Friday Things

1. I hope that you all had a fabulous Christmas holiday! Mine was wonderful, filled with lots of family time, relaxing and enjoying each other’s company. As you can see, Einstein was ready and waiting for Santa… little did he know that Christmas morning would be so exhausting. I came downstairs after taking a shower on Christmas morning and found him completely passed out in the middle of the living room floor, surrounded by toys!

2. Although we didn’t have a white Christmas, we certainly had a very white (and icy) day after Christmas. Even though it was a day late, I wasn’t about to complain. I enjoyed some cozy inside time, working on a crossword puzzle and playing some cards, watching the big snowflakes fall. I loved it and I’m ready for more!

3. This is the particular crossword puzzle I’ve been laboring over:

It was in last Sunday’s edition of the local paper, with a lot of the clues relating to current events of 2012. I’m making some good progress, but it is taking FOR-EV-ER. I forgot how much I love crossword puzzles; I need to start doing them more often!

4. I’m way late on this, but we finally got around to watching the Homeland season finale last Friday night. All I can say is OH.MY.GOD. Holy crap, what an episode. I’m still stunned. I can’t believe I have to wait for a new season to start! I might need to re-watch this entire season to get my fix.

5. We had our family Christmas celebration with my dad’s side of the family on Sunday, and my grandma whipped up some of her signature holiday drinks, which I mentioned in my White Chocolate Steamers post. I wanted to share it here again in case you missed it on Christmas Eve. It’s delicious and easy, so if you’re having a party this holiday season definitely try it out! She mixes together cranberry ginger ale, raspberry rum and triple sec. I have no idea what proportions she uses, but the drink is awesome. Light, bubbly, a little tart, a little sweet… perfect.

6. Confession: I have zero interest in going to see Les Miserables. I see tons of people talking about it on Facebook and Twitter, and, well, I just have no desire to see it. At all. I did read the book for a lit class in college, though. Perhaps that makes up for my lack of desire to see the movie? I’ve just never been very into musicals. Anyone else?

7. A friend of mine posted this on Facebook last week, and I’m totally convinced that this is how Einstein lives every waking moment of his life:

8. While at my grandparents’ on Sunday, they busted out their dominoes set and taught those of us who didn’t know how to play. I was sort of skeptical about how much I would like it before we started, but it was actually a lot of fun! Plus, you can play with pretty much any number of people, which is good when you don’t have four people for a traditional card game. Any domino players out there?

8. I learned the importance of a good thermometer on Christmas Eve. I was heating up oil in my Dutch oven for coconut shrimp and I had plopped in my older, much less expensive thermometer so I could keep an eye on the temperature while I was breading the crab cakes. It seemed like it was taking forever to get to 350 degrees, and then it started smoking. I grabbed my Thermapen and almost had a heart attack when it registered near 500 degrees! Needless to say, we had to take it off of the stove and wait awhile for it to cool down before we could start the shrimp. Lesson learned. Don’t mess around with the subpar equipment, use the good stuff, especially when you have it!

10. TGIF! I hope you continue to enjoy the holiday season as we head into New Year’s!