Thursday, January 21, 2010

January



If you haven't noticed the picture in my heading is a bunch of carnations. Carnations or Dianthus Caryophyllus are the birth flower of January. A lot of people a not fans of carnations. They are thought of as cheap filler flower. I think they get a bad wrap. If you get a large bunch all the same color and put them in a simple pretty vase you be very pleased. Give carnations a chance the next time you need to buy flowers.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

A New Year and A New Computer!

The worst of the worst happened a few months ago, well not really the worst of the worst even though at the time it felt like it. I had an accident with my laptop and the screen went kaput. I was glad it was only the screen so I'm able to retrieve the hundreds of pictures that I've stored. So now I have a new laptop and an external hard drive. Since I wasn't able to share my Christmas with everyone I've made a few collages .

Just a few decorations and some new ornaments. My favorite new one is the pirate flag.



This is a family cookie exchange I hosted. We all bring a different type of cookie and also make sugar cookies cutouts. We bake and laugh.



Every year I spend about 10 days and become a slave to my kitchen aid making cookies for gift. Previous years I've made up to 1500 cookies. This year I was only able to do 1100 since I was sick for a few days in the middle of December. The featured flavors this year were chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, sugar cookies, almond biscotti, peanut butter, peanut butter blossoms, white chocolate chip and macadamia nut, russian tea cakes, and snicker doodles. One thing I did this years was to make the dough ahead of time freeze it and just bake it later. This was such a time saver!



Just a few pictures of Christmas critter! Boomer is in the center with the antler. She is the only one of the 3 cats that will let me put them on.



Just a few shots of Christmas dinner prep. But I got to a point were I was all hands on deck and had to focus on the rest of the dinner.
Twenty days late but here are my resolutions for the year:
1. blog more!
2. get into shape (I think a lot of people have that one)
3. make sure I mail everyone's Birthday card on time (I'm the worst at this)
4. keep a food journal (I think I'll add this to the blog)
5. learn to crochet (like I need to add anymore to my plate)
6. take lots and lots of pictures
Hope everyone is having a great New Year so far!