Wow, I can’t believe it’s officially 2011. I have had a great holiday with my family and boyfriend. I went back to Long Island for Christmas to spend some time with my family. When I arrived at my parents’ house, I noticed that there was a pumpkin on the counter. Immediately, I thought about my mom’s famous pumpkin muffins. I asked her if we could make these muffins as I haven’t had them in years. She told me that they require a lot of work including grating the pumpkin. On the first night of vacation, I peeled the pumpkin. Then my mom and I grated the pumpkins. The next day we pumped out 102 muffins. It took a lot of work, but it was definitely worth it. I don’t know when I’ll be making these muffins again because pumpkins are quite difficult to peel and grate.

I’ve decided with all my recent baking of cookies and muffins, I’m interested in buying a hand mixer and a mini food processor. I made some jam thumbprint cookies for work and they were a bit of a failure as the dough was way too dry even though I had used three sticks of butter. I’d like to think a hand mixer would be helpful in this kind of situation. My ultimate kitchen appliance would be a Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer. I plan on getting one once I have a real place with a full-sized kitchen.

My boyfriend just visited over the weekend. He brought along many wonderful gifts. I hinted about a Coach wallet to J and of course he was listening! I was totally surprised that he also got me a North Face fleece with a hoodie. I’ve been thinking about getting this fleece by myself, but now I don’t need to! Jeff and I watched three movies during the extended weekend: Black Swan, The Fighter and True Grit. As expected, Black Swan was really intense, dark and crazy. I enjoyed it though. It was a bit graphic to see just how much ballerinas go through. The toe shots were a bit too much for me! The Fighter was really good and I believed that Christian Bale was really crazy and a crack addict like his character. Mark Wahlberg was also really good in his role as Micky Ward. I love inspirational based on a true story movies (The Blindside). It’s really heart-warming and gives me hope. True Grit, was a John Wayne remake. I have never seen a Western movie before this one. It was actually quite entertaining and exciting. I had trouble understanding Jeff Bridges’ cowboy accent, but I guess that was on purpose. Matt Damon was pretty hilarious with his character. All in all, it was a great movie weekend. I hope the next time I’m in Tampa, we’ll be able to watch The King’s Speech with Colin Firth.

I’m really going to try to update my personal blog more often. Hopefully, I’ll have things to write about. I also have been updating my food blog.