Hello From Michigan!

Hi all, just a quick update to say "Hello!! from Michigan!" I'm spending Christmas with Kyle's family in Michigan this year. My first Christmas outside California! There is snow on the ground and everything! Yay!

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Another Weekend, Another Packed Suitcase. Le Sigh

In our continued effort to see how few days in December Kyle and I can actually sleep in our own bed, this past weekend we headed down to LA to see my fam. It was all very low key and wonderful, filled with mother-daughter-sister bonding, wedding dress shopping (well, Kyle wasn't so much involved with these two), cable routing (this is what Kyle and my sis's boyfriend did while the girls went dress shopping), wine drinking, and nephew snuggling. It was hectic to be away from home AGAIN, but, really, it was exactly what I needed.

I am still dress-less, but I am definitely getting closer to finding something I love and can afford. I tried on this dress on Saturday and actually really liked it! AND it costs less than 1/4 of what the first dress cost (less than 1/6 if I buy it online!), so it's currently at the top of my list. I still have a whole month left to buy something without feeling "rushed" so I think I'm gonna keep looking. I'm pretty sure I'll know when it's the right dress and the right time.

When I wasn't tying on white fluffy things, I pretty much spent my time munching on my nephew's adorable toes. THEY ARE SO CUTE! I could just bury my face in each of his little rolls of leg chub and kiss him all day long.


Mom, sis, me, sis-in-law, and the CUTEST BABY ON EARTH. Check out that stylin' adidas track suit!


Me and my favorite nephew dancing. He gets down with his bad self.

Another cool thing from this weekend: I learned how to roast a chicken!! (Thanks most awesomest sister-in-law, Brigid!) It's easy as pie (except that it's easier than pie and really, I think the saying should go It's easy as roast chicken.) Anyway, it might actually be the easiest main-course I've ever made and it has a HUGE "ooh-aah" factor, which I totally dig, because, hello, presentation is everything. Well, presentation and taste... oh and healthiness... but whatever, this dish has ALL THREE!!!

Instructions: (Well spelled out because this is how I wish everyone wrote their recipes. I need DETAILED INSTRUCTIONS, PEOPLE!)
Buy one "Young Chicken" or "Roasting Hen" from your local grocery store.
Take home and remove from plastic.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Don't bother washing the chicken*.
Do wash your hands.
Place chicken in large-ish pyrex dish. (You know, the big glass rectangle thing, about 2 inches deep?)
Leave the skin on - you can take it off later.
Pour olive oil all over chicken. Both sides!
Rub the oil in. Yes, with your hands. Just do it. This is why they invented soap.
Squirt prepared mustard on to chicken (I used coarse ground Dijon mustard, but plain old yellow mustard would work too)
Sprinkle on some seasoning... Salt and pepper at a minimum, I also used "Poultry Seasoning", which has Thyme, Marjoram, Sage, and Rosemary in it. Really, whatever you have in your cupboard will work.
Again with the rubbing. Both sides.
If any areas of the chicken seems to be lacking once you're done rubbing, just sprinkle some more spices on. I'm pretty sure you can't use "too much" of any of these ingredients... except maybe the salt. We're trying to keep it healthy, remember.
Once the chicken is all seasoned up and ready to go, stick it in the oven, uncovered.
Set timer for one hour.
Kick back while your chicken gets all goldeny brown and delicious.

(Some white wine and/or water poured in the bottom of the pyrex dish about half way through the cooking time will keep the bottom of the dish from getting too caked with black stuff... you just need enough liquid to cover the bottom of the dish - several tablespoons outta do it... or you can just skip this all together.)

Ta-Dah!

If you feel like making a whole meal out of it, stab some potatoes with a fork and stick them in the oven too. Surprisingly, they ALSO need to cook for an hour at 425 degrees. So handy! Make up a quick salad and Voila! In an hour you'll have juicy roast chicken, baked potatoes, and salad. A PERFECT dinner.

This is seriously the BEST chicken I've ever had. The meat was absolutely falling off the bone. So juicy and so tender. Yum, I'm drooling just thinking about it.

If your chicken is still sorta frozen-ish when you stick it in the oven, you'll need to cook it a bit longer, maybe an hour and 15 - 20 minutes. You'll know it's done when an instant-read meat thermometer reads at least 165 degrees when stuck in a meaty part of the bird. (Conventional wisdom says 185 degrees - but I think conventional people like really dry chicken.)

Anyway, so now you too can roast a fancy schmancy chicken that everyone will ooh and aah over. Go do it! It's fun! And you'll be so proud of yourself!


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*Unless someone can give me a good reason for washing a whole chicken I'm just not gonna do it anymore! It gets germs all over my kitchen. And anything that I could possibly hope to wash off with 15 seconds of cold tap water will most certainly be cooked off in the oven, no? Seriously. Can someone please tell me WHY I've been washing my chicken all these years and why I shouldn't just stop washing poultry all together?

California School System

I'm terrible at geography. Terrible. Like, I actually thought the body of water that Boston Harbor sits in was Lake Michigan. Yeah. The Boston Tea Party? Totally in a lake. And not even on the East side of the lake. No no... I thought Massechuesettes was on the WEST side. You know, where... ummmm.... that one state is.... you know... shoot. I don't actually know what state *IS* on the West side of Lake Michigan. Are we sure it's not Massechuettes?

Anyway. Like I said, terrible at geography. I blame the schools. I'm pretty sure my geography classes went something like this:

Teacher: See, there's Los Angeles... and then there's more Los Angeles... and then there's some desert... and some mountainy things... and then there's this mystery area in the middle of the country that no one's really explored yet, I think the Bermuda triangle might be there... and anyway, if you just keep going East you eventually hit New York, which I've heard is really cold in the Winter, so you should never go there. In fact, you should really just never leave LA. Trust me. The rest of the country doesn't even have flush toilets or paved roads or movie stars.

So, see, I was doomed from the start!

I kid you not, when I went away to college (a whopping 5 hours north of Los Angeles) I wondered where I would do my shopping, because certainly malls don't exist outside Los Angeles... and also, where would I find hip new music to listen to, because certainly they don't have radio stations outside Los Angeles, and if they do they probably play nothing but top 40s music and think it's AWESOME.

The first time I went to Michigan, I actually WAS shocked to see that the roads were paved and the bathroom facilities were both indoor and flushable. Yeah. Let's just say I grew up a little sheltered.

But anyway, I digress. Back to geography! And my non-existent skillz.

So I'm going to a conference in April in Bethesda. Which, people tell me, is in Maryland. And when I heard Maryland I thought, "!! Oh !! I have a friend in Washington DC... I wonder if Washington DC is anywhere close to Bethesda, Maryland?" Turns out it is!! Hooray! And then I thought of my blog friend, Julie, who lives in Delaware. And I thought, "Hmmmmmmm I wonder if Delaware is anywhere close to Bethesda, Maryland?" And then I spent a non-zero amount of time trying to figure out which state Delaware was in.

Yeah.

Reason Enough To Marry Him

My fiancé is the most wonderful man I know.

Lately, I've been lamenting my general bah-hum-bugginess to him. I didn't dress up or carve pumpkins for Halloween. I didn't put up my fun harvest/fall/Thanksgiving decorations. And, travesty of all travesties, I didn't get a Christmas tree this year. Anyone who knows me understands what a big deal this is. I LIVE FOR my yearly Christmas Tree. I delight in purchasing a new ornament every year and placing it gently on fresh pine scented branches. As I lovingly remove each old ornament from my ornament box, I remember when or why I bought it and why it's special to me. The smell of the tree and glow of twinkly lights reminds me of my childhood and of all things good in this world. It is one of my most favorite traditions.

And this year I just skipped it.

:(

Too busy. Never home. Work pressures. Wedding pressures. Family pressures.

I was just spread too thin.

"Next year." I thought to myself. Even though I realized what a cop out that is. Do I really think next year is going to be any different?? It's always like this. I'm always running around like a chicken with my head cut off - especially at this time of year.

Yuck. I've just been in such a funk.

That is, until I got home last night... while I was at work till 9 pm, my darling, amazing, wonderful, future husband went out and got us a little tree. Our VERY FIRST Christmas tree together. It's tiny, because we're going out of town this weekend then again next Thursday and won't be back till after Christmas... so basically, we'll only have like 5 days to enjoy the little ever-green, but I ADORE it. It's the most perfect tree I have ever had the pleasure of decorating. AND! He also got us a little wreath to hang and some mistletoe, which I promptly kissed him beneath as soon as I got home and saw all that he had done for me.

He makes me feel like the most loved girl on the planet. He reminds me to stop and think about what's really important. He supports me, and knows me, and understands when I need someone to reach out to me and say, "Hey! Take a deep breath and enjoy what going on around you!" I love him so much.


Our tree!


Too small to support the (giant) star I normally place on top... so I had to tie a little angle ornament in place


My favorite person in the whole world addressing some of our Save the Date/Holiday Cards

My funk is officially over!

All Of The Smell - No Hazing Required

Vegas. It's a messy sort of town. And it always manages to bring out the sloppy drunk in me. I'm not much for "real" gambling, but I'll sit at the bar playing 25 cent video poker while downing free vodka-sodas all night long. I'm a sucker for the touch screens, what can I say?

Some friends and I went to Vegas last weekend. Why? Well, because I actually had like 8 spare nanoseconds left in December that weren't TOTALLY crammed full of holiday parties, and working overtime to finish big projects before the Christmas shut-down, and finishing up my class at Stanford, and trying to get my save the date cards out, and trying to find a wedding dress/photographer/caterer. And we simply CAN'T have spare time in December. No no. So Kyle and I agreed to hop on a super snazzy Virgin America plane (you should check them out - very cool!) and head out for 2 nights in sin city.

I think it was around 4:30 in the morning on our first night there when I achieved a new low - sitting at the 24 hour fried food joint in the hotel, I reached into my purse to grab... umm, I have no idea... but instead of whatever I was looking for, I found half a Corona. Oh yes. Apparently I was saving it for later. Drunk Courtney is always thinking! Thoroughly grossed out by the warm beer sitting in my purse, I decided I had had about enough for the evening. We finished our fried whatevers and went to bed. Luckily, my outfit for Saturday's debauchery required a different purse all together - one that was much too small to smuggle an open bottle of beer in. But on Sunday, hung over, feeling like death, ready to fly home, I tried to use to Friday's purse - it's my good big purse that I always take on planes with me because it holds so much - hmmm. Now I distinctly remember giving my beer-transportation-bag a good rinse off in the sink when I got home Friday night. I was *sure* this would fix any issues that might have arisen from dumping some beer into the bottom. I was wrong. Sunday morning, standing the lobby, waiting to check out of the hotel, I think to myself, "Eww. What's that smell?" Assuming it was the stinky looking man standing in front of me in line, I quickly moved behind Kyle. But the stench followed me. "Kyle, this hotel smells like a dirty frat house, we are never staying here again," I proclaim. And then I realize that the smell is my purse. Awesome. My purse smells like the 30 year old carpet of a fraternity house after the frat's biggest party of the year. Ewe.

Additional, more thorough, washings have done nothing to remedy the situation.

Dear Santa,
For Christmas I would like a new purse. I promise not to hide open beers in it. Thanks.
Love,
Courtney.

I Bought A Dress!

... and then I promptly returned it the very next day. Because, for the price of the dress, I could have put a nice down payment on a snazzy new car, or bought 15 cameras, or two large screen Hi-Def televisions, or roughly 1,142 lattes. Quick, do the math, I'll wait.

Yeah. That much. For a DRESS! That I'll wear ONE TIME. Seriously.

The dress can be seen Here (Except I was going to replace the beads and sparkles with the lace from this dress.)

(Note: click on "View Alternate Images" at the upper right to see what the dress actually looks like - hard to tell from the glamor shot of the model - you can't even see like half the dress!!)

The dress was GORGEOUS, and fit like a dream! (And I think the fabric was nicer that what they show in the "view alternate images" photo, because, really, it was way more luxurious looking in person.) But, you know, my options were

Dress OR Cake and Flowers and Invitations and DJ.

So, no contest really. Sigh. It sure was purty, though.

Oh well, the search continues.