Parfait/Mini-trifle

Last night Chad and I went to Deb and Bud's house to exchange Christmas presents. We were told to bring something dessert-y so we decided to try a recipe we saw on Barefoot Contessa. She had made some pumpkin mouse parfaits around Thanksgiving time. She used ginger snap cookies in the dessert and we had found gluten-free ginger snaps at Trader Joe's a while back so we knew we could try making it for Deb. We found the recipe and as it turns out, the mousse takes more than 4 hours to set and we didn't have that kind of time, so we modified the recipe. We ended up using instant cheese cake flavored pudding, home made whipped cream (by Chad), and chopped up bananas. We layered everything (with crumbled ginger snaps) in wine glasses and then garnished the top with a slice of banana and a whole ginger snap cookie. They were really tasty. As a side note, we couldn't decide if they were parfaits or trifles. Does anyone know the difference?

(Note: This is my photo from Saturday, December 29th, 2007.)

Demolition

Chad and I drove over to Glenside the other day to get lunch and we noticed that this building was being demolished. This used to be a pizza place (called Pepperoni's Pizza). It had a fire a while back and they are just now tearing it down, I assume they plan to rebuild. Watch a video of the fire here.

(Note: This is my photo from Friday, December 28th, 2007.)

Car Stereo Installation

One of my Christmas presents was a new stereo system for my car that I got from Chad. The main features are an auxiliary input jack in the front, an iPod connector, and it plays MP3 CDs. I was getting really frustrated with my old setup because I like to listen to podcasts on my iPod on my way to work but my FM transmitter wasn't working very well and it only worked at all if I was in the car alone. Today my dad, Chad, and I installed the system in my car all by ourselves. It was a little scary taking apart the dashboard of my car but we got it done and it works beautifully! This is the second successful custom installation of a car stereo that we have performed! Anyone need one installed in their car? Haha.

Christmas Loot

So I'm sure you were wondering about what was in some of those packages from my last post. Well here is a photo of some of the items I received from Chad and my family. I was too impatient to pull everything together for the photo so this is just most of it. I really made out well this year, don't you think?!?!

(Note: This is my photo from Tuesday, December 26, 2007.)

Merry Christmas

This is a photo of most of the presents that were exchanged on Christmas day at the Joslyn household. There are actually a bunch that didn't fit in the photo, but I don't want to make you too sick to your stomach so I'm showing this picture of most of the presents. Christmas is a very happy time in my family. It was a great Christmas for me and I had a ton of fun with my family (not to mention the fact that I got everything I wanted!).

(Note: This is my photo from Monday, December 25, 2007 - Merry Christmas!)

Mini-Yamanote

I went to my parents' house for Christmas Eve (actually, I went to Chad's parents' house first, we went down on Sunday and I drove back on Monday). My dad had set up a mini train set around some artificial trees in the living room (the real tree was in the family room). The train set is from Japan and it represents real trains. I took this photo without really being able to see it because I had to reach around to shoot the front of the train but it came out pretty well anyway. This is the Yamanote-sen, which runs in a loop around the center of Tokyo. Pretty much all the big areas of "center city" Tokyo are serviced by the Yamanote-sen including Shinjuku, Shibuya, Harajuku, Tokyo, Ueno, and many others.

(Note: This is my photo from Monday, December 24, 2007 - Christmas Eve!)

Christmas Carolers

We have some really awesome neighbors. These are the new neighbors that moved in over the summer. They rang our doorbell today and then sang some Christmas carols for us. Notice that one of them is wearing shorts! Crazy!