Cookies and Candles

Didn't turn out TOO bad

So I decided that I didn't really want to make shaped sugar cookies, but really just wanted the frosted sugar cookie taste. So I found a recipe for sugar cookie bars and VOILA! However, the cookie part tasted a little too floury in the end, but the icing is delicious. And from scratch. Not as hard as I expected.

Homemade icing-delicious! Wish I had food coloring though.

One carby delicious cookie bar

And of course, I also put up my decorations a while ago. In fact, I have already bought another holiday-smelling candle because my old faithful had burned too long. It might not look too much like the holidays, but it certainly smells like Christmas.

Nothing says Christmas like my touch of tacky from 2011-- Snookie! 

And the stockings were hung.  . . to drive the cats crazy

Things I Take for Granted In LA

When you live or work in some place for a while, you start to become oblivious to some of the things surrounding you. And by "you", I mean "me" and just assume this happens to everyone else. Right? Anyway, while there are many things that I take for granted in LA, the one that I don't is the weather. I enjoy every last bit of sunshine while I can. I consider the increase in my daily expenses compared to any place else that I've ever lived to be the "weather tax." I must pay it to enjoy the lovely weather. I'm not sure what all the fools in New York pay it for. Ambiance?

Anyway, I wanted to share a short list of things that I take for granted in LA that I had started to overlook and have now tried to open my eyes to:

• Pithy homeless people: Of course LA has it's fair share of homeless--which by the way, I consider smart because while it sucks to be homeless, it has to suck less in LA than in say, Minneapolis--there seems to be a subset that is hellbent on having a pithy message. One guy I see on a regular basis changes it up, but typically has a sign that reads either "I'm too sexy to be this homeless" (as if there is a degree of homelessness that he's trying to rise to) or "Homeless And Sexy-- That deserves something, right?" Sometimes the signs make me smile, but honestly the pithy homeless tend to be the same people that are getting quite a few donations every day. I don't recall such creativity in the other cities that I've been to. 
• Transgenders everywhere: I'm a little sad or jaded or a combination thereof that I see transgenders every day and it barely registers. Clearly in Indiana and in Nashville to a certain extent, seeing a black man with beautiful skin and great high heeled shoes would have warranted a double take, but now their beauty is lost on me. I might notice the Adam's apple but honestly when I see someone on the way to work, I think "Man, that's a lot of work for a Wednesday."
• The next new dessert shop: The abundance of frozen yogurt places are slowly shutting down so it's only a matter of time for the cupcake places start getting picked off. Whoopies never quite took off to reach the status warranting a separate storefront, and the same can be said for cakepops. Lately, I've been seeing a lot of "Milk and cookies" places pop up, so that's where my money is for the nest new dessert: an oldie. However, I love the place around here that sells mini-pies (Shout out to Simple Things Sandwich and Pie Shop!)
• I'm never more than a few miles from a Sephora: Sure, with sephora.com I can order makeup any time, but honestly when you've sweat off some makeup and there's a Sephora only a few minutes away from your next meeting and just a touch up will make you feel so much better, well, that's a bonus. It wasn't until a co-worker that's moving to Eugene, OR said "The closest Sephora is 2 hours away" that I realized that my closest Sephora is two blocks away (from work) or 2 miles away from home and another a few miles from that. 
• There are Sizzlers everywhere: My dad always used to quote White Men Can't Jump  by saying "We
  
  goin' Sizzler". I thought that was odd even when the movie came out because all the Sizzlers in the Midwest that I knew of had closed. I guess we favored Ryan's or Sirloin Stockade or some other god awful buffet restaurant. But low and behold among the sophisticated LA atmosphere there are plenty of Sizzlers (and Shakey's Pizzas) to keep the masses fat and happy (?). 

I'm sure there are more and I will share them as I start to open my eyes again to the odd and wondrous things I've been overlooking lately. 

Holiday Parties Out the Yang

A poorly lit photo of me and
a co-worker at our holiday
party. 

It's that time of year, isn't it? The time when you have a zillion holiday parties at various times for various people and with which you carry various levels of enthusiasm for?

I had three holiday parties last week and one the week before. Three of the four were work-related, because I'm still working on my LA friends. The one that was just the office and no clients was at a nice restaurant in Pasadena and included a Dirty Santa or White Elephant or whatever else you want to call a random gift exchange with present swaps and stealing. (What other names are there?) I ended up with a belly full of red wine, chocolate souffle, hangar steak and french fries, and a purse full of a new Sephora eye shadow palette (SCORE!).

The next night I grabbed some reindeer antlers with bells, and toilet paper (the perfect hostess gift in my opinion) and headed to some friends' housewarming/ holiday extravaganza. Because I'm kind of getting anti-social with new people in my old age and I wasn't drinking, I stayed for about 4 hours and then headed home. The party when on for another 5 hours. So technically I left halfway through. But I still had fun. And learned how to phonetically get my team to guess the name of the prime minister of Britain during World War I  (Clement Atlee). It was my shining moment in party games.

So, now I'm a little holiday partied out for a few days. However, I did make Christmas cookies out the yang (yes, there's a lot of things coming out of my yang in this post) yesterday, as well as homemade wheat bread. And a lasagna the night before. And my Christmas shopping is done and shipped. So I think I'm in a good place.

How many Holiday Parties have you been to this year? What were the White Elephant or Dirty Santa gifts that you ended up leaving with?