Kelly B.com

Happy New Year! Let's start off with the fluffy stuff. Did I make a resolution? Not so much. But I hope to focus our lives in the new house and be much more organized. I can't stand the piles we have floating around now. There's so little space everything is on top of everything and it's a bit discombobulating. Hand-in-hand with that is to throw away/give away everything we don't actually use. I think we're always have way too much of what we don't use and too little functional furniture or storage. I could use a few dozen less bottles of body fragrance type sprays and a few more shelves. I spent my NYE with my friend Lex and my husband. It's amazing how increasingly calm each NYE gets. If the world doesn't end in 2012 I entirely anticipate sleeping right through it. I used to be out there in a not at all weather appropriate outfit trying not to be killed by drunk drivers and now I can hardly be bothered with leaving my living room. In much l...

Merry Christmas! I'm so lame for writing on Christmas, huh? But I have sufficiently spent time with my family, I'm full of prime rib, and I have consumed an unusually large quantity of cookies. Every year I say I should make less, but every year I still insist on making at least 3 full batches, and thus 100 dozen cookies are created. Um, because talking about presents is super lame and superficial of me I'll mention my friend Cathy had a baby boy recently. That sounds way more important than my desire for a spiffy apron. I know because she picture texted me. I haven't actually talked to her since her wedding. We're really quite awful friends, but babies tend to always bring forward a feeling of goodwill despite general lack of good communication otherwise. She had a boy and his name is Alex. For the sake of general personal security I'll refrain from yelling his full name from the internets. Since I've already wandered down this topic I may as well co...

I have officially created a cookie snob. I finally made those cookies from the Toll House dough from the refrigerator section of and my husband doesn't like them. (It's snowing, nice warm cookies are a fun treat.) And he doesn't like them. It just figures! I've now cultivated in him a taste for real butter and real vanilla extract and and all the warm deliciousness that it implies. (This is clearly why he blames me for making him fat.) I don't really like them either but I'm just saying...people are not supposed to know the difference, right? But he totally knows! On a side note I think I've given up on Holiday Shopping. Am I really done? Not so much. But I'm over it. lol I like the holidays, and I like lame holiday music, and I even like Egg Nog but it's not really the same. I miss Amanda and cooking strange random recipes with her. I miss Kim not being literally attached to the baby all the time and buying me gifts that have absolutely n...

I'm on day 2 of my 4 day long weekend. I have PTO to burn up so why not? I have Xmas shopping to do anyway and my mind was a bubbling cauldron of stress, anxiety and general discomfort. I needed a break, if only to wander around Macy's for a bit. But you know what? It's been really great so far. Like, much better than I thought a break from work would be. Sure I did a heck of a lot of laundry, but I was so psyched about some new bedding I purchased on Cyber Monday (it's not as dirty as it's name implies). I know...I've become far too domesticated, but SHEETS! I love good bedding. These were 400tc King sized Cotton Sateen sheets. Mmmmm. I like our 450's better but for $26 inclusive of shipping to get King sized sheets?! I'm not going to complain. They're fabulous. I'm sure as you go up and up and up it gets better but having too-good of taste only proves to bite you in the butt because you'll never want to sleep in common sheets ev...

Happy Mid-November. Chances are I'm going to forget to mention Thanksgiving but, heck. It's my favorite holiday of the year so I'll make mention of it now. I think the plan is to go to my mother in law's house. I'll need to come up with a better title than mother in law. Maybe, "Bonus Mother" is a more apt term. Mother in law sound so...negative and ugly. Anyway, I look forward to it. I show my best eating ability around the holidays, though I admit as I get older my appetite seems to shrink. That whole guilt thing about not wanting to die of morbid obesity where they have to cut a hole in the side of my house to get me. Devin is scheduled to make another Turduckhen . For the uninitiated it's a deboned chicken stuffed inside a deboned duck stuffed inside a semi- deboned turkey and is traditionally considered a southern dish. I would LOVE to host Thanksgiving. I wouldn't so much want to make a Turduckhen , but maybe next year just hostin...

Saturday evening was our 2nd Christmas. No, this is not a new holiday persay, but we pulled names on my husband's side of the family and we didn't all spend Christmas together so some people (myself included) didn't get their gift. No big deal to me, but Trevor's mom pulled together a really nice meal (with Devin also cooking) and it was a nice excuse to get together. If not for holidays I don't know when I'd see some of Trevor's extended family members. People are busy. Life happens, but it's nice to see one another. I made a pecan crusted pumpkin pie, an eclair cake, green tea ice cream and cranberry muffins. I did not bring the muffins; I simply wanted something to munch on in the mornings and my oven was already hot from baking. Pumpkin pie is something I have a love hate relationship with. I love the fragrant spices. I love the velvety texture of custard pies, but something about pumpkin pie is a little too mushy so I can't commit to eat...

Christmas was good. I hope everyone else had a nice holiday as well. Mine was spent at The Farm with Trevor's family. My own family was invited as well but my mom was actually spending the holiday working and my dad certainly wasn't going to leave her alone. Add in the fact that my parents are a bit wary of driving places which they are unfamiliar. I had to drive my own mother to my bridal shower in order for her to attend. In any case, it was a nice time. It was however punctuated by a lot of car trouble. Yes. Car trouble. Times two. First we're making our merry way out to Boston to visit with some of the extended family and Devin's car doesn't go into gear. It'll go into Reverse, but none of the forward moving ones will work. We were right behind him thankfully, so the boys (and a nice stranger) rolled it out of the intersection and we eventually got a tow to come move it back to The Farm to be dealt with after the holiday weekend. Since Devin was wit...

I've been on a blogging strike recently. Not because I don't like rambling on and on at great length about things that aren't terribly important but because I've been burned out at work and I'm far too tired to think about blogging. I have to be in the mood to blog. It's just not fun otherwise. But, today is a special day because it is the anniversary of the birth of a very important person in my life. My love. My best friend. My Trevor. I am currently waiting for Trevor to be done with work, but before that we opened his present, had some Mexican takeout, which is a lot better than it sounds actually. And we'll be watching a movie. I know it doesn't sound like a lot, but Trevor had to work until 8pm, so the fact that we did anything is pretty impressive. Since he already opened his present I guess I can share that I got him a gift certificate to a local day spa because I thought that considering how busy he's been that he could use a relaxing ...

Ah, the first post of the New Year. Where have I been? Well, we went to Boston for New Years and to make a long story short I wasn't able to sleep more than 2 hours and I've spent the past week slowly catching up on my lost zzzz's . And considering how much work I have this time of year I haven't had an awful lot of down time. It's...not terribly exciting material to write about and I'm sure I've been a ridiculous grump due to lack of sleep and too many carbs this holiday season. Of course, the boys had fun together, as they often do. Ali & Maggie were there as well of course and while the end of the night ended on a somewhat dramatic and not terribly ideal note, the early part of our evening was fun. I think after the keg-stands were done that things started to take a downward turn. Ali somehow got covered in many drinks and Maggie was very upset that one of the other guests stole into the fridge and chugged from her champagne bottle. In semi-exc...

Merry Late Christmas to all! Well, now that it's past the big day I can share what we got as gifts. Trevor & I split the cost of a 52" LCD Flatscreen tv. And while the frugal Fanny in me feels uncomfortable with such a big purchase, it's very long overdue and it's something we'll enjoy many hours of entertainment from. I pulled his Aunt Deborah from the hat, so I got her a nice Nike workout outfit that coordinated together. (Matchy matchy is so 80's. You want to coordinate.) Trevor pulled Susan, but since we haven't seen her I have no idea if she opened her gift anytime recently. Other than that we didn't stress too much about gifts. I got my mother many Vichy products and I got my father a shot glass set because, would you ever believe it? He actually asked for one. I think he's going to use it for this vile tasting "medicine" composed of little more than what looks like bark, leaves, wood, and random dried plant type things fe...

Happy Almost Christmas. I spent my day baking, which is pretty normal for me anyway, but I typically don't bake more than one thing but having Christmas on the horizon I decided to go all out. I made a cheesecake, since I still have some remnants of cheesecake desire from my prior visit to The Cheesecake Factory. I just made a plain one because I couldn't decide on a flavored one and I'd hate to make an already rich dessert even richer. And I made biscotti for my mom because she loves it. I made butter shortcake cookies because I have a soft spot for that buttery richness. And in a final moment I decided I also wanted some peanut butter oatmeal cookies. I don't even like peanut butter, but when mixed with other things, as long as I don't have that mouth full of goo feeling I don't find it half bad. Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies 1/2 cup butter softened 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup brown sugar 1/2 cup peanut butter 1 egg 1 tsp vanilla 3/4 cup of flour 1/4 tsp salt 1...

If you can't tell by my masterful spelling up there, my title is meant to be pronounced a la Wayne's World's cliche "Party time! Excell - ent !"I've been sort of hush-hush about my whole wedding planning thing. To be fair, I haven't done very much recently because I've been much more concerned about the holidays and because I'm almost at the point where I want to get married tomorrow just to get it over with. lol But, Liza, Trevor's mother and my soon to be mother-in-law, bought me a little black party dress as a late birthday gift. Unfortunately for me it was a bit too large for my willowy frame and they had no similar dresses at my local mall for me to exchange it for. But I had Friday off and spent it with my parents shopping, so with a bit of help from my mom, I found a replacement dress. Now, I don't find little party dresses to be a particularly good investment since I usually only ever wear them one time, but I imagine that I...

Happy December! It's crazy how fast it all runs by. I took Friday off because I've acquired PTO that I never used and will have to use before the end of the year. My beloved Trevor also took the day off so we had a little daytime adventure of doing our semi-annual run to Kappy's , a liquor store chain in Massachusetts. I had never heard of Kappy's before Trevor, but it's a chain and I'd liken it to the most Walmart -like Liquor store I know of. In our neck of the woods you cannot purchase wine or spirits from your grocery store so you have to go to a liquor, or as we call it, "Package Store." And yes, if you walk into a package store and expect to be able to send a package they'll know you're not from around here. Colloquialisms aside, Kappy's is Trevor's favorite package store because they're quite large and therefore sell at a slight discount to their smaller mom and pop competitors. Hard Alcohol is always sold at a high ...