Top Chef New Years Challenge

05 Thursday Jan 2012

Posted by in Photography, The Adventures of Little T, The Family

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Here’s how we spent our New Year’s Eve, having a tasty Top Chef style challenge, I hope you enjoy the photos from our night.

Secret ingredients and quick fire challenge revealed: Make an appetizer with two ingredients that are known around the world to bring good luck on New Year’s Day. Black eyed peas, collard greens, cabbage, raisins, grapes, and champagne.

They drew knives to see who would choose their ingredients first. Scott decided on black eyed peas and currants, and Big T decided on collard greens and champagne. Here’s Scott cooking away:

The winning dish, doesn’t look like much but it was delicious:

The winner had 30 dollars to spend at the grocery store for the next part of our challenge, the loser only had 25. For part two, they had to go to the grocery store and buy ingredients to prepare dinner. They had to incorporate brussels sprouts and grapefruit into the meal.

15 minutes to shop:

Keeping track of time:

A twist! Pick out an ingredient for your competitor to use:

Big T had to leave a grapefruit out because he’d gone over the limit:

Plating:

Cooking:

Scott made grapefruit risotto with a roasted brussel sprout topping. Big T made pasta with a brussel sprout pesto sauce and a grapefruit salad. Both dinners were sooooo good and disappeared fast, but Scott was the winner in the end. What a delicious evening it was. We definitely need a repeat with some other chef friends involved (I’m looking at you, KD, Sonal, Michelle and Andrew!)

Happy New Year’s Eve!

31 Saturday Dec 2011

Posted by in Quick Snippets

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What are your New Years plans for the night? We’re super busy over here getting ready for Big T’s friends to come over and compete in our Top Chef Dinner Challenge. I wasn’t sure how much time I’d have to prepare, so I scheduled this post of….

This Little Blog’s Top Ten Posts of The Year

These were the posts with the highest hits in 2011 (in order of clicks). I think it’s interesting to see what everyone wanted to read about, I hope you do too! Onto number one…..

  1. Michelle’s Proposal ~ Add one sweet lady+an adorable guy and a pinch of Disney Magic and you get a blog post that’s definitely worth sharing.
  2. Disney Fairytale Pirate Wedding ~ Oh man, this wedding was awesome.
  3. It’s So Strange ~ Little T is still stumbling around Stumbler in his monster costume.
  4. Harry Potter Was Awesome, Until Someone Blew Chunks in my Hair: *Argh* I will always remember the last Harry Potter film as the one where I got thrown up on. 
  5. I Came Out of that Bounce House a New Woman: One of my most embarrassing moments of the year, captured on camera.
  6. Dear Hair: For some reason, everyone was really curious about my hair. Teehee. 
  7. When I Started Counting My Blessings, My Whole Life Turned Around: What can I say? My friends take good photos.
  8. Sometimes Happy Things Come from Sad Things: Losing our kitty Daphne was one of the saddest things that happened this year, but there was a happy ending for Boots and her baby.
  9. For Always? I think this way about Little T every day. My sweet baby boy.
  10. A Snowball in the Face is Surely the Beginning to a Lasting Friendship: Maybe the snow made this a popular post? I’m not sure, but that was definitely a great day. One of those days you’ll always remember. 🙂

Here’s to more memories and blog posts in 2012! I hope you all have a great night. I’ll see you next year! (hardy har har)

~Momma J

Volunteer to help with the Cal Poly Rose Float

30 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by in Photography

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Yesterday we took Little T to Pasadena so he could watch the students at Cal Poly work on the Rose Float. Cal Poly has participated in the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Parade every year since 1949. In fact, my relationship with Big T blossomed as we worked on a project for the rose float together. Aw, mush!

For the students, building the Rose Float is an intense year long process, but the fun for the masses begins the week before the Rose Parade when Cal Poly asks volunteers to head over to Pasadena and help out!

The float theme this year (designed by Cal Poly SLO student Kelsey Christoffels) is “To The Rescue”, and features superheroes catching a train that has fallen off a track to help save the day.

The theme relates to Cal Poly students because they go to school to make their community a better place, whether it is through engineering, communication, teaching or landscape architecture. Their hope is to someday be superheroes to their community.

Volunteer Information: 

More than 1000 volunteers come together between Christmas and New Year’s to decorate the Cal Poly float. The program is run completely by student volunteers from both campuses and they’d love to see you and your family there!

  • Free Parking
  • 1 dollar to volunteer
  • Must commit to four hours of volunteer work

Fun Float Facts: 

  • The float will have a moving train, a breaking bridge, a waterfall, and a helicopter with smoke and a spinning rotor. Cool!
  • This will be one of Cal Poly’s tallest floats.
  • It’s the first time that Cal Poly will have a synchronized show.  
  • Approximately 2000 roses will be used the train and capital building.
  • Approximately 2000 mums will be used for the train station and capital building.
  • More than 20 pounds of rice will be used for the float.

If you can’t volunteer, you can still come and see the floats: 

  • Free parking
  • Cost is 10 dollars to visit all three locations
  • Suitable for all ages
  • Tours and Guides to answer all your rose float questions
  • They have pretzels and snack food for sale

Little T loved walking around and seeing the floats. Everyone showed us the flowers they were using and answered our questions. In one of the exhibit rooms, we walked across a scaffold and got to see everyone building from above. The room was full of colors and beautiful floats.

Here’s a few more pictures from the day, we can’t wait to see how the float turns out this year on the day of the parade.

Our Holiday

28 Wednesday Dec 2011

Posted by in The Family, The Travels

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I don’t have tons of Christmas pictures because sometimes it’s nice to put down the camera and enjoy a glass of wine along with everyone’s company. But I will say, this Christmas was unexpectedly delightful. Unexpected, because I’ve been feeling emotional and tired lately. For one thing, Little T has a stuffy nose and he’s always very clingy when he’s not feeling well. Clingy as in: nobody can hold him except for mommy. I love that I can give him that comfort, but it does wear me out a bit. To add to that, I had to spend a lot of time on the computer. I always feel a little out of it when I’m on the computer for too long, so it was a hard stretch of work. I’ve also taken a nose dive health wise. I haven’t been eating well _at all_, and I feel really worn out because of it. I’m extremely sensitive to food and when I don’t eat right, I feel it X10. Not to mention, my neck and back are flared up from holding a heavy Little T (I injured it ages ago when I worked at Disneyland, and every once in a while it will get thrown out of whack again.) Anyway, because of all those things, I’ve been feeling out of sorts (physically and mentally) and a little down, but seeing everyone at Christmas turned out to be just what I needed.

The night before Christmas Eve, my family came over to spend the night. Little T was ecstatic when my nephews showed up at the house, walking around while shouting and pumping his arms in the air. It was pretty funny. After Little T went to bed, we watched “Rise of the Apes” and ate popcorn and Christmas cookies.

On Christmas Eve, the rest of the gang showed up. Big T made vegan crepes and we loaded them with chocolate, powdered sugar, and fruit. After that, my younger brother spent the morning using Photoshop to morph us into characters from The Office.

Apparently, geekiness runs in the family.

Later we opened gifts. Little T got a baseball kit and bongos that he banged for approximately 30 minutes before he broke them. He is very intense when it comes to drumming, silly Little T. :p

We played baseball for a while before heading over to my Aunt’s house for the extended family Christmas. When we got to my Aunt’s, we were bombarded by babies. There were seven babies total with two more on the way, so it was a babypalooza over there. Needless to say, we had lots of fun baby watching.

Little T was having too much fun, he even started to photobomb us. I hope he doesn’t teach that to all the other babies:

Around six, we drove four hours with my mom and step dad to get home and had Christmas Eve night at our house. We woke up early the next day and brought Little T out to the living room, expecting him to be excited about the Christmas Tree, presents, and stockings. He was excited for two seconds, and then he saw M’s Guitar Hero drum set that he loves and started to bang on the drums again. We had a great morning, and Little T was feeling so much better and we actually were able to sleep the night before because of this. Yay!

After Christmas morning, we went over to Big T’s grandparents house and spent the day with his family. We had Christmas Crepes again, ate lots of cookies, opened gifts (I got a huge gnome for my collection-teehee) and enjoyed each others company. Overall, it was a good week.

I hope Santa feels like sharing….

23 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by in Photography, The Family

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We’re celebrating Christmas at my Mom’s house tonight. The whole clan is spending the night after spending the day making cookies for Santa.

Hopefully he doesn’t mind sharing a few, because Miss Piggy is looking pretty hungry.

Happy Holidays to all of you!

Love,

Momma J

For more bokeh pictures, give the link below a click:

And *edit for the winner of our flicker scooter* GypsyNicole (#34) is our winner from a random number generator! In her comment, she wrote: “Thank you for the giveaway opportunity and happy holidays!”

Holiday Happenings

23 Friday Dec 2011

Posted by in Photography, The Adventures of Little T, The Family

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A great big box of stocking stuffers from Viva La Vegan Grocery:

Playing outside in a big pile of leaves:

Making silly adjustments to PJ’s because Little T is sooooo tall:

Having time for pretty hairstyles:

Watching Coach at a basketball game:

Getting tickled during half time:

Eating lots and lots of crispy kale:

Drumming in pajamas that don’t match (clearly, we’ve had some pajama issues on this trip):

And enjoying the lights around the neighborhood:

The best of all gifts around any Christmas tree: the presence of a happy family all wrapped up in each other.

20 Tuesday Dec 2011

Posted by in Photography, The Family, The Travels

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~Burton Hillis

Chirstmas for us is a week long family extravaganza. We start the weekend before Christmas at my Dad’s, spend the rest of the week at my Mom’s, drive four hours to get home on Christmas Eve, have Christmas morning in our home, then have Christmas Day with Big T’s family. Not to mention lots of family activities in between. It’s a family gathering marathon.

I got exhausted just writing that!

It can get a little stressful, but we try to take it easy on ourselves when we don’t have time to bake or we have to do something last minute. It all works out in the end.

Here are a few pictures from our first Christmas event at my Dad’s house:

Priceless is seeing my older brother, getting excited over receiving the movie Conan.

My Dad and S-Mom are treating Big T and I to a date night for our Christmas gift, babysitting included! What more can parents ask for? Little T got a little play slide and a musical toy.

After we exchanged gifts, we took a basketball break. Little T wanted to make a basket, so Big T got out the ladder and helped him out a bit.

When basketball was done, we played Dance Revolution on the Wii.

Piggy spent the whole day in the kitchen. She has mastered the skill of looking like she hasn’t eaten in weeks, heh heh.

Speaking of eating, there were lots of tasty treats all around:

Later in the evening the babies went upstairs to play…except for B, she had important phone calls to make.

We had a great time catching up with everyone (and isn’t this the cutest smile ever?):

Meanwhile, the big kids played Oklahoma Monopoly downstairs. I tried to explain to Little T that he wasn’t old enough to play yet, but he just looked at me and said, “come on mom, Oklahoma Monopoly is for everyone”. I can’t argue with that.

Bad Dreams…

19 Monday Dec 2011

Posted by in The Family

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Do you ever have bad dreams about your kids? Last night I had a dream that was really upsetting. I was in the middle of a war zone and a group of us had found a place to hide. Our hiding place was safe because we could see outside but nobody could see in. I was trying to save as many people as I could and bring them into our hiding place. It was tricky because there was a road in front of us where the enemy was constantly driving back and forth and I had to be extremely careful. Some people I’d save, and some people I couldn’t get to in time and they didn’t make it. All of this caution was thrown out the window when Little T appeared across the road. He was all alone and lost and scared and crying. I panicked and had this overwhelming feeling of pain because I couldn’t protect him. Without thinking or looking to see if there was anyone dangerous around, I panicked and threw open the door and ran across the street to get him.

That’s when my phone went off in real life and woke me up. I turned my phone to silent, and went and got Little T from his crib and held him tight.