. Bake in a 375 F oven for 7 to 8 minutes or until edges are firm and bottoms are very lightly browned. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool. If desired, frost with icing sugar.

Wiiiiiiii!

The past few weeks spent looking for the elusive Nintendo Wii have finally come to an end. From checking online stock availability, to phoning stores, to getting help from a fellow co-worker up in Sudbury, to even contemplating waiting in line for a Best Buy shipment, I was so very unsuccessful. My favourite picture is an empty skid in the place of a Wii on the Costco website!

Christian, on the other hand, actually just got one today from his friend, who was selling it second-hand (after only playing it 3 times). Yay, a Wii for Christmas!

Cockroach Spotting = Free Ice Cream

Last Friday Lilly, Christian and I had dinner at Hosu on Queen. Lilly had spotted a cockroach skittering by our table, which was really gross. None of the servers noticed us paying attention to the floor so I told Lilly, who was the closest to the bug, to point to it. That seemed to work since one of the waitresses freaked out when she saw it and smashed her foot on it. YUCK! She apologized to us and we thought that was that, but after our dinner she came back with green tea ice cream for us and a discount on our bill. She was so sweet about the whole thing, apologizing for the embarrassing display. Awww... apology accepted! :P That evening we had planned to the Harbourfront Centre for their DJ skating night. We left the restaurant at 10pm, but unfortunately the skating was only until 11. So we thought we'd be able to squeeze in more skate time if we headed to Nathan Phillips Square, which was much closer, however, the lights shut off at that rink at 10 :(

Since Friday night skating was a bust, I dragged Christian out with me on Saturday night for the skating party at Nathan Phillips. Before hitting the ice though we stopped at Butler's Pantry for dinner (they have the best salad dressing!) and we ended up missing the Stabilo performance. We were able to catch the fireworks performance, which was pretty neat. There was also a interesting 15-minute projection piece using the old city hall façade as the canvas.

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This week I finally got my Christmas butt in gear. The tree is all decorated at last and even though I no longer have school exams as an excuse for starting my shopping this late, I think my Christmas procrastination is just innate. I don't think I've ever finished my Christmas shopping before Christmas Eve. 3 days left! Let the frenzy begin.

Boob Tube

Guys, this is great- check out dailymotionepisodes.com. You can catch up on episodes of tv shows without having to wait for BT downloads. The quality isn't the best, but it's perfect if you just feel like catching up on a new episode that you can't wait to see that you missed on the telly.

Christmas in the Springtime

It's halfway through December and it's been unseasonably warm with temperatures hovering between 5-10 degrees. Crazy global warming- I want my snow! I should get moving along on my holiday duties. Aside from having only just mailed out some Christmas cards, I haven't started any of my Christmas shopping or decorated my tree (but it's up!) I can't help it, I don't get into the mood until crunch time. I actually found a fun site called Simon Sez Santa which is an interactive video version of the game Simon Says. Santa will do some hilarious things if you give him the right command. My favourite is "kill rudolph".

In Flight

A couple of weekends ago I had my In Flight exhibit opening at Pearson Airport's Terminal 1. It was the public preview day for the new Pier F that will handle transborder flights (Terminal 1 will continue to expand until eventually replacing Terminal 2 entirely). The new space was really nice and the long pier led to an open space where a massive steel sculpture called Tilted Sphere The most impressive aspect of the piece was when you go into the middle or through the side passages you could hear some really great echoes resonating all around you.

The unfortunate thing about my exhibit was that the pieces were in glass frames which where then all displayed behind another sheet of glass so there was a lot of glare coming at the viewer. In any case, it was exciting to be a part of the exhibit and I ended up taking a bunch of photos of my piece along with the other works on display. Our final stop for the day was the artist reception, where we got to pig out on many delectable goodies.

Hockey

Ball hockey season ended on Monday with our final playoff game against 1maniacs (aka "whine" maniacs). That team played so rough and their guys were even body checking us girls, which was peeving me off. I was still harbouring some anger from our previous match against them in which I was tripped to the ground, body checked by guys twice my size, slashed in the ankle and elbowed in the face. So during this week's game, when one of the guys flicked up my stick to keep from hitting the ball, my stick flew up near his face. He starting whining that I was high sticking and that I almost hit him in the face. I was like, dude, you inflicted that on yourself! Yet he wouldn't stop complaining and yelling at me, so then I proceeded to call him a jerk :O No more miss nice girl. The rest of the game continued on with their ridiculous antics. We were originally losing but near the end we started to come back for a tiebreaker. I played so hard like I had never played before and we finally won in sudden death! Whoopee, all that work for 2nd last place :P Victory is oh so sweet!