January

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

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

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

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...

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!

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

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.