Farewell 2013

I'm a little behind on blogging my year in review, because life. LIFE.

So 2013, huh? Lets call it the Year of Working My Butt Off. Never have I ever worked as hard as I did this year. My promotion at the end of 2012 to big boss meant a whole lot more work. Rewarding and fun, but girl... those hours! And because I am masochistic, I added a (very) part time second job to the mix, which has been 200% worth it. I love love love it and I get to sew on fancy fabric and machines and learn all sorts of things. So in 2013 I worked and worked and worked. And worked. And Brendon did too. He has been splitting his time between two jobs for the majority of the year as well as taking on a teaching assistant position and oh yeah, kicking serious ass in pharmacy school. It was a really good year for both of us. And because we worked our tails off, we paid off a good chunk of debt and although we're still living that broke college kid lifestyle, it's a tad more comfortable. And we're a tad bit more able to have some fun in our free time. So cheers to hard work paying off!

Speaking of financial fun, in Feburary, my sweet beloved Xterra's engine blew up on I35 (during rush hour) which was terrible and traumatic. Repairing her would have cost more than she was worth, so as much as it still hurts today to even think about, we sold her. The whole thing was unexpected and unfortunate and definitely no bueno all around. But the Bruce Wayne entered our family, and she has been such a blessing. Praise the car gods for good gas mileage. And as hard as it was letting go of the Xterra, I love having a new car. Materialistic as it may be, it is just lovely. I mean, it has AC, y'all! This was our first BIG purchase as a couple and it was exciting and scary and expensive but I think we did good. 

Now how about something nice that happened in February? We took a weekend trip to Fredericksburg and it was perfectly wonderful and a welcomed escape from work and school. It was romantic and fun and we needed it badly. Then Brendon and I both turned 25 in February and March respectively, and didn't notice a change from 24. Our gray hairs are becoming more numerous and our knees hurt, but that's about it.

I stopped eating meat gradually oh a whim in the spring and gave it up completely in the summer, and solved my decade long health problem of insane stomach pain! Talk about life changing. Still in awe, really.

We spent the summer traveling to all the small central Texas towns we could, dubbing the summer of 2013 "small town summer". It was seriously a blast and such an inexpensive way to have fun. I recommend it to everyone. We ended the summer with an AMAZING trip to New Mexico to play around in the mountains, where my heart is happy. One of my favorite vacations, ever. And a tent versus a hotel = cheap cheap cheap (and also BEAUTIFUL)! We are getting good at this traveling on a budget thing. 

Brendon had a relatively easy first month or so of school, it was a nice ease into the chaos that was to ensue. In September I moved stores at work and for a couple weeks did the most insane thing ever, ran two stores at once. Which was seriously, insane, but definitely a learning experience. And with September began the fall of craziness. It got more nuts month by month, but it was kind of fun and boy did time fly. So I am NOT complaining. December was full of holiday goodness as well as a heaping helping of insanity. But we survived! Brendon finished another very successful semester of pharmacy school, putting him half way through his third year and three semesters away from graduating (!!). The last week of the year was pretty wonderful with a combination of work slowing down and Brendon being out of school, plus Christmas, duh. 

It has been an excellent year. Now, here's an obscene amount of photos. Sorry about the frequent occurrence of my face, it's my blog after all.

JANUARY

FEBURARY

MARCH

APRIL

MAY

JUNE

JULY

AUGUST

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

DECEMBER

So hip-hip-hurray for 2013 and all the good times it brought along. For all the challenges it threw our way and how much we learned muddling through them. I'm a happy, although worn out, camper and ready to face the New Year. 2014, bring yoself on.

If you're interested in waltzing down memory lane, here's Farewell 2012 and 2011.

Christmas 2013

By popular demand, the Christmas 2013 post! Forgive me for being extra behind on my blogging. Can we just write it off as December being the busiest month of the year?

Christmas for the Hogans is always an event. We have four Christmases to squeeze in and it's always a little crazy. Good crazy. Christmas Eve we do with Brendon's momma and brother, Christmas morning with my mom and sister, Christmas afternoon with my dad, step-momma, and step-bro, and Christmas night we have our own. And we both worked Christmas Eve. Cray cray! But always wonderful and always worth it. But forgive me this year, I did not take a lot of photos. My energy level was sub par due to December being iNsAnE. Also my camera is still acting funny (??? dropped it too many times? too much flour and sugar all over it? whyyyy??), so the quality has been frustratingly meh lately. But there's a few!

Ask and you shall receive, Jules. AND CAT IN THE PAPER:

Can we talk about that "cellulose sponges" box and how many Christmases and birthdays it's seen? Best box ever. Also, this is my "YAY, COOKING UTENSILS!" face.

HEY GIRL HEY! :)

OH, so my mom and I made these AWESOME little danishy things and they were incredibly easy and reeeeeeally good. Mom, send me dat recipe! It's just slices of canned croissant dough with sugary cream cheese and preserves on top, plus icing. Winner!

And the only photo from Christmas at my daddios (slackerdom was really kicking in):



PAPA LUCHADOR! AY AY! We got him this luchador mask like MONTHS before Christmas and it was decently hilarious. Also scary.

So again, sorry about the lack of photos. Your girl was sleepy. I assure you it was magical and wonderful and full of my favorite people in the world. It was a fantastic Christmas, followed by two more days off! I had a strike of genius and decided to take a day of vacation the week of Christmas so, three days off! First time since August. It was perfect. Having the two days after Christmas off with Brendon to do absolutely nothing (seriously, I'm not sure we even left the house on the 26th) was the best. Best best best. We have worked the day after Christmas since we've been in Austin and having it off was SO NICE. 100% worth working Christmas Eve. And now we know.

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas if you celebrated and a relaxing Wednesday if you didn't. I know I owe the internet more posts, and they're coming I promise! For the three of you who read this regularly. (52 weeks of baking recap! 2013 review! New Years! Etc!) I no longer have the responsibility of blogging weekly with a baked something or another, so I'm going to have to work on becoming interesting so I can still fill my corner of the web with blabber. Because I know you'd miss me.

KIDDING.

52 weeks of baking: 52 - double chocolate torte

Fifty-two. We made it! I did it! 52 weeks of baking. Done. PHEW!

For my last week of baking I baked something that I knew I'd love, because it's my year of baking and I'll do what I want! I needed something involving chocolate, and specifically chocolate mousse. I think my favorite food might be chocolate mousse. So I made a double chocolate torte, via Smitten Kitchen of course. It's basically a big ol' pile of chilled mousse with an almost flourless cake at the bottom. It's a pretty little thing and very yummy. Oh and it has a pound of chocolate in it.

No lie huh, it's pretty. It had to chill in the fridge overnight and it was torture. I wanted at that thing. And raspberries are the perfect companion to chocolate mousse. They are killer on this and I'm not even that nuts about raspberries.

This torte is easy to make, just very time consuming. Like hours and days unless you start it in the morning. There's a lot of chilling and a lot of whisking involved. And chopping a pound of chocolate. Worth it though. Chocolate mousse is always worth it. Unless J-E-L-L-O has anything to do with it.

So that's it, y'all. 52 weeks!!! Thanks for hanging out if you managed to stick through the year. It's been fun and yummy. There will be a follow up post for sure. Because, I mean, a year of baking deserves one.

52 weeks of baking: 51 - gingerbread men

Isn't that just like the perfect shade of dog poo? Don't let that deter you, these cookies are delicious and spicy and festive as heck. Dough or batter of any sort containing molasses just always comes out poo colored. Amusing!

This week has been insanity. Not that that is anything new, that's the story of my dang life, y'all! But this week, I got sick! Figured it would happen soon, you can only go full throttle for so long before your body is like, NOPE. But luckily it kind of worked out, most of the feverish worst of it was on my two days off so I only spent one very long day at work feeling absolutely rotten. So baking was pushed to the end of the week. And it was a close call. I've just worked 24 of the last 48 hours, but I somehow managed to bust out these cookies last night and am throwing them onto the internet before I go to work today.

Also, there is something real funky going on with my camera. The top portion of all the photos is blurry as hell and everything sort of looks like a nineties glamour shot. It's been going on for a while and I have no idea whats up. But everything kind of looks like this:

Oh well, faces are overrated anyway.

For shapes we only did a handful of traditional gingerbread men, and the rest were stars, kitties, and ducks! Because why not?

My royal icing was waaaay watery, but I was too lazy to add more powdered sugar, so we rolled with it. Came out just fine.

Brendon's design's were my favorite. He made a cute dark wing duck with a mask!

Clearly my writing skills have some room to grow. But these cookies are GOOD! Like I said, spicy! There's a good amount of black pepper in them, and it's awesome. I think if I made them again I'd roll them out thicker. I like a softer cookie. They're a little ginger snappish when they're thin, which is yummy, but I'm into chewy cookies generally.

ONE MORE WEEK OF BAKING! Craziness. I probably won't bake or have anything interesting to report until after Christmas (I have three days off next week!!!!), so Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to the internet!

EDIT: I just realized I did NOT include the recipe I used. What the hell? It's a Smitten Kitchen recipe, I'M SORRY, I WAS RUSHED!