Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Stockings


Remember those cute little wooden stocking I blogged about a while back? Well, they went to Leigh Prater. She chose these four names for the personalization. She had some adorable Kelly's Kids clothing already monogrammed with "L" - perfect! I was more than happy to work out a trade.
I'd never thought about doing this before, but they look great on the Christmas tree! I'll have to keep an eye out for more of them next year.
Two and a half days of school left - woo hoo!

Monday, December 14, 2009

A Few Family Canvases


It seems like I've posted everything but art in the past few days. I have been painting! A lot! I am so happy to have had so many holiday orders. I am also so happy to have them all finished and delivered in time to be wrapped, given, and enjoyed. Even though I have lots of ideas to try out and I always feel the desire to paint, I am looking forward to a little break.
The family established canvases have been very popular this season. I've done them in just about every color combination, but the original black with khaki is still the most requested. I am also mixing it up with the font choices. I love the cursive, but the original block is still the most requested. I guess it is hard to mess with the classic.











The Nester Tour of Homes


This week the Show Us Your life Series is doing something a little different. First of all, it is on Monday instead of Friday. That means that I had to get my photos ready earlier! Also, instead of linking up at Kelly's Korner, we are linking up at The Nester. I love that site. It is beautiful and chock full of great ideas. I can't wait to go "on tour" and see all of the homes.



I decorate with Snow Village Houses. My mother started this when we were little. When I got my own home, she gave me a few of hers to start my own collection. We have picked up some along the way as well. My husband likes the ballparks!

I love the Art institute of Chicago. I had to have that one!
I also like to decorate with photos from Christmases past. I smile every time I get out those pictures of my sweet little butterball babies on Santa's lap.


I even use old pictures in my stocking hangers. I reprinted pictures of Mike and I when we were children with Santa.

Who is that little cutie?

Finally, I display our nutcracker collection in the fireplace. I know that sounds funny, but they look really cute in there. Carter and Lauren each get a new one for Christmas. I may have to put an end to that tradition - we are running out of space!
Thanks for visiting and happy holidays!







Sunday, December 13, 2009

It's Like There Was a Zombie Apocalypse and Then There Was Something That Came Along and Got Rid of The Zombies and Now it's Just Me and Boyfriend

At around midnight last night, it started snowing.  A lot.

I got absurdly excited about it.  I was like "Ohmigoditssnowingletsgoforawalkrightnow!!!!" And Boyfriend was like "It's 12:30 AM..." and I was like "So?  We need to go to the grocery store anyway." And then Boyfriend looked at me like he just caught me eating eating paste off of the floor and there was this tense little moment like that time in first grade when a little Mexican boy joined your class and you were like "Hi!" and he said "Hola! Hoy es Miercoles!" and you were like "oh shit... what do I do?  I'm only six!  I am not prepared for this!"and then you realize that you and this person are desk-buddies because he can't speak English and you can't write R's and suddenly you are forced to find a way to communicate through crude hand-gestures and grunting noises and pretty soon you've invented an entirely new language and you still can't make R's and Paco still can't speak English but it's okay because you understand one another and that's all that matters.  

My point is that after staring at me in silence for a few long moments in which I am sure he questioned some of his life decisions, Boyfriend was like "Fine."

So Boyfriend got all bundled up while I checked to make sure everything was unplugged because I didn't want the house to catch on fire while we were gone and then I got dressed while Boyfriend sat on the couch in his snow-clothes looking like he was on some sort of detonation timer and if the timer went off we would no longer be allowed to go for a walk, so I put my hat and gloves on really fast and then I was like "I'm ready!" and Boyfriend sighed and heaved himself off of the couch and we walked outside and there was already like, three inches of snow on the ground!

Boyfriend wanted to stop and take pictures of the snow and the pretty lights, but I was so excited that I took off running:



And then I stopped because I had a really good idea and I yelled "Hey! You should take a picture of me so I can put it on my blog!"  And Boyfriend yelled back "Yeah, I already kind of did that because you ran into the frame."  And then I was like "Well, you should take another one because I wasn't looking at the camera."  And then boyfriend sighed and I could actually hear it from that far away.  I guess it was more of an anguished grunt.

Anyway, that's Main Street in downtown Hamilton, MT on a Saturday night.  It's pretty much just like Las Vegas except with fewer fountains.

We got to the grocery store, and guess what?




Not open.

Someone should tell them that it probably isn't good business to close at noon because they'll miss the dinner rush.

Boyfriend said "Well, what should we do?"  And I was like "We could go to Super One..." and Boyfriend said "Super One is like nine miles away" but really it's only one and a half miles away and I told him that and he made that same tortured grunting noise but I think he was secretly excited about walking all the way to Super One because who wouldn't be?

When you live in a town this small, late-night walks are a pretty surreal experience.  It wouldn't have been hard to pretend that we were the only two people left in the world:





We finally arrived at Super One.  Even the inside of the grocery store felt like it was part of an alternate universe:



And there was some guy in that alternate universe who had the unfortunate job of stocking shelves at 2:00 AM but nevertheless he took his job really seriously and prepared for his shift like a fucking champion:


... with an energy drink and 64-ounces of gatorade.

I saw the guy wandering around in the store.  He looked like Gollum.  He was a creature of the night, dressed all in black save for the red "Anarchy" symbol that was safety-pinned to the back of his ratty T-shirt.  Unlike Gollum, this man was fucking purposeful.  He walked like you'd walk if you had just found out that your hot wife was giving birth to twin eagles but before you could go to her side, you had to save the earth from aliens and then the camera panned out and you started walking in slow motion to some Rage Against the Machine song and then you turned into Will Smith and you fucking brought it   and the aliens were like "daaaaaayumm, we should never have attacked Earth... our bad." And then you turned into William Wallace for a second and yelled "FREEEDOM!!!!!!!!" and then you turned back into Will Smith, only this time you were also part Samuel L. Jackson and you pumped some alien ass full of lead because that's what you were born to do.

That's how this guy walked.  Only more than that.

I felt reassured that if I actually was one of the only people left on Earth, this guy would be able to protect my ass from ALL the shit.

Boyfriend and I made our purchase (yogurt, an economy-sized box of candy canes, almond bark, Craisins and justice) and began the return trip.

Somewhere along the way, we came across a parking lot that was covered in completely undisturbed snow.  This is what Boyfriend did:



And this is what I did:



Don't try to read that.  It doesn't say anything because it's just random running.

Boyfriend was like "Hey Allie!  Look what I made for you!"  I looked at what Boyfriend made and then I glanced over my shoulder at what I had made, and there was clearly an incongruity between the two.  In my head I was like "Touché, Boyfriend... you win this time.  But I will get you... I will get you."

Okay, I'm getting tired of thinking of transitions between all of these pictures because you can only say "and then we kept walking" so many times before it just sounds weird.  So I'm just going to skip over all the walking bits and show you the exciting bits without any context whatsoever.  Okay, maybe a little context.  But not enough.

This is the only Internet Service Provider in town:



That's the front of the building.  I'm not tricking you by taking a picture from some alleyway and then saying "Oh look how ghetto and rape-y this place is!"  No.  This is the real deal.  If we look a little closer, we can see this in the window:



You can't see it very clearly because I had to use the flash (I'll take a picture in the daylight at some point), but it says (and I quote) "THe ol' Peek Hole!" And "Peek" is underlined once.  "Hole" is underline twice.  And yes, there is an exclamation point there.

You can see why rape may have been a legitimate concern when Boyfriend and I were getting our internet installed.

Anyway, it is probably not fashionable to end one's blog posts talking about rape, so here are a few more pictures.  Forget about the rape part.




It has warmed up considerable since last week!

That's Boyfriend holding a crossing flag.  There aren't real crosswalks in our town.  You have to flag down traffic your damn self.

Okay.  The End.

Nevermind.  I lied.  There is one more thing.  THIS  is a clone of my blog that I test things on before editing this site.  Brian (the vigilante hero of courage and justice and now web-design too) has been helping me figure out how to solve my layout problems and it looks like he did a really good job of it.  If you were having problems viewing before, would you please visit the link and let me know if the layout Brian made looks okay on your computer?  Thank you.  And now Brian has eleven trillion points because he spent all night helping me with my blog and he even sent me cat pictures.

Now it's the end.

Friday, December 11, 2009

Show Us Your Life - Christmas Cookies


My little pampered chef and I made Christmas cookies last week. She had been begging and we did need to take a dessert to the "Snacks With Santa" event at our church. I noticed that this was scheduled and kept the camera close. We made a mess but we had such a good time! Thank goodness for the Swiffer!



We started with just store bought sugar cookie dough. You won't find any fancy recipes on this one! Lauren wanted to skip all of those steps and straight to the cookie cutters. I was sick at the time and was easy to convince.


I laid out all of the decorating stuff, gave her a deep dish baking sheet, and let her have at it. Could that be why our cookies look like a sprinkle explosion? Like I said...we had fun.


My secret sister at church had gotten me this gingerbread man lollipop cookie kit. I figured while we had all of this stuff out we might as well...


They turned out really cute. The kit came with the clear bags, little tags, and some really cute decorating stuff.


I put the in this little bucket to take to "Snacks With Santa". They were the hit of the party. They were gone so fast that we didn't even get one.






Thursday, December 10, 2009

Visions of Sugarplums


I love this phrase. I love thinking about my children lying there with visions of Christmas joy. I know they don't even know what sugarplums are (do I?), but I do remember being a kid and how excited I could get just thinking about Christmas morning.


I've got cookies on the brain since I am posting about Christmas cookies tomorrow in the Show Us Your Life Series. Gingerbread men are just the cutest - and they smell and taste pretty good, too.

Dots, Dots, and More Dots


Sweet Shelby Love ordered a canvas for her room at the Autumn Street Fair. I am just now getting it to her! When I say that Shelby ordered it, I mean Shelby (not her mom) ordered it. This little girl knows what she wants. She designed the whole thing, knew what needed to be which color, and even picked the font. Her mom says she is like that about everything. I can relate.
Thank you, Shelby! It turned out really cute!




The bottom two are for Andrea Freeze. She ordered them as Christmas gifts for her nieces. She sent me photos of their rooms and bedding. I think they will match well. What a cool aunt!