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:

Yes, I did just kind of make a Guy Fieri joke!

After being so busy with all things MoFo, it was nice to take a week off. I don’t have to answer emails or post a bunch or think up ways to wax nostalgic about certain products for giveaways! But I really did enjoy working on the MoFo team, and I loved putting together giveaways for everyone because people love winning things. It doesn’t matter if you win $5 worth of stuff or $50 – winning things makes you feel good! Plus, you know, free shit.

During October I barely took any photos, which means I have very little backlog to share!

My birthday was the 27th, and for reasons I won’t go into, it was not something I wanted to deal with. It’s not a getting old thing, holidays in general send me into a panic attack just thinking about them, and a day that’s supposed to be about me? Vom. I just wanted to hide in my room and die, but my father-in-law MADE me open presents (I got a tofu press!). Hyperbole and a Half posted a new entry that was, funny enough, about being depressed. And despite my saying, “Stop trying to make a big deal out of it!”, Brian made me a cake. He ran out of room so there’s no ‘deal’ on it.

He showed me how the cake was broken, and obviously the ganache was too warm when he poured it…I almost fell over laughing. It was just what I needed, and it was delicious! Chocolate covered chocolate with chocolate chips.

Halfway through the month, Brian found out that the drive-in was showing double features of horror/Halloweenie movies every weekend (we missed the first weekend and Brian is pissed, Alien and The Thing). The first one we went to was a Freddy vs. Jason with House of 1000 Corpses. The very last weekend was Rocky Horror followed by Army of Darkness. I quickly found out it is pretty much impossible to Time Warp in a car seat. And yes, we froze our faces off even with a blanket and the engine running during intermission! But totally worth it.

We got our Teal Cat in the mail! I took its photo in the cat chair, a chair I paid $3 for at a charity rummage sale that the cats can claw to hell, and it’s draped with blankets because the chair is hard to vacuum fur off of.

This is our new dog, Fawkes. I have been looking at Petfinder for most of the year, but I didn’t actively start looking for a new dog until a few weeks ago. Brian had his eye on a Corgi, but she was adopted by the time we made it out to the pound. We met both dogs on Saturday at Petsmart, the corgi was sweet and not shy and seemed so perfect, I knew it would be likely that she would be adopted by the time we were able to get our application in. When we went into the store to buy pet food, I saw they had more dogs in the back. I recognized Fawkes from Petfinder and immediately went over and held him. Fawkes has quite the sob story, he and his dog friend were found tied to a pole in the alley behind his owners house. Yes, some dirtbag did that, and then didn’t bother bailing them out. So naturally he is kind of scared and not trusting, but he is so sweet and tiny. He currently only weighs six pounds, because not surprisingly, his former owners didn’t like to feed him (or bathe him or give him toys). He is all ribs under that fur! As soon as I held him, I felt it. My dog. Mineminemine.

We named him Fawkes for a few reasons:

1. Several people said that he looks like a black fox in his Petfinder photo.
2. We saw him at Petsmart on the 5th of November, which is Guy Fawkes day.
3. I am (non-romantically) in love with Wil Wheaton, so I am thrilled to have a dog with the same name as his character from The Guild.

We have to wait to give him a bath because he just got fixed, so pardon his greasy appearance. I can’t wait to pack some weight onto him and have him groomed.

Also yes, he is a yorkie/yorkie mix, that is just a coincidence. I was just like, “Hey dog, do you have emotional baggage? Cause if so, I have a motley crew for you to join!” And he responded by going limp in my arms and that was really the end of it all. He is totally chill with his new fur-family and even the cats (minus Genghis) aren’t bothered by the new addition.