So here is the funny thing about 2011. I spent the first three months in a solid depression over Bonny, sleeping about four hours a night on average. I spent most of my summer inside, watching t.v., instead of riding my bike or paying proper attention to my garden. And the panic over the holidays set in and most of fall was shot. Sounds pretty shitty, right?

But. BUT.

When I was going back looking for posts, I found a lot of good things. I got to see three of my favorite artists, I blogged about Ted Leo and The Thermals, but did I mention that I went to see Wild Flag and I washed my hands next to Carrie Brownstein? If I hadn’t just gone to the bathroom, I would’ve peed myself. When Brian and I left the show, I kept clutching my newly bought shirt to my face and smile-screaming into it.

I had lots of fun with MoFo and my theme.

I made friends with a baby squirrel.

Brian and I made donuts, something i’ve always wanted to try.

I helped raise over $500 for Ride To Light, and the frustration only made me cry once. Or twice.

I put myself on a personal budget to buy a new computer and became obsessed with nail polish.

Fawkes. He has come so far in just a few months, from a scared dog who didn’t even want to be held or play with toys to a chewing fiend who constantly wants to be rubbed. He is also a little shit who chewed the vacuum cord, escaped the back yard TWICE this weekend, and one of those times was to the neighbors yard, and he came back without his dapper sweater that makes him more visible at night. And we still can’t find it. Speaking of dogs, after two years of blood tests, medication, and playing with his diet, Chester’s liver levels FINALLY dropped and he lost three pounds. It was nice to have a vet visit that didn’t end with me wondering if his liver was about to shut down. I love my dogs, I love my cats, I love our little family.

And lastly…Brian and I started P90X! It’s EXTREEEEEEEME!!! fitness, six days a week. We just started week three (out of 12) and it is crazy. Google ‘I hate Tony Horton’ if you want to see what we’re putting up with. But I enjoy it overall, and after being sad all year I was glad to end 2011 feeling strong, productive, and working towards a goal. I am NOT on a diet. I do not have a goal to lose x amount of pounds. My goal is to complete P90X, and that’s it. I actually couldn’t be on a diet and effectively do P90X because of all of the strength training! I am eating lots of proteiny things and green smoothies so I am eating pretty good by default, minus the upcoming pictures. I will probably go into greater detail about the hilarity that is me trying to do a pushup at another time.

Onto New Year’s eats! Now, Brian and I don’t drink. We are also lame anti-social assholes, so we just stayed home and made pizza and Dr. Pepper floats, and I actually crawled into bed 20 minutes before midnight. I was just happy that I wasn’t ringing in the new year shivering on the couch, stricken with stomach flu and sadness like I was last year.

My pizza was another take on the Amy Deluxe/Supreme, basically all I did was put it on top of a pizza crust (using Upton’s italian seitan), sprinkled with Daiya. Brian’s pizza was the rest of the Upton’s, mushrooms, and Daiya. Then before midnight, we assembled what I thought was the genius idea of Dr. Pepper floats with cherries. Don’t do this! The ice cream kills the DP flavor, making it taste like plain soda water. Also, it made me feel like shit the next day! I should’ve just drank my celebratory Dr. Pepper and called it good. Lesson learned.

For brunch on New Years day, we made biscuits and gravy, adding mashed up black eyed peas to the gravy and I put steamed kale with mine for color and vitamins and what not. And I drank a lot of water. A LOT.

And here is my mix of my favorite songs from 2011 (that came out this year, I listened to this song a few hundred times and let’s not talk about all of the Ke$ha). Also judging by this year’s album collage, almost every single band/artist I like that is still making music/not dead came out with an album this year! So next year is probably going to be a boring year for music.

I think this photo sums up ours pretty well.

That’s my sister-in-law with her two dogs, Fawkes, and Chester.

We managed to have a really nice Christmas this year. Obviously, Brian and I had a bad one last year and the memory of Christmas is a blur of misery. Combine that with my sister-in-law getting a divorce, and I think we were all determined to bring the awesome. I got my tree and pulled out my ornaments (I buy 50% off nerdy Hallmark ornaments the day after Christmas every year, they make me giggle). We do our festivities on Christmas Eve because we do the day itself at grandma’s, so I made a nice dinner that we all enjoyed, we opened presents, and Lauri and I painted our nails while watching a great Christmas movie: Die Hard. We were supposed to make cookies but we never got up, and the only vegan things at grandma’s are the leftovers I bring with me, so I managed to not go into a sugar coma this year! Purely out of laziness, though.

I really liked all of my gifts this year. The first thing I got was two days before Christmas. I almost cried when I opened a package to find cookies, chocolate, a Lunabar, and these ornaments from Panda With Cookie.

And here is my horrible photo of dinner, stuffed tofurkey roast, potatoes and gravy, steamed veggies, Joanna’s butternut squash lasagna, and wheat rolls.

I did not get a single non-vegan thing this year (well, except an Urban Decay primer potion set from Lauri, but she graciously took it back to use herself)! My father-in-law got me a cowl from Treewool Knits and the Spork-Fed cookbook. My sister-in-law and I both put a ton of larabars in each others stockings. Oh, vegans and the people who love them. Brian had bought me a bunch of stuff to upgrade my computer so we could play Dead Island together, and he made me wait until Christmas to install them. So he did that, and we played and either by random fluke or our very bad in-game driving, I got incredibly nauseous, violently threw up my whole dinner, and spent the rest of the night watching reruns of The Office and waiting for my nose to stop burning. And yet, it was still the best Christmas we’ve had in years!

Thanksgiving goes the same for me every year: I dedicate myself to trying new recipes, bookmark lots of things…and then make the exact same shit I make every other year. Some of the recipes I make, I have literally been making for over ten years (now veganized), it’s just so easy to make something when you have the process memorized. But this year was different! I actually made a few new things. And all of the old things. For just Brian and I. We ended up with a ridiculous amount of food, and I didn’t even roast the broccoli and cauliflower I bought!

Now, we made a lot of stuff (Brian actually made about half the food) the night before and managed to eat while the sun was still out (unlike last year) so it wasn’t too stressful. I do regret not scaling down the stuffing, sweet potatoes, and green beans though, because I was eating them for a week. The dogs ended up with their fair share of sides because of this, but eventually we tore through it all.

I made a video saying what each dish was and where it’s from, but I never uploaded it from Brian’s camera (new recipes tried are starred):

Mashed Potatoes (from everywhere)
Potato Rolls (Veganomicon)
Tofurkey Roast (Bryanna Clark Grogan)
Roasted Ginger Sweet Potatoes (me)
Apple Pecan Cornbread Dressing (me)
Green Bean Casserole (Fat Free Vegan)
Sage Gravy (basic roux method)
Cranberry Sauce (back of the bag of cranberries)
Smoky Mountain Cheese Spread (not pictured, Vegan Diner)*
Pumpkin Pie (Bryanna Clark Grogan)
Apple Pie (Vegan Pie in the Sky)*
Graham Cracker Cake (Hearty Vegan Meals)*

Obviously i’ve made apple pie before, but the Smoky Mountain Cheese Spread was a big hit, Brian and I ate it on our rolls and mashed potatoes and with a spoon a few times…and the Graham Cracker cake is INSANE. Clearly I used too many marshmallows, but underneath them is a super rich cake with chocolate chips, that one cake will easily serve 10-12 people.

As usual, I was too hungry to care about pictures so they came out bad, but here’s my plate:

And here is a better picture of the over-marshed cake: