There was more to my last post..the one about whining...but for some reason it didn't save.  And I found myself not caring to fix it.  Because I was looking at inspiration sites on the internet.

I"ve found myself crafting a little lately.  Yep.  For real.  But even better than that, I've been taking photographs again.  I've decided to go ahead with the "Big Purchase" and stop putting myself down.  I can't wait! 

I found myself in need of scrapbook paper recently.  Not that I scrapbook (I just can't seem to get into that)...but I needed some.  I felt overwhelmed!  I never realized how intense that area of the craft store was.  I knew it was big...it loomed each time I passed it...but I never ventured into it.  I felt lost.  I found myself talking to myself.  I wanted to run and cry somewhere.  But after a while I found what I was looking for and followed my bread crumbs back out into the rest of the store.  But you know what the kicker is?  That stuff...the papers and stickers and things...it was all so fantastic!  I need to find a lot more crafts that use paper!  (and from the looks of it I might need to rob a bank)

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So, first, the rules:

1) Link to the person who tagged you.2) Post the rules on your blog (copy and paste 1-6).3) Write 6 random things about yourself (see below).4) Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them.5) Let each person know they have been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.6) Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

1.  Today...January 16th, 2009...marks the fifth anniversary of the first time M and I started exchanging emails.  We have been fast friends ever since.

2.  The best word to describe me is "Distracted".  I try really hard to focus on one thing...like this list...or a conversation...or work...or a TV show...or the weather report...but I get distracted.  Easily.   Um...now I forgot what # 3 would be.

3.  My "Go-to" words are "watermelon" and "monkey".  If I don't know what something is and my son has asked me a million times and won't accept "I don't know" then I say one of those words.   And my "Go-to" number is 7. 

4.  I hate Diet Coke.  I will drink any other diet soda (in fact, I prefer the diet over regular on most sodas) except Diet Coke.  I'll even drink Coke Zero (which is almost Diet Coke)

5.  I do not have a favorite movie.  When people say "Oh, that's my favorite movie" I actually get a twinge of jealousy.  I also don't have a favorite band, book, a favorite song...but I know that red is my favorite color.  I probably could come up with a good list of Top Ten Favorite Movies, Bands, Songs and Books if forced to. 

6.  I just bought gel deodorant for the first time ever.  It was an accident...I thought I was buying the normal white cake stuff.  I thought I would hate it...but I don't.  I like it.  It's um...blue.  I've used the same brand for so many years that I don't even remember what it is.  Suave?  I don't know.  But it smells like apples.

as far as tagging goes?  I don't know who to tag.  If you read this and post it on your blog then let me know.  

Today is a very windy day.  It would be a very warm day but the wind seems to be winning the battle.  I know that the sun is up there saying "Hey!  I had 80 degrees scheduled!" and the wind is just laughing and acting as if he didn't even hear.  The wind is not chilly enough to make it cold or uncomfortable...but it is strong enough to get under your jacket and attempt to peck at your skin. 

I just sat outside for my one hour lunch break to read and listen to music.  I could have sat inside in the cafeteria at one of the booths...they are plush and comfortable...but not only are the tables too high for my five foot 2 inch frame (I feel as if I'm a child sitting there with my nose barely reaching above the table edge)...but I am an outside sort of person.  This does not mean that I prefer outdoor sports (or sports in general) or own things like hiking boots or a canteen...it just means that if I have a choice I will choose outside.   

I think that's the one thing that  I love about my state.  Cabin Fever seems to be a huge malady of mine... There are rarely days when I would prefer to be indoors.  Rainy days here generally mean that it will rain somewhere around 5pm.  The rest of the day is just lovely.  Hurricane days can be a bit hindering, I definitely wouldn't find myself stretched out on a lawn chair in my backyard...but I would find myself on a nice screened in porch watching the trees sway and the rain come down sideways.  As many cons as I have about living here (way too many mosquitoes, brutally hot winters, the stupid accents) I don't think I could trade the luxury of reading outside 365 days a year for anything. 

 

We just created a brand new book review site.  check us out:  http://wearebooked.weebly.com/index.html


Also, since we are still all about food I'm going to be adding my grandma's Jello Cake recipe to the site today.  It's my favorite cake IN THE WORLD!!!!  I hope you enjoy.

This is where most people would list what they expect of the new year, what they resolve to do, what the last year meant to them...yadda yadda yadda....But I won't. 

It's also that time of year to take down the Christmas decorations, right?  But unless one of my cohorts decides to decorate the site for D's January Birthday A Thon I think we will just leave it up.  It's so pretty.

I don't think I have a purpose for this post...

I finished "How To Be Lost"-the first book on M's list below.  It was Incredibly Awesome.  A real quick read, too.  Definite recommendation (a double one, I guess)

My resolution for 2008 was to read 75 books. Well, I didn't make it. I'm reading #50 right now, but I'll have to count it for 2009 since I won't be done by tonight. So I read 49 books this year. That's not too shabby! I thought I'd talk about my top ten favorites. In no particular order.  

"How To Be Lost" by Amanda Eyre Ward This is one of those books that I never wanted to end. It's about three sisters. The youngest one goes missing when she's 5 years old. The story is about how the sisters set out to find her 15 years later. Beautifully written.  

"The Road" by Cormac McCarthy  I had been meaning to read this book for years. I saw it at the thrift store and decided it was time. I didn't think I'd like it because I heard it was science fiction and I don't like science fiction. I loved this book, though. It's about a man and his son that survive in a wiped out America. They are walking to the coast. It's a depressing book, which, I'll be honest, is my favorite kind. A must-read.  

"The Book Of Bright Ideas" by Sandra King This is such a cute book. It's about the friendship of two young girls. Heartwarming. A little depressing. And the names! The character names in this book are great...Button, Winnalee, Freeda.....and also, the author lives in the northwoods of Wisconsin...that's my hood! Those are my peeps!  

"Autobiography of a Face" by Lucy Grealy this book hit me right here. (I'm pounding my chest, just imagine it.) I have wanted/dreamed about a nose job for as long as I can remember. This made me realize that it's not that bad. It's the true story of a lady who had a terminal cancer when she was young. She had a third of her jaw removed, and the story is basically about living life with a disfigured face, and all the surgeries she goes through to make it look more "normal".  

"Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett  OK, I REALLY didn't think I'd like this one. I don't like what I call "history books".....stories set way way way back in time. 1950 is about my limit. But I had heard such good things about it..and then my mom read it and loved it, and that clinched it. We have almost identical book tastes...the only difference I can think of is Barbara Kingsolver books...my mom loves them and I can't stand them. Other than that, though, we're like this. (now I'm crossing my fingers, imagine that too.) Anyway, this book was very well written and entertaining. It's basically about the politics of England during the 12th century, with some great battles and a love story thrown in. Very good.

   "We Were The Mulvaneys" by Joyce Carol Oates  Another damn Oprah's Book Club book. Anyway, I have had this book for years. Tried to read it once and for whatever reason, never made it through the first chapter. I remember thinking it was dull. Well, I decided to give it another shot, and I sure am glad that I did. Very well written..one of the "I don't want to put this down" books. It's about a family (The Mulvaneys, duh) that starts out very close and by the end, a daughter is exiled, the farm is lost, too much booze is drunk, etc. That sounds awful, but it's written in a way that makes the family very likeable. I found myself caring for all of the characters as if they were real.  

"Fay" by Larry Brown  this might be my ultimate favorite of the year. What a storyteller. I had never heard of this author, but I found the book at the thrift store, and the summary on the book jacket intrigued me. I guess there's a book before "Fay" called "Joe" that is about the same heroine...I've got to get my hands on it ASAP. This is kind of a coming-of-age novel. The girl runs away from her broken home and finds a man that takes her in and becomes the father she never really had. Until she falls in love with him. Then it gets weird. But good weird. I highly recommend this book.  

 "The Box Children" by Sharon Wyse this is told in the point of view of an 11 year old girl growing up with a weirdo mom. She lives on a farm and has imaginary friends...the ghosts of the 5 children that her mother miscarried. This book has a dark humor that I love.  

"The Scent Of God" by Beryl Singleton Bissell  this book is a memoir written by a woman that was a nun and then left her convent for love. (a priest!) It's fascinating to read about joining the nunnery at a young age, and about day to day life in the convent. Fascinating read.  

 "When Charlotte Comes Home" by Maureen Millea Smith  this book is sad. It's about a family dealing with the youngest child getting sick and being in the hospital for a long period of time. Mostly about how her siblings deal with it. It's very beautifully written.

   "The Myth of the Welfare Queen" by David Zucchino  a non-fiction book that follows a few people that are trapped in the welfare system of Philadelphia. It really sucked me in, and it changed my whole view on welfare.   So, there it is! My Top Ten of 2008. Right now I am reading "The Hour I First Believed" by Wally Lamb. Wally lamb is my All-Time Favorite Author, and I've been waiting almost 15 years for him to write another book! I'm about halfway through and so far it is EXCELLENT. I'm sure it will be in my top ten for 2009!   Happy New Year, and go to the library and check these books out!  

Merry Christmas Everyone!

 

Happy Christmas Eve, my friends! This used to be my most favorite day of the whole year. I say "used to" because things have changed quite a bit. Let's speak of tradition, shall we? My family is steeped in tradition, and I am not a fan of change. I want to raise my kids the way I was raised, no exceptions, no matter how silly that may sounds.

So this is what my childhood Christmas Eve/Christmas Day looked like...

Spend the day playing in my room or reading, trying to stay out of mom's way as she cleaned the house. At some point I would wrap my presents for my brother and my parents. At 5pm, we would go to church. A Lutheran Christmas Eve service in our church was pretty painless..about 40 minutes of Christmas songs...but for a kid on Christmas Eve it lasted FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER. When we got home, Dad would set out the Swiss Colony Buffet. Every year he would order various cheese, meats, crackers, dips and dessert from Swiss Colony. We also would usually have those cocktail weinies in barbecue sauce. Grandma and Grandpa would come over at about 6:30. We would eat our buffet with coffee and iced tea, and then my brother J and I would spend a good 20 minutes rushing the adults and begging for presents. Then we'd all gather in the porch, and J and I would give our parents our gifts, and then we'd exchange gifts to each other, too. Mom and Dad always gave us two gifts on Christmas Eve, the "non-Santa" gifts. One was always a pair of pajamas and one was always a calendar. Sometimes Grandma and Grandpa would give us a family gift that night...usually a kitchen gadget...quesadilla maker, or espresso maker, etc.

So then after some chatting, Grandma and Grandpa would leave. J and I would put on our new pajamas and settle in on the couch in front of the fireplace downstairs, which would now have a roaring fire in it (when did he do that?? It must have been when J and I were distracted with Grandma and Grandpa). Then he would read "The Night Before Christmas" to us. The copy of the book was ancient, I think it must have been his when he was a kid. I hope he still has it. After that we left cookies and milk out for Santa, and a carrot on the deck for the reindeer, then it was off to bed for us. When we were kids, J would always sleep in my room on Christmas Eve. We'd stay up as late as we could, talking about Santa and presents. A few years, we even heard the reindeer on the roof! (my dad actually went outside and threw pebbles on the roof...the magic of Christmas was very important to him!) My parents left the radio on all night long...the station that played Christmas music. I suppose this was so that it was harder for us to hear them wrapping, stuffing, and assembling downstairs! J and I would usually wake up at about 4:30 or 5, and our allowed time to leave the room and wake up mom and dad was 6am. We always snuck out anyway, though...and it's one of my favorite memories. Slowly, slowly opening the door so that we weren't busted....our eyes adjusting to the dark and then looking over to the lit-up Christmas tree, hearing the carols on the radio...then looking over to the couch, where our stockings and presents were stacked...a pile for each of us...we would look at each other and whisper "Whoa!" Then we would ever so slowly tiptoe into the living room..we counted presents but didn't touch anything. Then we would peek into the kitchen and see that the cookies were gone! Santa took the cookies! And peeking outside...the carrot! It was half eaten! And there were reindeer tracks in the snow! Wow! Sometimes my dad heard us sneaking around up there and would stick his head up the stairs (their bedroom was downstairs) and say "hey! back to bed with you two! It's not time yet!" and we'd scatter back to my room, giggling all the way..then I'd read books to J until it was time to get up. At 6am we'd burst out of the room and run downstairs..sometimes banging on the piano on the way down. "It's time, mom and dad! Wake up! It's Christmas! Wake up!" My parents, who were usually up until 2 in the morning wrapping and stuffing stockings and exchanging presents to each other, would bound out of bed, my mom would hug both of us and say "let's go see what Santa left! Do you think he came?" and I would undoubtedly say "He did! He did, the carrot is half-eaten!" not even realizing that I had just admitted to sneaking out of the room. We would all go upstairs, Mom and Dad bleary-eyed in robes, Dad would start the coffee. After the coffee was dripping, we were allowed to start opening our stockings. My parents went all out on stockings. My mom made them, and they are really long and really stretchy...they fill them so that the goods are spilling over the top, and then they surround each stocking with unwrapped gifts, too. So J and I would open stockings at the same time while mom and dad watched. There's a specific smell that I remember about the stockings..they always put fruit in the bottom, so it was a combination of the fruit and chocolate and the yarn. Then, after stockings and about three cups of coffee each for mom and dad and sometimes one for me  (yeah, I started drinking coffee when I was three)it was present time. J and I would take turns opening a present..we always tried to stretch it out as long as we could. The Christmas music would still be playing, and dad would be taking pictures in between gulps of coffee. After presents, mom and dad would open their stockings. Then, dad would clean up the shredded wrapping paper, J and I would play with our new stuff, and mom would go back to bed for awhile.

At about 9am, we'd go over to my Grandma and Grandpa Nygren's house. Grandma would have Christmas breakfast cooking, and I'd go into the kitchen to help her make the orange smoothies. We'd listen and sing to "C'mon Ring Those Bells" while we worked. Since she died last year, this song makes me cry when I hear it. Which is often since I burned it onto a CD. Before we ate, we all did stockings. The stockings at my Grandma and Grandpa's house are handknit by my great grandma. There'd be Christmas music playing downstairs and the tree would be all lit up and the couches and chairs were filled with all ten of our stockings. We'd find our own and tear into them....then we'd put all the stuff into plastic shopping bags that Grandma passed around, then we went upstairs to eat. Always the same breakfast...cinnamon rolls with green frosting and cherries(which my dad is going to try to replicate this year..grandma didn't leave her recipe!), the orange smoothies, coffee, canadian bacon, egg bake, fruit, and cheesey potatoes. After us kids finished eating (me and J and our cousin J, and later L came along) we would sit at the table and beg to open presents. We had to wait until the adults were done eating and "until Grandma says OK". After what seemed like an eternity, Grandma would smile and say "OK!" and we'd scramble downstairs. Being the oldest grandkid, it was my duty to pass out all the presents under the tree, a duty that I took very seriously. I would always pile mine up by the fireplace, because I liked to sit with my back to the warm fire. After presents were passed out, we'd go around and take turns...youngest opens first and all the way up to Grandpa. This made it take a long time. To this day I feel a twinge of anxiety when I'm in a situation where everyone opens presents all at once..I'm like "Wait! Too fast! I can't see what everyone got! Slow down! Savor Christmas!"

After our presents were opened, we'd sit and chat and I would sometimes fall asleep in front of the fireplace, on the latchhook rug that Grandma made, clutching her Santabear.

At about noon, we'd hug Grandma and Grandpa goodbye and then it was on to Grandma and Grandpa L's house. It was a little more disorderly and chaotic there. First of all, there was seventeen of us, before the youngest cousins were born. We would open our stockings right away, which were handmade by Grandma. Then all the cousins would play for a few hours downstairs. Grandma and Grandpa's whole basement was like one big playroom. Grandma would have trays of fruit, meat and cheese for us to snack on. After a while, we'd go back upstairs and us kids would open presents. Grandma usually got us girls the same things, so we'd all open at the same time. Sometimes she'd get us "big" things, like a scooter. In that case, she would tie a really long red piece of yarn to it, put it downstairs in Grandpa's workshop, and hand us one end of it..we had to follow the yarn to get to the present. After presents, the adults would exchange their presents while my cousins and I would go back downstairs and play dress-up. Grandma had a huge collection of vintage gowns, slips, dresses, hats and purses. Grandpa, my dad and my uncle D would stand out on the deck and smoke a cigar. The smell of cigars still sometimes reminds me of my Grandpa L, who died in 1999.

Then in the late afternoon we would go across the street to Grandma and Grandpa's church. This is where the extended family would meet...my mom's cousins and aunts and uncles and second cousins...probably close to 40 people in all. Everyone would bring a dish, and us cousins would go down to the rec room, it had a pool table and a TV and air hockey. We'd stay there until my mom and dad came down to get me and J to go home. We'd complain and ask for 5 more minutes, and usually my parents would sit on the couch and give us 15 minutes more or so of playing. At this point J was usually about to drop, so my mom would pick him up and he'd fall asleep immediately on her shoulder, and my dad would pick me up, and we'd go out into the cold air and mom and dad would load us into the minivan which was now crammed with presents. We'd fall asleep on the short ride home, and dad would carry us inside and put us into bed.

And so that's it. I'm used to going a million places in one day and I wouldn't change it for anything in the world.

These days Christmas Eve is a little different, because J got married and they see R's side of the family on Christmas Eve, and Grandma died, so grandpa won't be coming over, instead my parents are going over to Grandpa's house, and I see my boyfriend's family on Christmas Eve. But it's still my favorite day, and I will still probably be up at 6am tomorrow morning with the giddy anticipation of Christmas Day.

 

Merry Christmas to all!

I feel like my photographic skills have slipped through my fingers the past few months.  I don't know how much longer I can get away with blaming it on my camera.  I'm about to make a HUGE camera purchase and I'm seriously beginning to doubt myself.  I mean...I've had this camera for a while...and I have taken some stellar shots...but lately?  I've spent so much time in post processing on the handful of shots that I kind of like. 

I've read things that say stuff about finding your "style" and even after a few years I don't think I have a style.  I've been really enjoying high contrast in editing lately but I almost feel like I'm faking a "style" by doing that.  And of course I'm a huge fan of portraits...but that might be because I'm also a huge fan of my 50mm. 

So...should I go ahead with the huge purchase?  M & E and some other random readers are all familiar enough with my ability...but M & E are very biased (you know, being my BFFs and all) ...Am I having these doubts because I'm a very cheap person and the price of this camera makes me hyperventilate? 

See?  I whined.  I promised you I would.

2 days until Christmas!