..the party's over...it's time to call it a night....

..does anyone remember that song? I don't recall ever actually hearing it except from my Mother when she was being silly.

So, yes, "Mr. B and me " have finished up this year's gathering of the neighbors for 2007.

I think next year we might want to start earlier - seems that the 15th was also a good choice for church parties, programs and other obligations, thus making our party a small-ish one.
But, hey on the flip side, more leftovers for us!

WhoHoo......except........

......who can eat 300 Buckeyes? Or 2 large baggies of White Chocolate- Macadamia- Crasin Bark?
3 various home made dips. Meats & cheeses. Taco soup?

OK, it's a dirty job, but..............

On a more serious note, in the preparing for the party, I found some great EZ recipes for fun stuff......

Crock-pot Candy................... Taco Soup.................crusty-little-breads for the various dips and spreads... Mmmm... Just let me know which ones you'd like and I can post them or email them to you...the recipes, not the food, silly...

I was "in-charge" of deserts. Mr. B loves his kitchen and his cooking, so I pretty much stay out of the way.

I can cook.....I choose not to...hate the "day-to-day" stuff...shopping, preparing, etc. Just to finish and have to start all over the next day?? Ick. Seems he LOVES it...

We used to have this thing that whomever got home from work first would fix dinner.

You have no idea how many times I drove 'round and 'round the block waiting to see his truck pull in first...only to tell him, "Boy, you beat me again.....huh.....what are the odd of that happening for the past 5 days now??"

The party was a success, with Grandma doing Angel card reading for all! Seems my archangel is Michael and he stays pretty close to me. Which is good. I loved the movie Michael and have always known angels were around me, watching and protecting...

It's was uncanny to hear some of the things she "read" from the cards - some need to pay more attention to the health of their bodies, some need to exercise more, some have children in their future (for me, it's my inner-child, who I have discovered is quite a brat....)

It's all in fun, but it does make you think...

Anyway, it's 3:47am and my tummy is letting me know (or is it my angels??) that I should really not consider 14 olives, 3 Buckeyes, 2 nut clusters, 3 slices of salami, one ham salad toast and 2 diet cokes a dinner....Oh yeah, and Taco soup...

So have a wonderful Sunday, enjoy a time of peace and reflection...and listen to YOUR angles...you know you have them, right??

g'night.
-me

ps- THANK YOU madrekarin for the darling "pegs" and heart - you can see they went right to work...

<<<<>>>> and to all a good night :-)

Remember back this past summer......

......when I was saying that in the fall “one seriously cute Grammie” would soon be on the scene?

Well, I should have given myself a smaller window of opportunity.

'Winter-ugly' is upon us….or me.

Flat hair due to hats. Frozen hair due to waking the dogs on freezing mornings. Funny-looking hair due to ear-muffs.

The constantly red nose. Occasionally drippy. ick.

Lovely r-r-r-ruddy complexion…with the ever present bright red ears…

The “ no-neck” due to scarves, turtle necks, hoodies…and my chubby-Irish heritage, of course.

Bundles and grundles of layered clothes that make walking a tad bit difficult.

Legs can’t bend. End up looking a little like “Everybody Loves Raymond’s” father in Frankenstein…

Shoes…er…boots. “yo momma wears combat boots” …can’t bend at the ankles - boots lace- up and over them…I feel like they weigh a ton …until I slip on the ice…..then they are dainty ice-skates….without the blades…….ballerina slippers comes to mind…

Gloves..some with no fingers so I have 10 fat little puggie-tips sticking out of them..Or whole gloves that make my hands look ginormous…..

Glasses? Well, yes, I’ve been wearing them regularly now. I have this fear of falling (I seem to have missed the “coordination gene”)

But, as soon as they hit the cold air, they fog up.


So, with 2 pups on leashes, no-blade-ice skates, legs that won’t bend, neck that can’t turn, ears that can’t hear do to the “muffs”, GINORMOUS hands that won't move in any small-hand-movement way...

I try to look over the tops of the glasses… LOOK OVER THEM!


Then my eyeballs, now freakishly exposed to the sub-zero air, start to freeze.... open....in a look that's a mix of horror and surprise mixed with nearsightedness....


Lovely.


Then I remember Mr. B and how the moisture from his breath freezes into visible icicles on his moustache and beardy-thingy.

OH.MY.HECK.! DO I HAVE ICICLES ON MY UPPER LIP ???

One slow step after another, I trudge down the frozen tundra, uh, street, so my little darlings can give me a token-steaming-poo.


Picture now, if you will, me trying to retrieve the above mentioned poo.


Heaven forbid I should fall,......er....wobble-over. Like a Weeble. You know, "Weebles wobble but they don't fall down..."


I’d never be able to get up. Or stop wobbleing....


They’d find my stiff no-necked, red-nosed, chubby-fingered, fogged up frozen-eyeballed -body just just rolling around where I’d left it.


With a white icicle-moustached upper lip…

Probably with flittery teeny-weenie birdies doing their “winter ballet” above me.


After all, they have all those aerodynamic feathers to keep them warm……

hurumph…..

Maybe the spring will be kinder to me…… .....one can only hope......

Keep warm.
-me

Good mornin', Sunshine!! :-)

I just love these little faces! From far away they just look like "ornaments", but if you look really closely, you see................ personalities!

I'm kinda into snowmen. Not like "collecting" or anything. Just kind of relate to them. I am built like one..round and happy. So you can see why I have a fondness for them. The "familiar" and all...

Got a little more decorating done before the Saturday gathering of neighbors and friends...wish you all cold drop by...

Randy's already made some incredible dips, has plans for the meat & cheeses, old-fashioned ham salad, I'm making Taco Soup, and we'll have cookies and homemade candies....

So, pull up a chair and stay a while...'cause, baby, it's COLD outside!

And, please don't forget the 'reason for the season'......

So from Mr. B & me.......have a safe and wonderful Thursday, will ya?!

Uh...Hi there....

Well, now that I have your attention...isn't he cute?! Ah, Blitzen, Blitzen....bliltzed!

So Heather, who is my friend, signed us both up for a quick class tonight. Trouble was, she had to work late and didn't make it.

I really didn't know what the class was, but she said it looked "cute" so I thought I'd go.

It was fun! I made this incredible folding-up-box that had 4 little origami "drawers" to put stuff in.

Little stuff.

Like, stamps, paper clips, safety pins.....diamonds.....

Anyway, mine is a little "off" ...kinda like the first pancake of the bunch - no one really wants to eat that one...but it gets you ready for the real thing...but my next one will be more aligned.

Here it is closed...with the little gift card to go along with it...

And here is is opened....Surprise!

Then..back to closing......

TaDa!

So I'm off to bed....g'night.

-me

when I was a little kid....

....my Mother always told me not to play with my food.

Good advice, I guess. But with all that color and texture on my plate, it was hard not to...

Well, I'm the Mother now, (and Grandmother) so if I want to play with my food....well I'm gunna..... nanner nanner....

(that is soooo not grown-up of me....)

Anyhow, this week-end I found some new foods to play with. Not exactly new foods like in a new and exciting discovery. Actually, it was sort of a new and exciting discovery for me, anyway.

I found crumpets!! Isn't that just the best? I heard about crumpets, I've read about "tea & crumpets" but I had never seen (or tasted) an actual crumpet. Never really know what a crumpet was....

Well, now I know. If you haven't tasted one, it's sort of a cross between an English muffin and a pancake...

I toasted it and put butter on while it was still hot. The butter went into all the little nooks and crannies ( love the word "cranny"!) but I felt it needed just a little something more...

As Al Pacino would say......"let me introduce you to my little friend..." (you need to read that in a fake Spanish accent for it to be effective...)

TaDa.....................

Oh yeah baby! Not only is the name heavenly, Cloudberry, but the taste is too. Different. I never even knew cloudberries existed before Ikea came to town! Yum-O.

So, OK, that was a good combination. Crumpets & Cloudberry preserves....

...hey wait, that could be a name of a hioty-toity soap/lotion line...Crumpets & Cloudberry...kinda like Crabtree & Evelyn...it could smell like toast...and butter...and preserves... !! Would drive the boys wild, I'd say!

OK, so here's another good combination.....

As if one candy isn't good enough...

......the Lindor quartet!

So you don't think I eat only sweets, and Crumpets (I love saying that! Crumpets..Crumpets..Crumpets..) I do have the occasional vegetable...

Potatoes are one........

But wait! These are no ordinary potatoes! These are funny-funky-looking potatoes begging to be transformed into.............tada!

Braxton & Grandma's cat, Bones!

(Bones has one ear that's 'folded' over - an old war injury...)

As I close, I want to make a PSA.....(yes, I've been watching television..I know what public service announcements are...)

Ahem....To all you little kids.........go ahead and play with your food...as long as you don't waste it. Make silly hot-dog men, eggs in the nests, pigs in the blankets and frog-eye salad. And always eat your veggies....

(well, maybe the one that DON'T look like Braxton & Bones......)

Have a great Monday!
-me

What should we do on a snowy Saturday??

...we should have the newlyweds over and make Christmas cards... After the morning walk.....

So that's what we did after a fun morning of shopping and having breakfast at Cracker Barrel. Love that place. The "General Store" is all Christmasy and pretty. And the biscuits- the lightest and the best around. Mmmmm - my face was all sorts of happy!

Found this cute little tin and K-mart and know I had to have it...one of my decorating philosophies is that every room needs a little splash of red...and this cutie-patootie is just what I needed...

The pups couldn't believe that after Randy had shoveled for them yesterday, it snowed all over again on their green grass. However, we are on a "schedule" which includes our morning walks...

PS - Lulu, the fashionista, refuses to wear any kind of sweater, or coat, or hoodie..she thinks she look silly in them...Braxton loves his sweater. He's not sooo vain...

So after the walk they just sat in the window and watched it come down in big-ole flakes..and tried to console each other..

The card-making was a great success- even the groom got in to the action....

He's pretty good I think....and he just came up with those ..I kinda need an idea..or a photo..or a kit...so I made these...

These are some little library card holder-thingys with pull-out invitations to our neighborhood gathering...inside, on the pull out, is all the stuff about the invite..

The bride's cards were lovely - she'll always make certain things are perfect - and they were!

And what's a card-making party without munchies?? I don't know...I've never been to one..

Grandma's homemade fudge....and the usual..cheese & crackers, chips & dips..a really good hard salami that Randy gets cut really thin.....I can almost hear my arteries slamming shut....

It was a really, really, really good day. The kind we need on a snowy Saturday in December....

Hope your day was great too.

-me