Ode to toffee...

So a few of us girls (Amy, Rebekah, me and Becca) had a candy making night a few weekends ago where I was determined to create, for the first time, my mothers toffee. Rebekah had attempted her own toffee at home not too long before this, and hers apparently had not turned out so well. So, with her by my side, we decided this was the moment to make some work. I decided to follow the recipe, although the instructions were very broad : "use highest heat, stir until light caramel color". It seemd to work every time for my mom in years past, so how hard could it be? I cranked up the heat and started stirring. It never quite got to a caramel color before it started turning to a white, bubbly, surgary, weird substance. Rebekah and I were freaking out a little bit wondering if we had gone too far, so we decided just to pour it on top of the almonds and see if it worked. It didn't. It hardened to the consistency of sugar stuck together with a little bit of water. It tasted like toffee but it wasn't anything I wanted to eat. So, we tried again. This time we decided to cook it past that stage and maybe the caramel color would come later. Oh no. We got past that stage then got to the sight of butter separating to the top. Maybe this would work.. we poured it on the almonds and watched as the butter stayed on the top, forming a lovely layer of toffee grease. Trash. At this point I was frustrated but even more determined. I decided the third time was the charm. I figured maybe if I stirred faster the butter wouldn't separate (not so smart) and if I cooked it longer maybe it would all come together. I mean, come on, it has three ingredients and you just stir it together... it should work eventually...right? Wrong. This fast stirring idea just lead to grease splatter burns on my stirring hand and cooking it longer led to a pan full of black sludge. Literally. It was pathetic.

You would think at this point I would have thought to myself, my toffee-making career had run its course. Not so much. I searched for my problem online, and found out I was making three mistakes. My heat was too high, my stirring too fast ( there went my theory) and I was supposed to be using salted butter. I was not the only one who was surprised by the salted butter thing. So, last Sunday I decided at home to try it one more time. With Daniel and my brother Keith cheering me on, I stirred that salted butter concoction slowly and evenly. Soon, I saw it. Beautiful, glorious, perfectly light caramel color turning to the consistency of a fine taffy. I had done it! I poured that bad boy on my almonds, melted the chocolate on top and TADA!!! TOFFEE!! I've never been so proud of something made in my kitchen.

So now you know... salted butter and slow, constant stirring. I'm gonna make some more tonight.

Christmas, Christmas time is here...

After my lovely salon party, Daniel and I went to the Home Depot and got our tree. We were in and out in 5 minutes since they were about to close for their Chrstmas party. We got it home, got it up and finished our decorating. We replaced our brightly colored Wal-mart lights and ornaments for more classic hues this year... its a new thing for me but I must say I like it. However, today as I was gazing upon its beauty I noticed that its very oddly shaped. I guess thats what you get for picking the first green tree you see. Also I cannot find anything I like to go on top of the tree.. and its driving me crazy. So.. if anyone has a suggestion... let me have it!

It's been nice having a fireplace to use and decorate but not so much when my house smells like a campfire everytime Daniel fires it up. He says he needs to take a class in fire starting.



Mister didn't quite know what to do with himself when we were setting up the tree.. but whatever he was doing he looked cute doing it.

It's a Festivus for the rest of us!

This past weekend we attended both mine and Daniel's company Christmas parties. Carson had theirs at Lonestar, whih was delicious. My salon had a Sunday brunch at one of the owners houses. We did a lot of eating, chatting, watching football and gift exchanging. There are some heavy drinkers at my salon and how people get drunk at 11 in the morning is beyond me. But it was fun for us observers!

Frosty the Snowan...

After the latest storm, the kids (and Daniel) decided to use the foot of snow and make a lovely snowman in the front yard. Apparently Josh was in charge of the head and handed Daniel a softball sized snowball for it. They packed more and more snow and it ended up looking just like Frosty. Tada!

Thanks for the good time!

It's been awhile since I've posted anything and I know Rebekah already posted about our fabulous cabin weekend, but I thought I would just say publicly that we had a great time! Unfortunately I was sick most of the weekend but the games, food and company were fantastic!

Pumpkins, but no pie.

Daniel in the patch

So Daniel and I decided to have a calm "Fall Fun Day" the day after we got home from Vegas that we both had off work. We went to a pumpkin patch and picked some lovely pumpkins to carve and I watched Daniel not only balance the pumpkins in his arms, but on his head. Then we attempted to see the leaves in the canyon with a nice drive but all we saw were barren tree limbs. Still it was a nice drive. After our pathetic attempt at a whole day of "Fall Fun" we gave up and went home to carve our pumpkins. Daniel decided to get onlince and find some fancy stencil to carve. When he was done I made the mistake of asking if it was supposed to be a stroke victim. I don't think he or Frankenstein were very happy. Mine's not so professional, but I didn't use a stencil, and I'm still pretty happy with it. I love Halloween.



Daniel's balancing skills!


Our finished pumpkins!

Umm... Tag?

Apparently.. Ive been tagged. I must list 6 Facts/Habits/Embarassments about myself and spread the love on. This kinda reminds me of the first day of school when you sit in a circle and share names and tell some random fact about yourself. I will try to be original and not just say I have 5 brothers and no sisters.

Fact/Habit/Embarassment #1: I am horribly, annoyingly, pathetically afraid of heights. It's something I desparately wish I could overcome, but apparently I cannot. Such was evident last night in Vegas when, in our suite, I was unable to walk out onto our balcony overlooking the strip on the 27th floor without either having one hand securly attached to the door of the room, or just having a panic attack altogether. I blame my father for "jokingly" trying to push me off a cliff as a child just to catch me and laugh. I wasn't so amused.

Fact/Habit/Embarassment #2: I am currently trying to teach myself how to sew. I have a had a machine for about three years that I had never even taken out of the box. I made the mistake of asking my mother to teach me, because she is quite the seamstress, but with very specific, somewhat heartbreaking words, she told me no. So now I continue alone. Im pretty determined though. I sewed one seam.. attaching two 3 inch blocks of fabric and basically danced. Daniel thinks Im overreacting.

Fact/Habit/Embarassment #3: I can read a book and sing along to a song at the same time while understanding each clearly. I never knew this was odd until I realized Daniel was the third person to point it out to me as being just that. To go along with this little fact, I can read 987 wpm or something close to that. Fun stuff.

Fact/Habit/Embarassment #4: I secretly wish I was a lounge singer. Its true. I cant imagine how cool it would be to sit alone with your guitar or piano and just be that raw. Its too bad I cant play the guitar or piano or sing that well. But I can sure lounge with the best of 'em.

Fact/Habit/Embarassment #5: I have a weird urge to punch ridiculously stupid people in the face everytime I encounter them. Same goes for people with bad manners. Say 'please' and 'thank you' or its a punch in the face for you. I swear I try to live my life in a loving, non-violent way.

Fact/Habit/Embarassment #6: I thought Daniel should get a fact of his own. He can play a mean game of Halo 3. There isn't much else to tell about him these days.. but I sure love him.

Everyone that knows I have a blog has already been tagged.. except my good friend Becca. So get started Becca... this one's for you.

So much for minding my own business..

Its official. I was involved in my first car accident ever and yet I wasn't even involved. Let me explain. I was on my way home from a small concert at the Avalon on 3500 s. State Street, and had just pulled up to the red light at 3300 S. State Street. I was just sitting there, waiting for the light to turn green, minding my own business, when all of a sudden two cars traveling the other direction hit each other and both cars went spiraling and swerving out of control. Well one of those cars just happened to be swerving directly at me. It was 9:30 at night and raining and there were only two cars at the red light I was sitting at.. me and a car directly to my left. Suddenly, as this silver car is heading directly for me, it swerves and hit me on my drivers side, then hit the car to my left, stopping pinned between us. His drivers side window was RIGHT next to my window. I obviously can't open my door because there is a car in my way, but Mister I-failed-to-yield-and-caused-this-whole-mess keeps trying to open his which just keeps hitting my car. I roll down my window in the rain and yell at him to roll his down. He finally gets it figured out and I see him (now Mister I'm-the-whitest-and-skinniest-kid-to-have-ever-worn-a-wife-beater-in-public) and his nice lady friend sitting inside in a daze with all their airbags deployed and not knowing where they are. They are ok, I assess, then a cop pulls up and the fun begins. After sitting there for over an hour waiting for the emergency crews to untangle the cars, get Eminem and his girlfriend out on precautionary stretchers, and tow away the disabled cars, the only people left are me and my other innocent red light associate and a single cop car. We sit there for another hour or so just waiting for the cop to bring us back our licenses and insurance information. He finally did around midnight.
All in all, it sucked. Luckily, my car is drivable, and the damage is amazingly minimal. It was a little traumatizing at the time, but now Im just mad that I have to deal with insurance claims for an accident I should have just been and innocent bystander at. Im glad all the drivers and passengers are alive and well. Next time, Im turning right at that light.

One year and counting....

I have decided that we too should join the marvelous world of blogging. Aka.. the blog wagon. In about a week and a half, Daniel and I will have been married for one whole year. Its hard to believe that the joyous and stressful event that was our wedding was a year ago. We are going to go to Vegas to celebrate our anniversary in style! We are pretty excited. The other thing we are excited about is our recent move. After many happy (and not to mention BARGAIN) years spent in the duplex, we got an opportunity to rent a house near Foothill Village for a great price. There are a few catches to the situation, but none we aren't willing to work with, especially for the deal we are getting on the place. Its great having extra space and no neighbors to hear fighting all the time! But we will definitely miss parts of the duplex and the memories it holds. We appreciate the amount of time we were allowed to stay there and the amazing deal we were given. The only other real development over this last year is that I finally decided to start doing hair full time and have been doing it from a great little salon near home. Its nice to be doing what I love full time.. even though building a clientele is a slooooow process. It's worth it though! Well thats our recent life, I will try to update this as much as possible.



Our new house!