Reunited with a past love....

I hope everyone had a happy and safe New Year's Eve! I enjoyed my little Christmas vacation/break from work. At the start of my vacation I had a few photo sessions and a lot of picture edits to get done and all the hoopla with Christmas activities. But for the last couple of days I'll have to admit I've been pretty darn lazy. I've had plenty I should have been doing, I just couldn't get motivated to do it. Now I have to return to work tomorrow - not looking forward to that in the least. In fact, I've come to the conclusion I'd make a pretty good house wife! If you know a good guy looking for one let me know!! LOL

Reunited.....

If you've been out late in Carbondale in the past 30 years or so you'll know who Winston is, one of the best parts of going out on the strip in Carbondale was Winston's bagels. You'd smell them toasting on an open fire the minute you walked outside.

I always ordered mine with cream cheese, cinnamon, bacon and apple slices. Here recently I found bagel tops (basically it takes all the thickness out of the middle which just gives you the top and bottom of the bagel)and decided to make my own Winston bagels at home. I toast mine in a toaster but the end result is still pretty darn good. In fact they've become a recent obsession of mine....

Back to work tomorrow. Not only is it the beginning of the month, but also the beginning of our fiscal year which means I'll be working, working, working. To top the week off, Johnathon has 3 ballgames this week. Joy!

I hope everyone has a great start to the New Year!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

Recent picture I took of my cousin's daughter - Savannah

The fire is cracking in the fireplace, the snow is gently falling outside, the presents are wrapped, the cookies are baked and I just boiled the potatoes for Grandma's potato salad.

We're going to have a WHITE CHRISTMAS this year!!

My nieces and nephews - Johnathon, Brittany, Katelyn & Matthew

Well, I need to cut up the rest of the potato salad ingredients and make a cheese ball and then carry everything out in the snow. Shurtz's are gathering at mom & dad's tonight.

I hope everyone in blogland has a Very Merry Christmas!

Thankful for Friends

"We wish you a Merry Christmas" is the song they sang at my back door Saturday night. Two of my grade school friends stopped by with a few house warming gifts and to visit for a while.

I hung the new pot holders on the cabinet already. Love SNOWMEN!
They checked out the progress on the house, we told a few stories and had a few laughs. I didn't think to get the camera out while they were here, not that they'd have let me take their picture anyway.


They also gave me this cute t-shirt! I'm getting ready to put the flannel snowmen sheets in the washer and get them on the bed.
Thanks Deb and Sherry - hope you both have a very Merry Christmas!

Snow, Fireplace and Christmas Decorations

Well it doesn't show signs of stoppin'
and I brought some corn for poppin'
and since we've no place to go (tadada)
Let it Snow
Let it Snow
LET IT SNOW

Sunday morning here in SoIL and we finally have our first SNOW! I love the snow!
I really need to be at work today since I have a board meeting tomorrow in which I was given the shortest amount of time possible to get the financials done and then on top of it have to forecast the rest of the year to determine bonus checks. But instead I think I'll sit at home in front of my fireplace and enjoy the scenery. Big thanks to Dad for getting firewood out of the woods out back and starting a fire yesterday while I was at a photo session.

My thermostat is set on 60 and didn't kick on until around 6:30 this morning. Of course I didn't carry wood in last night and had to treck out in the snow early this morning to keep the fire going - well worth it though, I love the feel and smell of wood burning.

Oh forgot to mention, I am officially living in my house now!!

Moved in the day my first house guests arrived (day before Thanksgiving), well truth be told I had to pack an overnight bag with clothes in it after my house guests were here because I only had enough moved for it to be liveable (didn't get around to clothes) and it rained that entire week.

My first Christmas tree.

I'm not ready to show you pictures yet as NO room in my house is done. I've been super duper busy this fall with pictures and have worked 60 hours plus the last two weeks and expect about that many hours this week too so 'things' at the house have been put off. But on a good note, come Thursday afternoon......I'm on vacation until the new year! That vacation isn't going to be a relaxing time but rather a "I'm getting stuff done at the house" vacation. I"ll relax some, but I'm ready to get a few projects marked off as complete. I won't really be able to relax until I get things done.

On the agenda for Christmas break:
*build kitchen island
*faux tin tile ceiling in kitchen
*molding on kitchen shadow boxes
*lay flooring in kitchen
*seal basement floor
*paint basement walls
*maybe build a few shelves in basement
*do a funky treatment on north wall in living room (knocking it out in spring so as of right now it's totally unfinished and ugly - have an idea on cheap treatment to mask look until remodel)
*hang blinds and window treatments in bedrooms and kitchen
*fix paint on kitchen cabinet doors
*hopefully get my handy-men to finish the tile in my bathroom, run electrical hookups to rest of outlets and move my satelitte connection
*re-arrange living room

*lay flooring in closet
*get bed set-up and bedroom put together (matress is on the floor right now), the room is painted but that's about all I can say about it
*maybe if I have time and weather permits, get crown molding installed in two bathrooms

I think that sounds like enough work for a vacation. Here are a few of my Christmas ornaments......well, it's time for me to design a few photo albums and then start working on company financials spreadsheets so I don't have to go into work at 3am tomorrow morning to get them done in time!

Last Christmas

I was organizing my photo files, making disk copies of raw files, and starting the process of working on everything I need to edit.

Right before I went on vacation I downloaded all of the pic files from my many, many camera cards into a huge file - basically I just dumped everything there to deal with later. Well it's now later - I was moving these into their appropriate file location based on what the picture is of and ran across these, someone must have taken my camera to the nursing homes for the Christmas party in 2007.

Little did we now how much the world would change after this Christmas.....

Red dot bathroom

From Red Bathroom

This Christmas I found a new shower curtain that I thought was really cute. My nephew was less than impressed with the red dots. I redecorate my bathroom all of the time because it the cheapest room to do when I'm in the mood for a change. It's a really small room with tile floor and I painted the walls a pail yellow (which goes with just about anything). I think I have about 6 complete decorating sets to change it up when the mood hits.

I redecorated into the red while he was at school and when he came home and first walked by it he just stood there. He asked me where the shower curtain came from and I told him, he continued to stand there and turned around and said hmmmmm. That was it. I don't think he likes the red or the dots. Prior to this it was blue & brown.....his favorite colors.

This towel set was on sale at Sears on black Friday which made my new shower curtain & decor a little more festive! It's a little more outdoorsey than I am, but I liked the look all the same. I'm going to take the green Christmas towels out soon but plan to stick with the red/brown combo for a little while. In part I must admit to aggravate my nephew!

From Red Bathroom

100th post giveaway by a fellow blogger

Just thought I'd pass this along to anyone interested. The Monogram Chick is having a giveaway.


As a means of celebration for her 100th post she is going to GIVEAWAY two of her "Favorite Things" a Monogrammed Preppy Travel Mug and Monogrammed Scraf.

Head over to her BLOG to get registered for the giveaway & be sure to mention that I sent you!

You can also order your monogrammed items for Christmas while you over there.

What I'm doing today

Later this afternoon I'm shooting pics in C'ville of a high school senior which I'm really looking forward to. The senior and her mother are a lot of fun to be around so it should be an energetic, creative afternoon....plus the HS senior is absolutely beautiful which makes "my" pictures look even better!!

But until them I'm working on the edits from Lindsey & Ben's engagement session (which are almost complete), the last flag football game (which I haven't even looked at), Arielle's Homecoming session, Georgia's wedding, and Taylor's senior session. Once I get through many 100's of pictures I should be caught up (hehe, like that' really going to happen - me caught up - right!).

I make my Christmas cards every year and have started thinking about what I'd like to do this year, I must admit I'm kind of having a creative low.....nothing is "speaking" to me this year as far as the card design goes. The last two years I've included a family picture on the handmade, stamped card. We're going to attempt to get pics of the grandchildren on Veterans day. I'm not sure I want a picture on the card this year, but maybe the grandkids pics will get my creative juices flowing and I'll become inspired about a Christmas design.

I typically make between 120 and 150 cards which take me several weeks to get done (they're very detailed).....with no inspiration, I haven't even ordered supplies yet! If you're reading this and related to me, or on my card list - you'll get a card this year (promise), I'm just not sure when!!

Christmas

I'm currently sitting in my office drinking a caramel latte listening to classical holiday tunes on AOL Radio online. I love Christmas music, actually the whole Christmas season in general.

I have to create a table-top Christmas tree over the next couple of nights for a donation/give-away. I think I'll just go ahead and decorate my office while I'm at it.