Christmas Gorilla

This weekend, we decided to get our home decorated for Christmas. I had seen "Elf Trees" and thought they might be a good idea since they're about 2 feet tall, easy to fit in the car, less needles to fall though out our apartment complex when moving it in and out of our place, and takes up less space in our apartment. We then thought about just buying a fake tree so we didn't have to worry about the needles falling and remembering to water it... (we decided we're not ready for a dog, or any other living thing, since we couldn't even keep a tree alive last year). So we were at Fred Meyer and went inside to discuss what we should do about the tree. Right next to us was a large bin of big (very soft) stuffed animals. There was a gorilla that stole our hearts, and I jokingly told Scott that we should just have a Christmas gorilla and wrap lights around it and we could use him year after year, even when we do have a real tree, he can guard our presents and presents can be stacked underneath him. Scott agreed and after asking each other 10 times if we were serious and "really going to do it" we bought our Christmas gorilla and decided it would be our first family Christmas tradition and he will be part of our Christmas decorations every year.

Scott put his glasses on him because I guess the gorilla was having trouble seeing.......

We then wrapped him in lights and put ornaments as earrings and a star hat.

We were also able to go to a Christmas concert at our Stake building which was really nice. We watched Elf, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, and Home Alone this week, and started playing our Christmas music.

Here are some things (both old and new) that we ate this week that we just wonderful:

"Worlds Greatest Chicken" with Garlic-Rosemary Mushrooms and a salad

Left the wine out of mushrooms and used honey instead of maple syrup as well as only used 1lb chicken with the same amount of everything else. 

Couscous with Chicken Sausage Ragu and salad

Literally took less than 15 minutes start to finish. I left out the tomatoes but added a few onto my plate since Scott doesn't like tomatoes. Also almost doubled the onions (we love cooked sweet onions in everything!) It doesn't LOOK good, so I didn't get a picture, but it tastes GREAT. I used sweet italian chicken sausage from Trader Joe's. 

Asperagus with Orzo, Salmon, and Feta

Ahh, I ate way too much of this. I'd made it once before but forgotten how amazing it is. I used whole wheat orzo, used about 1/2 an ounce less of fish than is called for, and used dried dill. Gosh, I could eat this every day!


Grilled Cheese with Bacon and Garlic 
I made mine with a mix of fresh parmesan, mozzerella, and feta, Scott's with just colby jack (yes we had all these cheeses on hand from recipe's I've recently made) then added bacon to both of ours and spinach to mine. Then when they were all cooked, I rubbed a cut piece of garlic over all the pieces of bread. It was wonderful!