gezelligheid

(n.) the coziness, warmth and comfort of being at home, or being together with friends or loved ones sharing time in a pleasant and nice atmosphere.

I kept saying to myself  "tonight I'll blog, I'll do it tonight, today, this morning, during lunch...." Sadly my dear friends, it just never happened. The fall semester is long gone, as is my winter break. Spring semester is about to start and my homework will start to pile up again.  Can you believe my Physical Geology book was over 300 dollars? That is just absurd. smh. college. egh.

Fall semester - what I am now calling my "Semester of Loneliness"- ended nicely for the most part. I decided to call it the "Semester of Loneliness" because I attended classes at the downtown campus by myself. I have 10+ friends at the same college as me but they all chose a different campus, and the downtown campus while beautiful, is not a good area to try and make new friends or socialize, if you know what I mean.  To top that off my friends and I all had completely different schedules so even when one of us had time to hang out, the other didn't.  Hence "Semester of Loneliness." The downtown campus truly is lovely though, right in the heart of downtown Norfolk. Red brick sidewalks line the streets next to tall regal looking office buildings, hipster coffee shops, and old theaters with vintage marquees. If i didn't miss my friends so much, and if the sketchy people at that campus didn't bother me so much, I would never have considered switching campuses.

Winter break finally came and my lonely semester came to a fast close. First party on the list was the Chick-fil-A Christmas party. We started the night off right with a ugly sweater contest, and then a white elephant gift exchange where our store's owner/operator bought all the gifts instead of all the team members. It was a lot of fun seeing people's faces light up when they opened the bag that held their gift, then see that same face turn angry when someone stole it from them. After that was birthday party, after birthday party, after birthday party. For some reason a good half of my friends have birthdays in December. Every weekend I had a different birthday party to go to, or parties I should say because sometimes I had more than one. (if you ever saw my tweet "my dad says I party to much" now you know why) It was refreshing to see everyone. I hadn't been around people or friends really, all semester... It was like my internal battery had died and I needed a spark of energy to wake me up again.   I never realized how extroverted I was until the end of this semester. When I'm not around friendly people I kind of just die.

Christmas day was nice. I think we all gave eachother some pretty cool (some strange) gifts. I received a shower curtain! My mom got a butter dish; My dad, a vacuum cleaner. Tyler somehow ended up with a huge amount of shoes, and my sister got an infinity scarf. Now you might think an infinity scarf isn't really a strange gift but to her, it was. You should have seen her face when she pulled it out of its box. She was really confused; She had no clue what it was. *laughs* My bad.

Anyhoo...

Happy belated Christmas and New Year's to you all!

-H

Crafty Christmas Fun

Homemade Christmas cards are just the best, aren't they? Its one thing I loved to do for all my teachers when i went to YMV! I can't believe its almost Christmas again.Winter break has just started for me and I'm o-so-excited. I will finally have some time to relax and forget about finals, and school, and all that jazz. :) Also no one can judge me for listening to christmas music non-stop, and drinking nothing but starbucks peppermint hot chocolate! Excuse me while i drive to the nearest location! :)

Happy Almost Christmas
-Hannah

Every mile is two in winter. ~George Herbert

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape - the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter.  Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.  ~Andrew Wyeth 

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”

~Edith Sitwell

“A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water.”
~Carl Reiner

 The day we arrived at the resort a snow storm started, and any patch of land that had not been covered in snow, from previous flurries was covered with more than 2 feet now! The trip there was long, 6-7 hours but totally worth it! Once we got the the actual lodge and checked in. My dad got the room keys and started to head out to the van to drive to the part of the lodge where we were staying. As he was leaving he hit his head on an unmarked broken door hinge {or something}. Started bleeding and asked the desk clerk for some cool rags and a band-aid. The guy returned with a alcohol swab!

Guess he didn't know you don't put alcohol on an open wound. o well... my dad lost his temper. {which i would consider normal} and the manger called our room and said that she gave us a free night at the lodge, a free buffet dinner for the family, and tubing passes! Which is kinda funny because the whole reason we went on this trip was because we had a coupon for buy two nights get the third free, and we had two rooms so it ended up coming out like buy one night get one night free! haha my dad's head is alright now, just a little scar from where he hit his head.  

and after the long trip down the mountain{s} this is our lovely car! not-so-lovely right now!

anybody els do anything fun with there winter vacation?
-Hannah

happy new year + photos from christmas eve

christmas eve - the family and i went to go see the lights show on the boardwalk.

 there is something about the lights when the photo is not focused! it'ts almost beautiful.

mmmmmm. right before this sign there was a series of lights with each day of christmas. My dad asked how many gifts did the person receive from his true love by the end of the 12 days. 364 gifts! anybody els think the true love was a king?

happy new year everyone!

-Hannah

p.s. i will not be posting for a while! I am going on a ski trip. EEEEEEEEEEEP!

1x12+2x11+3x10+4x9+5x8+6x7+7x6+8x5+9x4+10x3+11x2+12x1=364

Sugar Cookies Anyone?

What you will need:

·        1 stick {1/2 cups}softened

·        3/4 cups of white granulated sugar

·        1 tsp. of vanilla extract

·        1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour

·        1/2 tsp. of baking powder

·       2 eggs

·        1/4 tsp. of salt {only needed if butter is un-salted}

Directions:

1.     Ok, get out your mixer and put everything I just mentioned into the mixing bowl.  YES! Dump it in their all at once {please make sure your butter is soft and at room temperature before you mix everything. VERY IMPORTANT}

2.     Mix everything together on slow. Keep mixing on slow, and after about a minute you can turn to medium if you want..... Keep mixing until dough is firm and a little tacky.

3.     Next separate dough into two balls/sections.

4.     Place each ball in-between two sheets of wax paper and, using a rolling pin, roll the dough into a flat, even, circular looking disk, as if you were going to cut the desired shapes into the cookies right then.

5.     Place the rolled out dough in the freezer {don’t move the wax paper. You want to keep it with the dough, so it will not dry out in the freezer}. Leave in the freezer for 15 minutes.

6.     While dough is in the freezer, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. 

7.     Once the 15 minutes are up pull out cookie dough, remove the wax paper and start cutting the desired shapes!

8.     Place cookies on a cookie sheet that has been sprayed with cooking spray, and bake in oven for about 8-10 minutes!

Additional Notes:

Make sure the cookie cutters have had their edges dipped in flour before you start cutting., and with the left-over dough, repeat the wax paper/freezing process, but only leave the dough in the freezer for about 5-8 minutes {just so dough doesn't get too soft}.



"im sorry, did you say rain? because all i heard was liquefied snow!"

well my lovelys. Christmas break has started {well actually mine started last week but i was lazy and didn't post} so i have kept myself busy with Christmas present shopping and a performance at Busch Gardens! It was truly awesome because there was a 60% chance of rain so most everyone decided to go a different day and nobody was in the lines!

see? no lines on the rides...

we got to ride in the front row!!!

see the balcony? that's where we sang! right in front of the tree!

{this photo was taken with my iPod}

the penguins were so cute in their exhibit!

not sure how this happened but its AWESOME!

see the wet hair? its because i convinced my friends to ride Alpengeist in the front row, in the rain! Have you ever felt 100 bee's sting your face for 2 whole minutes?

Well i hope everyone is having a lovely holiday! Merry Christmas!

-Hannah

{photos used in this post are un-edited and belong to me}