Spare Time Life

Busy doing I don't know what

2011-03-23T11:10:00.000-07:00

I have been racing around doing something for the last while, even though I am not sure what that something was. I am positive that I was busy though.

Life has just been going along, full of work and housekeeping and visiting with friends and family. I try to make it out geocaching as much as possible, although other plans and the weather have kept me in for the last couple of weekends. There are a couple of caches close to work that I may try to get this week and a couple near home that have been calling to me. :) A friend and I have decided to try to do the SE Washington oldies challenge, which requires you to find the 25 oldest caches in our area and then log the title cache. There have only been about 5 people to finish it in the 3 years that it has been going, since apparently they made caches harder in the olden days (early 2000's) of caching.

Other than that, I finally set a date for my next murder mystery party and I am so so excited. Everyone I wanted has agreed to come and we all agreed on a date. An old friend from college will come for the weekend and we are looking forward to the visit very much! Did I mention I am very excited. I have a little over a month to get all the planning and set up done, as well as make a costume and figure out the menu. The mystery is set in Chicago 1928 and is full of gangsters, flappers, and the most horrible punny names, including Molly M. Awbsterr. Yes, that's what I said. I always shake my head at these things, since puns are very low on the list of my favorite kind of jokes. Oh well.

There is not really anything else going, other than my ongoing quest to eat better, exercise more, and keep my house cleaner, all while getting out and having fun. I feel like a super-hero for doing all of that...on the days when I actually accomplish it. I feel a bit lazy on the other days. Eh, that's life, I suppose. I am glad that spring is here, the weather is trying to get warmer and the flowers and trees are all beginning to blossom. It is one of my favorite times. Tonight I am going to try to go for a walk after work and take advantage of all of it.

Post Christmas Wrap-Up

2011-01-04T15:24:00.000-08:00

Christmas is over now and I am back to work and life is back to normal. Not that I wouldn't mind another week of vacation, but since I spent most of it lazing around or geocaching and almost none of it accomplishing things, it is probably for the best that my break is over.

I vaguely recall that I may have promised to post pictures about the things I was making for Christmas. I am not sure what prompts these strange actions, but I suppose that I might as well show you the pictures that Chantel was nice enough to take. :)

Project 1 was the clay ornaments. I wanted to make some salt dough clay and cut out ornaments to decorate. Steps one and two were easy enough.

Step three caused us some pain. By us I mean Chantel, Autumn and myself. We are all fairly creative and at least somewhat crafty, but our ornament decorating skills were very, very entertaining. We each ended up with one that we are embarrassed to admit to making. Chantel gets off easy on this though, since she says that anyone who asks about it will be told that her two year old made it. :) We learned one valuable lesson, though. Glitter not only makes things better, but it does a great job of distracting you from a really crappy coloring job.

Project 2 was the lotion bars. I found the recipe for these a while back and though they would be super-neat to make for Christmas. I enlisted some help (thanks girls) and we got cooking. Literally. The process for the bars is super easy. Heat stuff until melted, pour in molds and wait until it is hard again. Ta-da!!!

Melt one part shortening, one part beeswax, and one part vegetable oil in a double boiler.

Stir in a small amount of your choice of essential oils for a nice scent.

Pour the melted mixture into molds. (I have an insane amount of cupcake tins, and they are a really nice size.)

Let set until cool and solid. Also, remember to label them, or you might mix up the different scents. I actually thought of this while doing the second batch, yay me!

These turned out really great. They are slightly greasy when you rub them on, but it feels nice once it has soaked in. They smell really great, too. We made a violet batch, a vanilla batch, a violet jasmine batch, and and orange batch. We ended up with a total of 36 bars, or 12 each, out of a pound of wax and the equivalent weights of shortening and oil. I gave away a bunch of mine to people for Christmas, but I still have several. :)

Project 3 was a spur of the moment idea to make little tulle tutus for my 3 year old niece. I did not have a pattern, but I dove in anyway. It's not as bad as it sounds, they didn't come out quite like I had envisioned, but they still looked nice. I made each one with 2 different colored layers of tulle and a wide purple ribbon (blanket binding is so great for hiding edges you don't really want to try to hem). I made all three of them for about 7 dollars and 2 hours of work. And she loved them. She loved them even more when she found out what they were.

Project 4 (the final project) was an earring holder for my mother-in-law. She mentioned it in her Christmas list and I liked the idea. Years ago, my grandmother made earring holders for each of my aunts and I remembered her idea and thought that my mother-in-law would really like it. The ones my grandma made were a bit frillier, but I didn't think that would be quite right, so I went really simple with this. The basic idea is you take an embroidery hoop and stretch a piece of lace over it and then embellish. I hot-glued a cord and some beading along the edge, which also helps to keep the lace in place. I then glued some little enamel roses I had in my craft crap along the top, just to dress it up a bit. All done. The way it works is to slip the hook or post of the earring through the holes in the lace and then put the backs on on the back side. She really liked it. She liked it even more when I told her what it was. :)

That is all for my Christmas projects. For once I actually finished everything I wanted to get done. And on time, too. Go me!

p.s. I forgot, there was a project 5, but I never got any pictures taken. I bought some glass beer mugs and etched them for my husband and his father with their last initial. I made the stencils in a different font for each of their sets and made 4 mugs each. The etching was pretty easy, but cutting the stencils was a giant pain. It is a good thing they really liked them.

It's not quite letterboxing...

2010-11-28T19:17:00.000-08:00

but geocaching is pretty fun and, in some ways, easier.

I love letterboxing, and often describe it as treasure hunting with no treasure. Well, geocaching has the treasure. Well, at least it does if you consider small toys and trinkets treasure. Whatever. It is just as good.

Geocaching uses GPS coordinates instead of written clues, and is much more widespread. For example, there are 10-20 letterboxes in my metro area. There are more than 200 geocaches. I will never find them all. Which is a good thing.

The only real requirement is a GPS unit you can plug coordinates into and a computer with which to obtain those ingredients. The best site is the official geocaching site, www.geocaching.com. It is a free membership and there are thousands and thousands of caches everywhere.

I have added my GPS to my letterboxing kit and plan to look for them wherever I go. I recommend you do the same. :)

The first snow of the year

2010-11-22T16:55:00.000-08:00

It started snowing last night. And continued all day. And is supposed to continue all night again. So far we have 6 inches. :)

I know, I know, I shouldn't be happy, since I have already seen one accident and 2 people going all squirrelly on the city streets, but I can't help but think of how pretty it is. I plan to spend the evening curled up on my couch in front of the lovely fire (pellet stove) and drink something warm and read my book.

I hope you enjoy the snow!

Christmas Projects

2010-11-18T20:00:00.000-08:00

Yet again I have high hopes for craft projects for this Christmas. There are several things I want to make for gifts, for friends, and for snacking.

I am going to make a set of salt-dough ornaments, for myself, and probably for a lot of other people. I am not sure I even did this when I was little, but I have an urge to use my cookie cutters, even if I don't make cookies with them. The pack of cutters came with a clay recipe on the bottom. I hope they turn out well, then I can give them out to my family and they will have something made by me on their trees.

Another gift to make for my friends is a set of lotion bars. I found this idea on the linked blog and love it. The are a solid bar and rubbing it with your hand melts is enough to spread on your skin. They can, of course be customized. I have a couple of friends coming over to help and we will make a bunch of them for gifts (and for ourselves). I will post pictures of the process.

Cookies. I don't know what types yet, but I love baking cookies and I want to come up with a few that people aren't used to. I think I have talked the girls at work into doing a cookie exchange for Christmas, so I will hopefully have several really great kinds without have to bake such a huge variety myself. If anyone has a great recipe or just a favorite, please share it. :)

Finally I have a couple of crochet projects that I need to finish up. These aren't really for Christmas, but I need to get them done. A few months ago (read: lots of months ago) I promised some friends a "craft it forward" gift. I have finished one and have two more almost done (including yours, Laura) but there is one that I have not even started and I am not sure what it is going to be.

That is a lot to accomplish in the next month, but I think it will be fun. I will try to be good and post lots of pictures of all of these things as they happen.

Fall is here...with a vengeance.

2010-11-16T20:05:00.000-08:00

Fall showed up a couple of weeks ago. It sort of crept on, sneaking in cooler weather and tinted leaves. Fall is always beautiful. Golden leaves on my sycamores, falling to create a pretty carpet on the lawn. Red trees, yellow trees, and green trees, all blended in a fall painting.

I would love to show you pictures of even more gold. However, yesterday, fall invited it's dear friend the wind to visit us. With a high wind warning and gusts of 50 miles per hour knocking out power around the state (although thankfully not mine) I have no leaves left. There are a fair number of them piled in my yard, but almost none left in the trees.

Bare trees leave me ready for winter. The cold wind continues tonight and makes it feel as though it could snow at any time. I know many across the northern parts of the country have snow already, but I will be happy to wait until after all of our travelling next week.

Just a side note, I somehow got my camera to take this picture right after the other. I don't know what I did, but it is sort of neat. Enjoy your fall.

The weekend is here

2010-10-08T10:37:00.001-07:00

The weekend is here and it looks like it will be crazy! We are hosting a wine tasting party for a few friends and we have some more canning to do, as well as baking and laundry and general cleaning and yard chores.

I have let all the chores get ahead of me yet again. Sigh. I know I am not the only one who doesn't have the time and energy to clean, but even though I mean well, I still have trouble getting to it. So, tonight and tomorrow I will clean the rest of the house, do a couple loads of laundry, grocery shop, and bake bread for the party and for next week (unless we eat it all, and then I will have to bake more on Sunday).

The wine tasting tomorrow night should be a lot of fun after all that work. We have about 8 people, 6 bottles of wine, and a really nice pasta dinner. Sounds like a good time, right? :)

On Sunday we have to get some work done outside (if it doesn't rain too much). A friend's neighbor sent me a whole mess of plants and bulbs and tubers that she divided this fall and we need to sort through them, figure out what they all are (hopefully) and get them in the ground. We also need to get a space cleared to store the dahlias, since they will be ready to dig up within a couple of weeks. A good chunk of the garden beds will also be ready to clean out soon, since they are about done producing, now that the weather is cooling off.

On a side not, I have to find something to do with 4 cabbages. They haven't been picked yet, since I am not sure what to do with them, but they will split before too long and I am worried. I can make a couple of dinners with one or two, but there are still two more to use up. I am thinking sauerkraut, but I have never made it before and need advice. If anyone knows a good method, it would be super if you could share.

The last chore I can think of is to put my herb garden to bed. We laid out a pretty design this summer, but it was getting late in the season, so the herbs I planted never really took off until a couple of weeks ago. Some are doing really well and I was thinking to move them into a large planter I have and over-winter them in my dining room. Then I could have fresh herbs for as long as they last. Next year, hopefully I can get it planted earlier and hopefully the neighbors cats won't find it so appealing and I will have a good enough crop to be able to freeze or dry a bunch to use the rest of the year.

Canning Tally

2010-09-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

I start every post with an apology for not posting in so long...but I can't help it. I had a busy summer with work and running around and I don't know what all.

Today I just wanted to show you what I was up to this weekend.

The total was:

60 pints of salsa

24 quarts or spaghetti sauce

14 quarts of tomato soup

29 quarts of canned tomatoes

8 dozen no-bake cookies

10 dozen peanut butter cookies

4 dozen butter cookies.

We bought 10 boxes of tomatoes at the Farmer's Market and spend two long days processing and canning all the things we love to eat all year long. The soup is a new recipe from a friend of Shane's at work, so I haven't tried it yet, other than a spoonful to check the spices while it was still really hot. I think I will heat up so and make grilled cheese for dinner in a couple of days. We still have two boxes of tomatoes to do something with, so if the soup is really good, I might throw together another batch later this week. It was a huge pain and a very tiring weekend, but I am so glad that we will have all these yummy things to eat this year, it is just so much better than store-bought...and easier :)

Getting Going

2010-04-08T15:47:00.000-07:00

It has been a little over a week since I decided to try out SparkPeople. (Yes I know, I ditched that blog once a day thing pretty early. I just don't have the time.) I think I am getting it figured out, but there is still a lot to explore and more decisions to make. I am still working on eating better and getting enough water. (I just love going to the bathroom so often, so much fun.) I am doing well at sticking to the exercise plan, since it is pretty basin and doesn't take too much time.

Overall, I guess I am getting going. Not too bad, but maybe not that great either. Sometimes I eat a lot and then wince when I put it is the counter. I figure, I could fib about it, who would know...other than me. That is the sticking point. I feel guilty for cheating, eve though this plan isn't about cheating or rules, just about eating better and hopefully less of the things that keep me chubby.

I need to practice not feeling guilty. Is there an easy way to do that? Is there an easy way to say "It's ok to eat that much garlic bread, but don't do it too often"? I will work on it and let you know. :)

Other than that, I think I am going to be able to do this. The articles and posts and messages are very positive and that is a big boost. Here is to trying my best and success.

Day Two

2010-03-31T21:05:00.000-07:00

I made it one of my goals on Spark People to write in a journal once a day. This may prove difficult to keep up, but I thought it might be helpful. Accountability is a good thing.

Today was pretty good, I made most of the goals set for eating and I did all the exercises I was assigned. The program set me up to do 30 minutes of cardio and a full body weight training routine three days a week. Hopefully I will be able to do it more often as I get going, at least the cardio. I am riding my stationary bike for now, but I will be able to do more outside things like yard work and walking as it warms up. I don't know if walking counts, but maybe I can even get in shape to go jogging. Cross your fingers.

I am ready for spring. It is sort of here, but the weather keeps going back and forth between grey and sunny. This weekend we are taking out the old cherry tree in the backyard and hopefully we can buy a new lawnmower. Ours in kinda toast, but since we got it for free two years ago, I think it's OK. I still feel a little bad about the cherry, since it is a great tree, but it doesn't fit where it is and it is splitting and if it loses a limb, that limb will fall into my bedroom. Not a pleasant thought.Once the tree is out we will have more space for the vegetable garden. I want to put in some vine crops this year and hopefully we can work them into that area.

For now I am going to go relax. I think I will be a bit stiff tomorrow. It has been a while since I have worked with weights. Night.

Spark People

2010-03-30T09:19:00.000-07:00

I am now a Spark People...or is that Person? I don't know yet. :)

www.sparkpeople.com is a website that I heard of through my sister-in-law. She started it last summer, and really got going with it the first of this year. It is basically a healthy living site with diet plans and exercise plans and lots of groups for support. There are articles and a recipe database and chat groups on tons of subject.

I have not yet explored a tenth of the things available on the site, but I think that it has promise.
The site is really full of stuff, so navigating takes a bit of memorization, but the tabs and such are pretty self explanatory.

The plans encourage you to set goals and track them daily. Doing so earns you points, but I am not clear yet on what points get you, other than kudos from your friends. One of the goals I am working on for now is journaling every day, so most of the time I think that will take the form of blogging. I will try to keep them brief, since a daily ramble through my vocabulary would be boring for both of us. I will post recipes from the site and let you know how my goals are coming along.

The biggest reason I am doing this is to try to get active and lose weight. The site and I agree that I need to lose about 50 pounds and I am aiming to do that by my birthday in October. Wouldn't that be a nifty birthday present?

For now, I am off to get some work done. I will hopefully talk to you again tomorrow :)

Mistress Mary, Quite contrary,

2010-03-26T07:31:00.000-07:00

How does your garden grow?

Mine is doing nicely, thank you. :)

My bulbs are coming in now and I think that some of them worked very hard at multiplying last summer.
We still have 15, count 'em, 15 bell peppers.
And 16, I know it's crazy, tomato plants. The are all doing very well, although the tomatoes are ready to be move up a pot size. They are getting rather tall and want to lay down.

I am super pleased though, since there is at least one plant alive in each peat pot. Which is much better than we did last year. I think we might be getting the hang of it. Soon it will be time to plant the rest of the early seeds. Hopefully this weekend we will have time and can get some yard cleanup done. The flowers need to be weeded and the lawn mowed, although I need a new mower for that, since ours gave up the ghost last year. The only problem with that plan is that it has been cool and windy and grey for the last few days and it is not nice to work outside when it is not nice. Oh well. Later!

All right already

2010-03-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

So shut up already, Chantel :)

No really, I have been getting nagged by my office mate about how hard it is to stalk someone online when they never post new blogs. Silly child.

I haven't posted recently for 2 reasons. One is that I am not very exciting and the other is that I keep forgetting to get the pictures I want to post off of my camera.

So, for a brief, pictureless blog, I will give a summary of what is up.

This weekend is game night! Yay for many people and food and entertainment and such. So far we have a total of 9 people, which is great and hopefully there will be at least three more than that. Shane has always wanted to try having multiple tables playing different games during the evening, so people can try more of our giant selection of games. Including the 6 or so new ones in the last three months. It's not an addicti...wait, never mind.

Other than that, I went to the taste of home cooking school last night with Chantel and got many yummy recipes and snack ideas, at least two of which will be used for dinner tomorrow. I also went to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry last week with a teacher friend of mine as a "chaperone", sort of anyway. It was nifty, with a big t-rex skeleton and a planetarium and lots of neat exhibits.

We also letterboxed for the first time this year and found all four of the boxes we went after. I think that might be a record for us. :) It was a gorgeous day and I will get some pics from Nikki for that.

Other than that I am obviously working hard and keeping busy with some new miniatures for a wargame that my husband enjoys. You buy tiny (2-4 inches) pewter miniatures, put them together, and paint them, and then fight long battles on the plains of some imaginary place. Sure nifty!

I will do my best to put up another post tomorrow or Sunday with pictures and info on my seedlings and flower garden (already tons of flowers!) and maybe even recipes of the tasty things I will make for dinner for my friends.

A picture post

2010-02-03T20:04:00.000-08:00

These are the first of the seeds we planted for our garden this year. 16, count 'em, 16 tomato plants, in 7 different varieties (yes, we are nuts, no, I am not quite sure there will be enough tomatoes for canning). The round ones are green bell peppers. :)

This is my shamrock plant, which I am showing off because it is happy enough to bloom. Yay!

Tiny green points in my bulb garden. These are snow iris.

Flash on weighing day. He is 5 months old now and I think he is getting bigger, but I need to start measuring him more carefully to be sure :)

I baked an apple pie with some of the apples that I froze last fall. Shane thought it looked pretty and told me to take a picture of it. It tasted pretty good, too.

We visited my parents at Christmas and drove over to the coast one day. The waves were coming in and the sun was shining through the clouds. I loved this picture.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

2010-01-28T10:33:00.000-08:00

Well, it works for Star Wars anyway, for me...whatever.
Anywho, I have been gone for so long that I am not sure if any of you are still bothering to check on me...other that Chantel who is so good about reminding me of how lazy I am. I have been busy and lazy and all those other good things that come with life.
Shane and I are well, and Flash is doing great. He is growing and eating and loving his box. We have planted a lot more grass and lettuce and he just wanders around and munches away. We also have a new roommate, my friend Autumn, who will be staying with us for a few months. I am really enjoying having her around. We have been best friends since kindergarten and it is great to be able to spend more time together.
She also teaches a yoga class at a local dance studio that I have been attending for the last couple of weeks. It is great, but I am not in good shape and not very flexible, so it is quite a workout for me. So, HA to all those people who say that yoga is not exercise. HA, I say.
I have been spending my winter working on my crafts and relaxing. I am working on getting better at knitting and am still doing ATC's when I have to time and creative energy. I also like to kick back after work and just relax. Work is starting to get really busy right now, which is nicer than having nothing to do, but still tiring.
We are going to be starting our seeds for the vegetable garden soon. I bought a bunch of tomato seeds, as well as some beets and peppers, from this great website that sells heirloom seeds and it turned out that they were out of one of the varieties we wanted, so they sent us two substitutes, plus a whole mess of other samples, including lettuce, more beets, radishes, zucchini and another tomato. I think we are planting 7 or 8 types of tomatoes. Yes, we are crazy. No, they will definately not go to waste. We love to can, as you may have noticed, and it would be great not to have to buy tomatoes. In addition, I got a food dehydrator for Christmas, so there will be tons of drying experiments. Yay! (Bethany, I look to you for good ideas and advice)
Other than that, life is just normal. We are going to the (really late) holiday party for Shane's work this weekend, as well as a friend's baby's 1st birthday party. Another friend is having a Pink Papaya party next weekend and there are several of my friends going to that, so it should be entertaining. As the weather warms, we will be getting the garden and yard tidied and ready for the season.
Overall, life is normal and good. Yay!

Meet Flash!

2009-11-20T10:42:00.000-08:00

I have a tortoise! I have been very neglectful in not letting you know about him sooner, but I have, as usual, been busy and tired and gone and working and all those other nagging little things I call a life.

At any rate, his name is Flash and he is a Leopard tortoise. They are the 4th largest tortoise in the world, so he will someday be a foot or so long and weigh around 60 or 80 pounds. :)

I know, I am crazy, but Shane and I loved the idea of having a tortoise as a pet and we thought about it for over a year before we actually made the decision. It is a big decision, because when I said someday, I meant in thirty or forty years. Flash will outlive us. Leopards can live a hundred years or more in captivity. Yes, I said a hundred. Wierd isn't it. Kinda like having a parrot, but way less noise and irritation.
We built him a little home, which you can see in the second picture, but it turned out that the guy at the store and even some of the online people who keep tortoises are wrong. They all say that a little area is good for the tiny babies. It makes them feel more secure. All it made Flash feel like was an escape artist. Within a couple of weeks, he was pacing the walls and seeing if he might be able to climb out. So, we built him a much larger box, about 3x4 feet, which he loves and roams about it all day long (you can see him over in the corner...tiny).

He is still sleeping in his little box, since the temperature in the other room gets too cool at night and we have a space heater in with the little box. Also, the little box with be his traveling home. When we go visiting for more than a day, like for Thanksgiving or something like that, we will take him with us. It is kind of like having a baby, since he has a certain amount of gear that we will have to bring along, like his light and his trays of grass to eat. I know, I am crazy. :)

Anyways, I just wanted to show him off to you and tell you how adorable he is. He is really young, so he behaves just like a baby, sleeping and laying under his light and eating and having a bath and sleeping some more. Hmmm...sounds sort of like me, too...anyways. Thats all I have for now.

A Murder Mystery Birthday

2009-10-14T15:54:00.001-07:00

Now that I am finally finished writing about my cruise, I can tell you all about our Murder!

Our cast

My friend Nikki and I have birthdays that are only four days apart in mid-October. Last year we had a joint party and invited everyone to dress up and come and play board games. This year we got the idea to be a little more structured. We hosted a Murder Mystery. Neither of us had ever hosted or even been to a Murder Mystery, so it was a little challenging.

First of all we tried to pick an easy game. We went with a Wild West mystery, since the costumes really easy to put together, and the plot seemed fairly simple. We made up a list of our friends and got the invites sent. After a few casting problems, we had enough people and everyone had their character info.

dancer, bounty hunter, saloon owner

We had the party last Saturday and it was a bit crazy getting all the clues together, finishing the cleaning, and getting the house set up, but we ended up having awesome costumes, lots of yummy food, and a really great set up with a dining room/bar, casino, and lounge. We made chili and cornbread with lots of other snacks and deserts for the party and everyone showed up within a half hour of the start time (with some of my friends, this is a major accomplishment).

The party was really great. Everyone got into character and as the clues were revealed, everyone investigated for all they were worth. In the end, we found out that my husband was the murderer, but that he was not going to get in trouble for doing it, since the victim had secretly been a criminal. Shane even got to apply for the bounty! I call that pretty sweet. :)

the solution

Our Anniversary Cruise - Part 2

2009-10-14T14:47:00.001-07:00

We visited 2 towns in Alaska and 1 in British Columbia on our cruise Itinerary and saw 2 glaciers.

The first place we stopped was in Juneau. As Alaska's state capital, it had some neat buildings and some cool history. The ship was docked about 20 minutes walk from downtown (yes, Juneau has a downtown, it's not that small.) so we decided to walk in rather than taking a shuttle or the bus. Partly this was to avoid the HUGE line of people waiting, partly for the exercise, and partly because we were attempting to not spend every penny we had ever made during the course of the vacation. Once we got into town, we wandered around and made our way past the Courthouse to the City/County museum. It was a really neat little museum, with info on the gold rush, traders, and political history. Also, they had a huge chunk of the little building devoted to the local basketball team. Apparently high school basketball for them is what football was where I grew up (stands to reason, since it is indoors). When we were leaving they gave us a certificate celebrating Alaska's fiftieth anniversary as a state, which was signed by the governor. Very nifty.

Alaska State Capital Building

After the museum we walked past the governor's mansion, which was really pretty with a very nice garden, and onto a little park at the edge of a residential area. Cope park is a nice little park that runs along Gold Creek, at whose headwaters gold was first discovered in that area. We went there to try to find a letterbox, which we were unable to find. It was still a great walk through town and a really nice park. After that we went back to the downtown area and wandered through the shops. Shane bought me a really pretty necklace made of white quartz with gold veins through it as an anniversary present and souvenir. Once we were done in town, we grabbed a shuttle up to the glacier. Mendenhall Glacier is about a half hour out of town and you can easily walk to the base of it. We did not hike around to the glacier, but we did take a bunch of pictures and hike some of the little nature trails near the visitor center. After that, we headed back to the ship and went to the buffet for a late lunch. We kept it light, since it was only a couple of hours until dinner time. It was really neat and really weird having a set time for dinner. Normally we just kinda eat when we are hungry, but it was not really that hard for me to adjust. I just made sure not to eat too much too late in the afternoon. Since dinner usually took between an hour and an hour and a half to finish, there was plenty of time to eat all the food I wanted. :)

Mendehall Glacier

We were in Juneau on Sunday and on Monday we went to Skagway. Skagway is really focused on the gold rush and the tourist trade. There were tons of tours available, so we chose one that would take us up the White Pass Highway, the main route for the gold rushers. We crossed over into Canada (my first time in Canada, ever) and stopped to see some great scenery and a really cool cable suspension bridge. The driver told us lots of stories about the rush and also lots of really bad (and funny) bear stories. He kept us entertained as he drove us back into Alaska and to the last part of the tour, where we got to try gold panning and see a gold dredge. It was really neat to see the inside of a dredge that had actually been used in the Yukon and we even found a little bit of gold in our pans that we got to bring home as a souvenir.

Gold Panning in Skagway

Once we got back to Skagway, we wandered through town and looked at the shops and a cool little museum devoted to the gold rush at the National Park Service office. When we were finished in town, we walked back to the ship and again had a little lunch before resting for the afternoon. Shane took so many naps on this vacation that I am surprised he needed to sleep at night. He basically dozed whenever we were in the room for more than a few minutes. The bed was super comfy, which was awesome, since I have gotten spoiled by my sleep-number. We saw the show after dinner and Shane hung out in the casino for awhile before bedtime. We had to get to sleep early on Monday, because Tuesday was the day we were going to sail to a glacier and we would be there by 8 in the morning.

Dawes Glacier

We were sailing up to the Dawes glacier in the Tracy Arm Fjords wilderness and I actually set the alarm so that we could be up in time to get some breakfast before we arrived at the glacier. We found a seat in the buffet that was right at the front of the ship so that we could watch the cliffs and waterfalls while we ate. We went outside when we were done and found a spot to sit and watch the scenery float by. There were tons of little waterfalls cascading down the sides of the mountains on either side of us and lots of little bitty icebergs floating past the ship. We were originally scheduled to go the the Sawyer glaciers, but the channel there was too full of ice for a safe passage, so the captain got permission to reroute us. This was way better than just sailing around doing nothing, but now we have to make it back sometime to see the twin Sawyer glaciers. When we had sailed as far as it was safe to go, we got a great look at the Dawes glacier. It looked like a river of ice, with it's ripples just flowing down into the sea. We did not get to see it calve while we were there, but all the icebergs in the water were really great.

The rest of the day was spent sailing out to sea on our way down to British Columbia. Of course, the weather turned again and the seas got pretty rough, but I managed to keep control of myself and took plenty of Dramamine. That night after dinner the featured show was a couple of comedians/jugglers. They were really great, but had to work really hard with the ship pitching so much in the rough water. I got quite a scare when they pulled Shane up on stage. They were juggling machetes back and forth around my husband while the ship rocked and rolled! Let me tell you, my heart was in my throat. Shane was, of course, just fine, although he was terribly embarrassed about being pulled up on stage. It was a bit of a thrill, but I would be happy never having that happen again.

We spent a whole day at sea on our way to Victoria, which was spent relaxing on the deck, playing a game of shufflegolf (I took third place and got a medal!) and just generally wandering around the ship and goofing off. We had another formal night and I even talked Shane into getting a formal portrait done while we were all dressed up. Dinner was really yummy and, of course, we had a great time with our table mates. After dinner was a production show featuring the ballroom dancers employed by the cruise line. Shane was very NOT interested, so I went by myself. I said hi to one of the cruise directors staff and visited with her for a while. The show was super and afterwards I went and found Shane and we hung out for a while and then went to bed.

The next morning we made port in Victoria, BC, which is a gorgeous city. Again we walked into town and wandered around a bit while we tried to decide what we wanted to see. We ended up starting at the Royal BC Museum, which was hosting an exhibit from the British Museum featuring artifacts from about every culture throughout history that you can think of. It was a bit crowded, since there were school groups going through, but we really enjoyed it. They even had a couple of artifacts that you could handle! I found it thrilling to be able to hold a bronze figurine from India that was many hundreds of years old. I have always been fascinated by history and archaeology, so I think we really lucked out in going to the museum that day. This was the only stop in North America that the exhibit was making.

After the Royal BC museum, we went to the Victoria Art Gallery. It was really nice, although they had several sections closed while they changed exhibits. After the gallery, we walked up to Government House, which is where the Lieutenant Governor lives and where visiting dignitaries stay. We were told by someone from the information center that over the summer a member of the Japanese royal family had visited and the Price Harry of England had been to stay for a short while. Kinda cool! The house itself is not open to visitors, but the gardens are so we spent a great hour wandering around. The property is huge and there are all kinds of landscapes in it: a rose garden, a pretty duckpond, tons of lawns, a rock garden, and even a 70 hectare scrub oak forest. Following our usual pattern we walked all the way back to the boat for a late lunch. I don't know how much I walked on this cruise, but I do know that I pretty much ate whatever I wanted and I weighed the same when we got home as when we left. That is something!

This was the last night of the cruise and we saw the farewell show and went to the little scavenger hunt/game show that they host each cruise called The Quest. I am not allowed say much about it other than it should not be attended by children, that those were some of the prettiest men I have ever seen, and that if you ever go on a Royal Caribbean cruise, you absolutely cannot miss it. It was the funniest thing ever!!

On the last day of our cruise we sailed into Vancouver, BC to disembark. It was really quick and easy for us to go through customs, since we hadn't bought anything in Canada. We grabbed a cab to the bus station and took our Greyhound across the border to Washington State. We live in Washington, so a friend picked us up in Bellingham and drove us home. It was a long drive, since we took the scenic route, but it was great to be able to visit and have dinner with him. We arrived home late that night and were very glad to be able to flop down and not have anything else left to do.

The end :)

Our Anniversary Cruise - Part 1

2009-10-05T12:19:00.000-07:00

Shane and I decided to do something special this year for our anniversary, since this is number 5. We finally decided to take a cruise and agreed upon Alaska as the destination. After months of planning and excitement (on my part, Shane pretty much ignored it and me) it was time to go.

The cruise lasted 7 nights and was really great. On the first day we drove to Seattle and, after going through security and check-in, boarded the ship. It was huge. the ship has 10 passenger decks and holds over 2000 passengers and 800 crew. So, as you can imagine, there was a lot to explore. We found the buffet restaurant, which was open for lunch, and got something to eat. Then we wandered around. We checked out the pool deck, which was right outside the buffet and the next deck up, which was open. Then we located the main dining room, wandered past the shops, and checked out a couple of the lounge areas. By then it was 2:00 and we were allowed in our rooms. Our baggage was already waiting for us, so I unpacked and Shane took a catnap. There was plenty of storage, even though the room reminded me a lot of my dorm in college. The bathroom was tiny, but sufficient for the week.

Centrum Sculpture

After Shane's nap we went up and wandered around on deck 10 (the open one) and found a good spot to watch sail away. Actually two spots. We watched them cast off the mooring lines from the front and then went to the stern to watch the engines stirring up the water behind us. There was another ship leaving at the same time and several smaller craft zipping around, but we had no problems getting out into Puget Sound.

We spent some more time on deck, but soon it was time to get ready for dinner. On our way down, we checked out the casino and the spa, even though I had no plans to use either. We tidied up and I put on a clean shirt and went to the dining room. The first night was casual, so my jeans were ok. We were sitting at a table for four, which was nice and cozy and met our tablemates for the cruise. There names were Patty and Blake and they were from Huntington Beach, CA. They are only a few years older than us, so it was great to be able to chat and had a lot of fun with them the whole week. Our waiters were Uzari, who asked us to call him Uzi and said 'fabulous' to every choice we made, and Jessie, who seemed to be there whenever we turned around offering bread and filling the water. They were both super.

There were shows each night in the theatre and the first night was a comedian who was super funny. Also they introduced the singers and dancers employed by the cruise line, who were really great. After the show they put on the movie "Watchmen", which Shane and I had been wanting to see, so we hung around for that. About 2/3 of the way through the movie, I started getting queasy since we were almost to the open sea by that time. The ship was pitching pretty badly and I decided to skip the rest of the movie and go to bed.

towel animals!

The next day was spent at sea and I spent half of it in my room being uncomfortable. I finally managed to down some Dramamine and make it out for lunch. After lunch we had a meet and mingle with some people we had been chatting with online and also got to meet the cruise director, Carlie B. Everyone was great and offered tons of suggestions for beating sea-sickness.

Shane and I did some more wondering and he showed me some of the places he had found that morning while I had been battling with my stomach. This was the first formal night so I got all dressed up in my pretty blue dress (saved from HS prom) and we went down to the dining room. Again (as with every night) dinner was great and then the show was super.

I can't even remember everything I ate, but each night we could have soups, salads, appetizers, entrees, and desserts...as many as we wanted. Most of the time we each did a soup, a salad, and entree, and a dessert. Sometimes we were a bit greedy and went with 2 desserts, but that was usually the extent of the gorging. :) There was any kind of food you were in the mood for: fish, steak, pasta, Italian, Asian, Mexican. It was all very, very good. I could go on for days about the food, but I should stop now and post this.

Later I will come back and write about the next few days. Preview: Juneau, Skagway, and glaciers!

A New Post

2009-10-01T08:34:00.000-07:00

In which I make lots of vague promises that I have every intention of following through on.

You guys are really the most devoted readers a lazy blogger could wish for. I know that you actually do read when I remember to post, so I always feel so guilty when I forget for such a long stretch.

To update you somewhat, I have to back up a couple of weeks and tell you all about my anniversay. Shane took me on an Alaskan Cruise for our fifth wedding anniversary! It was so much fun! The scenery was gorgeous (even though I saw no whales), the ship was tons of fun, and we met some really great people. ---I will now make my first promise.--- I have lots of pictures and notes and will find some time this weekend to show them to you. :)

Since we got back, I have just been doing the work and relax thing. I have also been doing some thinking, and trying to get some plans made for Christmas presents, since I only have three months left if I actually want to make things for people. I actually have to cut this short this morning because I need to get to the library to get some books for more ideas. :) ---Promise number 2.--- I will be showing you what I plan to do as soon as I get a better idea of what that is.

I have lots of plans for this month, from taking part in a 5K walk this weekend (even though it is supposed to be raining) to hosting another canning party for the boxes of apples I am wheedling out of one of our clients at work. :) ---And finally promised number 3.--- So, this month you can expect posts about all the great things I am planning and hope to accomplish.

I accept good wishes and ideas for Christmas and recipes for use with my apples and the pears we picked last week. I hope you all have as much fun as I am going to try to have this month. October is my favorite month, since it is my birthday (a murder mystery party this year, more on that later (ooh, I snuck in a 4th promise, look at me)) and Halloween, and fall is finally really here.

Pictures

2009-09-05T19:43:00.000-07:00

So, I know I should have posted this ages ago, like when we did the canning, but I have been alternately busy and lazy and gone. Anyways, here are the long awaited results of the jam party.

We had loads of fun spending the day making jam. Nikki came over early and helped me pick the pluots at my neighbor's house. We got enough and then ran to the store to get the supplies to perm my hair. Once Chantel and Katie arrived we got started on processing the fruit. In addition to the pluots, we had strawberries (frozen) and peaches.

First we had to chop the fruit into tiny pieces and cook it down. Then we added the sugar and got it jarred up. The water bathing was super fast and we completed 6 batches of jam.

This is the pluot...

The peach had the most beautiful color...I am not sure these pictured really do it justice...

And these are our lovely jars cooling...We ended up making about 19 jars of jam for each of us. I gave one to a friend of Shane's and have a couple set aside to thank the neighbor who gave us the pluots. It was super fun and we will probably get together again to do apple pie filling and applesauce sometime in the next month or so when I get a couple boxes of apples from a guy at work. :)

My hair didn't get permed that day, but Chantel did it the next Saturday and here it is...ta da...

It actually looks nicer than this, since I wasn't allowed to wash it for two days after perming, and it was not styled and had no product in it at all. If I get a chance, I will snap some pictures this weekend while I am visiting my parents. They live near the beach, so hopefully we will go over and eat some chowder and letterbox if the weather cooperates...or quite possibly even if it doesn't. On Monday I will return home to my poor husband who is working this weekend and couldn't come and I will give you all some more pictures to look at.

Have a great holiday!!!

Green Beans

2009-08-10T08:40:00.000-07:00

Look, they all sealed. Hooray. The water level dropped some, so I will have to see if that is normal or if I did not have the lids adjusted tight enough. Now I just have to do 5 more loads. :)

Promises, promises...

2009-08-09T18:30:00.000-07:00

Hey, sometimes I manage to follow through. That's right, I am here with pictures of apricots and kuchen, fair and ribbons, and maybe if I get some taken, some pictures from the green beans I am canning this evening.

This is a pretty picture of most of the apricots that I was given. We ended up drying I don't know how many (although they filled up a couple of gallon bags when I packed them all up) and froze two or three gallons. I also made some kuchen, which is a yummy German pastry. It is basically a bread with sugar crumble (like streusel topping), fruit, and a thin custard topping. I will try to dig out a recipe to post tomorrow. I love it because it makes a nice dessert or snack and freezes really well.

These are my fair entries. I won a first place ribbon on each of the first three: the pears from my tree, the strawberry jam I made with a friend (hers is the one next to mine, also a first), and my potted sweet potato. Shane made fun of me for planting the ends of a sweet potato, but I just wanted to try it. I think it makes a gorgeous house plant. I am hoping that it will actually make some small sweet potatoes, but who knows. The last is a second place ribbon on the zucchini relish. I must say in my defence that it was a second for purely superficial reasons, which were not my fault. Cathy's got a first, and since we made them together, you can tell that it would have been a first also. Next time I will be more careful, since they are very picky about the jars and labels and so on, and take them into account in the judging.

What is that big pink ribbon on the sweet potato, you ask? Why, that is my Best of Show ribbon for the Unusual Vegetable class. Yippee!! I am so proud of my silly potato. Such a good potato to win Best of Show.

So, I had a lot of fun entering in the fair and am already making plans for stuff to enter next year. The way their rules are stated, entries have to be made or grown during the year previous to the fair. So, anything I make between now and next August, I could enter. I am going to be doing a lot of canning this fall and hopefully some really great needlework projects. If I can ever finish any of them.

We canned green beans tonight, just one canner load since they take so long, and they look pretty good. Hopefully they all sealed properly, since I have about 5 more loads to do and it would be nice to know that I am doing it right. I am still a bit intimidated by pressure canning. Water bathing is so much simpler, but, unfortunately, just not an option for veggies like my green beans. After the green beans are done, we hope to buy a whole bunch of tomatoes and can salsa and spaghetti sauce and try to find time to make pickles. Also, on the 22nd, I am having some friends over for a canning party. We are going to make three or four types of jam and relish and then split up the batches, so we can each take some of every type home. I thought that was the best way to get a lot of kinds, because otherwise you end up with more jam than any sane person needs, especially a sane person trying to cut back on carbs (which means less toast). I have no pictures of my green beans for you right now, but I will take some in the morning and post them, at least I will if they all seal properly. If not, I may edit this post to erase any evidence that I made the attempt. :) Wish me luck.

Apricots and Fair Time

2009-08-04T21:24:00.000-07:00

I was reminded again today that I have not gotten the pictures of my apricot adventures posted yet. I apologize for being busy and having dead camera batteries. I know they are just double A's, but I have to make it to the store to get more. Someday...at least by Saturday, if not tomorrow.

We ended up drying I don't know how many pounds of apricots, giving me a couple of gallon bags full to put in the freezer for snacking. Yummy yum. It's kind of cool because we had two different varieties, one large and sweet, the other smaller and more tart. We also got another couple of bags from a friend for me to freeze in halves for baking later.

Tonight I went down to a nearby town whose fair is this weekend. It is not my town, but it is one of those great small town fairs and we have friends who are very very very involved. We always volunteer to help and this year I entered some strawberry jam and zucchini relish that I helped make, as well as some pears from our tree and my potted sweet potato. I will find out if anything won on Saturday and hopefully I can post pictures (taken by my camera with the new batteries that I will buy) of my entries and their (hopeful) ribbons. So, lets all cross our fingers and hope to see lots of lovely pictures Saturday or Sunday morning.

Also, nifty event coming up...I am hosting a canning party for a few of my friends. We will make jams and relish and may do some baking. I am so excited!

2009-07-25T16:53:00.000-07:00

So I have a facebook acount now...sigh. I was trying not to. Really hard. I really don't need one more site to keep track of and check obsessively. But then my brother and sister got facebook and closed their myspace accounts. Then my dad got facebook. So I have facebook. I am such a follower. :) It's not my fault though, I had to. Otherwise I would never get to see new pictures of my adorable niece. Whatever.

Anywho, now it is time to go and halve and pit the giant box of apricots that I was just given. I am going to dry all or most of them with my borrowed dryer (and see if I will need to buy my own dryer) and make apricot kuchen. I will post pictures tonight or in the morning. It is the tastiest thing ever. Ever.

Cherries

2009-07-14T22:31:00.000-07:00

I almost forgot to tell you about the cherry harvest.

We ended up pitting and freezing 10 1-gallon bags of cherries and sending about 45 pounds home with my father-in-law to make cherry wine from. YUM!!!

Also, we took a bunch to friends and work.

There were still some left on the tree, but they were getting bad, so we decided to let the birds finish them off. A bit messy, but we were very tired of cherries. I never got around to drying any, so I may try to defrost some of the ones in the freezer and dry those. We will see if that works.

I am going to get a bunch of apricots to dry as soon as they are ripe...mmmm.

Things that I am doing

2009-07-14T22:07:00.001-07:00

instead of blogging for your enjoyment.

ATC's

Still doing ATC's, and still loving it. I am going to be doing several swaps this summer. Here are some of the cards that I have already done (and sent out).

Letterboxing

I have also been doing some letterboxing, even if you cannot tell from these photos. Nikki and I dragged the guys along on a trip to Maryhill Museum and the Stonehenge memorial. The ostensible purpose of the trip was to locate some letterboxes, but we also saw the museum, had a yummy picnic, and generally had a really nice day. We did actually find a couple of boxes as we wandered. Yay!

This is Nikki and myself feeling regal. :)

The peacocks at Maryhill (and there are tons of them) were hungry too. Noisy things. :)

Gardening

Gardening has sadly fallen down to number three on the list. We got some late season annuals into the boxes on the front porch, which I am really enjoying. Also, the Dahlias are starting to get pretty big. This shows the buds which opened a day ago, but I haven't gotten out to take a picture of. Working too much. I will try to get some tomorrow.

There really is a bud there...can you tell?

This is my porch...it needed the color.

Long time no see...

2009-06-15T19:30:00.000-07:00

I know that I have not posted in a long time, but I have a good excuse. I have a new hobby...and a yard...and a garden...and a husband...and friends. :)

Let's start at the top. My new hobby is Artist Trading Cards, or ATC's. They are neat little portable art. The idea is to create a piece of art, in whatever media you like that will fit into 2.5 x 3.5 inches. The simplest way to start is to use a playing card for a template and decorate that, although it looks nicer if you use card stock as a base. I haven't bought any cardstock yet, so the playing cards will do for now. You then decorate it by drawing on it, creating a collage, embellishing a picture, or whatever you can think of. You then trade your creation. That's it. Simple and fun. A card can take as little as an hour or two to create. I am participating in a yahoo group for ATC's called ATC World. The people on ATC_World participate in swaps, which are organized trades in which you make 5 or 6 cards on a particular theme or method and then send them to a moderator. The moderator will the give each person in the swap a card from each of the other people. So, you send in 6 of your cards and get back a card from each of 5 or 6 other people. Nifty way to do it, and it saves a lot in postage. I have participated in one swap, which I mailed off this morning, with the theme of the Green Man. The cards were definately a freshman effort, but I really had fun doing it. I cannot wait to see what I get back from everyone else. I signed up for another swap that ends the 30th of this month, and made those cards up yesterday. I think there are also a couple of other that I will do that are due in the next few of months.

As for my other hobbies, I was trying to get some letterboxing in before my friend left for Mt. Rainier for the summer. She works up there developing curriculum and studying the volcano and loves every minute of it. The program also hosts an exchange with scientists in Japan, so she will spend next summer at Mt. Fuji. So so cool. The sad part is that now I will not see her for the next two months. Very Sad.

Shane and I have been squeezing gardening and yard work into what spare time we can scrape together. My yard is looking decent, but needs weeding. The bulb beds are all bloomed out and need to be weeded and have the leaves trimmed back. My veggies are being slow, so I may have to add some more tomato and pepper plants to augment what is looking to be a fairly small crop. I envy Bethany her lovely plants. Hopefully it will all come out right in the end. At least my potatoes, onions, and rhubarb are doing really well. Also, the cherry tree is getting very close to being ready to start picking. This is going to be a big job this year and I will pay in cherries if anyone wants to help. :)

Other than that, I have been super busy at work for the last few weeks, so my weeknights are spent winding down. Over the weekend, Shane and I went to dinner with my boss to visit and hang out. Shane and my boss really get along well and they love to talk about lab stuff.We went to a really good Mexican restaurant in town. Yummy. We spent Saturday clearing out the garage, using a chemical cleaner on the floor, and sealing all the cracks. Whoever built this house did a crappy job on the concrete work. Tonight Shane will be spraying a sealant over the whole floor and when that dries we get to start in on the modular shelving system that he is building along one whole wall for storage. Yay! I am so excited to have real storage.

So, in the near future I have cherry picking, card making, shelf building, visiting with my family and Shane's and above all relaxing in the sunshine whenever possible. Oh yeah, and Ren Faire is the end of the month...if I can squeeze it in :) For now I am off to eat the yummy stew I put in the crock pot this morning. See ya.

Lately

2009-05-05T16:33:00.000-07:00

I have been very lazy lately. I seem to have done no blogging, little housework and lots of lying around watching TV, which is a feat since I do not have TV (hooray for Hulu). Shane is out of town this week at a training seminar and I have made all sorts of promises to myself about the things I am going to accomplish before he gets home.

So far, so mediocre. I worked on my embroidery last night, which I am woefully behind on, which was good, but then I got tired of that and watched hulu and played solitaire for way too long and then couldn't get to sleep early as I wanted to, so I am super tired today. Poor Chantel had to deal with a lot today. On top of being tired, my allergies have conspired to make me lose my voice, so she had to do pretty much all of the phone work in the office. Poor Chantel.

I had planned to get up and clean the kitchen this morning, but that did not happen, since I forgot to set my alarm early and was too tired to wake up on my own. So, I say to myself, I will do it tonight. Ha ha ha. I am so tired right now that I will have accomplished a lot if I manage to make it home without falling asleep on the freeway. I just want to make dinner and climb in the recliner with hulu and my book. I am also thinking about running by Dairy Queen for a Blizzard on the way home. That would be naughty, but it sounds good. I might not though, since I have brownie fixings at home. Brownies require mixing and baking and cutting, so much effort. Sigh.

Ok, enough whining. I will drive everyone off and have no followers. ;) So, the plans for the week are still cleaning and working on my embroidery and cross-stitch. I also would like to get the garage emptied out and clear the laundry closet. I want to clear out the closet, because one of the girls at work is giving me a washer and dryer! Yay! I know it sounds nuts not to have one, but it was a money thing, as in, they are expensive and the laundromat is cheap. But for me, convenience counts. So, since these are free, Shane can't complain. The garage needs to be cleaned out because when Shane gets home we are going to clean, patch, and seal the garage floor and the driveway. Whoever patched it last did a crappy job. Crappy. Once the floor is done, we are going to be building in shelving and storage cabinets along one whole wall of the garage. Shane is planning storage for canned goods, my crafts (although I am still arguing for the spare bedroom closet to be craft land), Christmas stuff, a bunch of books we don't have room to shelve, and all the other assorted crap we own. I am excited to be getting everything organized, but I never look forward to the work it takes to get there. Oh well. It will be nice when it is done and I don't have to shift through stacks of boxes or dig around in a dark closet for the fabric I need or the suitcase I am looking for.

Other than cleaning and clearing, I hope to get out and find a letterbox or two this week with Nikki. It has been a couple of weeks since we have gone. I also need to get a journal to set up for my letterboxing notebook and finish all the notes that go with the boxes we have already found. I would like to make the journal kind of like a scrapbook, with notes and pictures of the boxes and the fun we have hiking or driving to them.

I also need to get the lawn mowed and some weeding done in the veggies and bulb beds. I have no idea if I will manage all or any of this this week, but I can dream. Cross your fingers for me and I will come back in a few days and let you know how it went.

Letterboxing

2009-04-10T16:09:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I went letterboxing for the first time and had a blast. My friend Nikki went with me and we wandered around in the rain and managed to find three letterboxes.

For those of you who have never heard of letterboxing, it is a nifty hobby. The basic idea is to walk or drive or hike to a place, following a set of clues laid out by the hider of the box, puzzle out where it is (which can be simple or difficult), and then exchange stamps. Your gear includes a book or journal of some sort and a personal rubber stamp. These can be bought or hand-carved. I only have a purchased one for now, but hopefully I will manage to carve something that is not hideous before too long. The letterbox will also contain a stamp and a book. You stamp your stamp in their book and their stamp in your book and voila, you just letterboxed.

A lot of people I tell about letterboxing are not interested and think that it sounds boring or crazy or pointless. I don't think they are correct, but it's very individual. I love to go on walks or drives anyway, so the letterbox is almost a bonus for me. I think I am a little nuts, but I am okay with that and definitely not alone. There are tons of people interested in letterboxing around the country and the world. The last complaint, about it being pointless, is again, sort of subjective. I think it's neat to collect stamps and hunt for them. It is kinda like a treasure hunt to me. One of the stamps we found shows a hand-carved wild stallion from the Horse Heaven Hills and it is amazing! The person who made that stamp was an artist. The stamps collected are art and it is fun to have my own personal art collecting in a little book or box. Also, it is neat to look at the log book in the box. Everyone who has found that box signs the book with their stamp and info. They are dated and often have information on where the person is from and what the day was like. I find that fascinating. Some of the people who found the boxes we hunted that day were from the other side of the country.

I have great plans for letterboxing. Nikki and I will hopefully go out as often as possible and find all of the boxes in this area. Also, whenever Shane and I travel, I will try to find a box or two as a kind of souvenir. I am already looking for clues to boxes at the ports we will stop at on our Alaska cruise. My co-worker Chantel just shakes her head and laughs at me when I get going on all of this, but I love it.

Monsters vs. Aliens!!!

2009-04-03T22:00:00.000-07:00

Maybe I am a little behind the times, but I loved this movie. We just got home from the theater and it was HILARIOUS!!! I laughed my butt off the whole way through. I super recommend it. Now, I am tired and am heading off to bed, but if you want to see a movie tomorrow...see that one. Plus it is in 3-D, which is super fun also. Night all!

Vegetable gardening

2009-03-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

I spent so much time in the last post talking about my flowers, that I figured I should give equal time to the vegetables we have planned. As I said, we are starting some of the seeds inside: red bell peppers, green bell peppers, two kinds of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and three kinds of tomatoes (beefsteak, orange, and pear). In addition to that we have bought onion sets and potatoes.

We are close to having the second garden bed ready to plant, all that is left is to mix in the chicken manure (stinky stuff). I am not sure what all we will be planting in the beds. Aside from what I have already listed, I think we will set up a trellis for pole beans, plant some more types of peppers, and maybe put in some vining plants like squash, pumpkin, and raspberries. Between all that and my fruit trees, I will be very busy canning and freezing all summer and fall. :) Yay!

Getting my veggies ready.

2009-03-26T11:16:00.000-07:00

Over the last couple of weekends Shane and I have built a grow-light and planted seeds for the vegetables that we need to get started indoors. The light system is really neat. It has two fluorescent lights in the correct colors and the height is adjustable, so as the seedlings grow we can raise the fixture with them. The frame is kinda jury-rigged, but we can always build a new one, since we spent about 5 dollars on this one. The whole thing, including the light, timer, and frame was under sixty dollars and we can very easily take it down and store it away for next spring.

We planted the seeds late last week and we already have some sprouts in the cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower. I am eager for the tomatoes, since we will actually be planting tomatoes that I like this year. :) Also, the rhubarb that we planted late last summer is starting to get leaves. This makes me very happy, since it was kinda pathetic last year from being planted so late and I was dreadfully afraid that it would not make it through the winter. Hooray for being wrong!

More of my bulbs are blooming now, including 1 very cheerful daffodil. Its siblings are coming along with some fat little buds, but it is the only one to open so far. Also, the hyacinths are putting out their little stalks full of buds and I am eager to see the flowers start to open. The sad part about bulbs is that they do not last forever. The aconite and snow drops are nearly all faded now and the crocus are starting to get droopy. I will survive that though, since we planned the bed to bloom in waves, the daffodils and hyacinths will replace the crocus and then the tulips and more daffodils will replace them. We should have bulbs blooming in the front bed until at least early May. By then, my iris bed should be getting its act together and the roses will be getting ready to bloom. The roses will last till frost, as will the dahlias we will be ordering this weekend. To top it off, the iris bulbs we bought are rebloomers, which means that most of them should bloom again in August or September. !!!!! Aren't flowers the best?

The First Day of Spring

2009-03-20T18:16:00.000-07:00

(yes, I know it's blurry)

Today is finally the first day of spring. Of course that means it is cloudy and may rain, but I am okay with that because the rain will help my flowers and the clouds keep the glare out of my eyes while I am driving. :)

In honor of the happiness that spring brings me, I wanted to say Happy Spring! and show you some more of my pretty bulbs. Enjoy!

Pictures from Schweitzer

2009-03-12T20:53:00.000-07:00

Some pictures from our ski trip to Schweitzer in January.

Shane and his dad at the village.

Gorgeous frozen waterfall near Hope.

A view of the ski resort from our condo in Hope.

I have to admit that I had fun trying to ski. I was not very good, and it was crazy cold and snowy that day, but my instructor was great and by the end of the hour and half I was starting to really catch on. He said I was doing really well. I am just afraid that I won't remember much if I try it again next winter. We'll see. :)

The condo was great, with lots of space, and we had tons of fun hanging out and cooking and playing games and looking at the view across the lake. The lights on the mountain at night were beautiful. The lake was great and the town was great. Tons of fun.

Flowers!

2009-03-12T16:01:00.000-07:00

There are flowers blooming in my garden!!! I am so pleased. They started opening late last week and are so pretty. Only the earliest bulbs are blooming right now, but they are so nice. We have Iris reticulata, early snowdrops, aconite, and snow crocus. The hyacinths and tulips are poking through the ground and should be the next things to bloom, along with more varieties of snowdrop and crocus. Hooray!

Last weekend we got a bunch of pruning done on our fruit trees and took a big limb off of one of the sycamores. Once we get those branches all cleaned up we will go get some dirt for the second vegetable bed and get started planning and planting those. So far we only have onion sets to plant, but I keep reminding myself that it is very early. :)

I am ready for spring...can you tell?

Game Night and Cruising

2009-03-01T20:21:00.000-08:00

Game Night was great this weekend. We got eight people together and played a rousing game of Munchkin. Good times were had by all. Saturday I did a whole lot of not much at all, which was great. It is nice to actually be able to relax on the weekend. :)

Today I got my chores and errands done and Shane worked on the yard. When we finished with all that we drove over to the mall and went to the travel agents to get some information on a cruise.

We have been talking about going on a cruise this fall for our fifth wedding anniversary. I am very excited about it, but it is proving to be somewhat difficult to make some of the decision. We have about nine cruises to pick from that fit our time and price range that are going to Alaska. The good and the bad is that they all go to different places and none of them go to all the places we think would be neat to see. So, we have to decided which would be the best combination at the best price with the best excursions. So so so difficult. I tried to convince Shane that he should just pick one for us, but he is making me think about it too...meany. My life can be so difficult sometimes.

In other news, we got some art prints from the Rad-Con art show framed and picked them up yesterday. They look so great. We picked some really nice frames and they worked out really well. We even hung them up...yay us. :)

Also, I have decided that I need to get back onto my diet soon, at least within a couple of weeks. Unfortunately, I decided that after I went grocery shopping and got a bunch of things that are not South Beach Diet approved. So, it is going to have to wait a week or two until I clean out the fridge and cupboards. I refuse to throw away food. Some stuff can just be boxed up and put away until it is allowed again, but not everything. I really like South Beach since it works really well for me, but it is hard to give up the bread and pasta and sweet stuff. The first week is hell. Sigh. However, I remember how well I was doing last summer when I stuck to it for a couple months. I lost about 15 pounds and was really looking good. Unfortunately I got lazy and haven't been sticking to the rules so I have gained back about five. I was thinking it would be really great to lose about 30 pounds before this fall and the cruise. Shane promised me last year that if I stuck with the diet and lost all the weight I want to lose, he would buy me a bunch of new clothes. It would be super to have a new wardrobe to go cruising in.

I am going to go and look at brochures since I have lots of deciding to do about the cruise. I will keep you posted and hopefully make some decisions soon so we can get this all set and booked. Wish me luck.

As Chantel pointed out,

2009-02-27T19:10:00.000-08:00

I am a bad blogger still. I fibbed about blogging again last weekend. Naughty. Can you ever forgive me?

I am having a game night tonight and we are waiting for the rest of the people to arrive and for the pizza guy to bring my dinner. Yum. I just finished baking a couple batches of sugar cookies which came out nice and soft. Yay me.

Work this week was ok, but there is a super lot of drama about some people being promoted and some not and blah blah blah. I work with 7 other girls, so I am sure you get the picture. Sometimes its like being back in high school. Oh well, I will survive and I am sure Chantel will as well, even if it is not by staying with us. :(

Other than work, my husband is wonderful because he cleaned the whole house to get ready for tonight and he bought me a new vaccuum, which I have been wanting since mine always smells like burning rubber when I use it. So yay for my new vaccuum. I will try it out tomorrow and hopefully let people know how it works.

I should run since the pizza guy just showed up and I am starving. Hope you all have a nice night.

I am still alive...

2009-02-21T09:39:00.000-08:00

Not very active, but definitely still alive. I am sorry for the laziness that has resulted in such a long period without a post. Sorry sorry sorry. Is that good enough? Okay, on to recent events.

The blogging hiatus started when Shane and I went to Idaho to vacation with his parents. We stayed at a nice condo near Schweitzer Mountain and got in some skiing. I took a lesson and it wasn't half bad!

After we got home I have mostly just been being really lazy. We spent one weekend at RadCon, the local sci-fi/fantasy/whatever convention here in the TC. It was much fun as always. I made super cute fairy wings that I will have to take a picture of and we bought a couple of really great art prints at the art show.

Other than that my only excuse is that Chantel was having way too much fun on a cruise, so I had to take care of everything at work and we were kinda busy so I was super tired. But don't feel bad Chantel, I may have to go on a cruise this fall just to pay you back. ;)

Anyways, I will post again this weekend with more details and a really late reading list for January. Catch you all later.

January

2009-01-18T18:44:00.001-08:00

January is treating me well so far. Work is good and we are starting to pick up on the number of samples coming in. This is nice, since it means I don't have to sit around bored out of my mind all day long. :) I know...it sounds good, but trust me...eight hours of nothing to do is not fun for very long.

My family is well...at least mostly. Shane hurt his back Friday morning while he was still in Philadelphia. Poor thing had a day of class and then no sleep and then had to fly home. He is feeling better now, but I am not sure how much skiing he will be able to do next week. We are still excited about going though. He says that it will be nice, even if we spend the week with a nice bottle of something and a stack of movies. :) Which is all we did after he got home yesterday...sans bottle...but the movies were fun. I think we watched four or five movies before we finally went to sleep.

The other reason the ski trip will be fun is that my mother-in-law and I are going to get to work on the embroidery for the quilt we are making together. I am excited! Also, I plan to take a cross-stitch project that I have been working on and some knitting. Lots of crafting and cooking and having fun...yay!

I am still reading my way through my stack of library books and I am being good. I have not checked out any more yet. I need to finish the three I am reading first. And maybe the other two as well, we'll see. I did take a picture of the big one I told you about last time.

The book is titles 30,000 Years of Art and weighs 12 pounds. It's dimensions are 12" x 12" x 3". Lovely book! Full color photos of each piece of art on each page with descriptions, etc. I really would love to have this one. And it is pretty cheap. Only $32.97 on Amazon. I was so surprised. I assumed it would be priced like a textbook...around $100.00. Yay. Maybe I can get it soon. :)

Let's see...what else. My diet is going well. I have lost about 4 pounds this week. Don't worry, that is normal for South Beach. It will slow down. I fudged a little bit this weekend, but I will be good again all week so I can move onto Phase 2 in time for our trip. It is hard to have fun and eat yummy things on Phase 1.

I will take tons of pictures during our trip and post about it. Also, I hope to take some pictures of our quilt project to show our progress...or lack thereof...whatever happens. Pictures from our garden should be in the offing. The bulbs should be sprouting anytime now and I will be taking pictures regularly to show you all the prettiness. Shane and I also picked out the plants for my planted boxes and started a list for the vegetable garden. I can not wait for spring!

One last thing...a nifty blog. I am kinda behind the times, but for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, A Year of Crockpotting is the best. Last year she cooked every day with her crock pot. I wish I had known about it when she started, but Stephanie has archives of every post and every recipe is complete with pictures and instructions for the things she made, as well as review from her and her family. So many wonderful things to eat!

Work and Plans and Stuff

2009-01-07T21:24:00.000-08:00

The plans I have made for the new year are going fairly well I think...at least some of them are.

I am doing a lot more reading now and some of the books are even educational. I will post a list later of what I am reading and what I think of it, but for now ... I want the big one! I checked out a book called 30,000 Years of Art. It is giant and pretty and I could seriously maim, if not kill, someone with it without trying too hard. I will weigh it one of these days and measure it and shock you.

Other than that, I have been riding my exercise bike and will be starting the South Beach Diet again this weekend. It will be hard to do the worst part without Shane around to be my enforcer, but at least he won't have to listen to me whine. For those of you who live in a cultural vacuum or just don't pay attention to this sort of thing, the South Beach Diet is, for the first two weeks, basically no-carb and no-fat. After that it is just low-carb and low-fat. This is very difficult for me, since those are my favorite types of food. So I suffer ... but I have not learned to suffer in silence. Poor Shane. But, as I said, he will be out of town for more job training and will only have to listen to me when he gets home. I think that I will only do Phase 1 for 1 week this time, since we are going to Idaho with my in-laws the following week and this is not the easiest diet to do when travelling. I will still try to stick to it as well as possible, and we will be doing lots of normal cooking since the condo has a full kitchen, but I don't think I can be 100% faithful to the rules. And in case you are curious, the reason I do this even though I hate it is that it is effective. Yes ... a diet can be effective. Although, I believe they prefer to view it as a lifestyle change ... but I just keep changing back after a few months. While I am following the rules, even if it is only mostly, I lose quite a decent amount of weight and can keep it off. Last summer I did it for about 2 months and lost 20 pounds. I only gained it back over the holidays while I was being a disgusting pig and living on candy and the cookies I baked. Naughty. But I want to get back on track now. I have gained back about ten pounds that I want to get rid of again, plus the 20 left that I did not finish last time. My goal weight is 150. I will keep you informed of my (hopeful) success.

While in Idaho I will be working on the embroidered quilt squares with my mother in law and, hopefully, some new knitting patterns. I may get a set of circular needles and learn to make hats and socks. That would be super fun. It may wait until we get home though. I also plan to take a cross-stitch kit that I have been working on forever. I pick it up and do a little and get side-tracked and put it away and repeat that once every few months. I am progressing very slowly, but it will be gorgeous when it is done.

Work is proceeding along as normal and we are all waiting to find out what the new owners of the business have planned. I work for a small lab and we were bought by a large company that employs 1,400 people and has labs all over the east coast and Midwest. This means there are lots of things they may do to improve our operations, but it also means that they will take their own sweet time doing anything. So many vice presidents-in-charge-of and so much paperwork and so many conference calls. Ugh ... I am glad I am not the manager. I am merely the lowly secretary in charge of faxing this to him and mailing these to them and keeping track of conference calls and appointments and so on and so forth. Busy times, but hopefully all the fuss and nonsense will pay off for the lab and our clients.

On an exciting note, in the next few weeks our garden will start sprouting. We spent several weeks in the late fall planting 2 large bulb beds. The bed by the house is all irises, which won't be up for months yet, but the bed by the road is full of all sorts of different bulbs. Some of them will be blooming next month, which means I am going to start watching for tiny green points to start poking up soon. I promise lots of pictures. This makes me want to read The Secret Garden again ... I think I will read it tomorrow. Yay!

Plans for 2009

2009-01-01T21:19:00.001-08:00

I won't call these resolutions because everyone knows resolutions always fail within a month or two. So I will call them plans. The big plans I have are for getting in shape and eating better, reading and crafting a lot, working on the house and garden, and spending more time with family.

I was doing really well at eating better and exercising regularly over the summer. Really well. I lost 20 pounds. Unfortunately, I fell off the routine and have actually gained a couple of pounds back and lost what progress I had made in my exercising. So I want to get back into working out a little every day and not eating so much junk.

I plan to read more this year, especially 'worthwhile' books and classics. I plan to start a reading list of the books I want to read and keep a journal of what I do read. I also want to follow a plan to read the Bible in a year. I may even copy the great idea the ladies at The Common Room use and post my month's reading here for your enjoyment. I love reading their lists. I always see books that I want to read as well as old favorites. I also want to do more crafting this year. I want to get better at the things I do now like crochet, knitting, and cross-stitch. I want to try new things like the embroidery project I have planned with my mother-in-law.

I plan to get a lot of work done around the house and yard. We have a lot of projects that we want to accomplish. These include building my herb garden, planting a large vegetable garden, building some shelving in the garage for better storage, and continuing to clean and landscape the yards.

Finally, I am planning to spend more time with my family. With the changes at my job, I will have more vacation time, so I want to have long weekends with both sets of parents, more camping and hiking, and more time with Shane. I hope to get him interested in letterboxing and I hope we can spend lots of time relaxing together in our time off.

What are some of your plans for the coming year? Anything new to try or old that you would like to start doing again? I wish you lots of luck and a year full of prosperity and good times.

2008...a year in review

2008-12-31T13:49:00.001-08:00

I have only been blogging on here for a couple of months now, but I really think that the last day of the year merits a glance back to remember the ups and downs and craziness that is my life.

This year, for the first time in quite a while, was spent entirely in one home and one job. It was wonderful. A full year spent in our new home has shown us the joys and the problems of home ownership. This home is ours to do with as we wish. We have gardened and arranged furniture and made plans for the projects and gardening and such that we hope to complete in the coming year. We also practiced using the home design software that we have so that when we are ready for some serious remodeling we can use the program to help us decide on colors, locations, and costs of materials and cabinets and so on. Also, we plan to use it more to plan out garden spaces this year. The gardening we did manage fell short of the plans, but we had only so much time, money and energy to spend on the yard, trees, flowers, vegetables, and bugs. Hopefully we can improve on it in 2009. Our respective places of employment were also satisfactory. The laboratory I work for went through a few personnel changes earlier in the year and we have ended up with a great set of techs who do the job well and are able to work together with only a few personality clashes. I think this is fine, because there is no way a group of people can spend that much time together and be able to get along for all of it. Shane's work is also doing well. Their project is continuing to be ahead of schedule and hopefully that means that the stay and complete bonus will be along sooner than we expect and can be put towards our mortgage. Hurray for paying off our home!

Our families are well and happy. My brother and his wife were transferred to hell...or at least its suburb, but are coping with the boredom that comes from living in the middle of the desert on a tiny base. Their little girl turned one year old in October and is growing so fast. She is a very cheerful child and loves to talk on the phone, which is a blessing since I have only actually met her once. My parents are happy and well and spent lots of time camping and going to the beach, which is great because that is half the reason they moved to that area. I was able to go on a visit to their place this summer while Shane was off at training classes. We also made it to their house for a long Thanksgiving weekend. Shane's parents are also well and are still talking about selling their house and finding a smaller one, something that they have been discussing since all of their children moved out two or three years ago. It would be nice for them if they do, but I admit that it is great for the whole family to be able to have beds when we are all there on the holidays. Shane's sisters have both made changes to their households this year. Gina got herself a little terrier mix puppy this fall, upon which she dotes. The only problem is that the puppy in not very friendly to strangers, even strangers to whom she is related and spent several days. There was quite a bit of barking over the Christmas holidays. Julia gave up on finding a nice apartment after searching for quite a while and decided to share living expenses and quarters with her boyfriend of several years. This is nice for her, since it also moved her a lot closer to work, cutting down a yucky commute in the metro area.

Hobbies for me this year were a mixed bag. I learned a couple of new things and have plans to take on a couple more, but I admit that I have fallen behind on my reading. I have not read as many books this year as I think I normally have. I also have not tried as many new books. This is something that needs to be corrected. Immediately. Some of the new books I have read are the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyers, which I gave mixed reviews, the first few books of the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan, and a couple of books from the biography section at the library on Elizabeth I. I promise to do better next year and also to share with you the ones I find the best. I am pleased with learning to knit though. I have meant to learn for years and find it very enjoyable. I have done a couple of scarves and lots of practice patches and last night I tried my hand at perling and found it fairly simple, although the stitches seem to come out much tighter than my knit stitches. I will have to search around and figure out why and practice a bunch more. Alternating rows of knit and perl look my nicer that just continuous knitting. Also, I have spend more time cooking and baking and canning now that I have a nice big kitchen. I love baking and wish I had more excuse to. The big problem is that it is a spendy hobby if you cannot use up the baked goods and no one needs that many cookies. I am not sure if the last activity we have really gotten into counts as a hobby, but I love to entertain. Now that we have the space, we have been able to have people over for dinner, games, and movies. It is so much fun and I think it is much better entertainment that spending too much money on a movie and over-priced popcorn or hanging out in a bar or club. We have a large selection of games (which grew quite a bit over Christmas ) and videos and it has been a great pleasure to have our friends over so often.

In summary, I think that we have had a wonderful year and have many reasons to be thankful for our home, family and life. I hope that 2009 will be more enjoyable and lead to many new friends and opportunities for my family and for yours.

Enough relaxing...

2008-12-18T16:09:00.000-08:00

I have gotten off work early the last three days because we are so slow and the weather is bad, but I have accomplished very little in all that free time. I ordered some books for Shane's Christmas gifts and came up with the answer to all my puzzling about what to get my mother-in-law. But that is all. I still have to think of more ideas for Shane and figure out the ordering for his mother. So, I have to stop being so lazy and get going.

I need opinions...any ideas for my hustband? He likes to read and play games and be outdoors. The best I am coming up with right now is a new game for him. I am afraid that is not very original, but at least I know he will like it.

For my mother-in-law, the story goes like this: Shane suggested I come up with a gift that would let us spend more time together and work on a project or craft. I love this thought, since I don't think we get to see them often enough, especially considering they are only two hours away. So...the idea I came up with is that I could buy a set or two of pre-stamped quilt blocks for us to embroider and then quilt into a lap quilt for her to use, enjoy, and think of the fun we will have. I really like this idea, but I thought of it awfully late and I cannot seem to find the blocks anywhere in town. I can order them online, but I want to make sure that it is a good idea first. I have not quilted before, but I do like to cross-stitch and embroider and I want to make sure that it sounds like a reasonable project for us to do. My mother-in-law is also pretty good at embroidery. If you have any good online sources for this type of project, I would appreciate it. The only sites I am coming up with right now are JoAnn's and Herrschner's.

So, I am off to search the net some more and then go and wrap another present in the pretty paper I got after Christmas last year. Yay for clearance.

Gift Baskets are done!

2008-12-15T21:34:00.000-08:00

I have finished all of the gifts that have to be made except one and bought nearly all of the others. The gift baskets came out great!

I am very pleased that my idea was as good as I hoped it would be. I picked out a cookbook for each basket, crocheted some dishcloths, added cookie cutters, a spoon rest, the apron I made, and a couple of -kitchen whats-its. The mix-in-a-jar stuff was really easy to put together. I made up a jar of brownie mix, oatmeal cookie mix, cocoa mix, and Russian tea mix for each basket and also added a jar of the pear butter we canned this spring.

I am also very pleased with the aprons I made. I did not have a pattern to use, so I just copied the shape of the apron I have and used bias tape to trim it (thank you Bethany!). So pretty!

So, that is what I can accomplish with a five day weekend. I took vacation time that I needed to use up before the end of the year and stayed home Thursday and Friday. I finished most of the work on the presents and some of the household chores I wanted to get done. Saturday we were going to have people over for game night, so I finished my chores and got ready, but it started snowing and my friends were understandably hesitant about risking themselves, their children, and their vehicles on slick, dark roads. My friend Nikki did come over and we had dinner and watched a couple of movies and then it took her over a half hour to make the ten minute drive home. Yuck. So, Sunday was a lazy stay at home and watch it snow day. I accomplished nothing and am completely okay with that. This morning, my husband climbed back into bed after shoveling the driveway and told me the freeway south of town was closed, which meant neither of us could get to work. So, yay for another day off, but I was starting to go stir-crazy. Shane decided to brave the roads in town to go see a movie with a co-worker of his who also could not get to work, so I had him drop me at Nikki's apartment, since she was on a snow day and bored too. We watched movies, had burgers, and played with some beading kits I picked up at Wal-Mart. She made a really cool necklace that she plans to wear tomorrow and I got about halfway through a really complex necklace that shows great promise. I will post a picture if it comes out well. I hope that the roads will be clear tomorrow, since I will have today's work as well as tomorrow's to do in the morning and I really need to get the Christmas packages shipped now that they are completed. Cross your fingers for me.

Falling behind

2008-12-09T07:35:00.000-08:00

I am lagging. The race to be ready for Christmas is leaving me in the dust. I made all sorts of promises to myself to have everything done by now...yeah...not happening obviously. So I am trying a new goal. Everything that needs to be shipped goes out by Monday. That is getting awfully late, since that only leaves the post office or UPS a week and a half to work their magic. But I can handle that. If all else fails I will have to pay extra...ugh.

I have accomplished a little though, I have the materials for the aprons and will be cutting them out tonight and hopefully starting to get them put together. I am going to get the ornaments we are making out to get started as well, although they may have to wait for the weekend, since Shane will be helping me and he cannot stay up too late. Today I will decided which mix recipes I want to use and make up my shopping list so I can get them put together over the next few days. I should have the dishclothes done as soon as I can find an hour to crochet the last two and weave in the ends.

I think that is everything, so wish me luck. I have to get ready for work now...yay. :) Good luck on all your goals for the day.

So much to do...so little time

2008-12-02T20:20:00.000-08:00

The holidays have stopped creeping up on me and have started charging.

Actually it's not that bad. Thanksgiving was great. We went to my parents place for the weekend and had a nice relaxing time. My mom had a big turkey for us and made all the sides to go with it. It was so good :) We all ate too much and had a lot of fun. We took some board games with us and played a few of them. The best new game we have is called Escape from Pompei, in which the volcano explodes and you get to sacrifice your opponents to the volcano to try to appease the gods. There is more to it than that, but that is definately the best part.

On Friday we went to the beach, as you may have noticed from my amazing photographic skill... Just kidding, although I am proud of how well I am learing to use my camera. I have only had it for three years now...yay me! ;) The weather was gorgeous and fairly warm for the beach on the day after Thanksgiving. There was a storm a little way out to sea and it was kicking up some nice waves. I bet you could even surf a couple of them...Not bad for the Oregon Coast. We had lunch at a great seafood place in Florence and then drove up to Heceta Head Lighthouse and walked up to the top. It started to get cold, but it was neat to watch the sea lions playing in the waves. On Saturday we mostly just hung out, while we weren't messing with my parents new dishwasher. Games, relaxing, a few movies. It was a nice weekend. I was sad to go home Saturday night, since I don't get to see my parents often enough. It was nice to be able to sleep in on Sunday and relax though, instead of having to get up and drive home in the yucky traffic.

Now it is time to worry about Christmas. I have some crafting yet to do on present for my siblings and for some of the other relatives. I also have baking to do and need to decided on a present for my Secret Santa person at work. This weekend will be busy, because I want to work on all of that and my husband is volunteering to help at the local LEGO competition. I hope to go just to see what all those smart little kids build. Also, I want to start my decorating this weekend and maybe go get our Christmas tree. That may have to wait until next weekend, since I seem to have this one pretty well booked. Wish me luck!

Twilight and Thanksgiving

2008-11-25T21:40:00.000-08:00

I have found a new variety of heroin...Twilight is the most addictive thing I have read in a while. The problem is that it is too much like drugs. I know it is bad for me. I know it is killing brain cells. I know that I can come up with so many better things to do. So, what do I do? I read it in a single day. What's worse? I am getting the next three books in the morning so that I can do it all weekend. I am an addict and I am ashamed. Do you suppose there is a support group for people who read books like this? I may even have to watch the movie. Chantel called it a 'Twinkie book'. That means you know its mediocre and bad for you, but you consume it anyways. Oh well.

(Honestly, it wasn't too bad. The writing was juvenile, but since that is the target audience, it's hard to complain too much. The story was predictable, but funny. Although, I am not sure it was meant to be as hilarious as I found it. There was a lot of laughing and giggling at the characters and the expressions...especially Edward.)

I hope you don't think too badly of me. I have also been concerned with things more befitting my intelligence and maturity ;). My knitting is coming along nicely. I finished the scarf, but it was very short, since I made it a bit too wide, so I took it all out and started over on a thinner scarf in the same basic knit stitch. I am getting to be fairly consistent in that stitch and will soon venture into the brave new world of purling. Yay!

Other than that, I am more than ready for Thanksgiving. I am so excited to see my parents, since I have not been able to be with them since the summer. They live too far away to make an easy weekend trip. I am also excited because I do not have to do any advance preparation, since we are going to my parents house for the weekend and my mom is taking care of all the pre-baking and pre-cooking duties. Such a nice mommy :) I don't even feel guilty about that because we were not even going to do a big dinner and then she decided she felt like it after all. So it was totally her choice. She is even going to help me make fudge this weekend. Yum yum yummy. It is not the smooth marshmallow-y fudge that takes 10 minutes, but the lovely sugary peanut butter fudge that takes an hour and requires the knowledge of the mysterious 'softball stage'. Ooh...arcane isn't it. I hope to pay very close attention yet again so that someday I will be brave enough to ruin my own batch of fudge. I know that it is still tasty when it doesn't set properly, it is just not as pretty for sharing. Hopefully we will also find time to go the beach for a day if the weather is not rainy. I haven't gotten to go to the beach since last summer I think...so sad.

For now it is past my bedtime and I have to get up and pack in the morning, so I had better scoot. I hope you all have a lovely holiday and will join me in giving thanks for the loving families and friends and lives full of joy that God has blessed us with.

Lazy Days

2008-11-20T09:29:00.000-08:00

I have been being lazy or busy a great deal of the time lately and so have not found the time or energy to post. Over the weekend I helped Shane in the yard. We cleaned up most of the leaves that have fallen so far and took them to the dump and pulled out some icky shrubs, which will be taken with the next load of leaves. Shane also finished clearing out the iris bed, so that can be planted this coming weekend. While he worked on that, I cleaned the house up, something that I have a tendency to let slide. I can almost always think of something better to do and I seldom have the willpower to get the cleaning done first when I get home and am tired. I also got some cooking and baking done over the weekend. Saturday I make a big pot of cabbage rolls (which fed us all weekend) and Sunday I baked a couple of apple pies. This was my first completely homemade pie. Don't yell at me, but I have never made my own crust. I always heard it was hard and complicated, so I just bought pie crust at the store. I decided to try it out and they came out pretty good. Shane, my pie lover, said the only thing he would change is to make them a little thicker next time. I can probably do that. I also learned to cut the apples a little thicker. I could not remember the way my mother would do it, and the book said to slice them thin, so I did. A little too thin...it was more of an applesauce pie once they cooked down. Oh well, still tasty.

Other than that I have been practicing my knitting and watching too much internet tv. My scarf is now about 17 inches long and I am all caught up on House, Bones, and Kitchen Nightmares, as well as a couple of other shows on Hulu. We actually spent an entire evening this week watching a bunch of episodes of Reba that they had loaded recently. So lazy :)

I have also been improving my mind, though. I am almost finished reading The Complete Tightwad Gazette. It has a lot of great tips and ideas in it. I am going to discuss using some of them with Shane and see what he thinks about trying to save some money around the house. The biggest things I want to do are to really do a good job in our garden next year and get a lot of canning done and to make up a price book for grocery shopping. I have read about this in several places and it seems like a great way to save a lot on groceries with only a bit of work at the start. I think I will start when I do my shopping this weekend and get some prices down.

For now, I need to back to work. We are in the slow time of the year right now in the agricutural business and there are often giant chunks of free time. I am working on a couple of projects for my boss, but other than that, he doesn't mind if I read, knit, or surf on the computer. So nice!

I can knit!

2008-11-12T07:22:00.000-08:00

Well, sort of anyway. I managed to do about 5 rows of what will become a scarf last night in the class. After casting on about 5 times for practice. It was a lot of fun. The class was just for beginners, so I didn't have to feel silly asking to see something again or needing help figuring out exactly what I just did that left such a funny pattern in the yarn...wanna know what I did? I yarned over. Yes, I am a crocheter. No, I have no idea how I did it. Oh well. I like knitting. For now it takes a lot of concentration, and I am not sure I have it down 100%, but I will keep practicing and hopefully get much better at it soon. Yay me!

And isn't it the prettiest yarn...yay me!

Oh, I almost forgot, go to Charity Grace's page and look at her beautiful idea for a banner for the holidays, I think I may make several.

Knitting!!!

2008-11-11T07:35:00.000-08:00

I am so excited!!! To prove that, it took me four tries to spell excited correctly. Not even my fingers can wait for their treat tonight. :) Tonight is my beginners knitting class. Yay! I am very excited about learning to knit. I love crochet, but there are some projects that just look better, go faster (I hope), and will be easier if knitted. For instance, I don't think it would work to crochet mittens. I might be wrong, but I just don't see that going smoothly. Crochet is great for things like that afghan that I promise to finish after the dishcloths, also easily crocheted, that I am making for the gift baskets.

I am sure you all know just what it is like to have a dozen projects in the works, and then, just to irk your husband (not really, but I am sure he thinks so) you find something new that you absolutely have to try. There is the afghan, the Christmas projects, the counted cross-stitch in the closet, the fishing pole case to sew, and a million other little projects that I have around the house, in one state of completion or another. And now I am going to learn to knit and add a scarf to the pile. I certainly don't mind. My point of view is this: I am not always in the mood to cross-stitch, or to crochet, or to drag the sewing machine out. And some things are definately not portable. I like to take projects with me to work for free time and on car trips, although I tend not to work on them much in either situation. Nothing ever works out quite like I think it would, but the option is still there.

To summarize, yes I am adding yet another thing to the list of my skills and to the even longer list of my projects. I don't mind. :) I will try to post a picture when I get home of the scarf in progress. Although I am sure you all either know how to knit or know what a scarf looks like, I will be wanting to show off my newfound skill...hopefully. ;) Wish me luck!

Lazy Day

2008-11-09T16:15:00.000-08:00

I love grey weather. It just seems cozier. I want to snuggle up with a blanket, good book and a cup (or three) of hot cocoa. Aah, just sounds great doesn't it? So what have I done today? Nothing on that list...and nothing on my Christmas prep list either. I need to get in gear.

Since dinner is just leftovers from the last few days, I am devoting my evening to several things. I will make that cocoa for my husband and myself, work on my Christmas crocheting, get some pictures scanned in to the computer that have been sitting on the desk for the last 4 days, and last, but not least, just relaxing and enjoying a quiet evening.

One other thing I want to mention, both to thank the blogging community in general for pointing it out to me and to show to anyone who might not have heard about it yet, is the Tightwad Gazette. I requested a copy of The Complete Tightwad Gazette from my library and am enjoying it immensely. I have seen it mentioned in several blogs and it seemed to be the sort of thing I needed to read to really get a handle on all of the various ways to save money and be more creative with the money I do spend. My husband and I have decided that we would like to get our house paid off within two or three years (yes, we only bought it a year ago, no we are not nuts) and in order to do this, we keep to a fairly small budget. However, recent discussion has led us to the conclusion that we are not putting enough away for this goal. We eat out at least once a week, and I am not using all my resources to save on groceries and the few other purchases we make. The biggest budget buster is obviously eating out. We have decided to go back to the cash budget we used to use and stop putting all the little odds and ends on the card. By switching back to cash, we will not buy all those extras, since the money is simply not there. Any extras we do want need to be planned for and agreed upon by both of us.

My grocery budget is small, since there are only two of us. I hardly have to buy any meat thanks to the generous gift of a half of a hog each year by my boss and we are planning to buy and quarter beef this year, which will cut back the meat purchases even further. The savings on buying meat this way are great, but obviously the chest freezer in the garage is a requirement for this method of shopping. I intend to further trim my shopping budget by making more food from scratch, since I tend to be lazy and use more convenience foods that I should. I am working out a way to get a greater variety of dishes out of the shelf of cookbooks I have collected and plan out menus that can be cooked ahead.

I hope that anyone interested in fugality who has not read this books make it a point to check it out soon. I am enjoying the writing as much as the great tips. I also hope you are having a lovely relaxing Sunday afternoon.

Is it Christmas yet?

2008-11-04T14:54:00.000-08:00

Ok, not really, but I am starting to get ready for Christmas. I already mentioned that I am working on some of my Christmas presents. I am making gift baskets for Shanes's and my siblings. I found the baskets on Saturday, actually picnic hampers. Value Village had three different but nice wicker hampers. I paid a little more than I intended for one of them, but it actually still had all the plastic dishes in it and Shane said we can use them for camping. So, my plans so far are to crochet dishcloths, sew aprons, and make baking mixes to put in the baskets. I will also look at the bargain books at the bookstore for some neat cookbooks. Then it will just be whatever strikes my fancy to fill them up...cookie cutters, utensils, etc. I also got some neat Christmas idea books from the library.

One of my new tools is the Christmas Countdown.
http://organizedchristmas.com/christmas-countdown
They have a schedule and planner ideas to help you be organized and ready ahead of schedule. The whole setup is supposed to make it so that your presents are bought and wrapped, your cards written and stamped, and your decorating and early baking completed, all by the end of the first week of December. Doesn't that sound great? I am not doing any entertaining in my home this year, but I hope to do a lot of baking and we will be doing some travelling. Hooray for being organized!

On other topics, work is super slow right now, so I am getting a lot of reading in on some fantastic blog archives. See the blogs I follow for some great ones. Tonight I will probably be plopped on the computer for the whole evening. Shane is spending this election night watching the excitement over at his friends house, since we don't have TV. I plan to have a yummy dinner that may or may not be strictly on my diet, read blogs, and hopefully go to bed early. I probably won't manage that last, but I always try.

Weekend fun

2008-11-02T13:14:00.000-08:00

Friday night was a lot of fun. We did not get many trick-o-treaters, but the ones that came by were so cute. Shane picked up a few movies at Wal-Mart and we watched a couple of them and had pizza for dinner.

Saturday we ran errands, cleaned the house, and planted some bulbs. In the evening we had friends over for dinner and games and had loads of fun. Nikki came over to help me cook spaghetti for dinner and we cut up veggies and made dip for the chips. There were seven of us and we played a couple of really fun card games (Quiddler and Grave Robbers From Outer Space) and ate loads of spaghetti and munchies. Then we had a small ice cream cake that Shane's friend Chris brought to celebrate Shane's birthday. We finished up pretty early for game night and then the guys went to a movie. Nikki and I were too tired, so she went home and I curled up with my book. We really need to have game night more often, especially now that it is getting too cold to be out and about. I also need to find more games for 7 or 8 people. Most of the board games top out at 6 players and we like to invite as many people as we can get. I would appreciate any ideas.

This morning Shane opened his presents from his parents and me. It was all fishing gear, which pleased him. I think he likes my present, which is great since I am not the best shopper ever. Sometimes my ideas are big flops, which is depressing. After leftover cake for breakfast, which is totally not on my diet, we ran around a little looking for a cover for his truck and some work gloves for my since mine are rapidly wearing out. Now it is time to relax for the rest of my Sunday and hopefully get to bed at a reasonable time tonight.

Angels and Demons

2008-10-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

I don't know how many of you are fans of Dan Brown and the books Angels and Demons and The DaVinci Code, but I am. I love mysteries and puzzles and these were great books. They did a pretty good job making the movie The DaVinci Code, not a great job, but pretty good, and I am so excited because I just saw the trailer for Angels and Demons, which will be out next May. The things that most excited me are that Tom Hanks is back as the lead (because he is a great actor and I hate it when they change the actor in a sequel) and Ewan McGregor will be playing Camerlengo Ventresca. I won't give away any spoilers here, but I think he has the perfect look and attitude for the role...the whole shebang. So anyways, so so so excited!!!

http://www.angelsanddemons.com/

Much Ado...

2008-10-30T08:12:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is Halloween! I love Halloween. Dressing up is still one of my favorite things, as evidenced by the party earlier this month. Mostly now I just love the adorable trick-o-treaters. Last year we didn't get very many by the house, but I am hoping this year will be an improvement. Shane asked me last night if I was going to get some candy today and I said I had already had it for a week in the pumpkin bowl. Like I would forget trick-o-treater candy!

Anyway, hopefully I will get home from work a little early so that I can see the itty bitty ones. One of these days I will have to have a couple little ones of my own. For now though, all my friends have enough babies to satisfy my cuddly cravings. I am even going to a baby shower on Sunday! Lots of babies. :)

We have three BIG sycamores in our yard and the colors are beautiful right now. I am enjoying fall very much, although I need to pull my sweaters out of the closet. Last night I was looking through some Christmas idea books from the library and was super cold. I asked Shane if I could turn up the heat, but it was already at 70. Sad.

My Christmas plans are starting to come together. I am making several of the present being given out this year, so I am not starting too early. I just hope that it won't end up being late! However, the crafts I have picked out are fairly simple, so hopefully two months will not by too little time. I will try to post pictures of some of the things I make, or at least take them and put them up after the holidays so no secrets are spilled.

Before I go, I have to brag. My sweet, sneaky husband dropped these off at my office two days ago before I got to work for no reason whatsoever!! Isn't that wonderful? Chrysanthemums are my very favorite!

Costume Pictures!!

2008-10-26T21:57:00.001-07:00

Here are the promised pictures of the costumes that I made for our birthday party!

Nikki's blue poodle skirt and my gold flapper dress.

I am so proud of these. I am far from being a seamstress, but I had fun doing these outfits and they turned out really well, if I do say so myself.

The weekend is winding down

2008-10-26T17:07:00.000-07:00

I accomplished some things that I had planned on this weekend, but not everything. The biggest thing that did not get done was the spaghetti sauce/salsa canning session. Shane worked today and we had to work on the garden yesterday, so there was no time. Hopefully we will be able to make that happen next Saturday. My friend Nikki might come help if we do.
I did get quite a few of my other tasks done. Yesterday we ran errands and put in a lot of bulbs in the bed in front of the house. We still have some more to go in and another bed to prep, so for the next few nights, Shane will work on it once he gets home. I made four batches of pear bread today and have a ham in the slow-cooker for dinner (and lunch and dinner and lunch and dinner--it's a big ham for just two people). I ran around town some this morning and found a birthday present for Shane and some yarn for my afghan and some Christmas projects. Yay for yarn on sale!!
Right now I am trying to convince myself to go out and prep the bed for the next set of bulbs before Shane gets home so that we can get them in the ground quickly, but I am being very lazy and haven't been able to talk myself into it yet. I also need to charge the batteries for my camera so that I can post some pictures of my projects and the gorgeous fall colors that are showing up in my yard.
For now, I will tough-up and go out to dig for the bulbs and hope that Shane gets home early so we can get them all done before it is too dark.

Time flies

2008-10-23T21:22:00.001-07:00

So, lately I have been really busy, but I am not sure that I have accomplished anything. I got some more pear butter finished, although it ended up a little thinner than I wanted becuase it was getting late and I needed to get it in the canner so I could go to bed. I have also been working on a crocheted afghan that I started ages ago when I wasn't very good at it. I am still not great, but I am faster now and can do quite a bit without looking at it since it is a beginners pattern and just a lot of chains and doubles. I need more yarn for it though, so I have to go hunting this weekend and hope I can match at least the type of yarn. I don't have any hope for the dye lot. No biggie.
Tomorrow after work I am going to go cheer on a bunch of kids I don't know in their homecoming football game. My friend Nikki teaches science nearby and she is uber-involved in extra-curricular activities. Mostly I am going because I love football and haven't been to a game in a year. So sad. So I will go freeze my butt off and cheer my lungs out. Then Saturday Shane (my husband), Nikki and I are going to make a bunch of spaghetti sauce and salsa and can it. I can't wait. I always complain about how much of a pain canning is, but I put up with it because I love the food that I get without any trouble at all for the next year.
The only other news I have right now is that I am excited because I signed up for a beginner's knitting class at the local yarn shop. Yay!! I have wanted to learn to knit for a long time, but I don't know any knitters and I did not really want to try to learn from a book. So it's very exciting, but the class is not till Nov. 11th. I guess I will just have to work on finishing up that afghan until then. Wish me luck on finding the right colors of yarn.

Recent History

2008-10-21T21:03:00.000-07:00

Lately I have been very busy, which is why I thought a blog would be interesting. The biggest thing recently was the Birthday Party. My friend Nikki and I both turned 28 last week and decided that it had been far too long since we had had a birthday party. After some deliberation, the decision was made to have a costume party the weekend before our birthdays. Costume making ensued. :) A week before the party Nikki finally decided that a poodle skirt was her dream costume and I sewed her a cute one out of light blue felt with a white poodle applique. I made myself an awesome 20's flapper dress in gold and black and cut my hair short to complete the look. Friends, games, and ice cream cake made for a great evening.
Since then, the biggest part of my busyness has been a flurry of canning. Our house came with a cherry tree and a pear tree in the back yard. The cherry did not cause us too much trouble this year due to a lack of proper spraying, but the pear produced more than enough to make up for it. My husband and I each took a lot of pears to work, but we still had several boxes of pears left. These sat ripening in the garage until last week, when they would wait no longer. I canned a few quarts of pear halves and this week I am making pear butter for canning. I have got 15 pints so far and may do another batch. Other than that I will be making pear bread and pear kuchen, both of which are yummy and both of which freeze well. Pears for everyone.
This weekend, once the pears are done, we plan to buy a few boxes of tomatoes at the produce stand and make a bunch of salsa and pasta sauce to can. Yummy!
As the holidays creep (or sprint) closer, I am sure that I will only get busier and busier, but it should be fun busy.

To blog...

2008-10-21T17:11:00.000-07:00

Blogging is fairly new to me, other than a couple of interesting (to me) events that I felt the myspace community should definitely know about. With the idea in my head and the encouragement of a friend I am now jumping feet first into this new endeavor. Many things in my recent past are exciting to me and I just need to tell someone about it...even if they are only pretending to listen. So welcome to anyone who finds this and I hope that you get some small amount of enjoyment out of my ramblings and random insanity.