december happenings

Since I last wrote, my mom had her annual cookie and ornament exchange Christmas party. I wasn't going to go this year because it fell on a day I had to work, but she had to reschedule it due to some bad weather we had, so in the end, I was able to go. Cool story, huh?

I made Italian lemon cookies this year. In retrospect I should have taken pictures of everyone's cookies, or at least my cookies, but that didn't happen. I did remember to take a picture of my ornament though. I was having a hard time finding an ornament that met my high standards of ridiculousness, until I tagged along with my brother into Tractor and Supply and found this beauty.

The bad weather I was talking about was an ice storm. We'll generally get snow/ice twice a year in North Texas. Once around Christmas and again around Valentine's day. This year it seemes to have hit a bit early.

When you looked out the window, it didn't really look that bad,  just a few inches of snow on the ground. Except it wasn't snow, it was solid ice. Most of my smaller plants, including my poor little Yaupon Holly tree went horizontal due to the extra weight.

School was closed for about four days, so Perry didn't have to go to work, but since I work in a hospital I wasn't so lucky. The first day it iced, I drove to work very slowly and it went just fine. However, when I tried to drive back home, I discovered the bottom inch of my tires were covered in ice, and my car was literally frozen to the ground. It took Perry an hour to de-ice his car and then he came to pick me up. We tried to get my car out of it's parking space for about 30 minutes before we gave up. He ended up driving me to work for the next three days, until the temperature got above freezing and I was able to get some traction.

I would like to officially state that I am not complaining. A few of my co-workers lost their electricity. At least I got to go home to a nice toasty house after a 10 hour shift.
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So, Christmas happened. Hadn't you heard? With the exception of my father's gifts, I did all my Christmas shopping online. In one day. I really dislike crowds. I get all anxious and unhappy. And I worked retail for 5 years. So, no busy malls and congested parking lots for me if I can avoid it. The thing about Christmas shopping online is that you have to do it early, like 3-4 weeks before Christmas kind of early, and then you'll be just fine.

For a while now, I've known that in addition to the regular Christmas gifts, I wanted to make something for Perry. I thought I had figured out what I wanted to do a few months ago. The problem is that it involved me learning how to crochet. I didn't think it would be that big of a deal since a few years ago I learned to cross stitch for one of his gifts. Well, crochet isn't cross stitching. I tried, I failed, I moved on.

So, have you ever seen Bee and Puppycat? There's only one episode out so far, but Perry's a fan of it. So I decided to draw him as Bee and Reggie as Puppycat.

For reference, here's Bee and Puppycat:

As you can tell, she's not a big fan of her suit. Maybe it's the pink puffy sleeves.

And just because, I decided to paint it on a ceramic mug.

I gave myself a little pep talk before I started and told myself not to give up until I finished. Because I could already see it not looking like I envisioned in my head and getting discouraged and scrapping the whole idea.

Like here, before I realized I needed to mix the paint to get the colors I wanted. (Seems obvious doesn't it.)

Or here, when Reggie puppycat looked like Blobby poopyturd.

You should persevere, because once you start outlining with a black paint pen, everything will start to look better!

Tah-freaking-dah!

I did forget to respect the power of the black paint pen at one point, because I shook, shook, shook it too hard and several big fat drops landed right on my half finished Perry Bee. I was able to just paint over the ones that landed in a painted area, but two of them hit in the white background, so I just covered it with some white paint, which you can see by the left arm.
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So what did sweet Perry give me in return? An I.O.U. He ordered my gift online, but didn't follow the 3-4 week rule, because he don't follow no rules. Surprisingly, it only arrived one day late.

For backstory, I should mention that at work we had a Christmas "Angel Tree" where you can buy gifts for a child. The child I picked wanted a Lego set. I never had Legos as a kid and when I went online I was really impressed with all the cool sets I found. I mentioned to Perry how I was actually jealous of a toy I was getting for a 12 year old.

The set he picked is beautiful and just happens to be perfect for us to work on together. It's symmetrical, so while Perry works on one tower, I'm working on the identical one. We've gotten to the second story and haven't had a fight yet. I'll keep you posted.

thanksgiving week

This Thanksgiving was the first one that I've had off of work in seven years. It was nice to do a normal Thanksgiving dinner and not the tupperware leftovers that I've grown accustomed to. Perry and I did lunch at his parent's house and dinner at my parent's. We weren't as overly full as you'd think since we just ate a little bit of everything. His family does a potluck, every one brings a dish type thing and my parents...don't. In fact, I made two pumpkin and one key lime pie to bring to Perry's parents and Perry suggested that we bring one over to my parent's house. I laughed. As far as my mother is concerned, bringing food unless specifically asked is a breach of etiquette. Most people would welcome an extra pie at dinner, but to my mom it's a thinly veiled critique of her cooking and/or party planning skills.

Anyway, it was a happy Thanksgiving all around and the following day I got to participate in another family tradition that I've missed out on for quite a while due to work: visiting the tree farm down the road and cutting down a Christmas tree. Everyone went except my youngest sister who was in College Station.

I've never put up a Christmas tree before, but I made an impulsive tree purchase while we were there.  My brother dropped it off at my house and was kind of enough to immediately take me to Lowe's so I could go lights and tree stand shopping since I had neither.

Perry is an atheist (like myself) and he thinks Christmas decorations are a waste of money and space. I mostly agree - which is why I have no holiday decorations and have never put up a tree before. But I really am enjoying having a tree this year. I did most of my Christmas shopping online a few days ago, so I'll have lots of packages to put underneath it soon.

I had to give myself an early Christmas gift last week. My desktop computer died. It was six years old which I feel like was a respectably long life. Actually, the internet says about 3-5 years is average and looking back on it, I was really in denial about my need for a new computer for the past two years. In those two years I had to restore it to factory setting five times and it was soooo slow. For the past two months it was taking an unusually long time to start up and simply open an internet browser. I thought it just needed another factory restore. Wrong. It needed a bullet to the head. So I got a new tower.

I realize now that this old vs. new computer picture has a deceptive perspective which makes the old computer look even larger, but I think you get the point. My new CPU is super smaller. And I can open chrome in under ten minutes now.

Oh, and the day after the Christmas tree farm my mother, middle sister, and I went to the Dallas Arboretum for our annual Holiday Tea visit.  We've had a few freezes in the past month, so everything wasn't still (creepily) blooming in December like last year when we went. It was still a beautiful day though.

I am hereby putting a new camera on my Christmas wish list since I took about 15 pictures while were were at tea and this is the only one that turned out unhorribly.

And it's just a shot of the decorations in the room. I guess my six year old camera is as obsolete as my six year old desktop.

And just because (I've turned into a crazy dog owner), I tried to take a picture of Reggie with a Santa hat and beard. Yes, I've become one of "those people." And I want to say that I have no idea how people manage to pull this off, because even my mild mannered, lazy dog simply was not having it. Actually, it was easy to get it on his head, but how do people get their pets to sit still long enough for a posed picture?