Thought Box

Hayley's Tri-Dip Tray (Guac, Roasted Red Pepper, and Green Salsa)

Per tradition I held my Annual Super Bowl party, and it was once again a wonderful success!  The turnout was a little lower this year, but when you factor in my smaller apartment and that I am not as interested in impressing people as I may have been previously, I’m pretty OK with the overall size going down; Besides, most of the important people were here.  Oh, and the food was fantastic!

Aside from the game, which was a disaster this year (hate. packers.), one of my favorite aspects of the Super Bowl party is seeing all of the exciting food that people bring.  I annually include in my invitations a small tidbit suggesting that people bring their favorite “Big Game” snacks, and once again I was not disappointed.  We had a plethora of dips, a homemade Super Bowl cake, delicious rib roast, some steak, and a handful of other treats.

Hayley's Corn and Black Bean Salsa Fresca

Did I eat too much?  Yes..  Was it worth it? I think maybe so!  My buddy Lowell brought the rib roast this year, and I was honestly a  little disappointed since he typically brings the most delicious ribs ever.  That was, of course, until I tried the roast..  W-O-W! It may have hurt the gut a little, but hurt never tasted so goooood.. As bad as the Packers made me feel, that rib roast kept me going when the Steelers were really not looking good early on.

As for the game – could there have been a larger disappointment? Thank goodness it was fairly close in the fourth quarter, but a Packers win is a depressing Packers win either way… One of these days the Bears will figure out how to win something and I can forget Super Bowl XLV!  Right? Dreams come true.. right?!

One highlight I find worth mentioning is the fairly awesome halftime show.  No, I’m not a huge Black Eyed Peas fan, but come on!  That was pretty rad. I was making the comment to everyone, “Hey, this isn’t too bad for the Black Eyed Peas, eh?” when all of a sudden Slash appeared on stage playing the opening strains to Sweet Child of Mine (which is a top 5 rock song IMHO). I may or may not have squealed..  Just a little.. And then they brought out Usher? I gotta give it up to Wil.I.Am for pushing the envelope – he really brought it. It was nice to see a Super Bowl Halftime Show that didn’t have some 90 year old rock star, and I’m glad the Black Eyed Peas kind of nailed it..

Crystal's homemade Super Bowl cake, with rice cereal football on top

Oh, and the REAL highlight of the Super Bowl (since I hate the Packers and don’t really care much for the Steelers) was the wonderful Captain America trailer! You may not be as excited as I am (as I am mildly obsessed), but it looks AWESOME!

Anyway, before I nerdgasm, I’ll wrap this up.  Here are a few more images from the party, with credits for food justly given.

Another shot of Crystal's Cake

Spencer's fantastic steaks - grilled to perfection, as always

Crystal's deviled eggs (scrumptious edition)

OMG! Josh Brown came!!!

Sorry I didn’t get a picture of everyone that came; I only pulled the camera out one time to take pictures of guests and I know I missed some people.. Thanks to all who came, and here’s looking forward to a bigger and better party next year!

The announcements are in the mail! You should be receiving them soon, though don’t be offended if we missed you; we’ve both recognized how terrible we are at making comprehensive lists of people, and we agreed on keeping our lists pretty short.

That aside, I think they look pretty great! You’ve seen a previous post that hopefully gave you an idea of what they all look like, but one thing we’ve kept a bit of a secret until now was our fantastically wonderful wax seal! Check it out:

Pretty neat, eh? I’ve always wanted a seal like this, and I never knew how easy it would be to get one! We had our announcements designed by a student designer in Utah (and printed at the wonderful Rowley Press) , and one of the elements he worked on was that “J&H” symbol you see above.  I made sure he sent me all of his Adobe Illustrator files, and thus I have been able to send that logo out for other custom stuff to be done.  We found waxseals.com and about a week later received our seal with the custom design on it! We also found a good deal on larger quantities of quality sealing wax at letterseals.com (knowing we needed about 30 sticks).

One of the neat things we learned is that you can get wax that will go into a glue gun!  I always thought you’d have to get a candle with wax, but that’s apparently no longer how most people do it.  We also found this really neat wax that has a bit of a marble/milky look to it.  Both seals in the picture below are the same wax, just different sections of the stick and thus different blends of color.

(Note: the tape on the stamp handle was put there by Hayley to help get the right angle for the “J&H”)

I think I can officially cross this type of thing off my bucket list (maybe).. I really have always wanted something fun and unique, like a wax seal, that would show I had put time into packaging whatever parcel I’m sending.  This one looks pretty fantastic and it was a lot of fun to put on the back of all of our announcements.  Hopefully all of you who enjoyed them as well!

UPDATE: I just saw this come across Twitter – this is from WGNtv in the Motherland (aka Chicago), specifically Lake Shore Drive… CRAZY!!

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So, I got the following super exciting pictures from my Dad this morning:

Just under 2', but all of that fell last night (about 3-4"/hour!)

I don't think Archie is pulling out of the driveway anytime soon..

This drift could be waist high..

Isn’t that pretty awesome?  Not going to lie, I’m pretty jealous…  I like snow.  I like snow days, I like excuses to use blankets and drink hot chocolate, and I like doing donuts in my car.  Snow is pretty awesome.

Oh, and here was Hayley’s response when I forwarded the pictures (Oh how I love her.. Let me count the ways..):

“I need real objects for perspective. He needs to throw the cats in the snow.”

The "Feels Like" temperature is impressive, but no snow? BOO!

As for Houston, it’s pretty cold here too - I woke up to 19 degree chilliness! You may laugh, but it was 70 over the weekend – that’s a HUGE drop off in temperature. Truly, I’m not complaining; I kind of like the more chilly weather, though it loses its appeal when there is no snow involved.

What’s TRULY funny about the situation is that Hayley and I got some “Winter Freeze” notifications on our doors last night.  Apparently people are going to drip their faucets non-stop and winterize their cars to survive the sub-freezing temperatures… BAHAHA! Do these sucker people seriously not know how to handle 20 degree weather?  I mean, yeah… It’s cold, but REALLY?!

Oh, and they’ve instituted unannounced rolling blackouts…  To protect the region from massive power failures… REALLY?!

How has the weather been for some of the rest of you?  Who got hit the worst?  Even Dallas was covered with snow!  Hit up the comments and let us know how badly you were hit!