It's Getting Crafty In Here.

It's about to get CRAFTY up in here!

Introducing yet another obsession of mine, turned business:

Check the new website.  Check the new blog.  This will involve me, making all kinds of great stuff, taking all kinds of great pics, and putting up lots of fun tutorials.

Time to shed the day job, and do something a little more....well, crafty!

EXCITED!!!

New Year, New Nail Color

This is important.  I usually have 2 or 3 colors that I wear religiously throughout the year.

This is a new year, with entirely new goals.

I need a new color for new creative inspiration.

Teal.

This is Sally Hansen's Fairy Teal.

Also part of my Teal addiction is OPI's Ski Teal We Drop, and OPI for Sephora's Teal We Meet Again.

I have repainted my nails 3 times this year.

In this color.

So far, it's bringing me LUCK!

My Grammy Is 79 Today.

This woman is hilarious.

When she was in the hospital last year, she had to lay still on her back for 2 days for an angioplasty. On the second day, she says this:

"I been on my back for two whole days and haven't made a DIME!"

She got herself a digital camera, and she yells "Everyone say SEXXXX!" to get us to smile.

She wants to go see the Chip N Dales in Vegas for her 80th. Word.

Love this woman.

This just might be my favorite series of Grammy pics ever.

Making a wish:

BIG breath:

 Mission accomplished.

 Girls Sushi Night Out!

Happy, Happy birthday, Grammylammy!

Marie Callender's Chicken Pot Pie (aka Napalm)

Simon made a pot pie for lunch today.

He made it in the mircrowave.

This is the dialogue he had with himself:

"Hm... cook till internal temp is 160.  I thought this thing was already cooked?"

"I think I can just use this oven thermometer to measure this thing."

"WHOA, gheezus!  203 degrees?"

"Is this filled with lava?  This is going to take forever to cool down."

"Maybe I can eat this tomorrow."

"It's 8 degrees outside - maybe I can put it out there for AN HOUR."

"The SUN is 200 degrees.  The sun, and my pot pie."

15 minutes later:

"Holy Christ. This thing is getting hotter.  How is that possible?"

"Can you set the alarm on this thing to go in reverse?  So it can alarm when it cools down enough to actually EAT?"

"Hey, if your hands are cold, you can come warm them over this hole I just poked in the top.  It's like a pot pie geyser."

Ah, the dangers we encounter whey simply trying to cook a decent lunch.

New Years Eve

So I'm getting all worked up trying to find something to do on New Year's Eve, thinking about how cold it is going to be, how scarce cabs are going to be, how expensive everything is, how CROWDED. Brain overload.

Wait a sec - maybe we need to step back for a second, and let it be.  And, I am rather excited to hole up in my house for New Years this year, and we have some lovely plans:

We are making some super delish food.
We are cuddling in PJ's.
We are drinking wine and champagne.
We are - ok, I am - finishing several knitting projects that are going to be much needed in the next few weeks.
We are turning the heat WAY up.
We are watching scary movies so I have bad dreams
We are eating the 6 bags of popcorn we ordered from our nephew for Boy Scouts.
We are going to watch the NYC ball drop for the very first time.
We are snuggling with our pets, such as this fuzzy elf:

We are cutting out all the noise, all the busy parts of our lives, all the stress, and taking a moment to remember to be in love.

I can't WAIT. :)

La Llorona

OK, let me first apologize to my dad, who gave me this painting, for what follows.

This painting used to belong to my Granny Do, my dad's mother.  Dad kept it for me, and gave it to me one night when I was up in the Fort visiting him.  I got home late at night, so I set the painting in our stairwell where I wanted to ultimately hang it.  I just leaned it against the wall, then went to bed.

The next morning, in the early light, Simon rounds the corner of the dark stairwell, and comes face to face with THIS:

I found it later that morning turned backwords, facing the wall. HA HA HA!

When I used to see this hanging in Granny's house, I just thought it was a cute little girl picking flowers in the sun, with a grove of trees in the background. Simon's interpretation, however,  is ENTIRELY different.  He sees a girl, crying while gathering flowers on the beach, with a crashing ship on the ocean in the background.

We had some friends over for dinner, and after several glasses of wine, I  make them come tell me what they think:

ASHLEIGH: Whoa, that thing is scary.
PAUL: OK, I just got the chills.
SIMON: Told ya.
AURORA: Really?! I just don't see it.


So, Poll Time!  Is this painting peaceful, or frightning?

I bet you this photo ends up in the results set when you Google images of La Llorona.

PS - La Llorona is an old Mexican legend that our parents would use to get us to come in before dark.  Apparently, this woman drowned her kids to hook it up with some dude, who dumped her after he learned she was psycho. So, she did the responsible thing and killed hersulf.  Now, she wanders the plains, wailing, looking for children out after dark to drown.  Clearly, Casey Anthony has never heard this story.

Fork You

I love king crab.

My forks do not.

All my forks look like this.

 

Not a good presentation for having guests, but I know that each tine was bent into this lovely shape with incredibly love and fury to get that sweet, succulent crab out of its beautiful, pink shell.

Oh crab, I will conquer you.

Charlie Kitty

Charlie likes to sleep in a basket we bought for decorative purposes. Since everything we buy to decorate our house turns into a cat bed.  That is the rule when you live with those little furry dictators.  It's up high on a built in ledge in our bedroom.  He SQUEEZES is fat arse in there, even though the basket is pretty much WAY too small for him. I think he uses it as motivation to get in shape.

Since we are sweet-ace parents, we brush his teeth regularly since he has gum problems, and already had to have 2 teeth pulled. See?  I don't need kids - I am getting the same experience with my hairy child, Char Char. ;)

Last night, we had to take the entire basket down (with him in it) since he wouldn't come down.  Once on the floor, he still wouldn't get out. I think he was stuck, personally. ;)

Simon held his head, peeled his lips back, I did the torture brushing, and Simon put him back up on the ledge, basket and all.

He slept there all night.

The things we do for the ones we love. :)

Meow!

 

Pandora has been dying to get up there with him, but she's too small to make the jump.  Although, off to the right out of the picture is a dresser, and I came home one day, finding all of the contents from the top of my dresser on the floor, so I have a feeling she jumped to it, slid ALL THE WAY across and OFF the other side, taking everything with her.  Instead of trying it again, she just begs Charlie to give her a boost. AW!

 

Cookie Crafting

My nephew is 8, which means it is still super cool to make cookies with Auntie.  And so we did!

Recipe for dough is called Puffed Heart Lemon Cookies (made cut-out cookies for the first time on V day several years ago, and am stuck on the recipe - yum) followed by a smothering of royal icing.  I still haven't mastered this art yet; my cookies are always either too thick, or too thin, but whatever - they look fantastic. ;)

Ghost cookies of Christmas Past:

Put the first batch of finished cookies in the oven so the frosting could dry overnight.  Then drank a bottle of wine, and decided to make the rest.  Turned the oven on to preheat.  Enough said. (fail!)

I meant to take pictures of the finished cookies all decorated by the 8 year old, but we started eating them before I had a chance.  Sy only likes the heads.  This is how all my gingerbread peeps looked:

Hilarious.

Merry Christmas!

In Case You Missed It...

...here it is at 2:30 AM MST from my backyard.

Amazing.

I remember when I was very young, there was a solar eclipse, and my parents showed me how to punch a hole through my loose-leaf wide-ruled binder paper, and let the light of the sun shine through the hole and onto another piece of paper.  The light that shined on the paper looked like someone took a bite right out of it.  I couldn't see it when I tried to look up at the sky (plus I blinded myself - no wonder my eyesight is so jacked), and I was perplexed.  And totally hooked.

So I DIDN'T become an astronaut *sounds of smashing dreams*, and instead, became an IT monkey!

THE END!

OK, just kidding - I didn't really want to be an astronaut - flying sucks.  But have always been fond of looking up at the sky from the ground.

Ah!

PS - I couldn't even spell astronaut properly - blogger had to spell check it for me.  Aren't you glad I am not on the Hubble team right now?