Oh Christmas Tree...

We ventured out yesterday with my parents to get our Christmas Tree. My parents came out here and we just literally followed some signs until we found one...with very happy results!

This place was about 4 miles from our house!

Looks promising!!

Seriously. It was so cute!! We decided this will be our Christmas Tree place from now on. Yeah for making new tradiations!

Cozy Campfire and lovely trees.

On the hunt for a Noble!! But took some time to document the trip.

My parents found their tree and my Dad said "Okay, cut it down for us!" See Jason in the bottom right corner??

husband + campfire + hot apple cider = happy girl :)

sunday snapshot...

Glad our tree didn't take this much work to get!!

my daybook ~ preChristmas edition...

Outside my window...some clouds that have not yet been accompanied by rain today. the hope is to get the Christmas lights up today or tomorrow!

I am thinking...about Christmas :) mainly because I'm decorating the house today. For the first time in probably 10 years I'll putting up my Christmas Village that my grandma so graciously bought for me years and years ago. I just got it back after last yea from my parents attic (much to their delight) and can't wait to revisit all those memories with that decoration.

I am thankful for...the fact that in my immediate family we all have jobs, houses, and loved ones to be with this holiday season. We truly are all happy and healthy too.

I am hoping...that all our holiday plans work out. We know what we are doing for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day but we've invited various parts of Jason's family down and they have yet to confirm plans. I hope, for his sake, that they do make the trip. It really is only 3 hours...we do it a lot! Jason is on-call the 24th, 25th, 26th of December and then will work the week before and after like normal, so there is no chance for us to go up there.

On my mind...Jason and I have started to really have an open dialogue about food. I think this will help us both become better eaters. We aren't the kind of people who are going to be granola hounds, but we certainly need to be better about what we eat.

Noticing that...my husband really is a handy-man! He really enjoys using tools and building things, and for that I am grateful. Currently he is working on a shelf for above the kitchen table and on the guest room/craft closet conversion (more on that later!!).

A few plans for the week...Nothing too our of the ordinary. Today and tomorrow just spent mostly at home doing projects and spending time together. Next weekend is Apple Cup (Washington State VS University of Washington) and it is also the first weekend that Jason will be 'on duty' for his job all by himself!

From the kitchen...we realized this morning that we REALLY need to go grocery shopping...so I think that is on the agenda for tomorrow!

Around the house...Christmas is coming alive!

 

Towards fitness and health...as I mentioned above we are trying to be more conscious of what we eat and really that starts with what we buy...tomorrow's shopping list looks a bit different than in the past.

One of my favorite things...electric blankets! At least this time of year they are ;-)

A picture I am sharing...

 

I made these cakepops with my Mom and Sabrina.

Head over to my other blog... madebyACE to check them out!!!

Long Beach in November...

We headed to Long Beach, WA last weekend with my parents and some family friends. The main reason was to go clamming, the other was to get out of town. Weather predictions for that weekend at the coast were horrible but we figured we'd go and hangout by the fire and play games. We were treated with 45 degree weather on Saturday mixed with a whole day of sunshine. It was perfectly amazing! We look an hour walk on the beach, napped, went clamming in the sunshine and ate dinner and played games. It really was a nice weekend away from home. My parents rented a house and so that was an added benefit of not being stuck in a hotel the whole time. We learned to play the game Canasta and played a round of 10,000. Canasta is kind of link rummy and was totally confusing for the first day. I somewhat eventually got the hang of it but there are a lot of rules. 10,000 is more my style (mainly because I know how to play it) and was a bit bummed we only got one round in. All in all it was a nice 2 night break from home.

View from the beach house. Just about 2 blocks from the beach.

The neighbors had these rocking horses which many of my family members might recall from my childhood...we called our Fuerrie...he even made noise and my parents still have him...waiting (somewhat) patiently for the grandchildren to arrive to use him.

Jason

Sunny beach in November!!

Doughnuts!!!

Enjoying the sunshine on the deck

Enjoying both the sunshine and hot apple cider.

The men of the trip digging for clams.

with all our loot and supplies.

driving down the beach home. hot apple cider and sunshine.

so pretty! and to think it was November!!!

sunday snapshot - only a day late ;-)

elegant.

We had a busy weekend at the beach with my parents and family friends. More soon... We also had a 2 hour late start today at school...1 inch of snow and people are freaking out. That's western Washington for you!

sunday snapshot...late again...

Wow. I totally had the thought to do this on Saturday but I took a nap instead. Here it is, 48 hours later.

one of the many marks of war.

camera strap for the Canon...

We got our snazzy Canon Rebel for our anniversary and the strap, well it is just a black strap was CANON EOS on it. It really isn't too pretty and I've been wanting to spice it up for a while. I found a tutorial on the blog Skip To my Lou with a tutorial on how to make one. I finally got the fabric yesterday. I didn't want to get something too girlie or too busy, but wanted it to still be fun! I decided on a black/red/white combo to appease Jason and a little "paisley" to appease me!

I like the results. I"m totally head over heals for it but it is a great first try! I did buy double the amount I needed so mabye I"ll make version 2.0 sometime. I will also be making them in various other colors, of that I am sure. I took me under and hour to make...and to think, people sell these at $20 - $30 bucks a pop! Maybe that's another avenue I could go down. I seriously had a day dream today about getting a booth at a craft bazzar next year with me and maybe another friend or two who are crafty :) You never know!!!

On this project the ends of the fabric come about a quarter inch on each end from completely covering the strap which will probably annoy me enough to make version2.0 soon but over all it isn't the worth thing.

I really do need to invest in (or ask Santa for) a Quilters Rotary Set so that I can cut very straight lines. These lines...not so straight but it works none-the-less.

The colors. I was going to do poka-dots but it was too busy...

reinforced ends.

finished product.

in action.

:) view from the top

a visit to Stepping Stone Cafe...

This weekend Jason was "oncall" which meant he had to go to work for a bit...not too bad! When he got home on Saturday morning he accidentally brought something with him he shouldn't have and needed to bring it back to the office. He suggested we go out to breakfast since I was already out. I always have in the back of my mind the few places that Adam Richman visited in the Man VS. Food Portland Episode. We have been to VooDoo Doughnuts as you can see here!

For breakfast we headed to Stepping Stone Cafe. It was amazing. Not only were the portions huge, but good, tasty, and not greasy!! Win all around. We had to wait about 20 minutes for a seat but it was well worth it! I would guess that place only seats about 50 people MAX!

Peaking at the menu outside :)

Jason had the smothered B.A. I had the absolute.

*By the way. B.A. stands for Bad A**, in case you were wondering.

Jason being a good sport about my picture taking.

Me.

Coffee!

Our breakfast. It was gigantic!!

One MANCAKE. 13 inches (probably more)...

The "damage" we did. Not much! Haha.

Jason wanted this documented and the comment to be...

Omelet 1, Jason 0.

So good but to mancake-ish.

Pancakes to go. Yes, we did reheat them on Sunday morning. Our waiter told us it was best to use a toaster oven, which we happen to have! And I will say, it was good!

Jason claimed he would re-heat this for dinner. And he did!

Stepping Stone Cafe. Off NW 23rd on Quimby. Worth it!!!

And now we have one more MVF place to visit in Portland...Salvador Mollys which is a pirate themed restaurant. We're kind of waiting for some people (Kenny, Chris, Matt) to come visit us!!! Because we know they'd love it too!

from the 4th row...

...we enjoyed a Blazers game! Another perk of my life is my Dad knows people who get good seats to the Blazers (among other events)! Actually, there were his company seats and WOW were they good. 4th row behind the basket. Though the basket did block some of our views, it was awesome to be so close to the action!

Nice view!

He went to EASTERN!! Go Eagles!!

Paul Allen is the guy in the hat in the front row...

:) happy campers.

So during the game we were noticing (okay, my Dad and I were...not so sure about my Mom and Jason) that people who kept getting up were going across a few sections and then somewhere mysterious, instead of up the stairs like you would expect. At half time we decided we needed to follow them to see what was up..

Walking under the bleachers.

still going...

ah ha! a nice relaxing place for the people court side...because apparently court side isn't fancy enough ;-)

fun times with a fun family!!

sunday snapshot (on a sunday!!!)...

Finally, one of these on time. Maybe day light savings helped me this morning!

If I could go to space camp, I would!!

Fall colors are vivid around here right now.

Powerful and pretty.

We're off to Costco and to do some cleaning today. We have a few projects in the works (ie. planning stages) that I'll be updating upon soon, hopefully. One is building a wall shelf for our kitchen. Another is updating the closet in our green/brown room to become a desk/Annie craft space!! I'm actually kind of excited about because right now I just have a table and all my stuff is always put away but hopefully if I have this desk I'll use it. I'm reading this book and it talks about not only being more purposful with your eating but with your life. We are really trying to turn off the TV more often, be on the computer less, and be purposful with how we spend our time. For me I would like that to look like to include activities during the week such as sewing and scrapbooking, along with baking. Being purposful about who I spend my time with and the things I spend my time thinking about (ie. not worrying about work when I'm not at work). We'll see how it goes :)