Weekending- Merry and Bright!

Linking up with Holly and Sarah for Hello Monday:

Had a nice, mostly restful festive weekend. 

Friday, I subbed and had an easy, good day at school. After school, I went to the grocery store. I hadn't been grocery shopping in two weeks and did not miss it! Donnie arrived home from work, we ate dinner and then relaxed the rest of the evening. 

Saturday morning, I ran on the treadmill and then got to work. We were having friends over later so I had some food prep to do, clean up and putting finishes touches on Christmas decor. I know, the latter was something that I should have completed already but I was indecisive on a few things. Knowing people were coming over later forced me to make decisions and finish things. 

I gave myself a few minutes to look online before I got started started with the day and I found an amazing website about literature. I didn't have a lot of time to devote to exploring it in depth but I am looking forward to a truly lazy weekend (perhaps a cold and snowy one in January?) where I can delve into this site and of course, read more literature. A girl can try- earlier in the week, I tried to check out David Copperfield by Charles Dickens onto my Kindle but there was a waitlist so DC is going to have to wait; I'm certain that I´ll like it and am looking forward to reading it when it's available. 

Books took a backseat to brownies because guests were coming over and I could hardly serve a platter of my best book recs!!

This is what I hoped to create. It didn't happen but I did make the brownies and they were very good!

My would-be Christmas tree brownies were doomed by dint of my failure to cut the parchment paper to the shape of the pan. Since I didn't cut it, the paper protruded up and the brownies took the shape of the not flat parchment paper. I needed the baked brownies flush against the pan to get the right edge of the Christmas tree. 

I instead cut the brownies into small rectangles, iced them, put various sprinkles on them and then added them to my dessert charcuterie board.

Grateful for my sprinkle obsession collection

I should have tinted the icing green; I didn't realize the brownies could be placed in such a way as to make a tree. 

I also dipped pretzels in which chocolate and had more of the peanut butter chocolate chip cookie dip.

Do you like my foil collection as well, lol?? The kind of funny is that I almost bought more foil when I was at the grocery store on Friday because I didn´t know if I had any. To my credit, I don't open the drawers often that house the foils and I have to have my foils/ wraps in two places, so it is hard to know at any given point how much I have. These were not all in one location in the kitchen. Now I need to remember that I might not need to buy foil for the rest of my life (I also reuse pieces if the piece did not get any food on it)

I redid my foil/ wrap/ ziploc drawers- I took everything out, cleaned them out and put the items back in.

After that, I met my friends Kristine and Nicole at Heather's Gourmet Apples. These friends have birthdays in November and December. As part of their birthday presents, I paid for us to take a caramel apple dipping class. It was a lot of fun! They had never taken a class at Heather's.

Then we all came back to our house where the guys were. We ordered pizza, ate desserts and watched Lady Ballers on Daily Wire. It was funny but the subject matter is a serious one; it is not uncommon for women to have to compete with men in sports but it unfair and in many sports dangerous for women to have to compete with men. We had a great time with our friends.

Sunday was running, church, a trip to the mall with Alyssa to Christmas shop and then relaxing the rest of the day.

Donnie watched Die Hard with friends on Sunday and another friend sent him this Die Hard countdown to Christmas item. Just slightly morbid... Donnie is not even a huge Die Hard fan though he did like the movie.