A Cubicle Christmas...

At work we had a cubicle decorating contest for Christmas: the team with the best decorated cubicles wins a free meal. When I first got the e-mail encouraging us to do this, I thought, "Come on, who is actually going to go along with this cooky idea..." But I was wrong. Boy, did my co-workers get into it.

My team, predominately made up of men (there are 4 women and about 22 men), did not get into it as much. Finally, our manager brought in a whole bunch of wrapping paper and white stuff so we would actually somewhat decorate our areas and could be consistent with a "Let it snow!" theme at every cubicle. Above is my cubicle. I thought it was relatively creative. Everyone loved the snowman made out of tissue paper. (Doesn't take much to seem "creative" when you work in finance...) So, I thought I did ok... Then I walked around the other teams and came across this...

My friend and co-worker Joseph totally decked his cube out Grinch-style. He covered his cube in green paper. He had pictures of the Grinch and the lyrics of the Grinch song hung up. He had a dog with the one antler thing attached to his head (a stuffed dog, that is...) He had a mini Christmas tree... The list of details goes on... And on Friday (his last day of work until Christmas because he got lucky and had this whole week off), he dressed up like the Grinch and even brought in something to play the Grinch music out loud.... Joseph wins. Hands down. And he made everyone smile with his holiday cheer-iness.

Next time I'll be sure not to be "too cool" to participate and go all in so that I can give Joseph here a run for his money...

Try-It Tuesday: Penne with Ricotta and Bacon (and Chicken)

Try-It Tuesday is back! This may actually be my last Try-It Tuesday for a while because I told myself I'd do it through the end of the year and then take a break, and I'm not really sure what next week will look like with the holidays and all... So, soak it up, ya'll... This. is. it.

I'm not going to lie, I wasn't really excited about any recipes this week. Plus my brothers Joel and Cory are home for Christmas break, so I was kind of fearful that they wouldn't be as forgiving if the recipe I chose wasn't a hit, so that was some added pressure... So, I wanted something tasty, and easy, and brother-friendly. After some perusing of Pinterest, Pioneer Woman, and a couple of other blogs I returned to my staple: Rachael Ray's website. She (more like her minions, I doubt she comes up with many herself...) has lots of easy recipes... and I like that. So I went with this recipe: Penne with Ricotta and Bacon (and I added chicken, too, because we are a meat-loving family.) The verdict? Pretty good! I'm glad I added the chicken. And the bacon added some flavor. The texture of the ricotta was a bit strange, so part of me would like to try this again with just bacon, onions, chicken, and basil and put some kind of cheese on top or something. But it was good. And easy. And required few ingredients. So I was happy. And my family was, too. Which made me extra happy.

Until next time... well, maybe. :)

The symphony...

(Not my picture...)

It's been over a week. I'm a slacker. Moving on...

Saturday was evening that I have been dreaming about for quite some time. From the day that I drove through downtown Kansas City and saw for the first time the beginning phases of the construction of the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, I have been dreaming about going to see the symphony there. Saturday night I finally did it, and it was everything I could have dreamed of.

The building was beautiful. The architecture was incredible. The people attending to concert looked snazzy. :) The music was incredible (Christmas themed instrumental music, does it get much better than that?) And I went with my family and they're great... The whole night was just amazing.

(Inside the Center...)

(Inside Helzberg Hall...)

Just thought I should say a little somethin somethin about it, because it was incredible. Here are a few pictures from the evening taken by none other than my beloved iPhone.

Try-It Everyday: Baking Edition

I've blogged about all of the savory recipes that I've been trying over the last couple of months. (P.S. I've decided that I would do that through the end of the year, then I'm going to go back and re-try some of the recipes that were hits. Just thought I'd let you know.) But on top of all of those recipes, you better believe I've been baking some new treats as well. I thought I'd give a quick shout out to the lovely baked goods that have graced my belly over the couple of months as well.

Red Velvet Cheescake Cookies (above) by Two Peas and Their Pod. I baked these last night and took them over to a friend's house. Delicious cookies and a great night...

Mocha Cupcakes with Espresso Buttercream by Brown Eyed Baker. I can't bake things like this in my house because I'm the only coffee drinker so I took these to work last week and they were a hit.

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Salted Caramel Buttercream by Made in Melissa's Kitchen. These were great... just plain wonderful. I made them a couple of times this fall and last time I switched the cupcake recipe out with Martha Stewart's Pumpkin Patch Cupcake recipe but kept the same frosting recipe and I think it took them to the next level of greatness.

Maple Butterscotch Cookies by Sugar Crafter. Man, these cookies have some heavenly ingredients but they turned out rock hard. If there is one thing you should know about Abby Thomason: she does not like hard cookies... so these won't be a do-over. (Ok, there are other things that you should probably know more than my distaste for hard cookies, but you get the point.)

Cheesecake Factory Pumpkin Cheesecake. My co-worker asked me to bake her a pumpkin cheesecake for Thanksgiving. I made one a few days early just in case it cracked because I have a history of making cracked cheesecakes. I used Annie's Eats pumpkin cheesecake recipe... and it cracked worse than I've ever had a cheesecake crack before. (Turns out in my fear of undercooking my cheesecakes, I've totally been overcooking them which causes them to crack. Who knew? I should have googled that a long time ago...) So I made another cheesecake, with a different recipe, and the goal of not overcooking it... and it was a success! (Well, it had a tiny bit of cracking but nothing like before...) Above is my picture rather than the bloggers because they didn't have a good picture either...

Baked Pumpkin Spice Donut Holes by The Craving Chronicles. These were delicious! I even replaced the majority of the flour with whole wheat flour to make it more healthy and they were still great! (Ok, actually, I was out of all-purpose flour and was too lazy to go to the store, so... the healthiness just happened to be a bonus.) For sure a do-over.

Idle Hand Bars (Sweet & Salty) by Guilty Kitchen. These have chocolate, peanut butter, sea salt, and pretzels. When seeing the recipe I thought, "Where could you go wrong?" They were good... but still not my favorite of all of the chocolate peanut butter concoctions out there. (These still take the cake.)

Pumpkin Snickerdoodles by Annie's Eats. These were good but not very pumpkin-y. I'd add more pumpkin next time.

Cherpumple by some crazy person. What in the heck is a Cherpumple? It's a cherry pie, a pumpkin pie, and an apple pie baked inside of three different kinds of cake and combined into one gigantic cake/pie thing. My friend from work talked about it for weeks and weeks and then asked me to bake it for his birthday. I finally said, "Ok, do you really want me to bake this? It looks pretty disgusting..." He said, "Well, at least a layer would be cool." So that's what I did: I baked the cherry pie with chocolate cake layer. It was actually a pretty major baking fail because the cake was underdone but there was no way of checking it considering there is a pie in the middle. The outside was done though so I just frosted a slice, cut it out of the gooey mess, and took it to my friend. He said it was good and ate the whole thing... but I think he's crazy.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Brownies by Recipe Girl. I took these to work and everyone loved them. For sure a hit.

Pumpkin Cookies with Brown Butter Icing by Brown Eyed Baker. These were good, but pumpkin cookies always seem to have a funny texture to me. I also brought them to work (can you tell that I love baking for my co-workers? Because I do...) and my co-workers said they liked them. But let's be honest, are they really going to say, "You know Abby, I think this recipe was a bit of a miss. Better luck next time." I don't think so.

Well, I guess that's it for now. Let the baking continue...

White Christmas Party

White Christmas.

Sorry I've been such a slacker at blogging lately. Believe it or not, I actually kind of had a life this week so I was busy. One of the fun things that I did this week was have a White Christmas party with my aunt Georgie and my uncle Dave. "A White Christmas party? Did you mean White Elephant?" (That's what one of my friends said when I told him what I was planning on doing.) Yes, I did mean White Christmas.

Dave is kind of my like me in that he knows what he likes. I blog about what I like. He makes lists of what he likes. We're kindred spirits in that sense. (And actually, we found out this week that we are the same Meyers-Briggs personality as well... ESFJs for life, babay!) Anyway, Dave's favorite Christmas movie is White Christmas and I've never seen it. So we planned a "party" for me to come over and watch it with him and Georgie.

I got there and Georgie had the table set beautifully Christmas-y. (She even had napkin rings on the napkins...) We had eggnog while waiting for dinner (which I love and just happened to be craving that whole day. I texted her to see if I should bring some and she already had it!) She prepared a meal of Meatball Sandwich Casserole (because she knows that I love meatball subs) and a yummy salad with fruit on it (which she also knows that I love.) After dinner we watched the movie and snacked on coffee and sugar cookies (my only contribution to the evening...). And then I spent the night at their house... Talk about a splendid evening!

Mmm... eggnog.

Beautiful table.

Sugar Cookies.

I suppose this post doesn't have much of a point but to say: 1. I love doing fun little things like that for the holidays. 2. I'm pretty blessed to have such a fun aunt and uncle. 3. Well, I guess that's it.

Try-It Tuesday: Golden Potato Soup

I didn't really plan ahead for tonight's meal. I had planned on looking for a recipe at work today but as I've mentioned, Pinterest is blocked now so my searching for recipes is a little more difficult than it was before. I looked at a few of my favorite food blogs, but nothing looked that great to me. So I asked my friend at work if he had any suggestions for recipes and he suggested this: Golden Potato Soup.

It looked easy enough, and he had good things to say about it, so I decided to try it out. The recipe was pretty easy really. And the ingredients were common, things we already had in our kitchen actually. It did call for 1 cup of ham, but I don't do ham, so I replaced it with turkey bacon instead. The only strange ingredient was the cheese. It called for 1 1/2 cups of shredded American cheese. Ok, now I know American cheese is quite common, but where in the world do you find shredded American cheese? Beats me. So I just bought a package of Kraft Singles and chopped 'em up. Easy enough.

The verdict: well, it's a toss up. My parents loved it. Said it was a do-over for sure. My brother Cory and I thought it was too cheesy. The amount of cheese could have been cut in half and I would have been happy. Perhaps it was because it was Abby-shredded American cheese rather than store-shredded American cheese that was the problem. Perhaps the recipe-maker just likes cheese a lot more than I do. Who knows... I'd say it was a good recipe, it could just use a few alterations... aka less cheese.

Anyway, if you like cheese, and you like potatoes, and you like soup, this is the recipe for you. Happy Try-It Tuesday!

Smiling Lately...

I took a few days off of blogging because I went for about 24 days straight in November, and thought a break would be good. But I'm back, don't you worry... Things that have made me smile this week:

1. Butter sales! You know you are a baker when you get excited that butter is on sale! I love that about the holidays. (Among other things...) I made a special trip out one night this week to stock up on the butter. I may or may not have 8 pounds of butter in my freezer right now...

2. Christmas music is alive and well! My favorite album this year has been Michael Buble's Christmas album (thanks to my dear old Daddy for letting me steal it from him.) It's just really good. The Michael Buble Holiday Pandora station is pretty much the best thing ever, too.

3. Amazing Race. I love this show. It's getting down to the final few and I'm loving it. Andy and Tommy are my favorites, fo sho. Hopefully they'll stay in it. Tonight will tell...

4. Speaking of TV on tonight, I've been loving Once Upon A Time, too. I mean, how can you go wrong when you've got the following working for you: fairytales (anything that can combine Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin, Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, Jiminy Cricket, etc. is pretty amazing...), J.J. Abrams (the LOST guy), action, romance, fantasy, Ginnifer Goodwin (I just LOVE her), etc. It's a great show. And it's only 5 episodes in and they're all available online so it's not too late for you to get into it. You should do it, and be my friend, and we can discuss... It'll be great.

5. Breaking Dawn. Ok, fine, I'm a loser, and I like Twilight. So what? The movie was kind of great in a horribly cheesy, guilty pleasure kind of way and I loved every minute of it. You know what else I loved about it? The soundtrack. The Twilight movies always have good music but I especially loved this one. "Turning Page" by Sleeping At Last was on repeat in my car for quite a few days in a row.

(I was going to keep this list at 5, but I just answered a call on my phone and was reminded how much I am still loving it. So... 6. My iPhone. I love it.)