#171 He Loves Chocolate Mousse

There's an empty spot in my heart tonight.

Because tonight I took down my Christmas tree.

The good news is, that Christmas 2015 is just a little more than 10 months away.

So start that shopping!

Okay, I kid.

This winter has been pretty chilly. And what goes better with chilly weather than chili--the food? Every year, Hubby's work holds a chili cook-off. I forced his coworker, Drew, to enter. So he forced me to come over and cook it with him.

I guess it was a fair trade.

Drew has a TV in his kitchen.

It was the highlight of my day.

Drew wasn't impressed with my excitement.

I'd post a picture of the chili, but the pictures I took weren't so flattering. I was more concerned with getting a bowlful to test taste.

The recipe we used was Pioneer Woman's (who else's?!) Chipotle Chicken Chili. It was delicious, but didn't take first place. A traditional beef chili did, so I don't truly consider it a loss, especially since one of the judges voted us for first, and especially especially since Drew took last place last year.

Anything above that is definitely improvement in my book.

The next day some of our favorite people came over to watch the Super Bowl with us. 

Before the game, we watched the movie Gone Girl. If you haven't seen it, all I'll say is, it was crazy.

Hubby had to leave the movie half way through to start making game day snacks.

He may or may not have given me a little lip about missing the end of the movie. But then I reminded him that he was the one that chose to make rotisserie chicken wings, homemade potato skins, and queso instead of buying frozen apps.

He did an amazing job. I made sure to save his Snapchat of it all since I was almost too eager to take this picture:

 

The potato skins were amazing. I probably could have eaten half the platter. The wings were a little too spicy for me, but the meat was incredibly tender. Hubby is a perfectionist and hates his queso, but I loved it.

This past weekend I went shopping with Drew and while we were chatting with a salesperson I saw this:

Naturally, I needed to take a picture of it.

The next day, my sister-in-law and I made a family dinner to celebrate my Gram's 82nd birthday.

 

Doesn't she look good for 82? I keep crossing my fingers that it's hereditary.

Gram loves strawberry desserts, so I made her my strawberry trifle. 

Almost half of my family are babies when it comes to fruit in their desserts. Thank goodness I have been delivered of this. For the nose wrinklers, I made chocolate mousse.

Chocolate mousse is Hubby's favorite. So really, I made chocolate mousse for Hubby. I used Bon Appetit's Classic Chocolate Mousse recipe. I expected the mousse to be much harder to make. The only thing that surprised me was that it calls for 1/4 cup of espresso or strong coffee. I've never noticed a coffee flavor in any classic chocolate mousse that I have tasted before. It wasn't a horrible flavor, but if you aren't expecting it or if you aren't a coffee lover, you might not like it.

 
Chili not chilly, good friends, good food, and a birthday celebration--yeah, my last two weekends have been pretty wonderful.

#98 He Makes His Own Honey-Do List

My summer break started approximately 23.928475827 hours ago.  This has brought just a tad bit of excitement into my life.  The kids finished last week and the teachers worked this week for shortened days of 9-3.  It has been glorious.  I've been able to wake up a little later--7 am; if my teen self heard me calling that time late, she'd have a fit--I've had my exercising done by 8 am, and then I've come home in the afternoon to find myself practically twiddling my thumbs in boredom.

Okay, that last part is so not true.

Thursday morning, despite my freedom to 'sleep in' until 7, I woke up at 6 am.

By choice.

Someone have my head examined, please.

This choice was made due to another fun fact of this week: hubby has been off all week.  Somehow, for the past four years that I have been a teacher, hubby has always managed to be forced to 'use or lose' vacation time either right before I finish for summer or right when I go back for the new school year.

It's almost like he does it on purpose.

This week I can't complain.  Although knowing he had the whole week off had my brain formulating and devising a plan for the wide variety of things he could get done around the house, I fought all urges and did not make him a 'Honey-Do" list.

And just like the great husband that I know he is, he started Monday morning building a vegetable box garden for me.  I've given you a little inkling that such a thing might eventually happen, and now it finally has.  I must admit, I am a little leery to post this because that means I will have to follow through and let you know if I am successful with this little garden.

By the time I came home Monday afternoon, this part was already finished.  I was beside myself with joy for a few reasons:

1. Hubby built a box garden for me.
2. He did it (the building part) in one day.
3.  He did it on his first day of vacation.
4. He did it without me asking or even suggesting that he do it.
5. If this was how productive the first day was, what would the next days be like?

Now, fast forward to Thursday morning, 6 am.  The box was in place, the soil had been purchased and was sitting in the back of my car, the plants had been purchased (we decided not to start from seed because of how late in the season we began this project), and for some reason I had volunteered to help hubby with the planting early in the morning before going to work.

The one plus I can say about working so early in the morning is the smells.  There is a crisp, cold, summery smell to the air, and then after an hour or so the delicious smell of sizzling bacon wafts about like a tortuous temptress.

It is clear that I have never done this kind of work before. Without having seen how many bags of soil hubby had bought I thought to myself, "Oh, it will take only a few minutes to bring the bags out to the back yard.  That clearly seems like an effortless task."

My arm and chest muscles are still screaming at me today after what felt like a painful year of walking back and forth our alley way to the car to pick up one bag and carry it to the back yard.  Hubby managed to carry two at a time, yet my brain is still trying to figure out how I managed to carry one.

We bought way too many marigolds.  I read that it was a good thing to plant them around your box garden in order to keep animals away.  At first, Hubby thought I meant deer and so he decided we would not need marigolds as deer cannot get into our backyard.  Then when he realized that bunnies and cats are animals too, he bought two flats of marigolds right away.

I took most of the pictures for this post on my phone because it was 6 am and I certainly wasn't pulling out the fancy camera for 6 am.  I thought this picture was the best expression of what 6 am in the backyard looked like.  

Hopefully you like marigolds, because they are in practically every single picture I took.

We planted zucchini plants...

yellow squash...

green peppers...

and corn!  I'm not too hopeful on the corn growing, but I saw it and wanted it so I got it.

That is the story of my life.

We also planted sweet peas and tomatoes, and a few seeds in hope that they would sprout, but again, not too hopeful on that.  This whole garden is a trial and error project.  We'll see what works this year and try again next year for even better.  Hubby has already informed me that we could fit a few more boxes if we wanted.  My brain is already scheming up what else we could plant....I'm thinking fruit.  That was the one thing I kept wanting to get as we were plant shopping that Hubby kept avoiding me on.

The good thing is that in building this garden, hubby and I both got inspired to make our back yard more livable.  I sort of alluded to the state of my backyard in this post, but if you only knew the true terror of my backyard/porch you would be embarrassed to call yourself my reader.

Luckily, you don't know right now, so you can continue in ignorant bliss.

Because hubby went overboard in his purchase of marigolds, he planted the extras around our Charlie Brown tree in our front "yard".  He had already put mulch down on Tuesday to get rid of the unsightly little green sprouts that had already begun to poke through the ground.  I think the marigolds add a nice touch of brightness.  The next step is to spruce up the paint on our porch.  It's a little ratty, don't you think...Hubby?

#79 He Lets Me Win

Hubby and I made a bet about a particular recent happening in our nation. We had made a similar bet, oh, about four years ago.

I lost that bet.  And I lost this one.

My winning would be that hubby would allow me to put up all my Christmas decorations.  That means they would have been up the first week of November.

You must understand, this is an event that hubby strongly dislikes.  And this is not a strong dislike in the same way as my father who strongly dislikes seeing anything Christmas before Thanksgiving.

No.

This is a strong dislike in the sense that hubby cannot stand the whole concept of decorating for Christmas at all.

I know, he's a murderer of Christmas cheer.

Despite this, my spirits are never dampened.  Because as much as hubby strongly dislikes Christmas decorating, he also strongly dislikes disappointing me.

So, last Sunday he told me I could put up the tree.

There was much laughter and rejoicing as Jonathan and I blasted the Rat Pack's Christmas album while sorting and assembling tree branches.

We bought a timer for our tree a few years ago when we went to Las Vegas the day after Christmas.  (You know, so that all the thieves would be fooled into thinking that even though our car wasn't outside, we had to be home because our Christmas tree was on).

We never used it again, but I decided this year we were going to.  Hubby set it so that when I come downstairs in the morning it will be on to greet me, then go off while I'm at work, and back on minutes before I come home.

I think I love him a lot.

#77 He Motivates Me

In one of my more recent posts I put a lot of blame on the new school year for my lack of blogging.  

Today, I'll tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

I love Christmas.  I love it so much that I'm pretty sure I think about it a combined time of 10 out of 12 months of the year (and that's only because I'm pretty sure that eating and sleeping probably add up to two months worth of time).  

Last Christmas, I finished writing the first of a three story Christmas collection.  Of course, at the time it was only a one story Christmas collection.  It was during that time that hubby read an article about a woman who self-published through amazon.com (a website that I would be completely lost without).  She had been rejected by traditional book publishers a countless number of times and when it finally seemed like her book was going to be picked up, she was rejected again.  She wound up doing better self-publishing her book on amazon than if her book had been published the traditional way.

Hubby then told me that I needed to put my Christmas story on amazon.com.  To which I pointed out how silly it would be to publish just one short story.  

That's when he gave me the challenge: "Write two more"

  

I gave myself a deadline and can proudly say that I met it.  I cannot, however, honestly say that it was the soul reason for my lack of blogging.

But between working full-time and writing the stories for the book, I think I'm going to say they were both 50/50 to blame.  

For now, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

If you're looking to get started on the warm and fuzzy Christmas feelings, or you'd just like to show me your support, click below and buy my book!  I've outrageously priced it at $0.99.

http://www.amazon.com/Bringing-Christmas-Season-ebook/dp/B009V3HAS2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1351024389&sr=8-1&keywords=bringing+in+the+christmas+season

FYI: You can purchase this book even if you don't have a Kindle, you would just have it delivered to your computer and then it will download to your computer.  

#33 He Loves Christmas for Me

My Top Ten List of Christmas Favorites

It's hard for me to put all my Christmas emotions into words that don't sound like a mushed jumble of children screaming and teenage girlishness. So, I've composed a top ten list of things that make my Christmas complete.

Enjoy.

#1. Classic Christmas Movies.

There is something to be said for movies of the past. They just happen to be great. Greater than anything made today, in spite of all our fancy technology and capabilities. The movie industry just cannot seem to top classics like: "A Charlie Brown Christmas", "White Christmas", "A Christmas Carol", and of course, "It's a Wonderful Life". Christmas isn't complete without them. If you haven't seen any of those titles go buy them today and watch them before the Yuletide season is gone.

#2. Teacher Gifts.

Teachers can be big complainers. Last year, I got probably every complaining teacher's dream. For Christmas, the class all chipped in together to get me a gift card. I got one or two little presents, but that was it. And while I was stunned by and greatly appreciated the gift, at the end of the day I missed the wild assortment of typical teacher gifts. So, this year when I received a plethora of gifts of all shapes and sizes from my class, I was overcome with an abundance of joy and happiness that still hasn't gone away.


#3. Nostalgic Decorations

This is a sight that may not be seen for many more Christmases at my mother's house.

Stockings decorated in puffy paint, hand print ornaments, candy canes made into reindeer....bottle it all up. Store it away in your memory bank. Because this Christmas I was informed that when either one of my brothers or I have a baby, all the decorations with our names on them go out the window to be replaced by the grand kids.

I'm just not ready for that.

#4. Giving Gifts

I love to give. There is nothing quite as exciting on Christmas as watching the face of someone you love as they open a gift you know they are going to love. I'll tell you one thing I have grown to hate though. The dreaded Christmas list. I can't stand buying off a dull list. I try my best to find gifts that aren't of the ordinary. Gifts that really are the person I'm giving to, but aren't something they expected.

#5. Christmas Eve.

This is my mom's Christmas tree.

This is what it looks like on Christmas Eve night.

Christmas Eve night is my family's Christmas. That's right. We open every single present on Christmas Eve. It's pretty awesome. I've never known that experience most children have of waking up as early as possible Christmas morning to open presents.

Nope. I've slept in late and enjoyed knowing what my gifts were while the comfort of my bed surrounded me on Christmas morning.

Yes, I truly love my family's traditions.

#6. Revisiting Old Talents

Another tradition of Christmas Eve that I love is shared with my younger brother, Joel. Usually last minute, we throw together a fun variety show to perform for my family on Christmas Eve (before we open our presents). It's just feel good fun that makes Christmas more than just eating and opening gifts. This year, we sang a Frank and Nancy Sinatra song as part of our program. This entailed me picking up my guitar, which I haven't played in ten years, and making it work as our accompaniment.

My finger tips were yelling at me before the night was over.

#7. Christmas Cookies.

What makes a Christmas cookie a Christmas cookie? That it's made at Christmas? I'm not sure, but there is something delightful about Christmas cookies. Even the ones that are dry and taste like cardboard. They decorate a table just like ornaments decorate a Christmas tree. They are a conversation starter and a glimpse into different people's traditions. My husband had me participate in a cookie exchange at his work this year. The above picture was the turnout from the other participants. Not a single duplicate cookie.

#8. Homemade Gifts.

I'm not sure if there is anything that spells love better than a gift that took time, thought, and talent. You can't get a homemade gift off a list, you can't get free shipping on a homemade gift, and you certainly can't just go to the nearest mall for it. The greatest part is that if the receiver is a kindred spirit, you have just warmed their heart with your efforts. Sadly, there are those who will not recognize a homemade gift for it's worth, but me, I treasure them.

#9. My Kissing Ball.

My husband hates Christmas decorating. Hates it. With a passion. Now, he isn't such a Grinch that he won't help me at all. He will help me carry the boxes down from the attic, and he will put the lights on the tree, but that's it.

However, this kissing ball was one decoration that he bought years ago with a passionate "I have to have this" look about him.

And so, I love it too.

#10. The Savior of the World is Here.

Are any more words necessary?

I will just say, Christmas songs are a great way to remind us of this. My favorite is "O Holy Night", specifically this part:

"Fall on your knees,

Oh hear the angel voices,

Oh night, divine,

Oh night, when Christ was born"

Merry Christmas one and all!