On the Third Week of Christmas...

...

Dec 12: Listened to Christmas music

Dec 13: Listened to Sufjan Steven's Christmas album, went to the Georgetown Christmas Market, ate chestnuts roasted over an open fire (I didn't like them...Andrew sort of did), watched the Nightmare Before Christmas, started an advent that my mom sent us, learned about Christmas in Africa

Dec 14: Andrew and I took a trip to the mountains for the night...we walked around Breckenridge, looked at lights, went to a Christmas shoppe, looked at ice sculptures

Dec 15: Listened to Christmas music, colored Christmas coloring pages

Dec 16: Listened to Christmas music

Dec 17: Listened to Christmas music, present shopped, started wearing a pair of Christmas sox every day till Christmas (and will have to go until after Christmas!)

Dec 18: Listened to Christmas music, made presents, shipped presents

Dec 19: Listened to Christmas music, worked on homemade presents

I can't believe Christmas is less than a week away!! I also can't believe that I'm in Colorado and there is now snow, and it's not scheduled to snow by Christmas :(

On The Second Week of Christmas

This is what I did..

Dec 4: Listened to Christmas music, went to Andrew's choir Christmas concert, and watched some cheesy Christmas movie on abc.

Dec 5: Listened to Christmas music

Dec 6: Listened to Christmas music, put the ornaments on the tree, catalog shopped, store shopped, watched another cheesy Christmas movie

Dec 7: Listened to Christmas music, store shopped, watched part of a cheesy Christmas movie on Hallmark channel

Dec 8: Listened to Christmas music, finished decorating, wrapped presents

Dec 9-11: I forgot to write down what I did these days! But I worked all three days, so most likely all I fit in was Christmas music

The end of the 3rd week is almost here! Hope your house isn't as messy as mine, that you don't have as much shopping to do as I still have to do, and that your thighs don't hurt as much as mine do from snowboarding :)

Bedtime

Two of my favorite things about going to bed:

I get to use my awesome little lamp from Ikea

And I get to sleep in polka dotted sheets!

On The First Week of Christmas

If you know me at all, you know I loooovvvvveeee Christmas!

I love it so much I wanted to start Christmas decorating and preparing in October this year! But I held off and made myself decorate for fall and Thanksgiving, which was nice because we had people over for Thanksgiving this year.

So Christmas started for me right after Thanksgiving this year, and I am making sure I do something Christmas-y every day till Christmas (and it will probably go till at least New Year's) just to make sure I squeeze as much Christmas into December as I can!!

So far here is what I've done...

Nov 27: Listened to Christmas music, Shopped for Christmas presents
Nov 28: Listened to Christmas music
Nov 29: Listened to Christmas music, watched Elf, looked at Christmas lights
Nov 30: Listened to Christmas music, started decorating, online gift shopping
Dec 1: Listened to Christmas music, got our tree, decorated, put lights on the tree
Dec 2: Listened to Christmas music
Dec 3: Listened to Christmas music

Yes, listening to Christmas music will be listed probably every day. I love Christmas music and December is pretty much the only month that it's acceptable for me to listen to it every day.

I hope your Christmas season has gotten off to as good a start as mine!

Catching Up

I haven't really posted much of anything for awhile. I don't think I even finished doing what I wanted to do with my trip to Illinois in September.

Most of the problem is how many pictures I take!! I get behind on uploading and organizing them that I just don't get around to posting them.

So, I will be trying to catch up with my life on here over the next couple weeks, hopefully being all caught up by Christmas! :)

Because I didn't have time yesterday...

I am thankful for

A family who loves me, cares for me, and supports me

Having a job

A husband who puts up with my shenanigans and supports my baking obsession

A warm house

Friends

The pumpkin pie and whip cream that I am currently eating

All the traveling I have been able to do in my life so far

Faith

A mom who is also one of my best friends

A dad who I know is always there for me

Grandparents who have shown me what true love and sacrifice are

Technology that allows me to keep in touch with friends all over the world

There are so many more things I am thankful for. But I think those are all the biggest ones for me right now. I hope everyone found at least a couple things to be thankful about yesterday!

Eat Cake

I love these cakes! ... http://www.eatcakebemerry.com/index2.php#/home/

I'm excited to see the Eat Cupcakes section when it gets added! And considering the price of cakes today, these prices aren't too bad.

Not that I'm looking to buy a cake or somethin' :)

.my first (and probably last) not me monday.

Kendahl always participates in this Not Me Monday thing, and I always comment back on her posts about it. She hasn't posted anything for today, and so I decided to make my own not me Monday for today because I did really stupid things this week. Not a lot of things, but what I did was really dumb and sad. So here goes...

Last Thursday there's no way I could have left the back window down of my car, resulting in enough snow in the back seat to shovel out! I could never be that absent-minded.

(I'm almost embarrassed to even admit this one)...Today I definitely did not make plans to go snowboarding tomorrow, thinking Copper Mountain opened. (It doesn't actually open till Nov 6th.) And there's no way I could have mistaken a website posting from the 2006 opening day being Nov 3 for the 2009 season!

The other day I went to Goodwill and got a perfectly good frame, including the glass, for only $2. I'm not so careless as to have set it on the counter while I was working on something else, just to lose my grip, my arm swing across the counter top, knocking the frame onto the floor, shattering the glass all over the place. I am just not that clumsy.

The End.

Hmm..

I can't decide if I like this photo work or not. What do you think?

http://onelovephoto.typepad.com/heathergilson/

Seriously?

I came across this today and thought to myself...what a total, complete, awful waste of perfectly great antique-ish books!

so sad. so sad.

Daily Drop Cap

ello!

I just had to make a little post on this cuz it's sweet! You can put these cool drop caps in your blog from here: http://www.dailydropcap.com/

Vacation

Illinois Part V

Day 3

Once the whole shindig ended, we got to hang out and try to get a good picture of grandpa :) Here's what I got...




Playing harmonica again...


Loretta & g'pa


me & g'pa

Vacation

My Trip to Illinois Part IV

Day Three

The main point to this trip was my grandpa's 80th birthday. The whole family was there - it was great! So this all happened today.

I guess when you're 80 you get all sorts of things on your cake! ...


Grandpa still knows how to play 'O Susanna' on the harmonica which was really neat to see him do...



My little cousin Ethan, who is 5 now and adorable, really wanted to blow out candles, so he blew out the decorative ones on the table...


Marcia decided we needed ice cream to go with the cake, which I'm all for, but she decided this right as we were about to light the candles and sing happy birthday! So, we had to keep grandpa distracted for awhile, hence the tiny missing piece of cake...Oh, and grandma and Ethan helped blow out the candles. :)...



How the two little ones entertained themselves throughout the day...

Ethan collected acorns...



And Addison was just cute all day...

Vacation

My Trip to Illinois Part III

Day Two

The last thing to accomplish at the farm was to get a picture of me with Abby. And yes, to get a good picture of us is an accomplishment:







Matthew, my mom, and I then went to eat at a 7th Day Adventist restaurant in the closest little town...about the size of Pleasant Plains. It was interesting. I then drove to Springfield to visit with my dad who was in town that day for a dentist visit.



We went out to eat and hung out at his hotel. He was just telling me a story when I took this picture. hehe.

Vacation

My Trip to Illinois Part II

Day Two:

We took a walk around the property so I could see what exactly we own. This is a view from the spot they picked out for our future cottage...it looks out to our little pond.


Matthew planted some grape vines to start his own vineyard


Beautiful fall colors


One of our soybean fields


Here's our other pond:


My mom took me to see the Plasters Grove church, which was donated by my great great grandpa. There's only 11 members of the church :( So if it goes under the land goes back to us...what the heck would our family do with a church and cemetery?!


On the drive back to the cabin, there was a huge gross turkey vulture thing eating a dead animal on the road:


Pretty red plant: :)

Vacation

My Trip to Illinois Part I

..Day One..

At the end of September I went home for a visit. Matthew picked me up from the airport and the plan was to drive straight to the farm where my mom would arrive a couple hours later. Well, Matthew and I ended up going about 3 hours out of our way due to great conversation! Aka: Matthew can't multi-task ;)

So we arrived at the farm at the exact same time as my mom. So it was dark when we got there, but we made a fire and it was great! Matthew puts copper in it so there's really cool colors.





My mom brought Abby so I could visit with her, and that night she started out in the yard staked out on a post, whined and ended up on the deck of the cabin, and proceeded to stick her head through the screen of the screen door, so she ended up inside with me. Silly dog.

..Day Two..

The next day it was foggy and beautiful.
Here's the cabin (keep in mind the whole thing is about the size of a big living room):



Here's my 'puppy':

Other People's Things

We had some church people to our house for game night and I made some easy delicious things...very hard to mess these up!

Pumpkin/peanut butter dip (toward the bottom):
http://urbanext.illinois.edu/party/food_snacks.html

Healthy yogurt veggie dip:
http://www.mealsmatter.org/recipes-meals/recipe/18944

Layered Brownies (a little bit harder, but delicious! Andrew even liked these and he doesn't like brownies):
http://wondertime.coverleaf.com/wondertime/200903/?pg=97

I just think this is cool:
http://amyatlas.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-genealogy-charts-by-melangerie.html

The Adventures of Arnold

About 2 weeks ago now, I was in the bedroom with the door to the porch open. I heard little scratching noises coming from under the tarp, and got a little worried about what might be under there...

...a giant spider the size of my face, a rabid raccoon...
...ya know...all those normal rational fears people get about what's hiding under their tarps.

So I went outside (despite my fears) and discovered it was a squirrel! He was very curious and I managed to feed him some almond slivers. He loved them!

A couple days later I went to put something on the porch and startled poor Arnold. He scampered out from under the tarp. I had left the screen door open so I was afraid he was going to run inside, but he didn't.

Then 3 days ago he was scratching at the rug on the porch, so I put out two almonds for him. I didn't see him at all yesterday. Then just about an hour ago I realized...the almonds were gone!

So Arnold is alive and well. I only see him once in awhile.

Enjoy some pictures of my little pet
(Oh, and fyi, you can click the pictures to make them bigger)...

The first time I met Arnold...
...He let me get pretty close,

but then he ran and hid.
And then he got brave again.
Then I ran inside and got some almond slivers. He liked that a lot!

So I set out a couple more (see them on top of the ivy tablecloth?)
He sniffed for them...
and looked for them...
And finally found them!
The End.

?

This made me lol: http://craftfail.com/

Check out some of my pics here: http://jackiesphoto.blogspot.com

Saving the World one Craft at a Time

Meet our firstborn, Hiro...

He lives in our office...

Being on this craft kick, I've discovered that reusing and recycling plays into crafting a whole lot. It's pretty fun actually. Tonight Andrew asked me if there was anything we could make together. I was so excited that he was asking that I quickly said yes and found one of the crafts online I had been wanting to make. Unfortunately I jumped the gun so much that we only got about 1/4 of the way through the project when I realized we didn't have 3 vital ingredients! (I know ingredients isn't the right word since I'm not referring to food, but I can't think of that other word...what is it?) That project involved a phone book, of which only about 1% of Americans use anymore! So I was happy to be recycling it. But since that didn't happen, I was inspired to wrap some presents...


Matthew's birthday was at the beginning of August. I've had a gift for him since June, I think, but never sent it. So I wrapped it tonight to bring to him when I go to IL at the end of this month...



For anyone who knows Matthew, you know he'll get a kick out of the page from the phone book that I chose to be on the front of his gift. The little name tag is made out of one of the magnets that are always annoyingly placed on the front of phone books. I wrote on it with whiteout...when I messed up I used a Sharpie...how backwards is that?! ;)

Then I wrapped my dad's present (whose birthday is tomorrow). I used 2 tea boxes...




Another reuse I've put into play are these...



Old canisters tacked to the wall being used as pencil/whatever holders.


Oh, I decided to put my little cattail bundle in the olive oil bottle. I think it looks much better. Andrew just realized tonight that they were real...he thought I bought them from Hobby Lobby.




Time to edit some wedding photos for Zach and Jenn...
Over and Out.