Out of Touch!!

Here it is, 2 weeks into the new year and I haven't posted yet. Time flies!!! We have been back at school a week already, and it feels like we never left. It always takes the kids a while to get back into a routine when we have had time off so the past week was a little hairy to say the least!

Our kitchen for the program is finally finished (if you don't count the dishwasher that is leaking, the washing machine that the water doesn't go into, the paper towel dispenser that is too high, no soap dispensers, cupboards that are way too high and I'm sure I could come up with a few more things if you give me a minute). It was supposed to be ready by the time school started in September . Here we are, January, and we are finally going to start the lunch program next week and start cooking.

It's been a pretty tumultuous 4 months for the kids. New school, classrooms that didn't have dividing walls for weeks. We didn't have our sensory room for a couple of months. Then we had to move OUT of the classroom and into the half finished kitchen for a week so they could put new furnaces in the classrooms (portables). They are still in and out of the classroom fixing things, putting up bulletin boards and we still need baseboards and there's some painting still to be done. Maybe by next year it will all be finished!!

To add to all that we (the staff) have all been sick, off and on. I have had a cold every month so far. I had a cough and a cold the entire Christmas break and a 2 day migraine the weekend before we went back to work! It seems like every blog I read, they or someone in their family were sick over the holidays.

Enough of all that. Talk about out of touch. During the 80's I managed a yarn and craft store for 5 years. As you can well imagine, I have tons and tons of yarn etc. We won't even talk about the fabric store I managed after that. I received a gift certificate to a yarn store last Christmas and I had forgotten all about it. I discovered it in one of the recesses of my bag last week and thought I'd better get to that store and use it before they decided that it had expired. As luck would have it the store was closed for inventory!! But, the door was open so I went in. The staff just said hi, and let me wonder around. They offered me a glass of wine as they had been sipping and snacking as they counted yarn etc. This store was very different from the store I managed. This store was very sparse, had comfy couches and coffee tables. Yarn bins along one wall and a few stacked cubes in the middle of the store. There wasn't one textured, or knobby, or fluffy yarn in the store. Everything was very smooth, in different weights, colours and fibres. I guess I've been subjected to Michael's and the like for too long because when I saw the prices I had to do a couple of double takes. There were yarns that cost $49.95/50gm. hank.! Now granted it was cashmere but OMG how much would a sweater cost!!!!

This is what I bought.
2 skeins of Regia Silk. Made in Germany. 50gms/200m. 55% merino new wool, 25% Polyamid, and 20% silk. Very soft in a nice medium brown. The other 2 skeins of Supersocke Cotton. Made in Italy. 45% Cotton, 40% fleece wool, 15% Polyamid. I skein will make a pair of socks. For those 4 skeins I paid $57.97! Gulp! Am I out of touch or what?

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and a fun New Years Eve.

We went to Son #1 on Christmas Eve and took our neighbours with us. There was so much food there that we could have eaten for a week, lol.

We had a great time. They have a Wii so we had lots of fun bowling and playing tennis and baseball. We received more hockey tickets and a digital picture frame. I'm hoping to get some time to play with the picture frame in the next few days.

Christmas Day had 8 of us sitting down for dinner. We had my mum and dad, BFF, son #1, DIL, and GD. We had lots of present opening first and then we all stuffed ourselves on turkey and all the trimmings.

Boxing Day meant we had to go shopping with the other million crazy people out there! We really didn't buy very much, but I always have to get my dated ornaments in the 50% of sales!!
We went to the hockey game last night. Calgary v. Vancouver. We don't usually go out on New years Eve but we received the tickets as one of our Xmas gifts so off we went. It was a little chilly -17, but it wasn't too bad. We enjoyed the game, especially as the Flames won, and they even had fireworks at the end for New years. We got home shortly after ten and because we had eaten supper so early we had a bunch of hot appetizers and cheese and crackers and wine and saw in the new year.

Today is just a lazy day doing not much of anything. My DH got an ipod for Christmas with several accessories so he is busy hooking up stuff connected with that. I've been putting away some of my Christmas dishes and taking a few more pictures of some of the new ornaments I got. I'll be taking the tree down in the next few days. We usually leave it up until after 12th night (don't ask me why, maybe 'cause I love the tree and hate taking it down!!) but I want it all down and things back to normal before I go back to work on the 7th.

Didn't make any new years resolutions, mainly because I'm not very good at keeping them. I want to figure out where I'm going with my crafting, knitting etc. Etsy was a bust for me, so I'm going to rethink that. We'll see what the new year brings.

I'm going to add a few pictures and then I'm off to make Japanese chicken for supper.
These little cupcakes are so cute, it's hard to believe that they are candles!!!
This is my BFF little hint (about # 100) to my DH that we should get another dog!!
A rather sparkly race car!!

I got these ornaments at Pier 1 yesterday. They are painted on the inside and come in beautiful satin boxes.

Bye for now.

Almost Ready

I'm almost ready, the tree is up, all the presents are wrapped and ready to go.
We will be going to #1 son's on Christmas Eve, the first time we have gone out on Christmas Eve in over 30 years!!! Usually the kids come to us but we are having Christmas Day at our house so #1 sons wife said they would do Christmas Eve. It will be a very nice change.

We went to #4 son's house on Friday with all the gifts for the kids and son and DIL. We had a great time. We first had a very nice supper, linguinni and clam sauce with salad and then peach cobbler and ice cream for dessert - delicious. They are going out of town to DIL's family for Christmas and we wanted them to have their gifts before they left because we had bought them a DVD player with two screen for the van. They were very happy to get that because it will help occupy the little munchkins on the 9 hour journey.

They gave us two NHL hockey tickets for the middle of January and two tickets to see Riverdance that is coming to town in February. DIL also made me a beautiful necklace and matching earrings. She has been making jewellery for a couple of years now and makes some lovely pieces.

I received a package today from Black Eyed Susan's Kitchen. She sent me a beautiful icicle tree ornament. This is a picture of it on my tree. http://sueskitchen.typepad.com/black_eyed_susans_kitchen/ I wish I new how to add a link so you could go and check out Susan's blog. When you click on the link icon when creating a post it just asks you for the http address but I don't think that is what I want. I want to be able to put the blog name in my post and you can click on it and go there. If anyone out there in blogland can help me with this I would be very grateful. Thanks.

Anyhow, I'm going to leave you with a few pictures of some of my Christmas collections and my tree.

This is the first dated tree ornament that I bought. I have bought at least one dated ornament every year since then.

I love this ornament that my sister gave me one year. It's a diva poodle!!
This one is kind of hard to see but it's a nativity scene in a glass domed ball.
This guy is a favourite from the early 80's.

I have many Santas, these are just a few of them.

Here are a few of my snowmen and nutcrackers


This is Mr. Moose that comes to visit every year.Mr. Moose and all the little Christmas Stuffies stay by the tree and are there for any little kidlets that come to play.

I love this card wreath. It holds a lot of cards that usually take up a lot of room all over the place.

These are my bells that I hang on the inside of my front door. I have a great big red bow on the other side.
I love my fake poinsettias that I put out every year and my little reindeers. The red box and the green box came with hand painted (on the inside)round tree ornaments inside. But the boxes are so nice, velvet, that I leave them out on display too.

Man, this is a pretty long post.
I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and hopefully I will blog again between Christmas and New Years.
Bye for now.

No Crafting!

Before you now it almost 4 weeks have gone by and no blogging has been happening. I've been reading all my favourite blogs everyday, getting lots of inspiration. I've had good intensions but no follow through! But here I am. So, what's new? Nothing too exciting. I'm now on my third cold since September-not impressed. The only good thing about that is that hopefully it will all be over and done with by Christmas.

Speaking of Christmas I'm sad to say I haven't made one handmade thing for Christmas - oh except for a pile of dishclothes. No sweaters knit for the g'children, no sewing or anything. Pretty bad I'd say!!!

I did do a little baking. I made some tourtierres that should be good for a few meals. But no treats baking done yet.

I'd love to say that the Christmas tree in the picture is mine and is in this house, but it's at son #4's house. We were there on Sunday for GD's 7th Birthday. For her birthday treat she had gone to 'Build a Bear' with her BFF and they made matching white poodles in matching red and white dresses. So cute! Other toys of 'the moment' are Tinkerbell anything and Little Pet Shop stuff. Her brother who is only 3 was not impressed that his sister got all this stuff and he only got one token present.

This is what he thought of the whole thing! It's sure hard to be 3!!!

I hope to get a start on the tree and other decorations in the next day are two and then I'll have more pictures.

Bye for now!

Christmas Market

We (my husband, 2 friends and myself) went to the Christmas Market at Spruce Meadows yesterday. Anybody that is into show jumping is probably familiar with Spruce Meadows. It is a world class show jumping facility. Anyway, they now put on a Christmas Market every year. It is probably the best one in the area. There are over 200 vendors and several international ones.

They have everything from bread, cheese, fudge, chocolates to wood carvers, quilters, cutlery, tons of jewellery, pottery, and booths from several countries. There was Russia, Africa, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain, Holland. Lots of entertainment, ice carving outside lots to eat and fire pits to sit around. The weather was so nice, you could have been there in shirt sleeves.


I bought a couple of pieces of pottery. Just 2 small bowls that are very similar to the pottery I already have. I bought some focaccia bread and my husband bought some really nice deerskin gloves. I didn't know that deer skin is washable.

I made seafood lasagna for supper tonight. We had the focaccia bread and ceasar salad and then pecan,cranberry pie with whipped cream. Delicious. Son number one, DIL and GD came over. The GD brought the boyfriend for the first time (for grandpa's approval). He seems like a very nice boy. The good thing is that he doesn't drive so GD has to pick him up at the train station and drop him off there at the end of the evening. Grandpa likes that!! GD got her drivers license 2 weeks ago (first try) and is very proud of herself. She is driving her dad's big Avalanche truck. Queen of the road!! Actually she is a very good driver. As grandpa said, he's not worried about her driving, it's the other idiots out there on the street he is worried about.

I have a mountain of dish clothes knitted now. I thought I would offer them for sale here if there is any interest. They are 100% cotton and I have used them for years, (not these same ones, but ones just like them). I think I would sell them 2 for $8.00 and include a pot scrubber as well. The pot scrubbers are made from 100% nylon tulle. We could figure out the postage, it shouldn't be too much as they are pretty light.




Not a very good picture of the pot scrubbers, but that's the best I could do today!
I think that's about it for today. Bye for now.

Dish/Face Cloths

When I can't be bothered getting organized to start a new project or doing the million and one other things I should be working on I knit dishcloths. That's what I've been doing all week. I've got another cold and cough and no motivation to do much of anything so I knit dishcloths. I think I've knitted about a dozen this week. Been watching all the mindless TV-Survivor, Dancing with the Stars, Biggest Loser, ER, Grey's Anatomy, Heroes etc.

Hopefully I'll feel better soon and get busy doing something. Meanwhile I'm making a big pot of Turkey Soup, reading blogs and knitting dishcloths.

See you soon. Bye for now.

Time Flies!!!

Where does the time go? I read other people's blogs every day but it takes me 2 weeks to put a post on my own blog. I don't get it. I keep thinking I have nothing interesting to say so I'll wait until tomorrow...and of course it's the same thing everyday. Everyone else always seems to have interesting stuff to talk about.

Okay, lets give this some thought,hmm.... What have I done in the last 2 weeks? I finished the sweater I started for my BFF to give to her coworker. I knitted the sweater and there was still some yarn left so I managed to get a hat, mittens and then a scarf until the yarn was all gone. I even took a picture!

I hope it's okay and what they wanted.
In the last 2 weeks we've had snow 3 times (one being last night). I guess winter is here. Halloween night was really nice though. Probably the warmest we've had in years. Even so, we only had 19 kids and there were no little ones. I think the youngest was about 9 or 10 and the rest were teenagers. I think most people take their kids to the mall or to the community centres for parties. I think that's a much better idea, and so much safer.
I've been finishing off some more vests for kids. I'm not having any luck with etsy so I might take them to a store in town that carries stuff made by many artisans in this area. I might have better luck there. They do carry kids sweaters but I haven;'t seen anything like the stuff I make. That's a good thing.
Work has been crazy, as usual. Half of the kids have colds, and consequently just about all the staff have colds, myself included. This is the second cold I've had since school started in September! It's a winning combination when you work with kids that have colds and don't know how to blow there noses, cough, they are getting new teeth, consequently lots of drool, not toilet trained so poopy pants. Oh boy. October 2010 (my retirement date) is looking pretty good!!
Glad to see that 'Miles Away from Home' blog is up and running again. In fact she has tagged me. I have to come up with 7 random things about myself. I think I'm going to leave that 'til next time so I can think about it and hopefully come up with 7 things worth reading.
See you next time. Bye for now.