Happy New Year!

We rang in 2010 last night in the usual way...sushie and cheesy Kung Fu! This year I got us a bottle of Nova Scotia sparkling wine instead of the usual champagne, and was it ever good! It was so good that I drank the whole bottle! ...as per normal, Ryan took one sip and gave me his glass...disgusted with the taste. He then moved on to virgin ceasers...



Every year we make our own sushie. This year we used smoked salmon and prawns.

Mmmmm.....

We start our meal every year with Sunomo Salad.
(very thin rice noodles in a sugar/vinigar mairinade, garnished with cucumber lemon and prawns...)

We watch our cheesy Kung Fu while we make the sushie...and then we watch the first half of King Kong while we eat. ... we like to leave it there, and imagine that King Kong got to keep his bride and live happily for ever after on his island.

Happy New Year!!!!

May your 2010 be full of beautiful surprises...

I look foward to seeing everybody a bit more this year!

My Paintings...

The semester is almost over. Next Friday (Dec 04th) is the last day of classes. Then Finals on Monday, Tuesday, and Saturday (2!).

I thought that I would post my paintings from my watercolor class that I am taking. Each week we had a different 'theme'.

I will post them from my first painting in class to my final painting.

1-Experimental

This was supposed to be an abstract,

but I really wanted to paint a tree...so I did.

2-- Reproduction

This was a painting that we had to reproduce from our text.

3--Abstract

We used a viewfinder (a small rectangular cutout of paper) and magazines to find an interesting design. Believe it or not, this used to be Maddona's Dress.

4--Floral


5-- Abstract
I don't really like abstracts, but the teacher loves them.
We were given geometric stensils to use for our design.



6--Landscape
Ryan and I were walking the dogs around the golfcourse one night, and I couldn't get over how beautiful it is at night. So, I tried to reproduce it.

7--Final Project

Painting the dogs wasn't even my idea. I had wated to paint a tree full of crows, but my teacher...upon hearing of how badly Ryan wanted me to choose them as my subjects, insisted upon it. I decided that this would be the one gift that I could give to Ryan for Christmas that he would actually be thankful for.

And that's it.

There are more little bits here and there of stuff that we did in class, but those were the "paintings".

Halloween

I got to dress up TWICE this year! Friday was the annual costume Dance for the Kids at my work, so I dressed up as butterfly. I will post a pic as soon as I am able. And on Halloween, the whole family dressed up and went trick-or-treating at the neighbors.

The girls were little pink ladybugs.

I was a Bride and Ryan was a biker...

And, Nevaeh was Captain Hook!

We stocked up on candy, as we do every year. I got three HUGE bags of chocolates, 28 mini-bags of Doritos, lays and cheeses, and 18 bottles of fruit punch.

This year, we got 6 trick-or-treators.

Funny thing is that those 6 trick-or-treators almost cleaned us out! Ryan made sure that they took "lots"....And, we had one group of 3 kids come back for seconds. They offered to take everything, but Ryan told them that his wife would be mighty mad if she didn't have some loot for herself at the end of the night. And, our kindness paid off, because all of our pumpkins were still on our front porch in the morning...and not smashed up along the road like some of our neighbors' jack-o-lanterns.

When will people learn that Halloween is not the time to be stingy?

I hope you had a wonderful Halloween!

Ours was Spooktakular!

Ryan and I spent our entire Halloween weekend cleaning! We had hired a guy to come and clean our carpets, which meant that we had to move EVERYTHING from the upstairs downstairs. And we moved everything--upon doing which, we decided that we were only going to move 1/2 of it back upstairs...which means that we spent the rest of the weekend deciding what we were going to purge and what we were going to keep.

I love cleaning, so this was my kind of weekend.

Above is a picture of our dining room. Our living room is just as bad.

We thought that we would be able to start moving things back up today, but, the guy did a crummy job on our carpets and so Ryan and I went to the store this morning and rented a steam cleaner. After 3 more hours of work, and barely a visible difference, we came to the conclusion that 5 years and 3 dogs are just detrimental to carpeting--especially Berber! And this is as good as it is probably going to look.

...at least we know our carpets are clean.

B00!

I can't believe it, but Halloween is almost here & October is almost over. How time flies when you keep yourself busy, busy, busy.

Today, Ryan and I were going to rake and bag our leaves, and then give the yard it's final mow. Sometime during the raking, I had ulterior motives to sneak off and prepare my flower gardens for their long sleep through winter. Then, I was going to build a "witch-crow" in the middle of my veggie garden...I have been so excited all week for this day....but, the day today was not having it....as it has been raining all day and Ryan is sick....

... so instead, I spent the day puttering around the house cleaning, organizing, and decorating for Halloween.

These are wall decals. They are sticky like stickers, but peel right off of the wall. You can't really tell in this picture, but the orange is all glitter... these are really neat!

Last month I got the Owl that's in the picture above. He is around 10" tall and is covered in black glitter. He is really cool...you can't actually see how cool he is in this picture, but he is really cool...(...and sparkly...)
I hung orange lights on the mirror behind him, so my little foyer glows and sparkles all at the same time!

Here is the Witch hanging on my front door. She is waiting for the rain to stop...(we all know what water will do to a witch...)

And, even though Thanksgiving was two weeks ago, here is a photo of the best Turkey that I have ever cooked! It was P-E-R-F-E-C-T-!

And, I promise that I will be back next weekend with pics of Ryan and I all dressed up for Halloween....as well as our three little babies....

Just some stuff....

I have so much fresh rosemary, sage, chives, oregano and thyme right now in my herb garden that I figured it a sin to let all that goodness go to waste....especially when the only time that I really cook with those herbs is during the fall and winter. So, I decided to make myself a window herb garden. I think I'm going to have to add a few more pots to the collection. Right now I have 6 pots, 2 rosemary, 1 thyme, 2 sage, & 1 oregano. I think I need one more for chives and another thyme because tyme is just so damn pretty to look at...

Last weekend I went to the first Christmas craft fair of the season. I got many cute little things, most of which are all tucked away, waiting for the proper time to come out and cheer up the house.

I got this handmade crow mat....Which I love!!!

I love crows so much...and this is the cutest little hand-stitched crow mat in the whole world. It is made out of wool. The vendor also had little matching chair toppers (half rounds), which I didn't get...but wish to god that I did. So, I am now on an obsessive mission to go to all craft fairs within the valley and find them.

...at least I didn't chintz out on this matching candle jar cover...which makes me happy.
(You can see my newly established herb garden sitting in the back window.)

I'll post some pics of the other stuff that I got at the craft fair as they come out of hiding.

BORSCH...

If you ever were curious of what Heaven would taste like...this is it! I have no idea how beets, carrot, turnip, and cabbage can taste so magnificent, but somehow it does.

This spring, I planted a borsch friendly garden...aka, lots of beets and lots of dill. Sadly, my lots of dill overshadowed my lots of beets....and I think that I will be lucky if I get another pot with the beets from my garden.




But, there is nothing better in the world than a fresh loaf of Rye, a block of Havarti, and a steaming bowl of borsch with sour cream and fresh dill....

(sausage and perogies were good, but their main purpose was to make the meal a manly meal for Ryan...)

Happy Birthday Marika!!!!

I hope you are having a wonderful day!

...if I was closer, I'd take you out for some best ever birthday drinks....however, mine would not be a martini...

talk soon...

October marks the official start of Fall decorating for me. Tomorrow I'll pull out my box of wonderful decorations from the basement and get to it!

I did these 'pumpkin nests' in my urns last weekend. It felt like such a waste to pull out all the perfectly good flowers in them--but I just couldn't wait any longer for them to die. They usually stay pretty till long after Thanksgiving being that they're on a covered porch.



I got some really pretty iron hanging baskets today for the front porch. They are cone shaped, and lined with coco-husk matting. I'm planning on doing them up with pumpkins and gourds and Indian corn this weekend when I finish decorating the outside of my house. I'll be sure to post a picture.


I hope you all get an apple pie this weekend! I'm going to make sure that I do...