Good morning everyone! I hope you all had a great a holiday! Whether you were with a partner, friends, family, fur babies, or on your own I hope you were able to to make some special moments and enjoy the spirit of the holidays as their pertain to you.
I admitted to my husband that I struggled this year really getting into the holiday spirit. We watched several holiday movies throughout the month but I didn’t listen to any Christmas music until Christmas Day and didn’t even get decorations up until Christmas Eve. But the day came and I was able to relax in the peace of the day, sip on my eggnog, and take in the smell of the turkey filling the house.
For those who were like me and feel like they missed out on the whole month, do not forget that December is not over yet. Keep your decorations up, listen to the music, and keep watching those holiday films right up to the New Year and then some.
For those looking for some added holiday spirit, do not forget that The Office has multiple Christmas specials to enjoy. We have conducted a few breakdowns of them so feel free to revisit our past posts (links below).
At the end of the day, it really is up to us to decide how we want to celebrate the day. We all have our own ideas of what we think should go into a holiday but the truth is we cannot put those concepts on other people, not to mention our feelings about it change.
I hope you find some happiness as we race towards the new year, and maybe I’ll actually stick with my resolution this year in 2026.
I’ll get in touch with you all next week, until then I’ll see you all around the Breakroom!
Good morning everyone and welcome to a special post from the Breakroom Breakdown Party Planning Committee! One of my favorite parts of Christmas is the food, especially the Christmas cookies! Each year I bake batches (more and more each year) of various cookies that I give out as presents. And, of course, snack on all of the rest for the rest of the year and this year is no different. Technically I suppose it is different in that my husband will be baking them with me. And to be clear this was not me twisting his arm (I prefer to have the kitchen to myself) but he was insistent on baking with me this year so I am looking forward to it!
I have a few that I like to do every year and then I like to try out new recipes to see if I should include them and since I cannot personally bake you all cookies, I wanted to share my recipes this year. All found online, although I tend to play around with flavors like throwing in extra cinnamon. I am not affiliated with any of these websites, but am using their recipes so it is important I give them the credit. I hope you enjoy, tell me how liked them as well as share your own favorites!
I have been doing one for several years now and they are a favorite. My husband loves red velvet cake which is where I got inspired to find this one. They are pretty simple and what I love is how easy that crinkle effect is. By rolling them in a sugars before you bake, they crackle as they bake, and taste just like red velvet cake.
Everyone has their go-to sugar cookie recipe and this has become mine. Super soft and chewy (I am not a crunchy cookie person). I found this recipe one night we were snackish and haven’t looked back. While not inherently Christmasy, they remind me of snow balls so I think they work just fine.
Not much is more Christmas than a spritz cookie and you cannot go wrong with Betty Crocker’s recipe. One of all time favorites, I only do them at Christmas because I will admit that although simple, I never have luck with the spritz gun. They get stuck and come out deformed and I tend to curse like a sailor the whole time. Are they worth it? I do them every year for a reason, plus you get a variety of shapes and colors to use.
I was drawn to this as similar to a biscotti I did last year, but this will be my first time making them. I love chewy oatmeal cookies but detest raison in mine. Normally I throw in butterscotch chips (Oatmeal Scotchies) but this has a holiday feel to them so I am excited to test these bad boys out!
Rather than Gingerbread Men (which like to fall apart) why not do a simple, molasses cookie? Gives you the flavor, simple, and super chewy. Molasses is not necessarily everyone’s favorite flavor so do keep that in mind that it can be an acquired taste.
This is a very classic cookie that many of us grew up with. I personally have not made them but my husband really wanted us to do them this year. We are playing around with it in that instead of only kisses, I got other candies (like mini Reese’s cups) to put on top. Again, this is a very simple cookie because sometimes the easy ones are the best.
And that is my Christmas Cookie list this year! Six might not sound like a lot but I will be making more than one batch of each so it does end up being a lot.
Like I said, tell me some of your own! If I see a good one I might try to make it this week, or I’ll have something ready for next year.
I hope you all have a great holiday this week spending time with loved ones and I Iook forward to seeing you all after the holidays right here in the Breakroom.
Good morning and welcome back to the Breakroom! We are only 6-days away from Christmas and (for those who celebrate) there is a strong chance you may have forgotten a present and need to do some last minute shopping. Often forgotten is your office Secret Santa, what are you supposed to buy for a coworker?
I wanted to give some good options for gifts and I thought there was no better way than to look into the gifts given out at Dunder Mifflin over the years and pick some of my favorites. I decided to lean in on those I consider good gifts but if I do not include something that you thought was a good idea, let me know!
Teapot Perhaps one of the most iconic gifts is the teapot given by Jim to Pam filled to the brim with personal mementos (and a mysterious letter). Maybe you are not trying to profess your love to someone, but I’m sure you know someone who loves tea and would go crazy to have a teapot at home or around the office.
Baby Jazz Poster While this might not be everyone’s taste, this was given to Angela who specifically loves this type of artwork. While you may not know someone who is crazy for baby jazz players, this would be a great gift for anyone who loves the office.
Comfy Robe Season 3 we see the company gift (a robe) gets taken away from Toby by Dwight, but Pam ultimately gets him one. I once got a friend a robe years back and she continues to adore it to this day. Over the years I have leaned more into gifts that are consumables or simply will be used quite often because then they become part of their everyday.
Nutcracker While the nutcracker Michael got Dwight is a unique piece, it doesn’t mean you cannot get someone a real one. While I do think this is an odd gift, I feel it is a unique one because I do not believe it is something a person would often buy themselves. And I can imagine at least one person out there would open this up and, if there was no description of what it was, they may start make list of possibilities like Dwight did.
Homemade Gift I love how Phyllis and Ryan made fun of Pam’s gift of a comic book because most people I know would go crazy if someone created a unique comic for them. If I had any artistic abilities in me I would certainly consider doing this. Instead I have gotten into the habit of baking dozens of cookies and giving cookie assortments out as gifts. Not everyone bakes cookies at Christmas so it is my way of ensuring they have a fun snack that evening. And I enjoy all of the leftovers, too.
Cookie Jar (with cookies) Kevin received a cookie jar in a later season and loved it, pry because it also came with cookies. This is another item that I feel people would absolutely use but likely is not bought too often for themselves. I have one jar that I love that looks like French macarons stacked together. I recall a Christmas party with friends and we did a White Elephant game and the popular gift was an adorable unicorn cookie jar. So try to tailor it to their tastes, besides being utilitarian it is also decor so make sure it something they would want to look at all year round. And then toss in a few of your cookies so they get an added gift.
Board Game Now I am going into my own personal recommendations. Board and card games are always popular and I think everyone should have a collection they can break out. This particular game (Azul) was one a friend taught us to play and while initially confusing, once I read the rules I found it was pretty simple and fun. And I’m a sucker for a game with pretty tiles so this is just one example!
Cooking Tools If you have someone who likes to cook, why not get them something cool for their kitchen! Fancy spices and oils are great options if you do not know what they need because this way they can experiment. Otherwise two of my favorite Christmas gifts I’ve gotten have been a French rolling pin (featured above) as well as a Dutch oven (might be more extravagant than what you need for the office).
Giant Mug aka “Coffee Bowl” Okay I have now moved into Gilmore Girls territory but this can certainly translate to the office. I am a sucker for a giant mug, if it isn’t at least 20oz what even is the point? My next goal is one that is so large it is essentially a bowl and it will allow me to drink almost half a pot coffee in a one sitting. We all know at least one person who needs a hot drink all day long and this will be the beast that holds it.
Cozy Blanket When in doubt, it is hard to go wrong with a blanket. Now my sister once complained that people kept getting her blankets and I have to say, you can never have too many. You want backups for when they get dirty, maybe ruined and need to be thrown away, have them placed around the house, your pets can get their own, or just need to be extra toasty. My husband actually crocheted a blanket for his Secret Santa this year but there is no harm is buying one for someone.
There are 10 perfect examples for some Secret Santa gifts. Let me know if you have your own tips that you want to pass along. I told you what to buy, I skipped right over a “do not buy” list so if you have some cautionary tales feel free to share as well.
Be on the look out this next week as I want to get one more post out before we are out for Christmas. Since I cannot have a cookie exchange with all of you, I want to include you in on what cookies I’ll be baking this year! I’ll be doing my baking on Monday so look for my personal list, and I expect to get some good recipes in exchange so I can start planning for next year (or I can try them out over the weekend).
Until next week, I’ll see you all around the Breakroom!
Good morning everyone and welcome back to Breakroom Breakdown! Now, there is a topic I have been wanting to discuss for a very long time and that is how to decide what font to use in your documents, emails, etc… I’ve been waiting for inspiration to strike me, but never in a million years could I have predicted it coming up due to a font being considered “too woke.1“
You read that right, the break news from the United States State Department is that their current font being used (Calibri) was started during the Biden Administration for “woke reasons” and they will be reverting to the previously used Times New Roman. For the record, Times New Roman was the primary font used from 2004 until 2023, which is likely also why this was the favorite required by most high school teachers. It was in 2023 that the decision was made to switch to Calibri, which has been the fault in Microsoft tools since 2007. The reason for the switch? Wokeness at its worse. The decision was to shift to a sans serif font to make it easier to read, in particular by those with impaired vision or reading disabilities like dyslexia. It is for those reason that the Americans with Disability Act requires the use of sans serif fonts on signs and similar postings. So we can thank Marco Rubio for making this decision to help squash out the silly woke notion of making it easier for people to read.
To help clear up the terminology for those who are unaware of the anatomy of font (which is fascinating, by the way) sans serifs simply means “no serifs.” Serif is defined as the small lines and flourishes on certain fonts as a means of guiding eyes while reading it. In particular, serif fonts (Times New Roman, Garamond) are ideal for use in print such as news papers and books. While they tend to work well there, on a screen they can blend together and make it more difficult to read. In particular for those with certain disabilities, which is why they opt for fonts known as sans serif (Calibri, Helvetica). If you have not noticed, I have opted to switch to a sans serif font (known as “Open Sans” here in WordPress). Is it different? Yes. Is it that big of a deal if by doing this I have now made it easier for people? Call me woke, but heck no.
If you view below, you can see a side-by-side comparison of the fonts in question being used at the State Department (courtesy of NPR)2:
Source: NPR
While I realistically can see they are different, the truth is at the end of the day I do not see them as so different that it truly matters. I must argue that Marco “Little Marco” Rubio is not truly accomplishing anything aside from continuing his assault on anything that can be considered “DEI.” But even this should be considered scraping the bottom of the barrel in an attempt to go against a font that he does not like, especially as I refuse to believe he types up any document himself. But it did bring up a good topic of how, what fonts are good choices to use in a professional capacity? Maybe we can help Little Marco come up with a suitable replacement instead of Times New Roman (which is tad bourgeois in my opinion).
Reviewing a few different sources, I keep running into the same details so evidently this is has been long thought out. First, it is evidently not uncommon to use two different fonts in certain forms of writing. It is often that you might use a decorative font for headers and then a simpler one for the body with Times New Roman and Arial being a pretty common example. It is also worth nothing that in addition to your font, you will also want to consider your primary size (the State Department was 14 to go along with their Times New Roman) and this is because the readability of efficiency of a font can be heavily impacted based on the size being used. As we will all remember from school, Size 12 was our go-to for documents but we are certainly free to up it a little bit.
Further, the type of font really should be impacted based on what it is being used for. Serif fonts like Times New Roman or Georgia are great for being printed out and read. But it is common for them to be a strain on your eyes for long reading on screens, in which case sans serifs should be considered3.
Besides readability, we also have other considerations often associated with certain fonts. Our serifs are so popular because they offer an older feel, as they are meant to be reminiscent of a type writer and so they have distinguished feel. Sans serifs, however, are designed to give us a cleaner and more modern feel. Interestingly, despite meant to feel modern they are also meant to also look more like handwritten script since most people do not have serifs on their handwriting4.
At the end of the day, the font you choose has a lot to do with the specific branding you want your choice to relay (you might not want to choose Wingdings) but it also has to do with how the font is being used. In Rubio’s case, he is changing the font used in the correspondence used by the State Department. Given that this is going to include both print and digital, it does make sense to try to stick to one font between both. And given that I will wager the majority of the correspondence will be digital, I would argue that a screen-friendly sans serif would make the most sense and that his argument about the font being “woke” simply does not hold water. As multiple sites have confirmed, a sans serif like Calibri is the preferred method for screens to the point that Microsoft fully switched over to it almost two decades ago.
As a friendly reminder to my readers who might be unaware, to be woke is actually a compliment. It refers to someone being mindful and knowledgeable of certain injustices and making the conscious decision to not ignore it. So I am going formally recommend to all of my readers, lets go woke and push for the use of sans serif fonts in the future. We might not be able to end the social injustice in this country, but we can certainly scare them off when they see the terrifying lack of serifs on our typography.
Please give us a shoutout if you have been inspired to go woke and limit your serif use online. Further, I have been very inspired to learn more about fonts and would love to hear from typography nerds out there. Drop some cool fonts and facts for us all to read going into this weekend.
Happy Friday everyone! I hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving filled with loved ones and way too much food. And if you hosted like I did, plenty of leftovers to last you through the weekend. Now not only is today Friday, it is the most American of all holidays: Black Friday. Every year I really do have to ask the same the question: how is this still a thing?
Growing up I do have some pretty early memories of the relevance of Black Friday. My family would bring several news papers to Thanksgiving dinner and everyone would go through and start to pick out what we wanted for Christmas because this would be the best time because those products would be on sale. And as far back as I can remember, this was simply part of Thanksgiving and I know plenty of others who have the same memories. I never actually went shopping then, and my first official time doing Black Friday shopping wasn’t until I was in college. I will admit to doing it wrong compared to other people because I didn’t wait in line before open, I didn’t go crazy, I really didn’t even have a list.
But Black Friday truly was a full American institution that people across the country would partake part in, going back as far as the 1950s. Although, I believe it wasn’t until closer to the 1980s that it truly became more of a national event. And we have seen the pictures and videos on the news, plus seen them recreated in television and cinema. People would camp out days in advance for certain deals (usually electronics), people would push and force their way through the stores, and we have even seen people get damaged during these instances. For those who have never seen these videos, feel free to look up videos of sharks reacting to chum in the water and it is the same concept (but you get to watch sharks). But these days have long gone and as far as I know, people do not get quite as worked up over Black Friday. The true “magic” of Black Friday was disappearing perhaps even as much as twenty years ago, but then Covid Pandemic truly was the final nail in the coffin. Since then, we see Black Friday has truly expanded beyond just Friday. We get Cyber Monday, some stores were opening on Thursday for a few years, and plenty of websites start offering Black Friday sales a week in advance. In store, I couldn’t tell you if it is even worth it anymore because not only do I not go out I haven’t heard of anyone else I know talking about it. If I am being honest, most sales do not truly sound that great anyways and are likely on par with similar discounts offered throughout the year.
Now I have gone through all of this, and for those of you who grew up with these memories are likely nodding your head with everything I am saying because you have seen all of this happen. So we should both be able to agree that Black Friday popularity and revenue would have declined over the years, correct? Wrong, somehow we are both wrong. According to DemandSage, not only has spending over Black Friday continued to increase over the years but they are forecasting $11.7 billion in sales this year1.
I am as surprised as anyone as I would have bet money that the pandemic would seen Black Friday die out but here we are stronger than ever before. So how is this possible? Well I believe that lies with a couple reasons I previously mentioned. It is true we no longer see people camping outside of stores or breaking noses to get the last toy. Plenty of people still go to the stores, but it sounds like they are more looking to take advantages of perhaps slightly above average discounted prices to save money. So I believe it isn’t so much about getting so much money off the new television, it is focused on general Christmas gifts or personal shopping. But the biggest winner would be online shopping. As I mentioned, websites and stores have their discounts up earlier and longer than ever before which means people do not need to go to a brick-and-mortar location if they want to take part in the deals. And I do believe it is that a lot of people are no much focusing on big ticket purchases, but more focused on what are their personal favorite items that go on sale. They might have an Amazon list going all year that they are now watching to see what hits discounts. Or if you are like me, you have some personal favorite websites or brands that you pop in on to see if they have discounts on products that you would normally buy no matter way but can stock up cheaper. With the introduction of online shopping (which reviewing DemandSage, accounts for more than half of 2024’s Black Friday shopping) it means we can find more discounts, access it from anywhere, and be able to pick and choose the stores and products we are interested in. The current economic climate is always a questionable factor as well because if people are worried about money they typically do less shopping. But in this case it is the reverse because they are seeing it as a chance to save money, meaning it is the wise thing to do.
So my Breakdown of why I think Black Friday should have died out might not really offer anything new, but I hope it did point some factors out to those readers who are like me. Black Friday is an interesting phenomenon and it is interesting to evaluate what continues to fuel it each year. And if you like to shop it, then by all means go for it! As I mentioned, rather than hunting for big, fancy deals I was more focused on finding items I had added to my wish list earlier this year. But I have already made purchases on products I would have bought anyways but now I get a discount. For those who want to rail against the capitalist machine, I suggest focusing on local shops! Pop into small businesses in your town or even look up smaller stores in general that offer online shopping so that way you can support them over the big corporations that do not need more money.
I hope you all enjoy those Thanksgiving leftovers this weekend, while it is still the shopping season feel free to drop a comment with your favorite Black Friday shop this year so we can get a chance to share in the deals. Until next week, I’ll see you around the Breakroom (likely with pie).
