Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Busy Busy BUSY!

Holy cow, December is just flying by!

I think everyone is scrambling to get ready for Christmas this year. With Thanksgiving being late this year, December was right around the corner, and now it's half over already. Sheesh!

No knitting pictures to show, no knitting content to report. I'm too busy doing other things. Decorating, getting packages ready for the mail, baking, etc.

I've taken some time out to have some fun along the way though!

Kim and I had a little 2-day mother/daughter outing 2 weekends ago. We went shopping in Frankenmuth all day on Sunday (and a little more Monday morning) and then headed over to Birch Run outlet mall to shop the rest of the day. We had a fun time, and it was nice to get a little more shopping done while spending time with Kim. Included in the fun was a HUGE chicken dinner at Zehnder's in Frankenmuth. Zehnder's is an institution, THE place to eat when in Frankenmuth, but we had never been there before. Our waitress was a real sweetie and we really enjoyed her after a long day of hitting the sidewalks. The other place you MUST go to is Bronner's.  A true Christmas wonderland! We spent over an hour there Sunday night but they closed down the store when we had only seen about 3/4 of the store, and so we had to go back in the morning to actually make our selections and purchases. 

Here are Kim and I outside the Frankenmuth Woolen Mill store. Kim froze her butt on the metal sheep toy. It was about 15 degrees that day. 



This past Saturday was Mike's company Christmas party. They provided everyone a room (or a taxi ride home instead) at the hotel complex where the party was held. It was nice to be able to enjoy the evening and then just go upstairs and sleep it off.  A good time was had by all (That tends to happen when the alcohol is flowing freely!)

It's crunch time now, so I must fire up my KitchenAid mixer and get back to work!

We're having Christmas eve here with my mom and dad, Kim and Drew, and my brother's family. My brother loves cheesecake, so the past several years his gift has been a couple different flavors of cheesecakes. After baking, I freeze them, then cut each one into 4 pieces, wrap in foil and pop them back in the freezer. That way he can just pull out 1/4 of a cheesecake now and then and have a little treat. So I have 2 cheesecakes to make for him, and one for us to have Christmas eve. I also want to get some cookies made. I will try out something I bought myself at the outlet mall, which my friend Tam told me about. There was a 3-6 week wait to get one online so I was happy to find it in the store. 

It's the New Metro beater blade for my mixer. It's got silicone edges that scrape the sides for you and it even gets down to the very bottom of the bowl where sometimes things don't quite get mixed in. 

Ok, time to get into the kitchen and get crackin'!  

(I just heard on the radio we are going to get some snow this evening. Yay! Yesterday morning it was pouring rain, and I really am not happy when it pours in December, washes away the snow and makes everything muddy brown again. It was 50+ degrees when Mike left for work yesterday morning, but down into the low 20s by afternoon. Brrr......)