work presents

every year, i try to bake something delicious to give my co workers as a christmas gift. this year was no different...i start out the season with great intentions to manage my time adequately so the project didn't stress me out. this year was okay, but MAN. december is rough. between parties, gifts, baking, etc i am just booked solid.

but i digress. here's the tale of the 2008 work gifts.

every year brandon likes to make homemade toffee. it is a third-generation wells family recipe and it is TO DIE FOR. we've had some issues with the process (the first year we were married b bought a cheap candy thermometer and ended up destroying a pan, a spoon and a full batch of toffee) but he's really good at making it.



b is very particular about his craft. here's the secret family recipe...you'll have to talk to him if you want details on making it.

homemade toffee

1 lb butter
2 cups sugar
4 tsp vanilla
4 cups chopped walnuts
4 tsp cold water
6 tsp Karo syrup
4 7-oz. Hershey bars

1. prepare pan with half nuts. place half chocolate over nuts. set aside.
2. combine butter, sugar, syrup and water in pot. bring to boil, stirring constantly. cook to 285 degrees while stirring. take off heat and add vanilla - keep stirring!
3. pour over nut/chocolate in rows. even out with spatula if necessary.
4. sprinkle last half of chocolate over toffee. do same with nuts over chocolate.
5. set on top of fridge overnight and break up in morning



i decided to also make a payzant family specialty -- reindeer eyeballs.

reindeer eyeballs

1 package powdered sugar
3 cups rice krispie
1 1/2 cubes butter
2 cups peanut butter

1. mix powdered sugar and rice krispies together
2. melt butter and add peanut butter
3. shape into balls and dip in chocolate



add some hand-dipped chocolate covered pretzels....



some cute holiday wrapping...



and voila! christmas gifts for everyone. took only a sunday afternoon and a monday night follow up to prepare them. not bad.

twin day

last week my favorite friend roxanne came to downtown to visit me and grab a quick lunch. she lives in san diego so it was a real blast to see her.

roxanne is my twin. we first became friends in college when she was the receptionist in the BYU newsroom and i wrote for the student paper, and we figured out we both had the same hot pink volcom shirt. that definitely upped her coolness factor in my book, but we never really hung out or anything. for one thing she's one of the few girls i've met in my life who is actually taller than me, which is unique and therefore often disarming to me.

since college our similarities have only increased.
she works in PR, i work in PR.
i'm married to a brandon, she dated a brandon for a while.
we both randomly ended up at disneyland on the same day last year.
she lives in california and i [obviously] do too.
she's tall, i'm tall.
i managed an event at the ivy hotel in san diego...she parties like a rock star at that very hotel.
her name is roxy, my dog's name is roxy.

hmm...am i leaving anything out, twin? anyway, word on the street is that since our lunch date she chopped her hair and added a little redness, making us even MORE alike. apparently i need to get some awesome hipster glasses and then we will be the same. thanks for lunch lady -- it was great to see you!

so official

due to the extensive remodeling in our office, people are constantly being shuffled around to new workspaces. the auto team, of which i am a part, isn't schedule to move until the last phase -- but because i have sat in a big cube right next to the back double doors, that's where the receptionist is stationed now while her usual area is under construction (the front double doors are where our receptionist usually sits -- three times in the past two years vendors have thought i was the receptionist by accident).

not a big deal to me. i've sat in that seat for two years and liked being in a social area where everyone came by to say hi, but i was kinda excited to get a change of scenery.

so imagine my delight when i was told i would be moving (temporarily) to an OFFICE!!! woo hoo. what a big day...my graduation from cube land.




this office belongs to my boss, who is on maternity leave. it's only mine till mid-jan, but whatever! i can close the door whenever i want!!!

p.s. how clean is my desk? it's usually never like that...but i spent the morning organizing for xmas break :) i'm proud.

rainy day

i love rain!

however, i do not love taking the train in the rain. we got a little wet on our walk today...but that's not too bad, considering this is my first rainy train ride in the eight months i've lived here.

and LUCKILY i had an awesome macy's umbrella that i got for free when i signed up for a macy's credit card a few months back. brandon got mad at me at the time (he is morally opposed to store cc's, and i usually am too, but signing up got me a whopping 20% off my designer jeans! yay) so i was quite happy to show him how perfectly the umbrella helped us out. guess it wasn't such a bad choice after all :)

my hermano

thursday was my little brother grant's 18th birthday.

he was born when i was 7, so he was always sort of my little doll. i loved holding him and playing with him. i remember pulling him out of his crib once and thinking that someday, when we were both adults, i wouldn't be able to pick him up anymore and thought that maybe if i picked him up every day until then, i'd stay strong enough to keep doing it. too bad we don't live in the same house anymore so i can't try that...but i CAN still pick him up :)

anyway, it's been so fun to watch him grow up. he is so much cooler than i ever was (although i take partial credit for this, because i'm the one who taught him about hollister and punk bands and all the stuff kids need to be cool these days :)

BOTH of my siblings are fun. they don't mind taking myspace pictures with me. (this is from 2005...but we do this all the time.)



friday night, my parents threw him a surprise party. they passed out more than 70 invitations to all his little peeps (seriously? do i even KNOW 70 people?...) and they ALL kept the secret. hilariously, it was my MOM who blew the surprise. she maps out her menu for the week on the fridge each week, and actually wrote "party" for friday night -- and grant saw it. boo.

but we went to the party and ended up feeling totally old and lame. i sat in the back with brandon drinking my diet coke (the last soda left...i can't even remember the last time diet coke wasn't the first drink gone. what's wrong with kids today?) and looking at all the funny teenagers with their skinny jeans, random facial hair and nonstop texting.

then things got good because they played a slide show of his life. i loved all the pictures of his chubby smiley baby face and watched all the pictures of our family growing up. i cried a little. (i cried at the slide show at my sister's wedding too. happens a lot.) i love my brother.



happy birthday sparky!

christmastime lately

so i needed a little help getting into the christmas spirit this year...maybe it has something to do with our 75 degree weather, who knows. (though nights have been quite chilly...that's the only time i feel festive :)

luckily i had a funfilled christmas-y weekend last week to give me a boost.

just about every mommy blogger in pasadena has written about the griffith park light walk, so on friday we decided to check it out. i loved it! i'm a sucker for christmas lights, especially when i can walk it.



it started and ended with an amazing light tunnel. even though my eyes sort of wigged out while we walked through it, i thought it was beautiful.



they had all sorts of designs, animals, people etc. made completely out of lights all along a path. i guess the rest of the month you can drive this, but the first week in december it's open to walkers. (who wants to drive anyway? boring)



there were fun LA landmarks too, like city hall, a surfer on a wave, the griffith observatory, LAX. my favorite was a mini hollywood bowl and h-wood sign (sorry for the blurriness) :



here's me & melanie, the greatest neighbor/friend ever (though, of course, she's pregnant. all my pasadena friends have kids) :



saturday was our ward christmas party and dinner. i was skeptical of it at first but we ended up having a blast. first of all i had never seen a cultural hall decorated so amazingly -- there were decorations and flowers everywhere. b and i were asked to help serve, so we had a fun time goofing off in the kitchen with our other server friends and running back and forth with plates. it's always funner to help out than actually be the party guest, i think.

and then sunday we watched a christmas program on tv put on by the leaders of our church (i told you, lots of christmas stuff!) and walked up to pasadena city hall to see their giant tree.



i LOVE pasadena city hall. if i got married again i would so take our engagement pictures there. the architecture is amazing.





and that was our weekend. oh yeah, i also dyed my hair:



still getting used to it, but i like my new "winter" color :) and yes, i still only have one eye -- i swear, we did cut the bangs a little but they're still in my face nonstop.

google yourself

so today i googled myself (you know, just another day at work...) and all the typical stuff came up for lyndsey payzant -- the corporate alter-ego of the girl typically known as lyndsey wells:

my linkedin page, fb, the blog, some random articles i wrote in college for either the daily universe or to make a quick buck, plenty of media alerts and whatnot that i've sent out over the past two years in my current job.

nothing surprising. the husband and i have been known to google ourselves at times (hey, we work in media...it's important to know what's out there), but usually do it somewhat selectively. turns out there's a gay porn star w/ b's exact name. (don't try it, you'll be ruined for life.)

so next i decided to try lyndsey wells, something i hadn't done. and WOW. what an eye opener. on the first page alone, i found the following:

- a linkedin page for someone who is NOT me
- a franz ferdinand song about my exact name (seriously??? how cool is that? i'm not a huge FF fan, i only know a few songs, so if any of you are fans you need to enlighten me asap)
- some other random lyndsey wells on fb, holding a baby
- a member of the ucla rowing team (i didn't even know they HAVE a rowing team, let alone my twin is on it!)
- public background checks on other lyndseys

the best part of all of this -- they all spell their first name just like me! i have searched throughout the past 24 years trying to find others like me and have only found four. i am so excited to find all these other unique girls -- only they can truly relate to never buying a personalized nametag keychain from disneyland right off the shelf, or never finding a mini license plate with your name.

it was truly a great day for me :)

i highly recommend trying this for yourself...who knows what else is out there. and if you REALLY want to blow your mind, try the google images.

wow.