Sunday's Stuff

I am really loving the Manhattan Flower embossing folder and the Parissian Breeze designer series paper. Oh, and check out the oval and the scalloped oval punches! With matching stamp set! Love it.I had bought Copic's Spica glitter pens for Emily awhile ago, and ended never using the one that I bought myself, and I gave it to her. So recently I got another one and tried it out today. If you look closely, you can see the faint glitter on the middle of the roses.

Also loving the Glitter Ritz glitter. This is for a class that I will be doing in April.

Today was vehicle washing day. Even though there's still snow in the yard, the roads are dry and sandy. Linus was so sad that he wasn't allowed to come outside and help.

My forsythia, in the 2 foot snowbank is starting to bud, oddly enough. The poor thing will have to be moved this year, as every year the snow from the driveway gets piled on top of it.

Shaun is making rice pilaf, salmon and I'm making roasted cauliflower to go with it.

I did my Wii Fit for the day, but had to alter my routine. I love the boxing but am too intense, my forearms are so sore, the pain kept me up last night. I need to loosen up a bit. I know it's can't possibly be a real lose, but I'm down 2 lbs. from yesterday.

Saturday Stuff

We took the dogs out first thing, which for me today was after 9 am. Not 3 minutes from our house, it's full on winter. This photo was crappy, Kerry and Linus are in the shade and hard to see. I've 'improved' it with the Pioneer Woman's Heartland action. The rest of the photos are SOOC, but with my polarizing filter on my 50mm f1.8 lens, with the exception of the last one, no filter there.This is a dog, Kerry(waving) and me on the bridge across the river, which you can't see because it's covered in ice and snow.

I almost bit it just before this photo. Kerry had to use the facilities, which were surrounded by sheer ice. I was in charge of holding dogs. One of which thought Kerry went in the front of the box and disappeared so logic says he went out the back of the box which is on the edge of a cliff. Linus ran around to peek at the back side and I slid along with him, thank goodness he stopped at the edge of the cliff.

Everyone re-united with Dad. They are so happy the brown box thing let him back out.

I thought this was pretty neat, obviously so did the beavers.

I made fresh spring rolls and peanut satay stir fry for dinner. I could eat tonnes of these spring rolls. Which is a good thing, the deep fried versions sold refrigerated at Costco give me killer gas.

We finally started and finished repainting the door trim around some of the doors. We never finished them last year when we did the floors. The door frames were cream, the new trim is white. Which made us realize that the kitchen trim needs painting too, but that's another weekend.

I started trimming trees, Kerry took down the winterizing off the porch (plastic and 2x4s) so now we can see the neighbours.

And I got on the Wii Fit. I was pleasantly surprised to see that even though I feel like I have gained a bunch, it's only 5 lbs. since the last time I was on, which was over 100 days ago. Yikes. I did 30 minutes and then shot the crap out of some Rabbids on Rayman's Raving Rabbids Tv Party. Now my arms are killing me and I think I put my hip out (could be from walking cautiously on the death trap trails today.)

Cards

Sometimes you have to run with it. I realized late last night that I have a class tonight, I was not ready for it. So this morning with a fire lit under me, I set to work getting some new samples made and my class cards done and prepped. I'm holding out on one of them, I am expecting new stamps this afternoon and want to use them to make one of the cards. I got 5 cards done, and 2 cards prepped for 11 in less than 3 hours. I've used the new Manhattan flower embossing folder, even though the catalogue says it's a die, it is not a die, it's just an embossing folder, but a darn cute one at that. Here I sanded the patterned paper so you could see the flowers better.

This is right from SCS, but I can't remember whose card I copied, sorry. I embossed on the cardstock vellum.

For this one, I used the 'wrong' side of the embossed imaged and with lightening speed and a fine tipped glue pen, I filled all the ditches with glue. It didn't matter that the glue was no longer 'blue' and was starting to dry. The ultra fine glitter stuck to it anyway.
A close-up that doesn't do it justice.

The rest of the week in pictures, and lots of words.

Just in case you are wondering, I'm still a little bit sick. The Dr. said something along the lines of "with that medication, don't expect to get better after the week is up, you should have had 2 weeks worth" she did not offer me another weeks worth. I told her I still felt like crap and it's been almost 4 weeks and this is what I've been taking and she said "you could be feeling crappy for awhile still" I couldn't hear anything else she said because I was too busy having a temper tantrum on the floor. She did however tell me that she liked my Wonder woman t-shirt and that I was hot and clammy. I would have just settled for hot.

Tuesday, I made it to the last and most fun calligraphy class. We used watercolour paints as ink. and made this little accordion book to highlight something alphabetically. I decided to do ME! Alphabetically, I'm hard to describe, but with Kerry's help I got my list done 5 min. before leaving for class. Considering I missed the class on spacing my letters, I did pretty good.

I'm very thankful I have friends that still call me and worry about me, even though I haven't been up to making phone calls myself. The best news came yesterday after I was complaining about still being so burnt out, Nurse T. said "of course you feel like crap after doing so little, your body is working hard fighting an infection and if you looked at your blood (which I would never do, ever), you would see this." We had a nice conversation, I felt a bit better, and we made some tentative plans to do something soon.

Some pictures of what I can see while I'm laying on the couch watching too much tv, waiting to get better.

Sally, looking very sorry for me.

Very blurry Linus, wiping his face after he had popcorn. Check out his toy stash.

Linus, looking very sorry for himself.

Both dogs, waiting for me to pass out so they can eat me. Close your eyes, you are getting sleepy, you want to have a nap.

My most exciting mail. My Office Rewards from Office Depot. I get a card with a $16.39 credit. If you could see the left side of the flyer, you would also see the amount I have spent on ink to get that $16.39.

There's a golden retriever in this picture. Can you see him?

And yes, even sick, I have to make dinner. Good thing for 'the book' which is what we call the America's Test Kitchen Family cookbook now. Pizza Margarita, delish. Made a double batch so Kerry could share at work.

German Apple Pancake, yummy! No left-overs.

And the pan sauces for pork chops are great, I want to lick the pan. Shaun made the pasta with roasted red peppers and chorizo sausage, spicy but good. Kerry made peanut butter bars, but over baked them a couple min. which made a huge difference, still edible though. Twice baked potatoes! Emily ate 2 of them! Every single thing we have made from this book has been great!

I've got some work today, I realized after napping the evening away yesterday, that today I have a class! I'm not ready for it, not at all. I'm hoping my SU order comes today so that we can play with the new stamps I ordered.

One good thing...I think the Nasonex helps me sleep. I am usually a light sleeper, I wake up maybe 3 times a night if not more, I hardly ever have a good sleep. Dad has sleep apnea, narrow nasal passages, polyps, snores. While I don't think I have apnea, I do have the narrow passages, and polyps, I'm always stuffed up, but the last 5 days or so, I have slept well and not been stuffed up! The downside...I should be able to sleep late, no school to wake up for, no alarm, but I wake up when the phone rings, every morning this week at 8 am. EVERY morning and not the same person every day. I shouldn't complain, I'm getting 18 hours of sleep a day.

Right now...

-Kerry is baking cookies that my waist-line doesn't need me to eat.
-I'm digesting yet another stellar meal made using the America's Test Kitchen cookbook.
-I should be doing something else.
-I have to find Rae's address because I finished my flowers for the swap today.
-we think that Linus's lack of tail might mean he lacks the Spidey bum senses that tell him "Hey dog! Uranus has Klingons circling it!"
-I'm waiting to see if I get hives from eating Rene's Caesar dressing. Tomorrow I will discuss the benefits of allergy testing with my dr.
-I'm waiting for Spring to make a grand entrance. The 10 degree weather and sunshine today better not have been false advertising.

What are you doing right now?

Sinus Infection

I bit the bullet and went to the walk-in clinic this morning, there was no one else there. Whew...I hate going, everyone else there is sick, and obviously they have germs that I don't want.

I got crap for not using the Nasonex that Dr. MynameisRoy prescribed for me last month and some other pills that I hope I'm not allergic to. I read the side effects, I won't be going on my Hawaiian milkshake drinking laying on the beach trip while on these pills.

I have things I want to do things to create, but found that after a day of doing little things, like stitching buttons to flowers and fixing my camera strap, I was totally exhausted. So the next day I drank rotten Neocitron and slept for 1/2 the day. I did feel better and coughed less that night.

And just incase you are tired of hearing me whine about being sick, here's a picture of me to remind you of how cute I am when I'm not sick.

That's me and my mommy, I might still have that dress. Grandpa still has that couch. In the back ground behind my mom's head is the radio/intercom that we played with as kids. It was probably a very new trendy thing when the house was built, as kids we liked to hide in the bedrooms and use the intercom, but the best thing, you could be outside and hear the radio too. My grandparents always had the radio on, even when they went out, because if no one is home, the radio will make theives think you are.

When you are sick, silly things make you LOL! {*Updated*}

Which is exactly what I do when I'm listening to Beyonce's All the Single Ladies.

I used http://kuler.adobe.com/#themes/rating?time=30 to find some different colour combos for some cards.




And...in educational news...It's report card day. I'm so out of the loop that when Emily said she got on the Principal's List I thought "Damn, I should have made sure she took that Socials test that she missed the other day!" but then Kerry said that the Principal's List was better than the Honour Roll that she made last term. Whooo Hooo!

I think I might be in the running for the 3rd longest run-on sentence ever posted on a blog somewhere in this very rambling post.

My day has been pretty low-keyed. I made a dr. appt. to see about getting some allergy testing. I had a Tim Horton's English Toffee coffee and breakfast sandwich, and I remembered the big order from Kerry's co-workers...and used Timmy's lingo to order...large double double please! I'm not going to calligraphy because no one needs to get my germs, because, yes, I'm still sick. I'm dying, that's what I think, a slow and painful death in which I get every single illness blowing in the wind. That's melodramatic. My plan was to come home and go back to bed, but I've never been one to do that, so I thought maybe a morning of laying on the couch, but no, not that either. I had been thinking about my camera strap that I had gotten a few months back, and the really itchy ribbon on the inside of it. Think nerve rubbing and that's how it felt. I had dismantled the strap part way, only to make total mess of it. I had to start from scratch and made a whole new strap, using the original camera attaching parts. Armed with some of my huge stash of Amy Butler fabrics, batting, and my awesome sewing skillz, I now have a very pretty new camera strap, that I must point out, kind of coordinates with my purse!

Our ginormous Amazon.ca order came today, oh, correction, half our order came because the other half of the books the kids ordered aren't even printed yet, they will ship in November. Whatever! Anyway, I got this snazzy new book! The other one, which I have posted about before, but can't link to because I'm lame, is the hand's down best cookbook ever, the America's Test Kitchen Family cook book.(you can see the corner of one under this book) I had to buy a new red book to replace the one I bought for Shaun and have used and stained up thoroughly. I saw this one was available and treated myself and probably my waist line to a whole new world of baking possibilities.

Shaun and Jenn are making some kind of chicken, red curry, coconut, Thai dish for dinner. I don't actually know if I like red curry. I don't like yellow curry.

Tuesday Blahs...kind of an update to Monday

So yesterday this was not the normally happy-go-lucky blog, don't expect this post to be any better.
Seriously, I'm in my late 30's and have never had a problem with allergies other than hay fever. After my holiday excitement and discovering this late in the game that I am allergic to penicillin, I never thought I'd find more things that I was allergic to. I was wrong...do you hear that? I was wrong...

Yesterday, in my quest to eat better. Notice that's better and not healthier I had Greek House hummus and pitas for lunch, albeit late, like at 2 pm. Later I had what we call Vegetarian Dinner, a baked potato with sauteed mushrooms, Montreal steak spice and Parmesan cheese and a Caesar salad with Rene's dressing. No meat, that's the Vegetarian part. (It's really Lazy Kelli Didn't Want to Defrost Meat Dinner) So I have it narrowed down to the hummus or the dressing that gave me a bodyfull of hives. I bought the dressing the same time I bought and ate all the strawberries and thought them to be the culprits, but I ate salad that day too.
So I had hives, so I took the only allergy pills we have, Aerius, so it says 'non-drowsy' on the box, so I didn't sleep all night. That and the fear my tongue might swell up kept me up all night. So I'm not a happy camper right now.

And if the rest of the actors on Y&R aren't happy about Victor and Ashley's baby news, then maybe the writers should have thought of that before making that octogenarian a baby daddy again. Geez.

Monday Morning Blahs

I am going to rant, and complain, and whine...that's fair warning.

1. I'm done with the snow. -14 with the wind chill today with the chance of bring-out-the-idiot-drivers flurries this evening. Oh, joy of joys! Yippee skippee! I cannot wait.

2. I've popped a rib out. I'm no dr. or chiropractor, but this is how I see it, I could be wrong. It's a rib that is attached to my sternum, it is actually out on the back side, but it feels like I imagine a heart attack feeling. After last night, I also know that Kerry is no chiropractor either. I know, go to the chiropractor. But...refer back to #1.

3. I've found in my old age that...
a. I look just like I did when I was in grade 8. That's a plus I guess. I mean really, if you find a hairstyle that you like, stick with it for 20 years.
b. I pick up every single germ on the market. The drug manufacturers love me now.
c. it's harder to lose weight. Really, a diet of potatoes and popcorn doesn't work anymore.

4. We have a lot of little 2 hour projects that need to be done. Need to! Like finishing the trim. By the time we finish it, the room will have to be repainted again, so really maybe we should just leave it. God forbid we ever decide to really move...we would have to spend months fixing the house up.

5. It might have been Super Hero day at Emily's school. Last night at 9 pm. she says "I need a cape" so I tell Kerry to get out the costumer box. Both kids say "Costume box? Since when do we have one of those?" Geez...It's got a witch, vampire, Winnie the Pooh, and a ninja costume in it. Emily went with the vampire cape, of course, when we got to school it looked like all the other superheros were incognito so off came the cape.

6. We were discussing code names after watching a very slow 3 starred The Good Shepard. Very quickly, without any thought I declared that my code name would be Coco Puff Violet. And now I have a new nickname. Darn my quick witted-ness. So I made up an even better reason...I'm kind of sweet and bitter, like coco, I'm puffy (see #3-c above) and I can make you purple if you call me that!

7. I'm disgusted that ancient Victor and can't conceive Ashley are expecting.

Tidied up

It probably doesn't look much different from a few days ago, but I can tell. (I haven't touched the top of my drawers yet.) I know that I put my embossing powders in a larger plastic box that I can close the lid on now. I added another Cropper Hopper paper holder to my top shelf, and got rid of pounds of scraps. I also used those empty suitcases on the shelf to hide things I never use but can't get rid of. I cleaned out 3 boxes of junk that were hidden on the floor, and on top of my plastic drawers. I got 3 boxes whittled down to 1. I found my acrylic card holders that I had 'lost'. I watched Lost, Y&R and washed some door frames and counter tops. I filled my recycling bin with things I was willing to let go. Sure, I had to ask a friend if I should toss some of that stuff, and she said yes, so I did.

I folded and put away my super long and heavy table, all by myself without dropping it on my toes. So now I have room to jazzersize while I make my way from my table to my stash. Sally helped by hoovering up any small pieces of scrap paper.

So now my room is already and I can stop procrastinating and get my a$$ in gear and work on some class samples. Although I just realized my magazines aren't in alphabetical order....

The winner is...

Shannon W!
Email me your address and colour choice and I'll send that cozie to you ASAP!

kelli.w@shaw.ca

sparkle sparkle

I picked up some wide double sided tape, and some super fine glitter and played around a bit. I'm sure if I had made my hunny a Valentine's day card, this one would have been perfect!

I practiced and did my calligraphy homework. I can honestly say "I suck!" It's so terribly hard for me to get the hang of it. So for all you that think I can do almost anything, I can't do calligraphy, I mean I can do it, but well, you can see the results. We had to make a card, and it had to have a pattern using the letters we have learned. I do like my flower, even if I didn't stamp it in the middle of the square and managed to get some ink on the edge. I'm so over it.

I'm thinking I need to purge and organize a few things...what do you think?

And check that out, just about 12 o'clock and I'm watching the last few minutes of Y&R. Bad Billy, Bad Sharon, ick, needs eye bleach.

3 posts in 1 day!

I just noticed that my visitor counter hit 15,000. I'm sure 13,000 hits were my own.

To honour that and my most wonderful luck at getting in to Karen's photography class, one lucky person will win a coffee cozy made by your's truly.

Just leave a comment about what your favourite warm beverage is and I will pick a winner Tuesday at 5 pm. PST. You will get to pick one from the above 4 patterns.

And if you don't win and you want to buy one, you can leave a comment.

OMG I got in!!!

http://www.snapshotsofagoodlife.com/index.cgi

Okay, here's the scoop....I have wanted to get into to Karen Russell's photography class for a while, ever since I knew she existed. I love her photos of her super cute kids. But of course so does everyone else and the class sold out in 2 minutes last time. When I saw that she had 2 more coming up, I thought I would try. And here's my reasoning, the economy in the U.S. is pretty bad, so maybe, just maybe less people will be spending money on photography classes.
I thought that was pretty good reasoning. And apparently it worked. I got in!
I tried for the first class, it starts ASAP, in March. Not the best time for pictures in Kelowna, but I thought by the time it ended I'd be able to take wonderful pics at the reunion and Tara's wedding. The class was full in less than 2 minutes. So I figured WTH...I'll try for the June-Aug. class, and I got in!
I am so excited.
You might notice I'm not at work, I decided I would have to go in a bit later, to be able to make the 9 am. registration, and it just happened to be fate that Emily isn't going to school because she's sick. I think she's been fighting something off for about a week. I really wish she'd just get full blown sick and be done with it.
Off to tell my camera that she's got big things in her future!

2 times a year

It works out to about 2 times a year that the women in my family get together to make the very sought after chowmein noodles. We also make a shit load of sushi at this time. Then after the hard day's work, we have chowmein and sushi for dinner with the whole family. I have opted out of this tradition, and usually only go and help maybe once a year. We don't eat chowmein that often. I decided to go up this time to help and take pictures and brought home almost 2 lbs of noodles. They are my prized possession and I probably won't share. You can find similar chowmein at the Buddist Temple this coming weekend, you might have to call to pre-order.

I believe the final count was 15 batches. I'm guesstimating that's well over 40 lbs of noodles. The other aunts that helped took home 5 bags each, the ones that didn't help, got 1 bag. Many bags of flour, dozens of eggs, bottles of oil and lots of muscle power got used up.

That's my cousin, Kelsey, she was head mixer, controlled the mixing machine, measured, kneaded, and chopped veggies for dinner.

Me, using one of 2 pasta machines to flatten the dough before putting it through the next machine to cut it into noodles. Check out that muscular left arm, that's the one I can hardly lift today!

My auntie Kathy, flattening dough so that it fits in the noodle machine.

My auntie Geri, she was head sushi roller. She made California rolls and yam rolls. Only about 20 or more rolls of each. If we sold them at the going rate of about $5 a roll...well, we'd have lots of money for scrapbooking supplies.

My mom slicing cukes for tsunomono salad. I ate 2 bowls of it.
My auntie Heather was head deep fryer but also requested to not have the paparazzi take her photos. So when her shift ended my mom took over and she's okay with the camera. What you can't see are the 5 dogs behind her, none of them mine. All waiting for her to drop a noodle.

The finished bagged product. Always the recycler, Kelsey saved the bags from the Summer Games hamburger buns just so we could use them for our noodles.

We had an awesome dinner of chowmein, sushi, halibut, salmon, chicken wings, tsunomono salad and a bunch of other goodies. Kerry's mom came up with us, and my auntie Geri's son brought up some friends, we haven't seen him in years.

The reason everyone was in town was for my cousin Kelsey and Amanda's grandpa's funeral. It's great to spend time with out of town family, but it's so sad that the reason is because more and more funerals are taking place.

I did find out that this year is a reunion year for mom's side. This is always a fun, action and side-splitting laugh filled weekend.

Off to eat sushi for breakfast.