Happy 2009!

I can't believed I haven't blogged in over a month. Where does the time go? Here's an update on the last month of our life.
Sometime around the 15th of December I got a cold that I couldn't shake. Nothing is worse than to be sick in December. There is too much to do. Well the upper respiratory infection I had, led to pink eye. Bet you didn't know that upper respiratory infections and pink eye were related b/c I sure didn't until it happened to me! After several different prescriptions, it finally went away. I did have to wear my glasses for two full weeks. I learned that it is important to have an updated glasses prescription because it sucks not being able to see very well. I'll be purchasing new glasses as soon as I have an eye doc appt.
Everyone came to our house for Christmas Eve. We enjoyed a wonderful day with the family and a delicious meal.....even though I cooked the turkey upside down for several hours......I never claimed to be Martha Stewart.
We left early Christmas morning for the drive to Syracuse. We stopped for breakfast at the Waffle House like last year because that is the only thing open on Christmas day. We had a great time in Syracuse and I got to see snow. Not as much as I wanted, but some was better than none. The drive back was HORRIBLE. I swear I will only drive on major holidays from now on. My sanity can't take 12.5 hours in the car.
We enjoyed a week at home before going back to work. We had our house appraised because we've jumped on the refinancing bandwagon. Our new interest rate, saves us several hundred dollars a month. Yeah! We had some friends over for New Years Eve to play games.
Going back to work was hard, but we are pretty much back in the swing of things again. We even made it to the gym twice last week. We're aiming for three times this week but we'll see!
I hope to post more often in the coming weeks. Maybe if I'd stay off facebook, I would have more time to update my blog.

Gingerbread Love

My mom has almost finished putting the lights around the house.

This is the third year that my family and I decorated gingerbread houses together. We go to my aunt and cousin's church in Winston Salem to create our masterpieces. The lady in charge of this has bags of candy and icing laid out over 5 huge tables. You pick what you want to decorate, a small, medium, or large house or a tree, then grab your candy and icing and start working. The best part is when you are finished you can walk away and don't have to clean up anything. This is exceptionally appealing to us because we tend to make a HUGE mess!
It's fun to look back at pictures of our past creations and see how different the houses are from year to year. My mom and I usually use colorful Necco candies to create the roof but this year we decided frosted shredded wheat would be a nice change. We added lights to our house this year. I'll take a picture of it lit up and post that later.
This has turned into a fun Christmas tradition. I hope we are able to continue it for many years to come.
My aunt's house. She was pretty close to being finished at this point. Notice the detail. She even added an overhang at the front door.
Jennifer was working hard on her house. It turned out really cute. She used Necco's on her roof.
Caroline put Necco's all over her roof and then decided she didn't like it so she changed it to frosted shredded what. Her house was very cute especially after some third grade children got in on the design.
Here is my gingerbread tree. This is the second year that I have decorated a tree. I always think it is a good idea until I sit down to start and then my mind goes blank. I do like the way this one turned out. I used M&M's and gumballs on the tree. I tore apart some sour string candy and wrapped that around certain spots. I love the pretzel star on top of the tree and the gingerbread people infront of the tree. The end result was much cuter than I could have imagined.

My beautiful shower

After lots of hard work, my shower is finally in working order . We finally got the tile clean the Monday before Thanksgiving. The glass company came to install the doors on Tuesday morning. We still have a lot of work to do to finish the bathroom but at least I can shower in there now. I love the way it turned out. I was hesitant at first b/c I really wanted the frameless shower door but it was $1000 more than the semi-frameless so I had to go with the cheaper option! Next step is to purchase curtains so we can take down the beach towels that cover the window. Classy, huh?

My week of crafts

This is my favorite card this week. I went to dinner with Lauren, my best teacher friend, at CPK and then we headed to Jennifer's house for a night of card making. It turned into a long night since I made 20 cards and she made 15 but it was lots of fun. We were lucky because we didn't have to work the next day so it didn't matter how long it took us to finish.

These are the other 4 cards we made at Jennifer's house. I actually made so many cards this year that I'm ahead for next year. Yeah! I usually send my Christmas cards out on 12/1 but I haven't made it to the post office to purchase stamps yet so they are all sitting on my dining room table. Maybe tomorrow.....
I made these place cards and napikin rings at Shawntel's house. She always comes up with the best ideas. It took lots of hard work to complete these projects but they were worth it. I made 16 sets and I hope they can be used year after year. The only bad part was I put them on top of the fridge so they'd be out of the way and forgot about them until the day after Thanksgiving. Oh, well...there's always next year!
Shawntel came to my house a couple Saturdays ago and had a card class for some of my friends. Here are 2 of the 4 cards that people made. We all had lots of fun. We all need to do things like this more often. You can never spend too much time with friends.

As you can see, my life has been full of crafts lately but I've loved every minute of it. Now I must decide if I want to make gift tags or if that would just be too much!

MIA

Wow! Life has been busy. We are trying to finish our shower and get the glass installed before Greg's family comes for Thanksgiving. Things are actually going pretty well. The tile is finished and the glass is scheduled to be installed on Tuesday morning. We grouted part of it last weekend and noticed it was really difficult to get the tiles clean. After searching several stores for marble cleaner, we went back to the place we purchased the tile and they said, "Didn't the salesman tell you to seal the marble before you grout it?" Ummmm, no! They looked up our sales guys name and weren't surprised that he didn't tell us and then informed us he no longer works for the company. Lucky us, we must have been some of his last customers. They sold us (not gave us like they should have) some cleaner that we will try tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed that it works.
My big buddy, Bean, had surgery to remove a growth on his ear. It has been there for a long time but it was growing and looking really terrible. The path report came back and showed that it was malignant melanoma. Who's ever heard of a cat with melanoma? G and I joke that he's definitely our cat since we've had malignant melanoma too. Of course, they want me to get x-rays of his lungs and test his lymph nodes but I'm not going to do it. He's 14.5 years old and there is only a 20% chance that it has spread somewhere else. The vet did offer Chinese herbs and acupuncture but I declined. (Bet you've never heard of that!!!) He gets his stitches out tomorrow so we'll see what else they have to say.
On top of all this, I've been to 2 card making parties and hosted one myself in the last week. I'll post pics of all my projects later.
Life is busy but all is well. It's been really cold here. I even got to see snow flurries earlier this week. Of course, it didn't stick b/c it was 70 a few days ago but even the sight of it made me happy.

Target deals

I went to a baby shower yesterday afternoon and my friend told me about her trip to Target before the shower. She told me that all the Halloween merchandise was 90% off. I had to go check it out myself when the shower was over. Surprisingly, there was a lot of stuff left. I got:
25 Pez dispensers, 12 bags of candy, 2 Halloween games, a glow-in-the-dark pillowcase, a table runner, skull shower hooks, stickers, playing cards, catnip toys and a cat toy wand all for..........$14.28. My receipt says I saved $124.60. I really don't believe anyone would ever spend that much on this stuff but I guess it could happen. The kids at school will be very happy with my purchases. I think I'll save the pez dispensers until next Halloween for the trick-or-treeters. I went to two other Targets on Saturday night but they didn't have near the amount of stuff as the one at Southpoint. I love the clearance section at Target!
Bean approves of the catnip toys I bought him. He totally agrees that they were worth $.39 for a pack of four! His dad didn't even fuss about this purchase!

Just another Saturday

My cousin and her boyfriend hung out with me on Friday and Saturday. She gave out Halloween candy for me while I cut out center stuff for school. (I've already booked her for Halloween 2009.) We watched part of the Applachian football game on TV but we headed to bed pretty early because my mom came to get us at 8:15 on Saturday morning to go to the church bazar. I hadn't been to church in a loooong time (I'm embarrassed to say) so I was a little hesitant about going but I decided I'd go b/c my mom wanted to. She picked me, Collin, and Caroline up at 8:15 on the dot and we headed to Durham. Of course, we had to make a pit stop at Starbucks. Caroline and I always go to Starbucks. It's like one of our things. We got to church a little before nine and went in to start shopping. The ladies of the church had made some beautiful crafts. I bought 2 blankets with ribbon on them (taggies is what they are called) for baby shower gifts. My mom bought a couple cute things and even Caroline found a hand painted dishsoap bottle for her mother. My hesitation about being there left the minute I walked in. I saw so many wonderful people. I felt really old after seeing some of the kids that I used to babysit for. It was great to visit and catch up with people.
Carloline, Collin, and I went to Red Robin for lunch. They had never been there before and wanted to give it a try. After a nice meal, they headed to NCSU and I went to the mall.
I had some coupons to use and I wanted to vote while I was there. When I walked in the mall and saw the voting line, my mouth dropped open. The line was wrapped around and around and around. I decided to shop first, secretly hoping the line would disappear while I was in a store. I went to Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works to use my coupons.

I got everything pictured here for $3.20. I love coupons! The underwear was free and so was the snowman soap. I've wondered for quite a few months why I get 2 coupons a month from VS for free underwear when I NEVER spend a penny there. A lady at Bath & Body works told me that both stores are owned by the same company so since I shop at Bath & Body lots and give out my phone number when they ask for it, I get LOTS of coupons. I was so proud of my shopping that I headed to the voting line.
The sign said the wait was 2.5 to 3 hours from where I got in line. I didn't want to wait but I didn't want to go on Tuesday either b/c I was scared the wait would be even longer. The time passed quickly b/c I talked to the people in line with me. There were even volunteers walking beside the line passing out water and snacks to anyone that wanted them. I thought that was so kind. I made it though the line in only 1.5 hours. I was glad I waited and got to vote. I guess, we'll find out on Tuesday if my vote really mattered!