Sky shopping

If you ever want a good laugh while on a flight, just open up the Sky Mall.  Seriously.  The stuff in there is almost purposefully ridiculous.  On a flight awhile back, I ran across this product and snapped a photo to text to friends.  One glass can last you the whole night!

Each glass holds a full bottle of wine!

Who would ever buy this?  Well I'll tell you who - the St. Regis.  Evidence below: my room service dinner from last week - this glass is holding half a bottle!

Word

I know this is random, but...

Whilst facebooking last evening, I found this quote (posted by a "friend" I haven't spoken to in about 10 years) and really liked it.  Good reminder of the futility of dwelling on negative thoughts:

"Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies" - Nelson Mandela

Green chili mac & cheese

Okay.  Y'all.  Deliciousness awaits...

The perfect comfort food for a cold winter night.  And it's Christmas, so no need to worry about silly stuff like calories.  This was easy to make and words cannot describe how good it is.  Recipe here.

I used canned fire-roasted green chilis and it was yummy, so I bet it'd be even better with fresh chilis.  I promise you won't regret making this!

Sauteed broccoli with garlic on the side

Noisy

This is a teeny bit embarrassing but too funny not to share...

Last night I got a phone call from the hotel front desk saying they'd received a noise complaint and to please tone it down.

I was alone.  In my room.  Singing along to this:

Retreat

Grumpy work day.  harrumph.  What can make me feel better?

Listening to the Bob Marley Pandora station and going on this mini photo retreat:  corner of our porch with a Highlander romance novel and hot chocolate :)

Recommendation

One of my favorite things about coming home from a week away for work is coming home to my bathroom toiletries! Is that weird?  I just have so many products that don't fit into that damn <3.5 oz, quart size bag rule.  If only people at work knew what I could look like with access to my whole bathroom.  I've always loved trying out different facial skin care items and have a regular routine that I love (more on that later).  The one area I never paid much attention to was body soap or moisturizer.  Well that has changed!

A couple months ago, I started getting itchy, red skin so I went to the dermatologist.  It turns out I'm allergic to the Westin (not really, just their hotel soap and body lotion).  He recommended I switch to natural, calming soap and body moisturizer to clear up my allergy and keep my skin healthy.  Expecting a sales pitch for some ridiculously expensive dermatological product, I was surprised when he recommended some of the cheapest products available:  100% glycerin bar soap and Cetaphil Moisturizing Cream.  HOW did I not know about this before now?  Let me tell you, after a couple months of using these I am never going back to anything else.  My skin is happier and healthier than ever!

I got the soap from Whole Foods -- it's important to get unscented to minimize the additives.  It was literally like 95 cents.  You can get Cetaphil pretty much anywhere -- the derm said it was important to get moisturizing cream, not lotion.

Proof that more expensive doesn't necessarily mean better!

SF

Beautiful sky in San Francisco this morning

Fail

So I have a confession to make...  I still haven't written my wedding thank you notes.  I keep telling myself that *officially* I have a year (haven't verified, but I think I remember someone saying that), but I know I've got to get my butt in gear soon.  But here's the thing - I did have a reason for waiting.  I had this bright idea that with each thank you note, I'd include photos of that person/family from the wedding.  Hence the delay; I had to wait for our sloooow photog to mail me a disc of all the images and then I had to find time to go to Target and print.  All.  1000.  Photos.  I did, and last weekend I finally went through the process of sorting all the photos.  The living room rug looked like someone had vomited wedding photos all over it.

The sorted photos

Yay!  So everything is sorted and ready to get matched up with thank you card.  But oooooh no, of course it's not that easy.  Because look what I discovered when I was done sorting

The photos don't fit into the thank you note envelopes!  D'OH!!  Now I've got piles of sorted photos and no procrastination excuse for writing thank you's.

I'm thinking I'll still send the good photos to people and just include the thank you note in a larger envelope.  It just won't be as pretty!  Life is hard, I know.

Tinsel

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!  I know I am not unique in this, but Christmas is my absolute FAVE holiday.  Christmas day is fun and all, but it's the lead up to Dec. 25th -- shopping for gifts, decorating the house, baking cookies, lighting the fireplace -- that really does it for me.  We are planning to go home to Texas this Christmas, which I'm so excited about!!  We weren't able to go home for Thanksgiving this year, so I really can't wait.  Given hubs and I won't be around our apartment for the week leading up to or after xmas, there was really no point in getting a tree.  Not to mention the pain of carrying a tree up three flights of stairs.  So I opted for a more minimal decor look and am very happy with the results.  So without further ado, get ready for tinsel overload!

The candy-cane candles are a DIY project I got from Sweet Something Designs

The floating vase is a DIY project I made this summer, how to here.

The rest of the supplies are from oh-so-wonderful Target!