On Hiatus

I'm heading to Florida tomorrow morning to spend some time with my family there and to attend my friend's wedding. We're excited to celebrate New Year's Eve at Pleasure Island.

I'll be back in 2007. See you then!!

Slingle Bells

I feel like a big, whiny baby. Here’s why:

Yesterday I flung the backdoor of my car open and bent over to get some bags out. The door bounced back and slammed into my elbow. Really hard. The pain was so bad that I didn’t know if I’d be able to make it from the driveway into the house.

When I got inside, I rolled around on the floor for a while, writhing in pain. Then I was OK enough to get some ice on it and take some Advil. Seven hours later, the pain was getting worse (especially when I moved my arm around) and I couldn’t fully bend my elbow.

So Steve took me to the emergency room. I had to get x-rays and everything. Turns out there were no broken bones. They put me in a sling and gave me some Vicodin. That really helped.

Today it feels a bit better. But all I have to show for my pain and suffering is the tiniest little black-and-blue on my elbow. My hospital discharge papers have the diagnosis “bruise” on them. How lame.

Anyway, I have to wear the sling for a few days. On the bright side, the bags I was bringing in included one from this new store I found that was having a fantastic half-off sale. Note the Juicy baby blue hobo that is listed. It is now in my closet.

Before all of this, I had my hair done and met a friend in Willow Glen for lunch, exchanging gifts and more Christmas half-off shopping. I guess I will be relaxing today.

Special Delivery

This photo illustrates why Dunkin’ Donuts needs to expand to California. Doesn’t it look like the crime scene of a donut massacre?

My brother- and sister-in-law mailed us these from Massachusetts on the 19th. Four days later, they still taste good, but they look like this!! These babies were all snug in bubble wrap and packing peanuts, and they still are a bit weary from their travels. Not to mention that three of them just sort of vaporized in the box.

Anyway, I think they are fabulous for sending them, and we will definitely enjoy munching on them for the next few days. Their smell alone makes me drunk on happiness!

Also, I'm done with work now till 2007. Woo hoo!!

Witness for the Prosecution

I think my neighbor is holding my cat hostage. I’ve always had a suspicion that she was taking Jackson in during the day when we weren’t home. He usually meets us at the car when the first one of us arrives home from work, and he usually comes from the direction of her front door. Some days, he never comes at all. But he’ll show up the next day and all is forgotten. You will recall that he disappeared for over a month in the summer. I had a feeling that she had him that whole time. It is clear that wherever he was, he was certainly getting fed, as he grew about twice his size during that month (i.e., he was not starving in an alleyway somewhere).

I should note that she is a crazy old cat lady. She has many cats herself and I have several reasons to believe she is crazy:

Exhibit A: She sticks silk flowers into her bushes in the front yard.

Exhibit B: We have lived here for three years and have never met her. Every time we see her outside, we approach to say “hello,” and she turns her face and runs in the house.

Exhibit C: Steve found her car keys lying on the sidewalk next to her parked car one afternoon. He rang her doorbell to return them, but she would not answer (he could hear here moving around inside).

Exhibit D: She allegedly started screaming at another one of our neighbors one day for being an alcoholic for no apparent reason (nobody is quite sure of why she thought he was one).

Exhibit E: She left a very confused taxi driver idling in her driveway for two hours one Sunday afternoon (I was monitoring the situation while pulling weeds).

Exhibit F: She will randomly blast old, depressing country music at night from time to time.

So, there you have it, she is crazy.

Anyway, I expressed my theory regarding her cat stealing to our other neighbors last night, and they agreed that it was entirely within the realm of possibility. They are lucky to have met the mystery lady, and feel that she frequently makes up elaborate scenarios in her mind and then acts upon them. For instance, they said that she might think that we neglect Jackson by going to work all day, so she needs to take him in and care for him.

Needless to say, Jackson did not come home tonight, so I am PISSED. I want to go over there and bang on her door and steal him back. But then I wonder if I am the one making up elaborate scenarios in my head?? I feel that the neighborhood corroboration on my theory makes it likely that I am not the crazy one, but I think Steve disagrees.

I guess there’s nothing I can do for now. But you can bet I will be continuing to gather evidence against this weirdo.

UPDATE: Just in case anyone was worried about Jackson, you can stop. Right after I wrote this, I turned off the computer and decided to call him one more time before I got ready for bed. He came in and spent the night all warm and snuggly in the garage with his two little brothers.

Two of My Favorite Things

Yippee! I was so excited to get this surprise holiday gift from Stampin’ Up! in the mail today! And this is a special sneak preview for all you stampers out there – This set will be featured in the upcoming Spring Mini Catalog!

Speaking of direct sales organizations, my friend invited me to a 1154 LILL Studio party. You must check out the Web site. They offer the cutest purses and you get to custom design yours by selecting all of the fabric. The party isn’t for a month, but I’ve already started playing around on the Web site, matching different fabrics and designs.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

It was so freezing this morning that I had to scrape ice off my car before I headed in to work. I don’t think they sell real ice scraper/brushes in these parts at all. So I keep a plastic spatula in my car for such purposes. It gets the job done.

I embraced the coldness and made a steaming pot of vegetable soup for dinner (alongside BLTs). I need to make soup more often. It’s tasty, filling, easy-to-make and can last a few nights as leftovers. Also, it was good to work some vegetables into the diet with all the candy and cookies that are being circulated these days!

Happy Anniversary!

Today is the sixth anniversary of our first date. Hooray! Every year gets better :)

I'm also happy today because -- barring the unexpected -- I have completed my Christmas to-do list. Getting here involved staying up past 2:00 a.m. to make 40 snowman hot chocolate packets, but I’m here nonetheless. I can't believe that I have nothing I HAVE to do today. I miss this feeling and plan to revel in it all day.

Yum-O

I made Rachel Ray's five-minute fudge recipe today, as it was featured on Friday's Oprah. I must say that it really did only take five minutes, and it is very tasty! Also, I'm in the middle of making the gingersnaps from Martha's "Baking Handbook."

In other news, we discovered that our house is walking distance from a fun bar, the Branham Lounge. We went there last night for a birthday party. It is quite a dive, and has an eclectic clientele, but we had a fun time. We had previously been leery of walking to this shopping center and the others at that intersection, because it involves crossing a very major road. We decided to walk there after we tracked the distance on the mile counter in the car and it was only 0.6. It only took 10 minutes and was quite pleasant! We are very excited because that means that we can walk to many fun places, including a yogurt shop, Taco Bell and a nail salon (well, I'm more excited about that). I always wanted a house that was walking distance to shops and stuff, so this makes me happy!

Out to Dry

Come on, people. If one of my posts was ever comment-worthy, it was yesterday’s. The only comment was from my mom. And I had to solicit it!!

Anyway, I will forgive you, and treat you to a view of my latest invention: a Christmas card clothesline!

I think this idea is so good, I’m considering sending it in to Martha and letting her use it as a “Good Thing.” I’m definitely going to be creating these little clotheslines for future holidays that warrant card mailing. I might even put one up in my craft room to display my fanciest work!!

You Need to Click on This Link ...

For a special holiday message from me!!!

http://www.elfyourself.com/?userid=e516c88e2112ac7b701d481G06121322

More Stuff I Made

I finished another project tonight. I took plain old Nestle hot chocolate mix and covered the tins with some card stock that I stamped. Made some tags, tied a bow and called it a night. These will be accompanying the homemade marshmallows as gifts to neighbors.

I think I’ve already overdosed on Christmas. It’s all starting to feel like a bit much. I only have one more to-do on my list, so I’m hoping that when that’s done I’ll be able to take a breath and enjoy things a little.

Oh, and I wanted to follow up on my promise to review the post office’s door-to-door service. I think it probably would work if you had a normal, functioning computer. I had a really hard time printing the postage labels from the Web, so I wasn’t able to try it out. Steve and I have just been making daily post office trips. There have been lines, but they haven’t been too horrible yet.

Also, Tubbs wanted to say “hi!”

Sweet Treats II

Instead of handing store-bought candy out to the people at his office for the holidays, Steve said he wanted to give them some of my homemade peppermint bark. Making peppermint bark is really a no-brainer, but it is tasty. I made three batches on Saturday, layering milk and white chocolate.

I just packaged them up into these little cello bags and stamped the toppers. The three batches made about 20 bags. Now I can cross one more thing off my projects list!

Sweet Treats

My second batch of Martha’s peppermint marshmallows came out much more presentable than the first. I marbled them with a knife rather than the recommended toothpick this time. Here’s a little pack all ready for giving!


I had planned to give these with a tin of hot chocolate mix as little hostess gifts. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get my act together fast enough. I had two parties this weekend to which I showed up marshmallow-less!

I have a bunch of other projects in the works right now that I will hopefully complete later today. One thing I did finish yesterday were these:


Yes, they’re just the boring Pillsbury ready-to-bake cookies, but Steve loves them.

I need to head to the gym now to combat all the little nibbles I took while working in the kitchen yesterday!

Pick-me-up

I have about a dozen packages to mail for Christmas this year. There's a post office around the corner from my office, so I decided I would take two packages in each day to mail, starting today. The line was SO LONG and SO SLOW, and it's only December 8!

I've been seeing all those commercials on TV that say your mail person will pick up your packages right from your porch. It sounds too good to be true. But I looked it up online, and the post office really does offer that service! You can print postage at home, affix it to your package and request a pick-up online. I have a few other packages ready to go, so I think I'm going to try it out tomorrow. I will follow up with my review!

Sparkly

This was the first year we put lights up on our house, so I thought I should document it. Steve did a great job with the net lights on the bushes. They were expensive (it took five nets to cover), but it looks so much neater than random strands. There's also some around the door. The little kids across the street even came over to pay us a complement on our lights!

You Can Call Me Barry

When I was in the shower at the hotel in San Francisco on Sunday morning, I noticed some weird red spots on the palms of my hands. I jumped out of the shower, afraid I was allergic to the hotel soap or the different kind of water.

The spots were itchy and stingy and would not go away! On Sunday night I started to notice I was also getting them on the bottom of my feet. I agonized my way through work yesterday with my feet itching all day. Today it was WAY worse. So bad that I had to leave work and go to the doctor urgently. I was even having a hard time driving because of the itchiness and the fact that it was making me jump and twitch in weird ways.

My mom took me to the doctor, and it turns out it is a virus that I probably got from someone who had previously stayed in our hotel room. GROSS! I had to get a Benadryl shot and a shot of steroids in either arm to help combat the virus. The steroid shot hurt like heck and made me queasy and light-headed. I almost passed out in the doctor’s office and had to stay there longer for observation. So embarrassing and annoying when all I wanted to do was go home!!

So, now I have to take another type of steroid pills for a week and continue to take Benadryl and use Cortisone. I really hope this clears up soon, cause it is disgusting and really irksome. Why have I suddenly turned into a virus magnet??!

Bah Humbug

We started off this past weekend by opening the first window of our little advent calendar on Friday night. It’s full of little chocolate treats. For the past few days, we’ve been enjoying the tasty nibbles, but today’s window was EMPTY!! What a gyp.

After that, we went out to dinner and then ventured to Los Gatos to drive through Fantasy of Lights at Vasona. Another GYP!! Twelve dollars and the whole thing didn’t even last 12 minutes. I’d been before and really enjoyed it, so I don’t know why I was so disappointed this time. Maybe the novelty has warn off.

Saturday we drove up to San Francisco for Steve’s office Christmas party. We stayed the night at the Hilton; the party was at Hotel Nikko. The party was quite fun, with delicious (and free) food and drinks in abundance. The photo below was taken just before the batteries of my camera ran out. It’s the best one I got once I figured out how to use the timer feature.

At the party, the sash of my dress took an accidental dunk in the toilet and we lost the raffle for a $150 Visa gift card by one number! BOOO!!!!

On Sunday morning we were awoken at 7:30 by screaming children in the hotel room next door. I punched the wall and yelled “shut up” several times, but they didn’t get the message, so I called security on the punks. They sort of quieted down after that.

We were up so early, we decided not to waste precious shopping time and ventured over to the big mall with Nordstrom. All was right in the world when we discovered that Nordstrom was having some type of early bird holiday event that featured a live swing band, a help-yourself gourmet coffee bar, a mimosa bar and fancy waiters passing lovely little pastries (all free). YUM! We got a lot of shopping done and had a tasty lunch in the city.

On the way home Steve accidentally ran a red light (we were behind a moving truck and the light was green when we approached). The next thing we knew there were flashes going off all over. They got our picture! DARN! That’s probably going to be an expensive little piece of mail when it arrives.

Anyway, I know it sounds like I’m complaining, but I did have a very nice weekend. And tonight I was able to get done a batch of swaps for our Stampin’ Up! meeting this Saturday. The set is so cute – from the new Winter Mini Catalog. It’s called “I like it a latte” and it has all kinds of coffee/hot chocolate images. And you know how I like my coffee and hot chocolate. You can't see it in the picture, but the steam is glittery and embossed.