Where I came from:

Where I am now:

/whine

As promised, more Christmas craft photos

Here's the trash bag wreath, done and hung for under $5:


And here's a photo of me cutting the marshmallows. I tried a knife, scissors and a pizza cutter. The pizza cutter worked best. The key to stick-free cutting is to keep everything well dusted with powdered sugar.

Stuff we are making

The kids love to do crafts, but the finances are very tight. I found some really cheap crafts for us to do this year and we are loving it!


These are snowflakes we made from Borax (have it on hand for laundry anyway), pipe cleaners and thread. Total cost was $2 for a package of pipe cleaners and they were ready overnight. You can read the instructions here.

I also found some really cheap fresh cranberries at the store and made these:


I boiled equal parts sugar and water to dissolve, let it cool for a bit (so the berries didn't pop) and added the berries. After soaking them overnight, I drained off the sugar water and rolled the berries in a little sugar. Doesn't it look like snow? They are tart-sour-sweet-yummy, too. Oh, and all those good antioxidants surely make up for the sugar, right? Who cares, it's Christmas!

We also made homemade marshmallows, which are yummy but not as fluffy as I'd like since I was using a hand mixer instead of a heavy-duty machine (my Bosch broke in our move here) and a trash bag wreath. I'll post pics of those in the next couple days.

The Hokey Pokey

or, "That's What It's All About"

One of our very few Christmas traditions is the birthday cake the kids make for Jesus. We light the candles, sing Happy Birthday, and eat the cake on Christmas Eve. Kind of keeps us reminded of why we do what we do before we tear into packages.

Mauled by a Leopard

Sometimes when I don't blog, someone needs to send the Saint Bernards out, cause I sure could have used a shot from the cask on their collars this time!

My wonderful hubby gave me a copy of Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) with which to upgrade my most excellent computer for Christmas. Which I did, but without backing up the hard drive first. ALWAYS BACK UP THE HARD DRIVE FIRST. I knew that, but didn't do it, and we all paid the price (and are still making payments) dearly.

We lost it all. ALL of it. Every address, phone number, photo, document, application, bookmark, I mean everything. Hubby spent four hours on Christmas day just getting from Spinning Beach Ball of Death to start up screen. Not how he likes to celebrate. This is not normal for Leopard installation. Of all the people I have heard about, and all the people my favorite techie-type has heard about, I was the only one caught in limbo after this particular upgrade.

I was eventually able to reconstruct most everything except our bookmarks and address book, but it took a very long week of very long days. I just "found" my blog again (YAY!) so I can start writing nothing to no one once again. Aaahhh, technology.

I do love Leopard. There are so many improvements and it is a really nice OS. I strongly recommend getting "The Missing Manual" for it, because there's no better way to cover all that newness and learn all the cool things you could be doing if only you knew.

Well, it's nice to be back. I'll post more about Christmas, travel, holidays with family, the new New Year's diet, and more head spinning tedium.

In the meadow, we can build a B&M

We lived in a sleepy little burg of 1000 before moving here. I used to go every Black Friday to the nearest town (of 10,000 people!) to do all my holiday shopping on one day and loved it. My mom and sister would give me their lists for us and I'd buy their gifts too, so they didn't have to ship cross-country.

I'm seriously scared to go to the malls or larger stores here. Too close to the city, too many people, and too many stories on the news of people getting pushed and trampled. If I get pushed, I fall over and I've hurt people too many times falling down and the cane going flying. Too dangerous.

But I miss going. It's really where the holiday season starts for me. So, I set the alarm for 4AM and gave it a shot. I drove past Best Buy at 5AM, and saw the line outside was all the way around the building. Hm. Not for me.

At Shoe Carnival they greeted me with a $10 gift card and a buy-one-get-one-half-price offer, so I got slippers for hubby and me. Not gifts, we need them NOW!

The fitted sheet on my bed has bit the dust, but the rest of the set was fine, so I toodled over to Bed, Bath and Beyond at 6 when they opened for a really nice replacement. I can't afford $100 for a set of sheets, but I can afford $25 for a really nice single fitted sheet (especially with a 20% off coupon!) I picked up a charging station there, too so hubby would stop losing his cell phone charger. That can wait to be a gift, I guess.

I dropped by Joann for some pillow forms at 50% off so I can get started making some special pillows for the kids (I'm taking their old special event T-shirts, iron-on-ing a photo of them on the back, then turning the outgrown shirts into pillows as keepsakes). I grabbed some crochet kits and a soapmaking kit (that's the one I used the 50% off coupon on) so they can make gifts for their friends.

At the Christian store I got all gifts: the kids some new music (Switchfoot, Mercy Me, Barlowgirl, etc.) and the new holiday CD by Jars of Clay. They had a 20% off coupon and a BIG cup of hot cider for me at the door. Aaah.

Best Buy was my last stop where I got some DVDs, a Wii game and my gift to hubby: a supercool computerized remote to control all our living room gadgets. We joke about our 7 remotes, but it's becoming ridiculous. When we switched from cable to sat TV he was saying he didn't like the new remote, so it's as good a time as any to consolidate. All of this stuff will be gifted.

Later, in the afternoon, hubby took us to Books a Million and Target. I didn't find anything in either store I can't beat the price on online. But, while at BAM I read up on the new Mac OS upgrade and found the gift I want to send to my oldest boy 'cuz he's da bomb!

I still have a ton of books to buy, but I can get those at Amazon much cheaper than the stores. I have money available there anyway because for the last three months I've taken my profit from my Amazon store in gift certs.

I didn't have to be up at 4AM, I didn't have to wait in long lines, but I wanted to. It kind of kick starts the holiday season for me. I didn't get but a handful of gifts, but saved more than $50 on things I needed anyway because of the special Black Friday coupons and sales.

The rest? Free shipping at online stores! YAY!

It came out of nowhere, officer!

Hubby was blindsided this morning. He's fine, there isn't even any damage to the car, because the collision was an emotional one.

Not that he shouldn't have seen it coming. He does this every year, so this year I tried to prepare him.

"Honey, the kids and I had so much fun today! There are 123 days left until Christmas and we sang Jingle Bells at 1:23!"

"Honey, we had another party today - there are 111 days until Christmas and we sang Silent Night at 1:11!"

"Hm. Honey, I can't think of anything other than a huge, long paper chain to help us count down to Christmas. It's only 100 days away now, you know."

All of these were greeted with various "hm"s and "uh huh"s and shoulder shrugs.

This morning, one of the littler children came bounding into the living room, all excitedly saying, "Only 89 days till Christmas, Daddy! Isn't it wonderful!?"

You'd think the poor man was in the midst of a massive coronary. His face went white, his jaw dropped and he gasped for air. I asked what the big deal was, it's been coming for a while now.

"But, it's so close!"

Did I mention that I'm invisible?

Say AHHHH

It's been a real fiasco here this summer. Turns out several of our children have forgotten how to brush their teeth! Now, that the 7-year old has a cavity, I'm not surprised. That the 10-year old has a cavity worthy of a root canal disturbs me (it was a baby tooth though, so we pulled it.) But that my 15-year old son has 13 - THIRTEEN - cavities, that's a real blow to the parenting job I thought I was doing.

Now, to be fair, in his defense, I concede that he has what is called "porous enamel" and with the move and getting resettled, I didn't exactly run to the dentist for sealants as often as I should.

But, knowing he has this porous enamel, and in my own defense, I have purchased, instructed in the use of, reminded and nagged concerning the use of floss, the toothpaste of his choice, a pre- and post-brushing rinse and a fancy sonic toothbrush that does all but sing the national anthem to him.

If even two - pick two, any two - of these had been faithfully used, I submit the damage would not have been as extensive. Now, partway through drilling, the dentist informs me that at least one of his teeth will require a root canal.

I'm pretty much over my anger, but can't quite see my way to laugh about it yet. I am seriously considering telling all the relatives to purchase tooth care items and gift certificates to the dentist for Christmas this year, though. After insurance we'll be in debt to the dentist more than $2000. While that includes cleanings, my oldest's wisdom teeth removal and various fillings, it doesn't include root canals, braces or anesthesia for the poor boy who just can't sit still in the chair. My mother said, "Have the dentist just skip the novocaine!" Yeah, sure, except the dentist didn't do anything wrong, why should he be punished? So much for a commuter car this year.

So, open wide and say AHHHH, or is it ARGH!?