House decorating

Back in either late November or early December I decided that I wanted to make a gingerbread house. I figured this would be a fun activity to share with our friends. Well due to scheduling, we couldn't get together until this past Saturday. So we decorated houses and then had a re-gift Yankee Swap.

It's funny, because when we had the supplies on our counter in the kitchen it didn't look like we had all that much. So we asked people to bring some candy to share. Wow, when it all was on the table, it was apparent that we had more than enough!

To allow time for the houses to set up before decorating, Chris and I made the basic house shape in advance. And we used graham crackers since I figured it would be easier than baking enough gingerbread to make 17 houses. So we started putting them together on Friday night. And we soon discovered that two boxes of graham crackers weren't enough, so we finished them up on Saturday morning after a trip to the grocery store. And in the end, 2 people were unable to make it, which was probably a good thing as the house was pretty full with 15 people (6 of them being kids).

We started off the evening with dinner. I think in Chris' and my minds we were thinking we would start with decorating and people could eat whenever, but as it turned out, we ate and then decorated. Back at the end of December I had come across this recipe for mini ham and cheese sandwiches. I thought they sounded good, but was also somewhat skeptical. But we gave them a try, and they were delicious! A little greasy/buttery, but very good. We knew those wouldn't be enough, so we also had salad and pizza. We recently discovered the BEST pizza ever. Papa John's BBQ Chicken with Bacon. Amazing! Normally it comes with onions, but we have a number of non-onion people, so we got it without. Still very good. That pizza went quickly.

For one family, this was their first time coming to one of our game nights. They commented that they found it amusing that we essentially hosted a kids' party when we don't have kids. Hey, we like to do fun "kids" activities. :) Besides, I've found that sometimes it's better to include the kids if not having them there would mean that the parents are unable to come due to lack of babysitters, etc. So the kids come and they run around the house, play games, watch movies, etc.

And it's not like we ignore the kids. Kristin was the first of the adults to finish decorating her house. Probably because she wasn't busy helping the kids with theirs. So when she was done she started playing with the kids. It seems their game was to all hold onto her legs as she tried to walk.

We rounded out the evening with a Yankee Swap. For the most part it was a re-gift Yankee Swap, but I think there were a couple of items purchased especially for the event. I think one of the "best" gifts was a small glass plate etched with an image of The Last Supper. But the best part of it was when Caitlyn referred to it as "Thanksgiving". Her mom then responded that she thought they needed to get to church a little more often.

So to wrap this up, here are some more pictures of the houses.

A little of this, a little of that

I guess I'm just not meant to blog all that frequently. I'd like to get back into it, but I seem to lack topics to blog about. And this post is all over the place as I play catch-up with everything.

I took some vacation days and was off of work from Christmas Eve until yesterday. It's a bit of a shock to the system to get back into things. While I was off I did a whole lot of nothing. And I loved it!

I watched a lot of movies and some TV shows. Serenity, A Knight's Tale, (yes, we started with an Alan Tudyk theme) Troy, There Will be Blood, Four Christmases, Nobel Son, Surviving Christmas, Lost in Austen, Dangerous Beauty, Picture Perfect, Confessions of a Shopaholic, Harry Potter 1-6, the final episode from season one and the pilot of Dollhouse, and Buffy, season one and 15 episodes of season two. Plus we went out and saw Sherlock Holmes. Our Netflix account definitely got a workout!!!

I knit. And I knit some more. (Basically I spent my time knitting and watching movies.) This included 2 chocolate chip cookies, an oreo, a sugar cookie, and a peanut blossom, all on a plate and with a matching mug of milk. To combat that sugar, I made 2 sugar snap peas- one with a closed pod and the other pod open with 3 peas in it. (Not sure why the pattern for the open pod is about half the size of the closed pod.) Then for clothes I made a quick black and white hat and then have started a couple of other projects.

I bought new ice skates and Chris even humored me and went to the rink with me one day. Although he won't readily admit it, I think he had fun. He didn't fall and was actually skating away from the wall for a while. If only they actually sharpened rental skates, he might have done even better.

Had a scrap night with Kelly. I had grand ambitions of working on my Acadia album from when we were there in 2008. Instead I spent the night helping Kelly with her album. And we got 12 pages done, finishing up DJ's first year of life!

In other Christmas relatedness....

I was a little late getting the decorations up, but about halfway through the month things finally got spruced up. Due to various other scheduling I imagine decorations will be up through the end of January.

We had survived Cookie Baking. We cut back the number of recipes and stretched it over the weekend. We also did gifts over the weekend, thus eliminating the need to schedule another event. I still need to finish making the cookbook.

On Christmas Day, Mom came over and we had a nice meal, gifts, etc. Then that evening we went and saw Sherlock Holmes.

Coming up... on Saturday we're having friends over to make gingerbread houses and do a re-gift Yankee Swap.

Coming up.... Jan 30th getting together with my mom's extended family for our "Christmas" gathering. A turducken is in my future...

Other December activities included a Lost and Found concert. Hard to believe that I've been following them around for 16 years now! Michael (frizzy hair on my right) and his wife had a baby recently so I gave him a little sweater that I had knit. When George had his girls they got dresses, so it was only fair. Plus it was a sweater I had originally planned for a baby boy I know, but it ended up looking too girly.

We shoveled snow a couple of times. And then when we came back from Cookie Baking to 8 inches of snow in the driveway, our next door neighbor asked us if we wanted the number of his plow guy. Um, yes, please. He's now saved in my phone as "plow guy". :) While waiting for the plow guy I looked out the window and saw this fabulous sunset. (The snow picture is from our commute in to work earlier in December.)

In other news, I got new glasses. Not very exciting, but in mid-December I realized I had about $400 left in my FSA. Since it's a use it or loose it kind of thing, I figured since I hated my old glasses, this would be a good way to use up the money. Hopefully these will stay on my head better than my old glasses.
What was weird though, is when I went in to pick out my frames, the saleswoman remembered my name. I hadn't been there since the summer! She said she remembered the fun colors of my hair.

And at the beginning of December Chris once again had a table at Good Shepherd's Craft Faire. Pictured here is only about half of his inventory. He's done really well this year, especially with his Etsy store.

Halloween Festivities

So there's this blog that I follow called Cake Wrecks. And on this blog, they feature things like this cookie creation. We had a Halloween Party at work (more on that later) and someone brought in this cookie for the party. As soon as I saw the inscription, I immediately thought of Cake Wrecks. It's not too wrecky, but the Wreckorator does need a spelling lesson.


On the home front, the ApotheSCARY is back in action, this time in our front hall. Many of the bottles still haven't gotten labels. Guess people will just need to use their imagination to decide what's in them.



Also at home I had my glass pumpkins and some candles set out on the bookcases in the "library/office" area. It's really just this odd space between the front entry and the rest of the house where we've got a few bookcases and Chris has his computer desk. Anyway, I thought it was a good space for this display, although it is a little crowded.

The final area to decorate was the windowsill in the dining room. I had thought about putting things out on the sideboard like I normally do, but thought this was a more visible spot. It has my ghosts, a few more candles, and some items that I got from a swap last year. I had my witch mobile hanging from the ceiling fan in the dining room.


Since I had the ApotheSCARY set up at home, I wasn't sure what to bring to decorate at work. And did I even want to decorate at work? It was kind of expected of me since I still had the brick wall set up from last year's display, but what should I bring in? In the end, I brought in a large skeleton and some fake gravestones and had those set up. Not too exciting, but it also didn't take a lot of effort or creative thought (which I was lacking).


So more about work.... We had a Halloween party again this year, which I planned. We decided not to have a cube decorating contest again since so few people had participated last year. This actually was good for me since I was out of ideas.

Instead, we just had a costume contest. However, we did add a new category this year. For individual costumes we had winners for Best, Scariest, Funniest, and Most Original. And we added the new category of Best Group Costume. I was wondering how many groups would get into this and was happy to see that 3 groups participated (ranging from 3, and 4 participants, to a 12 person group).

The party itself was pretty easy to plan. Put together some invitations and posters, send out calendar invites, contact the cafe for food... Then on Friday run to Costco for beer and a few other food items, set up, and Party!





I actually ended up with two costumes. I wanted to wear my Ren Faire dress for the party and I wanted to wear a costume all day. However, I knew it wasn't practical to wear it all day. But then I decided to wear a costume for skating on Saturday, so got a cat costume. Perfect to wear for work! So I started off in a cat costume, and then changed just before the party. I had thought about just wearing the ears and tail with normal clothes, but then decided to go with the leotard, tights, and dance skirt. And jacket. A "must" since the leotard was a little skimpy.


The winners for costumes were: Me for Best, Jeremy as Dracula for Scariest, Chris as a Spelling Bee for Funniest, and Linda as "Partly Cloudy with a Chance of Rain". I don't have a picture of her costume, but it was a blue shirt with cotton ball clouds and she walked around with a squirt bottle spraying "rain".



The Best Group Costume was the Legal department as The Wizard of Oz.

Another fun costume was "Smarty Pants". And I got a shot of everyone from Marketing who was in costume- Flavor Flav, me, a cop, an escaped convict, and a hotdog.

As to Halloween itself, as I mentioned, since it was Saturday and I had skating, I dressed in a cat costume. I then wore my costume for various errands. But then in the afternoon I was exhausted I lay down for a nap. I ended up sleeping for 4 hours and woke up at 8:30. Chris hadn't turned on the outside light, so we never did get any kids at our house. :( How disappointing that I slept through Halloween!

Chris Breecher, Domestic Diva

Yeah, not sure what exactly prompted this, but I decided I wanted to make a retro style apron. So I went to the fabric store, looked through the patterns and then went on a search for fabric. I couldn't make up my mind of which I liked better, so I bought both. I don't think I even looked at the cost of the fabrics. (Bad me!)

So I get back to work (I had been shopping on a lunch break) and was asked to show off my fabrics. One of my friends immediately claimed one as hers. I'm thinking, ok, because it's not like I needed 2 aprons. But then on Friday, when I mentioned her paying for it, then suddenly she wasn't too interested. And the price I gave her wasn't much over cost. Materials alone were $20-25, and I was only asking for $30.

So what do I do, I open an Etsy shop! I figure I have plenty of other crafts to try to sell. It's not up there yet, but will be soon.

And to continue the sewing spree, on Friday when I went back to the fabric store to get some more bias tape to finish up the second apron, I saw this dress on display so picked up the pattern and some fabrics to make an Easter dress. It's a little low in front and my bra seems to always be visible, so not sure what I'm going to do about that. I'm going to have to see if I can find a different bra, and if that doesn't work, I think I may need to add in a little modesty panel or some lace or something.

And speaking of Easter, we'll be hosting a brunch. Not sure of the guest list yet, but it could be 10-15 people. As those of you who have seen my apartment know, we don't really have room for that many people. 10 was going to be a squeeze, and then Chris went and invited friends of ours who are a family of 5. I think I now know where the miscommunication arose. When I proposed to him the idea of hosting Easter, it was also part of a game night discussion. And these people are part of game night, but I wasn't intending them to be part of Easter. He offered to un-invite them, but I told him that he couldn't do that.

Skating has started back up again. There's a new student in class who can't skate, which as horrible as it sounds, makes myself and one of my fellow students feel good because now we're at least better than someone. Still can't stop, but I'm getting better at that. Yesterday, in addition to working on outside edges and 3-turns, we also practiced stopping and going backwards. Eventually I'll be good at those two things. And since I'm so much better than I was in early December when I started, I can't complain too much.

Happy Hallowe'en!

These pumpkins are outside. I had wanted to carve the letters on them, but life got in the way. The other side of the steps had some pumpkins that my neighbors had painted. I also put some spiderwebs on the metal of the entryway. I thought it turned out pretty well, especially since the metal was a bit on the rusty side.





After going through the main outer door, there is a small entryway. I had this wreath on our door and the rat down in the corner. It's been kind of funny listening to people's reactions for the past month as they see the rat. He's pretty gross looking, and if you're just looking quickly I think he looks fairly realistic.

As we move further into the building we come to our living room. I really enjoyed making this little ApotheSCARY shop. Thanks Rachel for the inspiration on this. Unfortunately I lost some creative steam so there are a few empty or nameless bottles. Maybe next year I'll get it finished? In the meantime, here are some more detailed shots of what I've got.

























Here we have my buffet in my dining room. On the left are the bat and luminary candles, the ghosts in the middle, and the pumpkins on the right. Now that Halloween is over I'll keep the pumpkins out but pack up the rest.


And finally, here's a picture of me. Kind of blurry, but I like how it turned out. I love my lashes. I think I need to wear fake lashes more often. The skeleton earrings were a bit heavy, but I think once a year they'll be fine.