The Time Has Come My Little Friends...: December 2009

Apparently the meat packing industry is doing just fine during this recession, because Josh's company managed to throw a pretty rockin' Christmas party.

Seriously, it was NICE. It took place at a hotel in downtown Salem (not a bad one considering the location).

Here is a gratuitous picture of food. The company really went all out. The prime rib was especially delicious.

I don't know why but my arm looks WAY fat in this picture. It's really distracting.

This Santa Butt was one of the centerpieces on the tables. We got to take this one home!

After dinner the floor opened up for dancing and gambling (with fake money). Josh played black jack and I played a few hands of poker. At the end of the night we cashed our chips in for raffle tickets. We ended up winning $150 in cash! My favorite part of the night was when I met the owner of Josh's company, and his gorgeous (and young) Brazilian wife told me I was "very fashion." That made my day.

All in all, not a bad night!

I've pretty much had that song stuck in my head since October when stores started putting out their Christmas merchandise. Now that it's December I don't feel so stupid singing it. I don't know why, but I'm REALLY excited for Christmas this year. I made Josh help me put up our tree the day after Thanksgiving (after some Black Friday shopping and a nap, of course). Decorating the tree was always one of my favorite things to do during the Christmas season. Josh and I had a lot of fun decorating the tree and listening to Christmas music. Now that we've had the tree up for two weeks, I thought I should post some pictures.

Here, it appears the cats were enjoying themselves as well. This is a lie. They were really familiarizing themselves with the Christmas decorations so they could plot this year's scheme to destroy Christmas. I'm sure some of you remember last year's fiasco (I can't make a link to the post, but you can look it up). Little did they know we were prepared for their attack and bought a new tree that doesn't have detachable branches, so the only thing they could do was pull the ornaments off and chew on the lights. Ha ha!

Last year Josh and I decided to start buying each other an ornament each year. This is the ornament I bought Josh this year. He has kind of a snowman thing (most of his childhood ornaments are snowmen), so I bought him this one made out of a light bulb.

Josh bought me an Eiffel Tower ornament last year, and this year he bought me Big Ben. I really like it, but I'm MUCH more excited about this one:

Yes, it is a pickle. My family always had a pickle ornament hanging from the tree, so I decided that I needed to get my own. It's some weird German tradition I guess. All I know is that you're supposed to hide the pickle in the Christmas tree and whoever finds it gets a prize.

Here is the finished product:

I have already done plenty of my other favorite Christmas pastime this year: baking! I volunteered to do the dessert for our ward Christmas party this year. I wanted to make cupcakes, but not everyone likes cupcakes (stupid people) and I wanted to give people a variety to choose from. So I decided to make two kinds of cupcakes and an assortment of cookies. I made gingerbread cupcakes with cream cheese frosting and chocolate cupcakes with peppermint buttercream. I made a TON of cookies as well. I made chocolate-covered cherry cookies, eggnog cookies, sugar cookies, peanut butter blossoms, orange thumbprints and pecan bars. They went too fast at the party to take any pictures, so I think it's safe to say they were a hit. Here is a couple of pictures that I managed to take before the party: