Thanks 2011!

Wow Thanksgiving 2011 already?!  Thank you for supporting our obsessive pizza making and reading my ramblings.  It means the world to me!   Here are my favorite moments of 2011 that I am thankful for sharing with family and friends.

Happy Thanksgiving! Gobble gobble!

Special thanks to my partner in crime and best friend, Chris.  I love you.

Lemon Shortbread Cookies with Pink Lemon Glaze

Look at these adorable little cookie feet!  [Insert obligatory sticking foot in mouth joke here.]  Bet you are wondering if you stumbled upon the wrong blog.  Well, my sister The Queen is pregnant with another girl! We are all thrilled!

She is due Dec 27 which means now is the time to celebrate!  I decided to make this baby party a Just Desserts party.  The appeal of a Just Desserts  party was more than I could resist.  There are so many desserts you can make ahead, in small sizes, and just plop down when the guests arrive.

Saturday Pizza: 11.05.2011

The usual Sunday pizza is, well, on Sunday.  We definitely have a routine by now.  People over around 5, kids make their pizzas, C makes pizzas for the adults while the kiddy pizzas bake.  We usually are saying goodbye to the visiting family(ies) around 8 or 8:30 at the latest.  We're like a well oiled machine!

Enter Saturday pizza!  No routine.  No bedtime.  No rules.  Throw in the time change, Oh Yeah! Pictured above are my best buds from work (from left Burke and Ben).  Saturday they came over for tons of pizza, wine, and fun with their partners Sara and Terry.  WAY FUN!!  I don't know what hurt my stomach more, pigging out on pizza or laughing so hard.   I was a little puffy headed Sunday but it was totally worth it!

Reclaimed Bleacher Platform Bed

Bleachers!  You know the ones you sat on back in the day at your high school pep rallies or basketball games.  Perhaps the ones you didn't want to sit on if you played basketball or volleyball.  Ask my dad, I HATED to get benched during v-ball games.  Grrr.

One day C and I were shopping at World Market for something.  They had a dresser or something displayed on a simple platform box.  C lightly kicked it with his foot and said, "I could make ya a box like that to put the bed on."  I looked down and then at him to make sure he was serious and quickly nodded Heck Yes!

That's what sparked the project.  C was just at a second use store and got pine to make this awesome bench I never posted.  There were bleacher boards there that he thought might work.  Field trip!

Sunday Pizza: 10.30.2011

That there's my father-in-law, Papa Choo-Choo.  Bubbe and Papa Choo-Choo live walking distance to train tracks that have actual trains running. (As opposed to our tracks that are pretty much all converted to walking/bike riding trails.)  They came for a visit last weekend.  It is with mixed emotions that I write this post.

C and I married in late June 2005.  Our invitation read "Celebrate the day we begin an adventure of a lifetime." We closed on the selling our condo July 5 and headed to my dad's house for a day or two.  C's parent's met us there and we all celebrated by eating the top of our wedding cake rather than freezing it for a year.  The next day we left Illinois and headed for Washington in one of our cars with our two and half year old dog, Abbey.  All our belongings would meet us in Seattle.

Parents and Yardwork...

Waiting to buy

We moved into our house November 2009.  Z-Man was only 8 months old and just crawling and cruising and bruising.  It was a crazy time.  Our house is in a suburb subdivision.  The real estate ad stated "Low maintenance yard" and we were sold!

We were somehow thinking low maintenance meant NO maintenance.  It didn't matter in the winter months which in Seattle buys you until July.  Round about August we were the only yard with brown grass in the neighborhood.  We both grew up with families that let the grass go dormant during droughts.