Xmas How-to: Boozy Hot Chocolate

Yes, this is the simplest thing ever, but sometimes a person just needs explicit instructions.

Plus I wanted to take pictures of my new mug. :D I have a thing for glassware, apparently - probably because it can hold booze.

Here's how to make perfect alcoholic hot chocolate:

First, you need booze and hot chocolate. Hot water, spoons, and mugs also help. The best type of booze for hot chocolate is liqueurs; I prefer Baileys and Kahlua, but peppermint schnaps is pretty awesome, too.

The how to:
Pick an awesome mug. (This is an early Xmas present from The Hubs, in honor of my favorite Xmas special - "A Charlie Brown Christmas" for life, yo!)

 
As the water heats up, prep the booze and cocoa mix: Pour in the cocoa powder, and then pour in the booze. Since we're adults, we're going for a decent dose - I basically pour until it covers the powder (so about 1/4th of the mug). We pour the booze first so we don't take up too much room with that stupid hot water. Stir until it's a slurry of booze and cocoa mix.

Once the water's hot, pour and stir to get the chocolate as smooth as possible.

Stir, stir, stir until frothy. Best served with some delicious sweets cooked by your loved ones - my MIL and SIL made these bad boys. (Chocolate chip cookie made with Andes mints instead of regular chips, "slutty brownies" which is a layer of chocolate chip cookie dough followed by peanut-butter oreos with brownie batter on top [OMG SO DELICIOUS], and homemade fudge.)

Enjoy while watching the appropriate Christmas special that coordinates with your mug.

Happy Holidays if you celebrate, happy Tuesday if you don't!

VACATION! Also known as "catch-up on life" time!

So as most people know, teachers get at least 2 weeks off for the winter holidays.

I should be excited. I should be relaxing for this entire break.

But instead I will only have "off" through Xmas day, and then I'm kicking in on all the catch-up work I have to do for work. That's right, a working vacation. (Although to be fair, I'm planning on working on all the stuff I LIKE to do as a teacher, which is mainly unit planning; the part I don't like, grading, is waiting until next week when school re-opens and I can go in to work to do it as well as prep for the first week back.)

Although I will be working through most of my break (giving myself the 4-day weekends that The Hubs have off as my own so I force myself to relax a LITTLE), I plan to use it to catch up on real life stuff as well, mostly of the housewife variety but some personal pursuits as well.

It's frustrating to me to feel so out of balance, which makes sense as I am a Libra. I get overwhelmed very easily by own inadequacies, and when I feel I'm lacking in an area it makes me beat myself up a LOT. The focus has been on work, and to be honest it felt like every other area of my life was suffering as a consequence, which just fed my own self-hatred. I'm trying to even things out a little, and the last few weeks as school was winding down to finals I was actually able to get stuff done, including Xmas-related stuff. Turns out the trick is to stop making work the only priority and make a little wiggle room for other stuff to climb up the ranks - go fig!

Anyway, the intent of this is not to complain, esp. because for the most part I still love my job and I'm so happy to be back in the classroom with a (mostly) awesome group of 9th and 10th graders.

The intent is to list all the things I want to get done over break! OMG so much to catch up on!
Here's my self-imposed Honey Do list:

• Treat the bathtub drain and clean the tub - it is so gross, you guys, it's so embarrassing. The reason neither of us clean it with any frequency is because we both have bad backs and it's a sh**** chore, but I'm tired of looking at how gross it is. Plus I'm tired of the bathtub not draining fast again. (It's actually pretty easy - you heat up a cup of white vinegar and pour a 1/2 cup [I think] of baking soda down the drain, followed by the vinegar and it cleans it out fairly well - you can repeat it until it's draining as you like it. Man, baking soda is the best for cleaning stuff.)
• Fix all the clothes that need sewing fixes. 
• WASH ALL THE LAUNDRY!
• Start working out. Yeah, I said it. I REALLY want to get healthier, and since eating is hit or miss, I gotta put the exercise element in. Volleyball once a week is helping and I feel GREAT afterwards, but I want that feeling more often. I have a beginner's walking program I found on sparkpeople that I plan to use.
•  COOK (and meal plan!). I'm thinking of making big meals or easily-doubled recipes that I can freeze. I also need to clean out the fridge and freezer, so I have room for all this food. 
• Clean out the pantry!
• A bunch of little housewife-y projects (all via Pinterest, my internet crack) - all natural cleaner, non-processed cream of whatever-soup mix, clean my dishwasher
• Make stuff just for the sake of making stuff! Man, I miss crafting. 

So yeah, it's a pretty long to-do list, but I know I will feel SO much better if I get this crap done, esp. if I get in the work-out habit NOW and get it on its way to becoming a habit before I go back to work.

Man, being an adult is exhausting. 

Goals Update/Keeping Busy

(Here's the post of the original goals)

My health goals have slipped. I've been better this week, but it's still a bit of an uphill climb to get back on track. I seem to do well during the morning/afternoon, but when I get home I lose all sense of restraint and I'm like "EAT ALL THE CARBS". Urf. On the plus side, we have tried to eat out less this week, and next week our schedule is a little more predictable and stable so we should be able to cook at home more.

No pumpkin-carving party this year, so I'm going to start thinking about an optimal time for a gingerbread bash! I haven't made a gingerbread house since I was a little kid, and Xmas is my favorite holiday of the Holiday Trinity, so I'm pretty psyched. Of course, I need some of that pesky thing called spare time before I can plan anything. *sigh*

Volleyball is moving forward in that I've found a local open-gym night on Thursdays (that of course was closed the first week I'm free) and joined a Meet-up group (that of course has no current scheduled games). I think XOSO's next season starts in November, so come hell or highwater I WILL PLAY VOLLEYBALL SOON.

Finally, my crafting by hand has been on semi-technicalities, but I'll  count it because at least it's making me be creative and take a moment to work with my hands. I technically missed the second week (although I did create some very cute bulletin boards for my classroom, even if my T.A.s technically put half of them together), but last weekend I drew my RPG character for the new campaign my friends and I are playing. (Yes, I'm one of those nerds!)

Guevana, a gnome Rogue. If you don't know what that means, you were probably popular in high school

Tonight I prepped my possible costume for Wednesday - IF it's cool to wear costumes at work. I would think it is, and my costume is perfectly acceptable for teaching (I'm dressing as a "citizen of the Capitol" a la The Hunger Games - I couldn't find an Effie Trinket-style wig, so I settled for a platinum bob wig), but I want to double-check first. I didn't really have to make anything specifically for the costume - heck, the only money I spent was for the wig, because the rest is from my closet. I had a feathery-thingie that's been in my crafts cupboards for years, so I attached it to a bow headband I had from my New Year's Eve dinner party costume (I'm also using the same dress, belt, and earrings). Et voila:

It's gonna look AWESOME with my wig. Very Effie, I think.

I wish I had more to do for Halloween - this year our usual crew was busy helping our friends move into their new house today! Whooo! Unfortunately, though, that means we don't have any plans. Might see if my cousin and her partner will let me come over and pass out candy - that way I can still wear my awesome costume if I can't wear it to work, haha.

Other than that, my schedule is still crazy but I think it might be slowing down and I can catch up (famous last words!). This is in reference to work schedule, of course - the next three weekends are booked solid as well. Oy. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to be so busy, being unemployed drove me NUTS; I think I just like having the right to complain about it. ;D

Accepting My Size: Size 22-24

I am full-on into the "Fat Pride/Fat Acceptance" movement. Healthy is defined by your inner workings (physical and mental), not your outer shape. Lately I've been unhealthy, using food as my stress relief, but I'm ready to start working back to healthy mode - not for weight loss, but because I like how I feel when I'm making my blood pump and when the food I eat makes me feel good.

Also, I have sweet legs, a killer rack, and a nice caboose, yo, and these must be recognized as such.

My outfit is together, but my desk is in shambles. 

Showin' off my nice legs, cute shoes, and BRAND NEW BIRTHDAY PURSE OMG

These were taken Monday, the day after my 31st birthday. I was in a great mood that morning, but to be honest, the rest of the week was... less than. I'm working my way back to happiness, though; this is a temporary setback due to work circumstances. I still really like my job, though, and my career field despite the efforts of a select few to make things more difficult for me; I also have a lot of catching up to do, so once these things work themselves out and I find a balance again, I think there will be a lot of happiness returning to me. Despite feeling very moody and overwhelmed, I still feel life is good and the second full year of my 30's is off to a nice start with me still feeling very fulfilled.

One of those fulfillment areas is accepting who I am, inside and out. I'm a beautiful woman, and I really love myself a lot of the time.

One Year Into My 40th Decade

My 4th bday - I've been partying hard since birth, baby

 The 30's are an interesting set of years; it's the decade we all seem to dread getting to, yet once we're here it's almost a relief to see the previous 3 decades finally start to pay off. (Or at least that's what seems to be happening now, finally.)

This isn't to say my life is exactly where I want it to be, but when I hit the big 3-0 without hitting most of my official "success markers" and making myself miserable while stewing on this fact, I finally ran out of f***s to give. I'm still out. It just got exhausting.

And, of course, when I stopped caring is when stuff started to fall into place. It's still early to feel 100% confident that things are going to work out as I hoped (life has made me cynical), but I'm guarded-hopeful and feeling good.

This weekend marked not only the end of some schedule MADNESS that will make my day job a lot easier, but also a nice upswing from last year's birthday. I'm still shaking off my disappointment in myself and some certain people in how my birthday was treated last year; it really hurt me, deeply, but part of that was my own doing. This year, though, I was so busy I didn't even CARE, and The Hubs actually forced me into picking something to do for my bday. When I finally figured that out, I got excited about the weekend, and that led to an overall fantastic weekend. Happiness in celebrating myself, relief at getting my schedule back to my own choices, and joy in finding out that I am more loved than I believed I was last year (and that I need to get the f*** over myself sometimes).

So far, my 30's have actually been fairly excellent, even when I was unemployed. It's definitely nice to be employed again, that's for dang sure. I'm just saying I'm happy so far with how this decade is going, and that's a nice place to be.

That isn't to say there aren't still things I want to work on; I want to create a beautiful life, and find the balance between work and living life. I still live a little too much for work (and considering I'm a teacher, that kind of comes with the job), but I'm hoping that as I work more and become more confident and secure in my job, and find routines that work for me, that it'll start to balance out. I want to cook fresh, delicious food and break the addiction to processed sugars and junk food. I want to take the time to craft with my hands and read books analog-style, and to break my computer/internet addiction. In a lot of ways, my life is getting close to where I want it to be, but there's still some areas that I can control (see previous) and other areas where I can't change but can work on my side of it (see medical issues).

Despite the self-assessed "need for improvement" areas, though, I still feel fairly happy with where I currently am and the direction The Hubs and I are pursuing together. Life is good, and it's nice to feel that way on my actual birthday.