Christmas

We had an eventful holiday with all of starting on Christmas Eve. We visited with my Grandparents and then headed over to Jon's Grandpa's to celebrate with his family.

Christmas morning we were hoping to get an early start on the celebration but woke up to find that our power went out in the middle of the night and that it had been snowing like crazy. (I'll post my snow fall pictures in another post) We opened our presents and here is a collage of the excitement.

Once we were done at home we got ready and headed over to my parents for breakfast of Züpfe bread and to open presents.

We ended the day at Jon's Mom's house where we enjoyed their Christmas tradition of Christmas pie and opening presents.

It was a wonderful day and it was great to be able to spend time with each of our families.

Gift Tags

This year for Christmas I decided that I would make my own gift tags. Every year I feel like I go to the store and I can never find gift tags in a design that I really like. One year I even forfeited gift tags and just wrote people's names on the bottom of their gifts.

To start this project I found a paper punch in the shape of a tag and various printed papers as well as cardstock in solid colors.


Once I had a bunch of little tags punched out I decided which solids to match up with prints. I then glued a solid and print together. By doing this it provided the tag with a little weight, since the printed paper was kind of light. I then used a hole punch to punch holes at the top of the tags. I had decided that I wanted to use various ribbons and ric rac to hang the tags from. You could skip the holes at the top and just tape the tags on if you want.


Once all of this is done you can design and address the tags however you want.

Here is an example of a wrapped present with a completed tag. I used stamps for the lettering.

The Twilight Before Christmas

I was sent this video, and thought some of you twilight fans might find the humor.

Santa

Even Larry is waiting for Santa to come.

Homemade Toffee

Every year I make several batches of homemade toffee to take into work, family events and holiday celebrations. However, after all of that is said and done there is always someone who says they wished they could have had a little extra to take home.

So, I am trying to take an inventory of anyone who might like their own personal batch of toffee this year. If you have never had my toffee, I think it's fabulous - but I might be biased. Also, I don't put nuts in or on the outside of the toffee.

If you want toffee just leave me a comment and I will make sure you are on my list.

Martha Stewart Crafts

EVERYTHING is on sale at Martha Stewart Crafts! Who knows when you might need embellishments and such. I love sales!

New Holiday Decorations

There are new holiday decorations posted on the Spell It Out blog.

Festive

I am sure I will get some criticism for this post, but here it goes. Although I am enjoying this snowless weather. I am having a hard time feeling like it's actually Christmas. My internal calendar is all confused because there is no snow on the ground. There have even been several times I have left the house recently without wearing a heavy coat. Shh...don't tell my mom. ;)

I am sure once it snows I will regret that I even missed it in the first place and then I will want to go on vacation to somewhere warm. Those who know me well know that I have a fear of driving in the snow. It's not necessarily the snow that I am afraid of, but rather the other drivers that might run into me.

I guess it's just the magic of snow that I miss, not the actual snow and the trouble that goes along with it. Maybe I should go find myself a snowglobe to shake and get that magical feeling.

Tis the season.. to give and say thanks

It's that time of year to be thankful and give to those we love. With my love of stationary I am always looking at what is out there. The art of note writing seems to be dying off. I am not the best at doing it, but I do like to try and having cute cards does help. Here are few notecard sets I have found recently - that I love.







I found all these at RedStamp.com.

All because he loves me

On Wednesday I had a bad day.
Then on Thursday at work I got these.

Jon sent them to me to cheer me up.
Aren't they beautiful?
He's wonderful!

Purses, handbags and fabulous!

Hey Ladies, if any of you have a love for handbags I strongly encourage you to check out madebyhank. This girl makes some fabulous bags! At least I think they are fabulous. She also has an etsy store, which is where you can pick one up. Maybe if I am good Santa will bring me one.


photos from madebyhank

Stationary

Another of my loves is stationary. I have numerous different styles of cards at my house and have to resist purchasing more when I find more that I love at the store. Well a week or so ago I lucked out and won this adorable set of notecards from a blog that I read.

Photo courtesy of Chris

The blog is You Can Call Me Chris. She hand makes tons of wonderful papercrafts. Right now she has adorable Christmas tags in her etsy store. I highly suggest checking out her store!

To be Thankful

The Library of Congress has recently added several color pictures from the 1940's to their Flickr Stream. After looking through several of the pictures it made me very grateful for the sacrifices that so many people have made for this country. Veteran's day doesn't always have the celebration and fanfair that other holidays receive, but it doesn't make it any less of a holiday and I feel it should always be poignantly remembered by our country.

My Grandpa and Grandma on my mother's side as well as my Grandpa on my father's side all served in the arm forces. I am thankful for all they did in supporting this country. Here is a picture of my mom's parents.


If you have the time I highly recommend going through the pictures from the Library of Congress. They can be found here.

Books and beauty

I love old books with designed hardcovers, or in this case these new books. I think that the cover of a book should be interesting. I know that this might go against the old adage that you can't judge a book by it's cover. I personally like to pick books by their cover. I also read the descriptions but if the cover is interesting I will definitely buy the book. I figure if the book sounds interesting and the author can come up with a great cover, I will mostly like love it!

I dream of one day owning a house that has a floor to ceiling bookcase that I can fill with lovely books like these.

The suspense...

has it killed you yet? I am sorry I really wasn't planning on drawing it out this long. Life just got in the way. Here is the reveal.

For those of you who might be wondering how long my hair was before, it was to my shoulder blades. I had Jon take a few pictures the weekend before I cut my hair. Just so I could later stare at them in awe of the time I spent growing my hair out. I'll try to post them soon.

Hmmm...?

Further details to come.

Stamps and Mustaches

As time is passing on my Monday afternoon I was thinking. While thinking I had the thought that it would be fabulous to have a rubber stamp in the design of a mustache. Then I could stamp mustaches on whatever I want. Crazy, I know.. but yet also entertaining.

Locco for Gocco

Without any children to post pictures of or humorous stories about their antics - I am once again subjecting all of you loyal blog readers to another one of my craft related posts. This post will be about my new Gocco machine that arrived in the mail from Japan. It was a long flight, and boy are it's wings tired. *badum-CHING*


I am sure some of you are wondering what's a Gocco? Well it's basically a small, self contained screen printer. I bought it in the hopes of being able to screen print designs on some of my future aprons. Of course I am going to have to learn how to use it, and find a manual in English since all of the instructions are in Japanese.



Stay tuned to see what crazy things I can design with this new toy of mine.

News Reporters

Tuesday night Jon and I are at dinner enjoying some lovely cheese fries and dipping sauce at the training table. We did order sandwiches too. Just so all of you don't think we didn't have a partially sensible dinner. When my cell phone rang. It was an out of state number, 206 area code. Rather than be distracted and possibly miss out on my share of the cheese fries I decide to pass on answering the call. To my surprise the person calling actually left a message. Sadly most phone calls I get from numbers I don't know, the person doesn't leave a message so ends up being a mystery who ended up calling.

Later after we got home I decided to listen to the voicemail and see who the "mystery caller" was. Once again to my surprise it was a news reporter from Kiro TV in Seattle Washington, named Kyle Moore. In his message he said that he was doing a news story on a Jon Pomeroy, and when he looked that individual up I showed as being linked to him. This intrigued me so I called the guy back. I did, however, search the TV station's website to make sure this Kyle Moore guy was legit first though.

The reporter seemed shocked that I had called him back. He reiterated to me that he was doing a news story on Jon Pomeroy. It was nice he gave the guy's name again because I couldn't understand what last name he had said in the message. He asked me if I knew the guy. I said I wasn't sure and asked if he could tell him a little about him to jog my memory. The reporter then began to apologize for inconveniencing me. He then told me that he was hoping that I was the guy's wife. I informed him that wasn't the case, which he was already aware of - since I didn't appear to know Mr. Pomeroy. The reporter thanked me for my time and ended the call.

I then went and told Jon this story and how crazy it was, and how I felt the reporter might have gotten my cellphone number.. blah blah blah. I then made a mental note of checking the Kiro TV website later in the week to see what the actual story was about.

The next day at work a co-worker stopped me when I was on my way to lunch and jokingly told me that my name was all over the internet in some news story. Not quite making the connection, probably due to low blood sugar, I mentioned something about the odd phone call I got from the news reporter and asked the co-worker to send me the link to the article. When I came back from lunch I found this link:
http://www.kirotv.com/news/17713956/detail.html

Apparently, "Rebecca Long" was being charged with starving her 14 year old stepdaughter. Wow! Heartbreaking!

Although there is a spelling difference, and anyone who knows me knows that the individual in the article is not me - it catches me off guard that the reporter somehow ended up with me. He said he had contacted several people. I imagine he just searched that name.

Nails on chalkboards...

have got to be the worst sound ever! Thankfully such a sound will not be made on my chalkboard.


Currently I am in the process of re-organizing my craft room. Once that is done I will find the perfect spot to hang my chalkboard on the wall.

Birds of a feather

I didn't really have anything to blog about.. but decided that I would start a mini showcase of things I have or recently obtained that I love. As some or none of you might know I really love birds.



The designer of this necklace uses old watch parts, along with new pieces to design her work. I think it's wonderful!

Twilight Update

Twilight arrived in the mail yesterday. After work and various household chores last night I picked up the un-opened hardback book. There is just something about cracking open a hardback book that hasn't been opened before that feels me with joy.

Anyway, back to the book. I can't say that I love this book. I did make it half way through last night before putting it down. Stephanie Meyer's writing style is a little choppy to me and seems to drag on. However, it has peaked my interest and I have to finish it to figure out what happens. Since there are more books to follow I am sure I will end up reading them too, so I get the whole story.

Craft Time!

The other day my friend Stephanie was admiring the felt case I made for my ipod. She had mentioned that her hand knitted case for her camera had stretched and her camera no longer stayed inside. I decided to surprise her with a new felt case. Here is how it turned out.

Books

I have been looking for a new book to read. Lately I have just been reading magazines and the readers digest. The book Twilight was suggested to me, however, with the recommendation I was told - "If you loved Harry Potter you will love this!". I never read any of the Harry Potter books. I am sure this declaration is making some of you gasp. I just never had any desire to read them. But anyway, back to Twilight. I have asked a few people who have read it their opinions and got good feedback. I am still a little nervous though. Why? I am not sure.

I did order a hardcover copy off of Half.com the other day and hopefully it will be here shortly. I'll update the internet world on my opinion once I start to read it.

On a side note if anyone else is looking for something to read I recommend the author Wally Lamb. I have read both I know this much is true and She is Coming undone and loved both of them. He has another book coming out in November and I am anxiously waiting it's release.

Homeownership and HOAs

I have been a homeowner for several years now, which don't get me wrong, I love. However, I was not completely prepared for life in an HOA. HOA are for some people, but I have come to find out I am not one of them. I do not like paying a monthly fee to cover services which I feel are basic and not worth what I am paying each month.

This weekend I received a letter in the mail from the HOA management company, advising that someone had complained about our 1962 Mercury Comet being parked in the driveway and that the car had made a stain on the driveway. Maybe its my humble upbringing, but a stain on a driveway seems pretty commonplace to me, since you are parking cars there - which do drive on the dirty road and contain various types of different fluids.

Anyway apparently this vehicle and stain are bringing down property value for everyone else. The letter also asked that the vehicle be stored in the garage in the future and to make sure there was something protecting the concrete in the garage from damage from the vehicle.

HOAs may be for some people. They are definitely not for me. This has made me more motivated to find a new house.

Halloween is just around the corner..

I have posted a few Halloween decorations for sale on my Etsy.com account, NeedlePinProductions.etsy.com.

Go check them out! You don't have to buy from Etsy, you can order directly through me. Just email me what you would like.

Roadtrip - Jamestown Wyoming

Jon and I recently took a roadtrip into Wyoming to look at a truck Jon was interested in buying. Before taking a roadtrip I like to look up the route on google maps and then check a few different websites. I like to see if any of the towns we might pass by are ghost towns or have cool points of interest. One of the towns we passed through on our adventure was Jamestown. There wasn't a lot of buildings of interest; but this one really stuck out, so we spend some time taking pictures. Jon with his professional DSLR and me with my point and shoot. yay.

The following are *my* pictures.

Continuation of July 14th post

On July 14, 2008 I posted a pic of canning jars and said to stay tuned. As usual with my life I made a slight change of plans. My original plan of attempting to make homemade raspberry jam (first atttempt) stayed the same, but I found new jars I thought were cuter.

Here is the final product -

The jam turned out great, in my opinion. I do have a few extra jars I would love to share with anyone who might be interested. Just let me know!