Leap Day!

There are two reasons I desperately wanted to write an entry over here today:

1. I previously said I was determined to get all the Christmas photos posted by the end of February, and today (obviously) is the last day I can do that!


2. I can only post on February 29th every four years, so I should take advantage of it

I've been having trouble sleeping lately, and John suggested I do some research on teas that might help. A google search brought me to a page on teavana.com all for night-time teas. I bought three different ones and have tried them all over the past week and have to say that, hands-down, this is the best one. Not only did it have a nice subtle citrus taste (that tasted very natural, too, not sicky-sweet or strong like a lot of citrus teas I've tried), but the two times I have had this before bed, I have slept like a ROCK.

I don't know if it's just a placebo effect, but I don't care, I haven't slept this well in a few months, so I'm happy with a placebo if it works.

Ok, so, the last of the Christmas photos, it is!


Mary opening a gift


Dad and Katie


This is the cute sweatshirt I was talking about in the last entry. Be prepared to scroll through several more photos of it.














All the 8s in the background are from Katie's birthday






John, working on his quilt square. This year the them was Gingerbread Men, and John decided to stick to his "cartoon" theme and drew the one from Shrek. (I stuck with my "cow" theme and my gingerbread man was wearing cow-spotted shorts)




This photo was actually taken a few days after Christmas, but it's a wine stopper that John and I got for Christmas that I love!

Making Ravioli

So, I used one of my Christmas presents for the first time this past weekend. I can't believe it took this long, but I finally made some homemade ravioli with my KitchenAid ravioli attachment.

Since I think mom was planning on getting the same thing, I thought I'd throw out some tips I learned through the process.

1. Every time I have made pasta following the recipe for pasta dough in the owner's manual thingy, I have found I needed to add more water. As in, it calls for 1 tablespoon, and I've added closer to 1/2 cup. If you read the manual, it will tell you to test (and how to test) the dough after the step with the flat beater. If you follow that test, you should get a good dough. But you'll probably need way more water than what it says you need.


2. If you're using the KitchenAid Pasta Roller attachment, go all the way to the 4 setting (so, start at 1, then 2, then 3, then 4). I couldn't find anything in the Ravioli maker manual that said that, but John found it in the roller manual. 3 is TOO THICK. It will get stuck in the ravioli attachment and is not fun to clean when you discover this. Especially if you decide to skip the step that says "if this is your first time, try rolling it through without any filling".


3. Which leads me to - follow that step. Do a test ravioli strip w/o filling before putting the filling in


4. I floured both sides of my sheet of pasta before putting it in the ravioli roller thingy. I don't know if this was necessary. It was kinda hard to do without deforming the sheet of pasta. It's very important that the sheet remains as wide as the roller. Some of my got thinned out a bit when I was flipping it to flour both sides, and so in those points, the raviolis didn't close completely on one side, so those raviolis had to be tossed. Oops!


5. I made the Pumpkin Sage ravioli, and there was not enough filling for all the raviolis. Almost, but not quite.


6. They suggest you let the raviolis dry for 10 minutes before you separate them. I suggest you wait a little longer. This can be worrisome because the pasta has raw egg in it, but it does make it much easier to separate - they ones that had been sitting out the longest for me just fell apart easily, while the "fresher" ones kinda stuck/pulled more.

Overall, it was a learning experience, especially with the first roll or two, but I'm very, very happy with it, and am looking forward to making more! It's quite a process, though. Especially cleaning up.

Since I can't really have a post without photos, and I don't have any of the ravioli-making process (yet), I'll continue with Christmas, but now over at E's house. The photos are all kinds of out of order, I apologize. But you should probably be used to that at this point.


Emma!




On E's tree




Mary


Katie


This is a great quilt that Emma got


She likes it!


Waiting her turn


Andrew


Emma and her E


Dad and his hat


Emma and her hat!

I only have ONE more set of Christmas photos to go (and they are mostly of Emma in that incredibly cute red sweatshirt with the fuzzy hoodie). I said I was going to finish those by February, didn't I? Hmmm... expect another post soon, I guess!?

Insert Blog Post Title Here.

Work last week was crazy-busy and full of weird hours, but it was overall successful! We came out of that week with a lot lessons learned, and a list of things to do before the real go-live at the end of March. So, the business isn't over, but things are very good.

Yesterday, my parents came into town and we enjoyed a little less than 24 hours full of watching TV on Netflix, eating good food (Rockne's for lunch, Hudson's for dinner, my "killer" brownies for dessert, and one of John's amazing breakfasts), and sleeping, too! they made their way over to E's house after our big breakfast this morning.

Since I just talked about my family, let's even it out and post photos from some time spent with John's family! This is Christmas Eve and Christmas morning at his parents' house!


John's mom got a game called Hedbanz, where you put the cards up on your head like this (the game comes with actual headbands that the cards slide into so you don't have to hold them), and you don't know what your card is, but you have to guess by asking yes or no questions.


John's dad got "I am a turkey". He got as far as figuring out it was big, brown, stupid bird, but never did guess turkey


Some sample questions


I have no idea what John saw in the fridge... but I'm kinda worried.


John's brother got us the game Stone Age for Christmas, and he gave it to us on Christmas Eve so we could all play.


The DeBacco tree all bokeh-y


the tree is full of santa ornaments


Here's the tree not bokeh-y


View from the dining room windw on Christmas morning

Finally posting some Christmas-related photos!

Tomorrow at work we start something called a Cutover Dress Rehearsal. Basically, at the end of March we have a HUGE implementation of a bunch of changes across a bunch of different IT systems that all have to happen, coordinated, over the same weekend. Starting tomorrow, we're doing a practice run-through with some non-production systems.

I'm the project manager of one of the projects (that is, obviously, web-related), so I have to work some weird hours.

In order to prepare myself for these weird hours, I decided to do pretty much nothing all weekend long other than watch TV shows on Netflix. At least, that's the excuse I'm going with.

Oh, and today is Valentine's Day, which, I'm sure I've mentioned before, that John and I don't really celebrate, but I did recently buy him cookies from Doubletree. Whenever we decided to get away and spend the night in a hotel somewhere, our first choice is always Doubletree because of the COOKIES. Oh, the cookies! Turns out, you can buy them online and have them SHIPPED TO YOUR HOUSE. Much cheaper than a hotel room.

Anyway, let's jump back in time to a different holiday-time: Christmas! Before the actual holiday, John and I went down to his hometown in order to go to an Ugly Sweater party. I didn't have time to find an ugly sweater, and I was one of the few who didn't do anything, but it was pretty fun seeing what everyone else was wearing, and enjoying their Christmas decorations.


I like how you can see John's reflection in this one


These aren't shot glasses that look like candy canes, no, they are actually candy!




This is actually my tree. It's not really Christmas unless I take a bokeh tree photo...


Or two


(back to the party, I didn't put ornaments on my tree, if I had, that wouldn't have looked this nice and coordinated)




Nothing says Christmas like... a macro photo of a pencil holder?


Smart Yoshi is SMART!


Soem of my best friends are flakes. One of the few winter decorations I sometimes get out.


I got John this hat as Christmas present. Yes, the EXIF says this photo was taken on Dec 21. We're not good at waiting to give each other gifts.


Yosh tried it on, too.

Great, Busy Weekend!

This past weekend was a busy but good one!

Saturday night we went out to celebrate the birthday of a friend. We had a complete blast! We started at the wine bar near our house, then went to their house where he and his wife served amazing food (including the most delicious cake pops ever. Actually, these are the first cake pops I've ever tasted, but I'm still conviced they are the most delicious), showed us pictures from their vacation in Hawaii, showed us a video of the (No doors!) helicopter ride they took there (Apparently, in Hawaii, there are 720 degrees in a circle, because the pilot doing a "360" just turned them around), and amused use with the antics of their cats (which was actually funny, and not lame like it probably sounds). From there we went out to a bar across the street from their house, where there happened to be karaoke, and we were able to convince (read: force) the birthday boy to sing a song. Andrew got video of it, and I got photos (John later reminded me that Super New Awesome Camera actually takes HD video - in fact, an entire episode of House was recorded on my camera - but that fact escaped me at the time, so still photos it is).

Sunday was, of course, the Super Bowl. We watched the game at John's brother's house and stuffed our faces with bad-for-us-but-tastes-so-good food. This was after I had already made (and ate) a nice healthy dinner, so I probably counteracted that with all the yummy noms, but... these things happen.

Work is, of course, crazy busy, and I'm counting down the days until April 2 when my project should officially be live. Of course, I'm considered a "platinum level" project, which basically means we are a "very important" project, so for at least 2 weeks after go-live, key players (and, as project manager, I have a feeling I'm a key player) will have to sit in a conference room all day long just in case anything comes up. Thrilling, no?

Of course, I don't know why I'm so excited for this project to be over, because all that means is that another project will have to start up and the cycle starts all over again! Is it time for a vacation yet???

Anyway, We are certainly much closer to go-live than we were when all these photos were taken!


I don't know why I left off last time with some photos from my birthday celebrations, but didn't include this - a self-portrait taken on my 34rd birthday!


And, of course, more champagne!


Homemade pasta! Made with the pasta attachment that mom & dad got me for my birthday!


John - hard at work!


This is at a bar that we had a YPA (Young Professionals of Akron) event at. It included a "wacky sock" contest, which I won! I was wearing cow-spotted socks that were toe-socks (so they looked like gloves for your feet), and the toes were pink, so it looked like udders.


Sleepy Myles


Playing Dominion with friends


Wrapping Christmas presents