Day 168: Christmas Goodies!

Day 168: After a few hours of baking, my friend Janie and I successfully created a ton of Christmas goodies! In the photo below, you can see peanut blossoms, white chocolate sugar cookie brownies, raspberry meringues, white chocolate covered oreos, brownie sandwich cookies, peppermint cookies, oreo truffles and gingerbread cookies. Yum. Yummy Yum Yum.

Day 167: Dough!

Day 167: It's that time again: Christmas cookie baking! I started off tonight by making the dough that will gloriously be baked tomorrow. My first set of cookie dough included brownie cookies and peanut blossoms! I sure hope they turn out! :)

Day 166: Pine Cones and Holly Berries

Day 166: Doesn't the title just make you want to sing your favorite classic Osmond Family Christmas song? (okay. well, maybe I'm the only one that listens to the Osmonds...) But one of my holiday centerpieces includes plain, painted and sparkled pine cones, shimmery balls and small holly berries. Nothing says Christmas to me like this centerpiece. This is a photo of my Christmas-y cones and berries!

Day 165: Campus Sunset

Day 165: I caught this impressive late afternoon sunset while waiting for the bus ride home. You can see the Biomolecular Chemistry building, the First Congregational Church, as well as one way and railroad signs in the image.

Day 164: Badger Basketball!

Day 164: Tonight we had tickets to the UW men's basketball game versus UW-Milwaukee. We don't get to go to too many basketball games throughout the course of the season, so it was nice to have a chance to watch them play. This photo was my attempt to get an action shot during warm ups--I think I achieved that! 

Day 163: It's cold...

Day 163: I feel like I'm a broken record. So...it's really cold outside...and I've decided to take a stand. I've busted out the faux fur hat. For good. Well, until it reaches 20 degrees again. Please reach 20 degrees again!

Day 162: Website Blunder?

Day 162: I was doing some online shopping today, looking for a way to spend some company cash from my Black Friday purchases. I was trying to find Christmas presents for anyone in my family, including Forest. Upon entering the "Pet" section, I noticed the website had a section for both cats and dogs. And men. Yep, that's right. They had a "mens" section on the pet page. Awesome.

Day 161: Fresh, Fluffy Snow

Day 161: We received a hefty amount of snow today (almost 5 inches), but since it's been so cold, it was the light, fluffy kind. It's kind of a double-edged sword. Would you rather have it be warmer, with heavy, wet snow or frigid with light, fluffy snow? Right now, I'd vote neither, but that's just me. I took this photo of the snow at night, so you can really see it sparkle!

Day 160: Halo

Day 160: On the way to the gym this morning, I spotted this halo around the sun. I tried to capture the whole thing, but with the sun blinding you in the eyeballs, it was pretty tough. This was my last shot before I got out of the car. I think it turned out pretty well, don't you?

Day 159: Brrr.

Day 159: It's becoming a theme. It's cold outside. Way. To. Cold. So it's no wonder that the heat needs to be on full blast. I took this picture of my car heater button--it's just unfortunate that it doesn't go any warmer...

Day 158: Geese!

Day 158: It's been a pretty cold late/fall early winter, so I was surprised to see that there were so many geese still around to experience it. Usually that's a big sign that the cold weather is coming--when the geese are flying south for the winter. But these guys were happy to be here, at least for the time being. They were flying north! (well, north-northwest :)

Day 157: How Many Men...

Day 157: I have a window in my office, but it's facing the side of the building, so I don't usually get to see much. However, on this day, I looked outside to find a bunch of men standing on the roof. I don't know exactly what they were doing, but apparently it took many of them to do it. Figures..

Day 156: The Hardwood

Day 156: As of last year, I started playing volleyball on Tuesday nights in Verona. Although I don't like leaving my warm house in the evening, it's nice to get out and be active. Plus I play with a great group of girls! I took this photo of the hardwood before one of our games.

Day 155: Bang Head Here!

Day 155: It's been a relatively stressful few weeks and I'm grateful to one of my students who brought me this sign a while back. If it didn't cause concussions, I'd do this more often.

Day 154: Christmas Tree!

Day 154: It's only a few weeks until Christmas, so we went out and bought our Christmas tree today! I would love to cut one down one of these years, but we've had luck at the Menard's lately, so we went by there to grab one. As usual, the tree looks and smells great. Once I got the lights and the ornaments all up, I took this close-up photo. It contains some of my favorites- the pickle, an antique ornament from my great-grandma and hand-crocheted snowflakes from my family. Christmas brings so many memories back!

Day 153: Last Home Game

Day 153: Today is the last home game for the football Badgers :( It always seems like the season comes and goes so fast! It was a pretty chilly day, but it was easy to stay warm not thinking about the cold! Just next to us in the box seats, someone had hit the window and the glass broke! The glass fell onto the fans in the section below, so those people were moved to the Penn State visiting section. After moving the fans, they broke all of the glass from the window, which was a seemingly quick and easy process. I sure hope that guy felt bad about taking his anger out on that window!

Day 152: Black Friday

Day 152: As I stated previously, I'm an avid Black Friday shopper. Every year my mom and I start shopping around 10:30-11am, hitting all of the necessary stops. Typically, we try to shop for others, but we usually seem to find better deals for ourselves. :) By the time all is said and done, we're both pretty tired. Apparently this year, Forest was tired for us. I took this photo of him that night--he's completely worn out from doing nothing!

Day 151: Thanksgiving!

Day 151: Thanksgiving Day is upon us! I look forward to the good food, the family and the Black Friday ads, but not all of the travel! Since I'm an avid Black Friday shopper, perusing the ads is a must! Have to see what all of the doorbusters are! Below is a spread of the ads from this year!

Day 150: Turkey Day Treats!

Day 150: I don't have a ton of time to do serious baking, but I like to be in charge of the pies and such at Thanksgiving. It's kind of like my thing. :) This year, pumpkin and apple pie were voted as the pies to make, so I made sure they were on the menu. Below are photos of my pumpkin and apple pies!

I also made a homemade maple-cinnamon whipped cream, mainly for the pumpkin pie, but it could have been used on both!

My other favorites are the Hershey Kiss acorns, made from dark chocolate kisses, mini Nilla wafers and homemade buttercream frosting. The pilgrim hats might be the best, as they are marshmallows dipped in dark chocolate on top of dark chocolate shortbread cookies. The buckle is buttercream frosting! Yummy!

Day 149: Snowy Sill

Day 149: It's not quite Thanksgiving yet, but we've still had a few snows here in southern Wisconsin. And with the cold weather, it looks like we are going to have a white Thanksgiving. In all of my years, I can't remember a time when we've had snow on the ground for Turkey Day. Guess there's a first for everything!

Day 148: Cafe Logo

Day 148: The Robin's Nest Cafe is the cafe located inside of Nancy Nicholas Hall, where I work. The cafe opened during the fall semester and it's been pretty successful thus far. Some students were working on a project for a class to help improve the cafe and this logo was used in their project. I thought it looked neat!

Day 147: Vending Machine

Day 147: Today a friend stopped by to visit us! One of her favorite dessert places is Hubbard Avenue Diner, so we stopped over there to get her some pie. The diner happens to be right next to the Mustard Museum and since none of us had ever been there before, we decided to stop in. Guess what? They had a lot of mustard! In fact, this is a photo of a mustard vending machine..you know..just in case you have a hankering.

Day 146: Cheese!

Day 146: As a born and raised Wisconsinite, cheese to me is one of the necessary food groups. This is a photo of spreadable Merkt's cheese--a sharp cheddar, in case you were wondering. :)