I don't feel like coming up with a title, so this will have to do

Today was an excellent day.

I didn't stick to my diet and I didn't exercise (which I am going to feel overwhelmingly guilty about tomorrow) but sometimes, you just need a break.  I've felt a little stuck in a rut lately because other aspects of my life have been mass chaos to put it lightly, but today was exactly what I needed.  I did what I wanted to do, not what I needed to do (okay, I did a little bit of what I needed to do, but I wanted to do those things as well).

I woke up at about 7:30 and did nothing until Matt woke up at about 8.  We lazed around for awhile, discussed what we were going to do (we've decided that it's important to start our own holiday traditions, so we elected to spend today by ourselves and not with family), and then got a call from his dad's girlfriend letting us know that she had made some bread for us.  We got showered and dressed and went over there to get the bread, and then just sat and talked for awhile.  When everyone else started showing up, we left.

As much as we love our families, we've come to the conclusion that we need to focus on our little family. It might only be the two of us, but we have yet to establish how we're going to combine our separate families' traditions for the holidays.  We do know that eventually just doing what his family did for Thanksgiving and what my family did for Christmas is not going to work for the long run.

In any event, we got back to the apartment and I turned on the Packers-Lions game (still depressed with how that one ended...) and he was reading.  Eventually we got hungry and we went to the store.  We had a turkey breast in the fridge for both of us, and the mixings for stuffing, cranberry, and mashed potatoes, but neither of us felt like cooking.  So we went to Hy-Vee and got a pizza, some ravioli, and a chicken pasta meal thing.  Nothing healthy or relevant to my diet, but that was never the point of today.  We decided to crockpot the turkey for tomorrow and do the whole Thanksgiving dinner thing after I get off work.

So we got back, I watched the rest of the game and talked to some friends online while Matt read and paid no attention to the game whatsoever.  After that, we did the dishes and got the kitchen cleaned up so I could make a big mess of it again.

I promised a coworker that I'd make Red Velvet cupcakes for the potluck we're having tomorrow.  I have a few pictures of this...

Awesome cupcake papers!

My baby, the KitchenAid Mixer

Creamed shortening/sugar

With the eggs...

Cocoa powder!

Mix the red food coloring with the cocoa powder to form a paste

Add the paste to the shortening/sugar/egg mixture.  Now it starts to look like Red Velvet cake...

Finished batter!

Cupcakes hanging out in the fridge!

And the finished product!

The icing kind of looks like a Christmas tree!

From the top

And just another cool looking angle.

Of course, in between making the cupcakes and making the icing, we watched The Holiday which rounded out the list of movies I wanted to watch for Thanksgiving (Love Actually, Joyeux Noel, and The Holiday).  We were going to put our Christmas tree up, but we didn't get that far,  I imagine we'll do that Sunday evening.

So, all in all it was a wonderful day with Matt.  Unfortunately, I'm back at work at 6:30 tomorrow morning.  Hopefully it won't be overwhelmingly crazy.  I am not ready for the Christmas season to start.  I'm just glad that I'm still capable of keeping Christmas at work separate from Christmas at home.

And on that note, I need to go.  I should definitely get some sleep - tomorrow is not going to be tolerable if I don't.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving (or just a good day, if you live outside the US)!

Tschüss!