Happy 2009!

We miss you, Rhoda...

Getting snowed in.

Last Wednesday, we hosted book club. Nils prepared glögg for three and half hours and we set out pepparkakor. Last year, I had a bad incident with glögg: getting so sick that I spent most of Christmas Day in bed. What a sad sight of affairs. So needless to say, I had a hard time drinking my cup of glögg during book club without remembering my 24 hour throw-up fest and the lethargy that swallowed my body last Christmas. When book club was over, I still had more than half of glögg in my cup. So sad. It's actually so tasty it's a waste to waste.

On Saturday, we went to Holiday Party '09 and drank cider and Bells Christmas Ale. It was an awesome party with Christmas portraits, yummy goodies...and naked men! I almost forgot we were at Community Gardens - it started to look like a frat party.

Apparently we are expecting quite the storm over the next three days. Wonderful. But what can we do? Our plans to leave for Duluth on Thursday look postponed till the weekend. Ultimately, bumping other plans. We have made sure to stock up on food and beer though. So I guess we're set.

Side note: I haven't taken too many photos as of late.

Happy Holidays!

Saw Whet on the Moss

Saw Whet on the Moss
Originally uploaded by BigBrotherBear

I can't help but post this. It's just too darn cute and the rest of Jason Idzerda's photos are awesome! I know my friend Megan would just love these!

The 13 Days of Christmas

I love my job. I work with great people and provide services to some pretty neat people in the Northwest area of Hennepin County. Yesterday, we had our annual holiday party at our drop-in and it was so nice to see so many people come together, enjoy food, and have fun. I can't imagine what it would look like if the Northwest Community Support Program didn't exist. It would be site of sad affairs.

I am spending my weekend at home, relaxing, and working on Xmas gifts. I am almost finished with my gifts for my favorite people of the West Coast. Once I am done with their gifts, I will move on to finish projects for my mother.

Nils and I will spending most of our holiday in Duluth with his mom Alice. Last weekend we found out that we'll get to help babysit a puppy while we are visiting. There is nothing that will give us more joy than being able to walk a dog on Christmas Day. We can't wait!

I am excited for love.

So, I have good news. It's been quite the eventful week. Nils and I woke up on Tuesday morning an engaged couple! We had a lovely Thanksgiving weekend and continued to kick off our holidays with pepparkakor, ABBA, a faux tree, and engagement ring hunting! We are hoping to have a Turf Club engagement party in January. I don't want to go on too much about being engaged, but I do have to mention that finding an engagement ring is more difficult than I thought. Since I turned the tables on the traditional proposal story: I being the one who asked, I had been figuring that Nils would get the ring. This not the case, and now I am surfing Ebay and Etsy for the perfect eco-friendly, simple, and possibly vintage engagement ring. I've already had a few people take a gander at my ring finger looking for that certain sparkle of commitment, and well, I just want to say we are getting there! I am just so picky!

Now that we are fully into the the holiday season, I've been thinking about gift giving and such, and this year, I am definitely into making most of my gifts for friends and family with my bare hands and creative mind. I couldn't help but get excited walking around No Coast CRAFT-O-RAMA yesterday. It was a plethora of talented artists and creative awesomeness. I adore seeing what people are making. I scored a free No Coast tote bag and a cute pin cushion from Run Amok.

If you are still wondering what to get a friend, I've been selfishly inspired to gift this to myself: a book on why it's important not to eat meat and understand why. I noticed this book last month when it was released, and an opinion piece written back in October, by the author Jonthan Safran Foer, reminds me that I want to read Eating Animals. I think it would be a lovely Xmas gift for your vegetarian/vegan friend or someone who is contemplating a change in their diet. Or well, for someone who gives you a hard time on your decision to stop consuming animals.