Winter wonderland

Here's me at the ski hill....looking all cute in my new coat and hat on Sunday.  This is taken during the Furniture races.

Our rye field, all glistening with snow and frost
The field next to the house, where apparently we have a super highway for animals.  Turkey, fox, dog, deer and bunny tracks all over the place.  This pot is just before the super highway crossing.  I even found some fur on one of the barbed wire fences where a deer must have gotten lazy and didn't jump high enough.

The weather was fantastic this weekend. We finally had temps above zero....we hit 30 degrees above as a matter of fact.  Fabulous day to get out and do some outdoor activities!

She's BACKKKKK...and prettier than ever

She's back and prettier than ever! She even got a good washing on the inside too while she was in the shop. It is so nice to be back driving her again.

In other news, I got my first PAZZLES DT project finished and out the door in a box on its way to headquarters. I am so glad that is off my plate for now. The next assignment will arrive by the end of the week, so I don't get to sit back for too long. I can't share the project for a while so when I can finally "release" the images, I will post here. Of course, at some point the project will be posted at the PAZZLES website....then I will link it!

Sad sad day

If you know me, you know I love my car. She's my baby, my little "Cookie", a gift from my hubby at Christmas in 2003. She is perfect. A gorgeous color, runs like a dream, corner's like a cheetah and has that little turbo boost when I need to zing into traffic. Except for a tiny ding above the left front fender from a careless child opening a door into her, she is a shining example of what a car should look like when regularly washed and waxed. And except for a horrifying moment when a lube and oil "specialist" screwed up a simple oil change, she has had a flawless running record.

Now, she isn't perfect. Now we have one less raccoon in the neighborhood and a big crack in my bumper. I wasn't driving by the way.

We are very lucky the air bags didn't deploy, but that doesn't make me feel much better. I can drive her, but it makes me feel sad to do so. It's probably weird to be so attached to the car, but there is a LOT of sentiment behind it and that is what makes me sad.

My other job....

The girls at work thought it would be a good idea for me to take a photo of myself with my first check from the PAZZLES design team (All the info is blurred out to protect the innocent). So today I finally cashed my little $5 check and thought I had better take a quick photo. Now, I was not planning to do this. I figured it seemed kinda silly, after all, it's only for shipping our projects back to the company. But, it is proof, that someone out there, other than my friends and family, thinks that my creations are worth looking at...and I am not talking about putting together paper and embellies (that is part of it), but creating the computer files to make those embellies and dimensional's that thousands of others will be purchasing to use with their machines. Now, the reality is that after three years of using the machine at work, there are hundreds of pieces of "me" in a scrapbook somewhere in the world. World I say, because I know some of my designs have been shipped to people in other countries (the cut paper versions, not the computer files.) I know of a few title cuts that reside in Michigan too! OK, so long story short, I am creating and getting paid for my "intellectual property" and it's pretty darn cool!

A good day for FOOTBALL

So we had the most perfect day for football..not too chilly, not too hot. And they finally won a game. The sun was shining on the team today! The boys got down and dirty too. This is the Q man after that last play of the game. He got to play quite a bit in this one so he was pretty happy. Three games to go with a big one coming up in a week. Should be fun as long as the weather doesn't get too wacky!

Football 07

The end of the season is almost here and they are on a winning streak. Three wins in a row and one to go. They had the big game on the turf and under the lights Monday night and played an awesome game. We had a little photo session before the game on Saturday. What a tough guy.

Running in more ways than one....

Cross Country last night. N had quite the challenge on this one. The weather was fabulous, but warm, muggy and buggy too. A lot of the varsity runners were looking rather hagard by the end of this trail. N took off and had the lead from the start and never let go. The trail itself was rather stupid (to put it nicely!) Toward the end of the trail the path doubled back and then criss crossed itself. With the lead vehicle in front of N he blazed the trail rather easily, but then they started lapping people and the poor kids who were getting lapped didn't know what to do and got in N's way. Then they came to the criss cross part and N had to almost stop for runner traffic...the golf cart pulled to a stop off the track and then N ran right past but almost got smacked into by the runners. The photo is of N after he had just gotten through that mess! The golf cart then tried to catch up to him and, well, that just never happened...LOL The course was 1.9 miles and his time was 11:50.

In other running news, that is all I seem to be doing...running...in my car...to work, to pick up a kid, dr's appt, shopping..whatever. I think I put 65 miles on my car Tuesday alone! Yesterday was almost 100. I am glad the week is coming to an end.

Have a crafty day

Sports scene....or lack there of

Whew! That was actually a long weekend. Q had his football game and they got crushed. The other team had some HUGE players. Still a good game, they didn't give up without a fight. N's run didn't happen on Thursday. We drove all the way up to the run site (a golf course over an hour away) and watched the high school run, but they cancelled the middle school run.....grrrrr! Nothing like driving almost 3 hours for nothing! The drive was quite pretty though. The sky was partly cloudy with those puffy grey bottomed clouds....which held lightening and rain. This is what cancelled the run. It is too bad, because just about the moment N was going to run, a rainbow could be seen just above the line the kids were going to take off from, and the trees were lit up like fire with the sun shining on them. Would have made and AWESOME photo. Oh well, another one of those "the one that got away" moments.

Since it rained the entire weekend we did a lot of TV watching and house cleaning. I got the all the thrift sale stuff from my basement sorted and priced. I tackled the closet later in the weekend and I am just about ready to sort through my craft stuff to purge a few "older" things.

I am currently on book 8 of 13 in the Janet E saga. I had to skip 7 because it was not available at the library....so I will have to do a little backtracking in the story.

Happy Birthday Miss C-Don

Happy Birthday my dear. Hope your day is all you wish it would be.

I will celebrate with a margarita for you tonight.

Kitty cats

I finally took a decent photo of one of our kittens. This is Dot. When she was born she had a little dot on the top of her head (which is where the name comes from) but since she has grown a bit, it is more like a little comma. And you may notice the two different colored eyes, a blue one and a green one. It's not a trick of the light or my camera, she really has two different colored eyes. The blue one is SO bright blue!

In other news, we had a storm blow over last night. It missed us, but blew a barn down about 3 miles away. We got strong winds and heavy rain, but the worst passed just to the north of us. The storm kept me from my computer last night, so no late night bloggin'

Hope your day was creative.