Happy 2015 everyone! Did everyone have a good holiday season? I felt like everything after Thanksgiving of last year was all a blur. We had our turkey, we had our leftovers, and the next thing I knew, Christmas somehow crept up on us, then BAM! it was over. Just like that.

Life really got the best of us this year because we didn’t even have time to put up our Christmas tree. Tragic, right? At least we did hang our stockings and buy ourselves a wreath to hang on our door. I did make some Christmas cookies, listened to some Christmas jingles on the radio, Christmas shopped for Brian and Bentley, and ate my fair share in all things peppermint chocolate. So all in all, I guess it was a pretty good holiday season – simple and low-key.

As we waved 2014 good-bye and welcomed in 2015, here’s just a few of my accomplishments that occurred in the past year:

• One of my new year resolutions for last year was to be better at keeping photo memories of our lives. I’m glad to say that I stuck to this all year and have an over-stuffed Project Life binder to prove it! It’s been fun capturing little everyday things, developing them into tangible photographs, and jotting down little notes and memories into my Project Life binder! I’ll definitely be continuing this for years and years to come.
• I also managed to organize all my recipes into binders and categorized them according to the type of dishes they fall into. For This project actually started a few years ago and the number of recipes I started to collect grew so much that I actually had to buy separate binders for individual categories of food! I now have a separate binder for cakes and cupcakes, then another one for bars/brownies/blondies and cookies, one for all things s’mores and peppermint+chocolate, and a separate one for Thanksgiving alone!

• This year was also the year of culinary firsts for me – I learned how to make cake pops, a three-layered cake, homemade salted caramel, Swiss meringue buttercream, homemade marshmallows, royal icing-decorated Christmas cookies, meringue cookies, homemade ice cream, and homemade apple butter. And I successfully carved a beautiful turkey with a surgeon’s precision on Thanksgiving.

• I got LASIK! You can read about my experience here.
• I officially became a certified veterinary technician and landed myself a full-time job at one of the best hospitals, less than two months after graduation. I now work with some amazingly talented individuals who teach me something new every day.

So there you have it, my friends! Here’s to an equally amazing 2015! xo

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As 2013 comes to a close and we welcome the arrival of 2014, let’s look back at all the fun things that happened this year:

2013 was the year of firsts…

First and foremost, this was the year I finally took the plunge and started my own food blog. I’m not sure when and how this obsession with food started, but if it weren’t for Brian’s encouragement to do this, SEF wouldn’t even exist. And thank you to all of you who have visited my little space on the internet – it’s been exciting to watch this site grow everyday! I’ve also had a lot of fun learning about food photography, baking, and food styling. It’s crazy to see how far my pictures have come since SEF started back in February. I still have a lot to learn but I’m excited to see what the future brings!

I participated in my first food blogger event this year – the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap! It was such a fun event for a great cause… I’ll definitely be doing it again next year!

We went to Nelson’s in Stillwater and had ginormous ice cream cones. Pictured here, a “kids” sized cone is served with 5 generous large scoops of ice cream for less than $3 (if my memory is correct). I definitely recommend that place – there are so many different flavors to choose from!

Bentley turned one and his momma made him a homemade 2-layered cake

Shortly after his 1st birthday, Bentley got an anal gland abscess and had to wear the infamous cone of shame for the first time.

Bentley also enjoyed his first winter here in Minnesota! He really is a snow bunny at heart (his parents are not though).

We had our very first thanksgiving together, complete with a 15-lb turkey, homemade stuffing, bacon green beans, honey jalapeno corn bread, pumpkin cream cheese cupcakes, and mashed potatoes and gravy.

We also went to Seattle for the first time ever! Oh man oh man was I in food heaven! All the seafood, all the Taiwanese food… the ocean, the mountains, Pike Place Market…. I’m totally in love with that city – it feels like home. You can read all about our first trip there here. We actually loved the city so much that we went back for a second time as an anniversary present to ourselves. Maybe one day we’ll be able to move there and go shopping at Pike Place Market every Saturday morning…

I’ll be perfectly content if I can have donuts and coffee for breakfast every morning…

…and Ding Tai Fung for lunch everyday

And as usual, we went to the Minnesota State Fair at the end of summer and ate a bunch of food.. you can read about my recap of my Fair experience here.

I also graduated from vet tech school this winter! It has really been a fun two years… I’ll miss my instructors and classmates, but I’m excited to go out to the real world and apply what I have learned in school! It’s kind of weird now that I have all this free time on my hands though… I must say, the class that surprised me the most theses two years was my large production animal class. I wasn’t (and till am not) a fan of large animals, but I sure had fun on our field trips to the farm!

We got to wrestle goats for blood draws, learn how to milk cows for the California Mastitis Test, run around with alpacas and much much more.

I’ll still always be a city girl at heart though.

And of course, we’ve went to plenty of sports games…

Minnesota Vikings football

Minnesota Wild hockey

Minnesota Twins baseball

Seattle Mariners baseball

Seattle Seahawks football

These are just a fraction of what happened in 2013 – I’m excited to see what 2014 brings!

Happy early New Year everyone!

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