oh the weather outside is frightful...

Happy Hanukkah!
Happy Winter (officially started yesterday you know)!
I can't believe Christmas is so close! Just three more days. :-) I was actually thinking last week that I wasn't sure if we would get a white Christmas this year or not. The weather has been so crazy... warm, then cold, snowing but it doesn't stick. Well, Saturday I drove up to my parent's place for a hair cut... and at first it was just the normal brown/gray landscape that you get this time of year. But then I saw this (ignore the crappy camera phone shots):

Which after a few more miles, turned into this:
Once I got up to Schnecksville, I realized that while maybe Philly won't have a white Christmas... we'll certainly get one up there!! Yay! :-)
When I got home, Trav had gone grocery shopping... and picked up a bag of cranberries. We'd never cooked with them before, but I guess he was inspired after watching the Iron Chef cranberry battle the night before! So he cooked a great london broil with a cranberry reduction on top:

What a great flavor combo!! The bite of the cranberry holds up nicely with the heavy meat.
And we drank champagne with a splash of cranberry juice and some whole cranberries:

And I ground up some whole cranberries with a ton of sugar, spread that inside and on top of some crescent rolls, which we then baked like normal:

Delish! It was sweet, and tart, and buttery (from the rolls themselves). A great, light treat... even Trav was wishing for more.

I also got to open another early Christmas gift... Season 5 of the X-files. We didn't watch the whole thing this weekend, but we definitely put a dent in it! :-)

Sunday I woke up with the intent of going walking with Ro. But instead we decided to hold off since some of that white, wintery look had come down our way in the form of freezing rain (winter certainly made its presence known)! Be careful what you with for... right?!
I did end up walking with Ro later... slowly and carefully!!

That might look like snow, but its not... just a layer of ice over everything!


Ro looks adorably like she's smuggling a basketball under her sweater:

The rest of the night was spent relaxing, watching football (boo Steelers, boo Eagles) and X-files, and eating some sugar cookies that Trav was baking when I got home. Not too shabby.

Now its back to work. My boss and his wife are away until the new year, on a big trip in Europe (a little jealous!)... so its quiet here. But I should get to it.

On more thing to leave you with before I go: Year in Pictures. I absolutely love when these come out... the pictures are amazing. Some are beautiful, some are devastating/sad, but all are incredible pictures. Check it out.

Okay, off I go!