Snow

I get the mayor's updates and this morning he said that the Lea Hill area was the hardest hit in the city. Granted, there is only a couple inches at best, but for Auburn, so I've heard, this is notable.

Candy

One of the most fun things about having my Mom living next to me for 16 years was making chocolates for Christmas gifts. We would go through countless pounds of candy melts and home-made fondant, and tons of laughter and talking while doing it. It is just one of the precious memories I have of her. We even did them one year was she was legally blind, and that was quite an adventure! Last year was first time I made any since loosing her in 2003. I did a few pounds with my friends Foy and Debbie in Lake Stevens, and it was fun, but it didn't come any where near what Mom and I did.

So, I am back at it again. Not on the scale of what Mom and I did, and not nearly the fun, but I have enjoyed it. I bought 13 pounds of melts and have made 4 batches of fondant wth the two bags of jelly filling I bought at the candy store. I just finished the five pound bag of milk chocolate tonight and will start the dark chocolate tomorrow. Tonight it was just the "painted" ones, which obviously goes a lot slower, but are very rewarding. I think my favorites tonight are the little snowmen and Christmas trees. I painted the details on them after they were done.
When Clyle comes in and asks if I have any "mistakes" it reminds me of how Christy would come in and always look for our mistakes. We never let the kids eat any of them unless there was some flaw in them. Even after five years, I still miss Mom. But tonight seeing these little candies it makes me feel like she's not that far away.

Cards

A few of the cards that I did tonight using that beautiful paper I bought in Florida, some rub-ons an die cuts. Very simple yet I like them. No stamping on any of them.

Christmas Decorating

Not really great pictures, but I think we are finally done with our Christmas decorations. Can anyone say "carried away?" Our new additions this year are the santa-reindeer teeter totter and the carousel. Both purchased at discounts. We also added the candy canes, which was kind of a bummer. We bought the first four sets (thinking that would be enough) at Liquidation World at a terrific discount, but found out it wasn't enough, and went back the next night, only to find out that they were all gone. When we came out to the car, the battery was totally dead. We walked a mile to Schucks and bought another battery. The candy canes were originally from Kmart, so last night we headed to Kent for the nearest store. Unfortunately they were not on sale, but now we have enough to go all the way around. Our first inflatable was the giant snowman, then we came across the first snow globe at Prospectors liquidators a couple years ago. Then came the Let It Snow snow globe. Last year after Christmas sale yielded the Santa and Snowman snowglobe. We thought we were all done until one of the residents was driving passed today while I was putting up the icycle lights and told us that Lowe's had a 50% off sale so Dave got his teeter totter.

It took me two day to do the indoor tree. I thought I had a pretty well done last night, but today as I was starting to sort out what was left to go back in to storage (or St. Vincent's), I found all kinds of other stuff to go on it, and now it is loaded and looks very pretty. I will do a picture of it later. I think at any rate, we made up for all those years that we didn't decorate.

Christmas

We went to Snohomish today and started moving the stuff from the storage there to one here. The only problem is that the new one it is half the size. We brought our Christmas decorations home and it took the entire back of the Jimmy plus the top to get them all here. I'm sure that this is going to take up half the new storage unit. Oh well.... I am going to pare them down a bit too. I say that as I bought a darling 4 foot snowman for the house and four sets of candy cane lights for the yard.... uh hmmm. I'm excited to start decorating though. I got a little done this afternoon, and tomorrow will do the tree and Dave will put up the inflatables and the lights outside.

This evening I worked on Christmas cards. I'm doing mass production tonight. I had some pieces cut out from a workshop I had last year and I'm updating them a little with new stamps and such. I got a dozen done tonight.

Here are some that I made while we were in Florida. This is a really gorgeous paper pack that Christy and I bought on sale and split. You can't see it real well from the scans, but the paper is glittered.

I hope that everyone had a wonderful and thankful, Thanksgiving Day. I am thankful for our recent trip, for only having to work three days this week and mostly for my family and dear friends. I am thankful that we still have freedoms to this point... don't know what the future holds with our last election, so I will savor it while we have it.

We had a nice day with Skip and Clyle and my dinner turned out perfect. The turkey was done just right, and all the trimmings were yummy. The nice thing is that it's all cleaned up, even the turkey bones are boiled, stripped and in the freezer. So we've been just relaxing tonight. The guys did a little more relaxing than I did.... haha.

More Arabian Nights

A few shots from Arabian Nights. No, we didn't take them, we didn't know that they would allow cameras. The one with the guy jumping through the hoop of fire... after three tries he didn't make it the night we were there, but it was good anyway.

The center is Shaharizad and the Prince. Okay, so I was one of the suckers that actually buys the pictures that they con you in to taking when you walk in the front door. But it was well worth it, as getting a picture of all of us together almost never happens since somebody has to take the picture.