Holiday Vacation 2011 Recap-Part One-Christmas and Christmas-ish activities

Wow, so I think this is the longest blog vacation I've ever taken.  It just sort of happened.  Around mid December I was struck with an intense cold that lasted until past Christmas.  Then I was off work for a week and a half so I just decided to let the blog rest for awhile.  But I'm back.  My vacation was officially over at 6AM today when I woke up for work.  But my vacation was awesome so I'd like to hand out some awards to my friends and family for making it so good.

Today we will discuss Fristmas, Christmas and the 1st Annual (yeah I'm going there-it should definitely be yearly) Post-Christmas Extravaganza....

Later I will recap New Years and my husband's birthday.

Best Baking-I'm going to go ahead and call this a tie between B and I.  I was too ill to prepare the Gingerbread dough the night before we made the cookies so B followed my recipe and I coached him through it.  There was a slight mix up between baking soda and baking powder but we worked through it.  Then I used my new cake ball maker to whip up these brownie peppermint cake balls.  They might have been slightly hard but look how cute they are.

Best Holiday Decor in my House-Another tie between B and I.  B for single-handedly bringing in the tree by himself and setting it up on the tree stand.  Me, for acquiring Christmas decor over the years and sitting it around the house.

Best attempt to open/eat his own Christmas presents-Hobie!  Christmas is really about the kids, right.  Hobie really enjoyed opening his presents on Fristmas*.  He wasn't bad at gift giving either.  He managed to get B and I some much needed new salt and pepper shakers.

Most Photogenic-My brother and sister.  My brother gets it for actually agreeing to be in a photo and look at the camera and L-Fab is always great in photos!

 Best Couple-Obviously B and sleeping Hobie win best couple.  Always.

Best Inter-family Mingling-This goes to B's family below and my family (in the next pic).  It was the first time we had members of both our families hang out together on Christmas.  Plus B's family forced me to watch A Christmas Story which is good since I've never actually seen that movie all the way through (Crazy, I know).

Best Feast-My mom wins the Best Feast award for preparing billions of dishes for Christmas eve dinner as well as multiple meats.  She even made a few vegan dishes for my mother-in-law.  My Aunt gets runner up for the December 23rd holiday meal she made us.  Delightful.

Best Post Christmas Gathering goes to me and all my homies who met up on December 27th for some good times.  Special Shout out to the Young's for their guest appearance all the way from Vegas.

I was so excited to fit everyone in our freshly
painted basement!

Special shoutout to me for deciding not to cook a bunch of food and instead just get 3 Stouffers Lasagnas and some wine and beer.

Special shoutout award to Curly J aka the Brayer for suggesting we play Dirty Santa (aka White Elephant) and for bringing this awesome Sweet Talking Ken Doll as one of the prizes.  It was hysterical and fun playing with my closest friends.  (Curly T, you better be able to describe the whole second season of Parks and Rec to me next time I see you).

No special shoutout to Shanzles for bringing this wreath made of plastic bags (although it did come with a Starbucks gift card so not the worst gift ever.)

Best Holiday Craft-Shanzles.  Shannon previously failed at beach craft hour but came back strong with these cute book themed Christmas ornament.  You are officially redeemed!

Overall, it was an amazing break but I'm so happy to be back at work today.  FALSE.  I am not happy to be back at work today (but I am grateful that my University totally shuts down between Christmas and New Year's so I don't have to work).

I will return later this week with part deux of my holiday recap.  You can't wait!

*Fristmas is the made up holiday B and I share where we open up our Christmas presents to each other a few days before real Christmas and then eat some sort of delightful breakfast or dinner together.

Making Stuff is Hard....Ebelskivers

The first thing that is hard about making Ebelskivers is pronouncing that word.  I have no idea how to pronounce it.  So let's just go ahead and call them stuffed pancakes, because that is what Ebelskivers are.

On Fristmas Morning (a fake holiday I made to celebrate with my husband back when we used to spend Christmas apart, see Fakesgiving) I decided to do something special and bring out my Stuffed Pancake pan that I got as a wedding gift.  I had only used it once so I decided it was time for round two.  I found this awesome sounding recipe for caramel and apple stuffed pancakes topped with ice cream.  Now, I know eating ice cream for breakfast is probably not that healthy but hey, it was Fristmas.

The recipe sounded easy enough.  I mean you just make caramel out of sugar.  How hard can that be?  Well after the fourth attempt and a burned finger I was about the throw in the towel on the whole stuffed pancake thing.  But I finally made something that resembled caramel so I went with it.  I'm pretty sure it was actually just burnt sugar.  Either way I managed to finish the pancakes.  They tasted kind of weird so I just added extra ice cream to cover up the odd tasting caramel and semi burnt pancakes.  Oh well.  I gave myself an A- for effort.  Next time (in like a year) I will buy pre-made caramel sauce because I think this could actually be really good.

Things started looking up again when we finally got Hobie to wear his cool new hat.

He hated it.  But I did it for his own good.  I mean it was really cold outside.

OK, so have you ever tried to make stuffed pancakes?
Have you ever had breakfast that included ice cream?
Do you know how to make caramel?  (clearly I could use some tips)