hellish crafts or bad kids....

Hello!

I told my mom and daughter that I was going to blog about them...in irritation of course! We went to my mom's house to celebrate Christmas. My poor dear mother has been sick for 3 weeks! She has that nasty cough that I believe goes along with the flu. They gave her a z-pac for a sinus infection and she is still sick!  Scott made his fantastic wonderful delicious green chili stew. I would have married him for this stew alone - I am just sayin'! It has chunks of beef and potato in a  rich broth with green chilies - fantastic! We put cheese on it and serve with tortillas scrumptious!! I think it cures what ails you - so mom should be peachy in no time!
On the way to my mom's I had two knitting needles, a ball of cotton and one of those "Knitting for Dummies" books - it should be called dumb knitting for dumb dummies but whatever! I couldn't make heads nor tails of the directions and I was getting a little car sick from trying to read ughhhhh. When we got to my mom's house I asked if she remembered how to do this dumb knitting thing  - she showed me how to do it. Then Taylor was hollerin' about wanting to learn because of something she had seen on The Anticraft website. So I moved out of the learnin' chair and let mom show her how. When I went back to the learnin' chair to be taught to purl Taylor starts telling me what I am doing wrong - she who just learned. My mother started giggling, partly because I stick my tongue out a little and tilt my head when pulling through stitches, partly because I kept throwing the thing down and yelling that I couldn't do it and partly because of my dear sweet and oh-so-helpful daughter was bossing me around - rude! That is when I informed them that they would make it on the bad kid portion of my blog. They didn't seem upset about it at all harrumph!
We had a lovely visit and got lovely gifts as well. When we got home I attempted to knit. I got about 4 rows in and had to do something else - came back, dropped a stitch and couldn't figure out how to fix it. I  ended up pulling the whole thing out. Then I spent an hour - clearly doing it wrong - trying to knit just the first stitch and couldn't get it to work ahhhhhhhhhhh I finally got it in time to do one row before going to bed. I will pick it up in a minute and see how it goes. I am sure there will be a fair amount of grumbling - or I will get it on the first try of the day - HA! Taylor was laughing maniacally and saying that hell had certainly frozen over because she was knitting and because she learned it before me. We shall see who gets the first dishrag done. I did see her few rows of purple and I am sure she isn't really making a dishrag - but we shall see anyway! I will post a picture if I ever have something worthy of posting.
We are going to our friend's house for New Years - lucky for us it's only a few blocks away so we won't be going far. We are snacking and playing games.
I hope next year is the best year of your life so far - be safe!

911

Hello,
Thought you might enjoy a few of the things that drive me crazy as a 911 dispatcher.

 me: "911 where's your emergency?"
caller: "Is this 720..."

me: "When he ran from the car, which way did he go?"
caller: "that way!"

me: "is the male white, black or Hispanic?"
caller: "he is American."

me: "police and fire this is Jamie."
caller: "is this the police?"

There will be more - I am sure

Have a lovely 911 free day!!

My co-worker Troy reminded me of another..

Troy: "where did this happen?"
caller: "my house"

Christmas baskets

Santa crack corn - fantastic caramel corn!

side car cookies

cup not included!

Cinnamon sugar - make the most of your toast

vanilla sugar 

we made a few kinds of drunken cherries

cooking vanilla

Scott putting them together

We made all the food items we put in the baskets - it was a year long process and it was fun!!

Merry Christmas

Hello,
I hope you all had a fantastic holiday. I sure did!! We had  SNOW of Christmas Eve - how wonderful is that?!?!? Sunday we had breakfast with Scott's family. We dropped off some baskets we made (that will be another post) Taylor came over for dinner since she had to work Christmas Eve. We had ham, hash brown casserole (well I used this recipe but I must not have the sour cream listed on mine because I didn't use any - I also use half the butter)  and salad. We opened our ornaments - we each get a new ornament on Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve I finished a picture ... Santa of course!

The Key to Christmas - Mosey 'n me!

Scott and I ran to the store - other than that I stayed home for 2 days straight! It was great!! I made a baked brie - with brown sugar and pecans inside mmmmm!! I shoveled the walk - brrrr!! We didn't have water for a few hours because of a break down the street but it came on in time to shower and clean up the kitchen! Taylor came over at about midnight and we all went to bed. I was up at 6am - first one up! I got GREAT gifts!! I will show some pictures - keep in mind that I am a little spoiled!

I have a kitchen chicken collection - love this one!

Polish box hand carved - beautiful!! 

bottom of box !

inside - chocolate, earrings and a pill holder!

Santa gave me a misto, chicken shakers. Ryder got me awesome salt and pepper grinders and a garlic press!! 

Polish pottery - love this!! 

beautiful cup for tea with a screen and plate for screen 

hmmm wonder what that is....

Taylor got me season two of the Walking Dead - WOO HOOO!! I also got some cute crocs (yes I said cute Katie!!) I got Sturbridge Box pattern from Victoria Sampler, Little House Needleworks - Bear Tree Forest, and Autumn Leaf by Ewe & Eye & Friends. I got some cds - Pink, Mumford and Sons, Jason Mraz. Scott got Bruno Mars - my new favorite!! There are a few other things but I will stop. I got wonderful gifts but more importantly - I had a wonderful time with my family!! We had a wonderful dinner - Scott made French onion soup, prime rib, potatoes and green beans - fantastic!! The brats crashed after dinner - even the cat who ate too much wrapping paper!!

We played games 

yes Ryder has laser eyes... it's a super power! 

Taylor has laser eyes too - cool right!! 

adorable 

I got Taylor some footie jams - I asked how much she would pay to keep it off the internet and she never answered so here we go..... I love you Taylor!! 

I hope you all had a happy and warm holiday!! 

Again...

Kansas Officers slain
Not to take away from the school shooting in Newton - but these officers who lost their lives deserve to be noticed as well. We have had too many police deaths in the last few years!

Christmas stuff!

Good morning,
First let me say - IT IS SNOWING!!!! YAY!!!! WOO HOOOOO .
Whew - got that out of my system! I updated the family page and 2012 projects page if you're interested. Had a good weekend. Tried a new recipe chicken shitake and wild rice soup - it was pretty good! Another new recipe - cornmeal almond trout, served with a sweet potato and roasted parmesan green beans - delicious!

We finally got our tree decorated - a week before Christmas - shameful! Scott started baking cookies - no pictures of that though!

Santa and his elf 

police humor - a cartridge in a bare tree - HA!

not staged - nope.

I had a mole removed - no pictures of that either - your welcome! I did fine until he said "I'm going to cauterize this" and I spent the rest of the time trying not to pass out. I was sweating, nauseous, shaking and had to go to the bathroom - what a pansy!  That was Monday and it hasn't stopped bleeding. Of course they told me to go home, put ice on it and relax - would I do that? NO! Too much to do. I had packages to wrap and stuff to bake - and dinner... too busy. The biopsy I had this month came back good - told you it would.
We worked on our Christmas gifts - pictures after Christmas. I'm excited about that!!

I finished a quilt - YAY!! It is hand quilted. I didn't even look at the name of the pattern so I will let you know - tomorrow. It was a contest winner and there were some errors in the pattern - I am not good enough to catch them all and some of them might have been my fault....so this was hard. Thank goodness you can't see that all my corners and points don't match up!

back is muslin - love it! 

Well, I guess that is all I know. Hope you have a good week before Christmas week!!

Mo doesn't like Christmas kisses - not at all!! 

Terrible

There are no words that can express the sadness. How horrible people can be.

Hello!

Hello!
I am back. Please stick with me as I build my little blog back up Ü
We had the busiest weekend ever! It was so much fun! Friday night we went with friends to dinner and to a concert - bells and flutes. WOW! I am so impressed with these people. They make such beautiful Christmas music. The bells are so fun to watch - almost like a dance! We had such a good time seeing our friends as well.
Scott and I semi decorated the house - we are only missing a tree - we will get it up soon though!!

Saturday night we went to the Longmont parade of lights - love it!! The best part was the dancing horses - so cool!! It was just Scott and I. After we made grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner - mmmm!! 

Sunday morning we went read the paper and goofed around then we went to Georgetown for the Christmas market. It was cold and snowy - perfect!! We had a great time there. I bought the cutest quilt pattern from The Quilted Purl  - Pinwheels in my Garden I am not putting the flowers on it though - the kit has a fun fabric to put there instead - she had a quilt done in the shop and I loved it! I will post pictures when it'd done. We ate lunch in Georgetown - in a restaurant I do not recommend so I won't mention it here. Georgetown is a cute little town with lovely stores! We had a good time.

Monday night we went to The Denver Botanic Gardens to see the Christmas lights. So beautiful!! It was coooold but so very pretty! After we walked the gardens we had apple cider, hot chocolate and cinnamon roll in the little restaurant at the gardens. So much fun!

Tuesday my mom came to visit me. We went to The Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse for lunch and then to the Savory Spice Shop because I needed Vietnamese cinnamon. It is always nice to have my mom come visit me. We usually letterbox but she forgot her stuff and I hadn't printed any clues  - eh whaddya gonna do! Mom stayed for dinner - just burritos.
Have a wonderful week - hope for snow!!