Starting the New Year Off Right

It was time to get down and get rid of the dirty. 

Enter this beauty...the $5 rental vacuum from Home Depot.  

The best vacuum suction I have seen...my house now looks unreal!

New Year's flowers from my love who is deployed

Birthday celebrations in our apartment

And walks here...with a great friend who was out visiting

San Diego is an magical place.

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Becoming an Etsy Girl

A few weeks ago I finally opened my Etsy store.   It's been a long time coming.   Right now it's just necklaces...recycled men's tie necklaces and metal fashion jewelry.  More to come!

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Recipe Round-Up

I've got hundreds of recipes from magazines and more recently pinterest, that I have not yet corralled.  

current method = throw in a box

This weekend I have started rounding them all up to make a few of my own recipe books.  

The idea is to have color coded sections and add pictures of what I make to those that are picture-less (can you tell I'm a visual person?).  I'll keep you posted with how it all turns out.

Live Music Gem

Last night we were determined to find some great local live music.  A friend and I hit up all the San Diego music bloggers for recommendations and then picked a random group.  We ended up at Lestats in North Park and heard this unbelievable band called the Show Ponies.  The lead singer was AMAZING and for 3 hours of live music,  you can't beat $10!

Opening Act

The guy to the left was hilarious

The Show Ponies

Dessert Designs

Each year I make all of the desserts for our annual holiday party.  I tend to over-make for the 100 guests, but line up bags for people to take treats home.  Here's a peak into the process...

Ingredients lined up, ready to go

No baking from scratch with this many treats 

in a short amount of time by myself!

1/2 the baking is done!

The finished spread

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Mug Making!

After so many posts about original mug making.  I had to try it.  I got a few of my girl friends together and we sharpied the night away!

They turned out great, but did take longer than I thought in the oven (since we had so much ink).  Plan on at 35-45 minutes at 350 degrees and a full night of cooling.  What do you think of our designs?

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Holiday Hoopla-Family Competition

If you know my mom, you know it's a big deal when you are guaranteed 2 hours of time during the Holiday Schedule for whatever you would like to plan for the family!  So I went to work on creating the Holiday Hoopla Games.  

Since this is the first year, of what I hope will be annual, I started early to create the 'drama'.  I sent little goodies to our families to  help clue them in on the Christmas day games and rev up the excitement.  

Round 2: Practice Games and a Note

Round 3: 

I used the green screen at work and created an email message 

to send 2 days before they arrived to our house.

THE GAMES!

All the games laid out and ready to go!

Snack time treats.  

Reindeer drinks and snowman candy bars.

And yours truly as the master of ceremonies!

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Military Boxes-25 Dates of December

It's always hard to be away from loved ones over the holiday season.  I knew it was even harder for my boyfriend during December, because that is when he always heads home for his family celebration.  So, I have spent months thinking of what I could do to make it special.  Spending that much time...lead to lots of things (so make sure to check out all the posts).  

In November I came up with the idea to do the 12 days of christmas leading up to December 25th.  I thought it would be cute to have little gifts he could open each day.  As I started scouring the dollar stores and coming up with ideas, it morphed into the 25 Dates of December.

What's That?

One HUGE box of goodies. 

The Premise:

Each day, beginning December 1st, we would have a mini-skype date.  We got really lucky that for this part of his year deployment he is in a place where he has good internet access.  For the first 6 months of the deployment in Afghanistan, we only talked maybe once a week if the connection lasted for a few minutes.  

Inside the boxes are wrapped presents with numbers on them.  Each day he opens a snack to eat (one of his favorite treats) and there is some type of game/activity.  This was hard to find 25 things to do over skype, so some are a bit of a stretch.  I tried to make it so if we have a christmas activity it was a normal snack item and if we had a normal activity it was a christmas snack item.  

He would comment all the time about how great it was to have something to look forward to each night.  It was a bit of a challenge with the time difference to make the commitment to be home when he was available, but we made it work every day.  It was a great way to help stay connected during a time when it feels so lonely.

 Before being wrapped

 The finished dates all labeled and ready to be shipped!

The Dates:

1. Ding Dongs & Decorate a fake tree together (I sent one and had one at my house)
2. Sabritones Chips & Christmas Scratch Off Elf (black paper and stick, you scratch off to make a design...we raced to make it something to do together).
3. Twinkies & Battle of the Sexes card game
4. M&Ms & Playdough (competition to make different christmas themed items out of the dough)
5. Doritos & Christmas Magic Paint (all in one paper with paint...need water and a q-tip to color in...raced here too)
6. Milano Christmas Cookie & Farkle
7. Pringles & Hangman (sent dorm room whiteboards to easily compete with)
8. Reeses & Christmas Color Velors (another competition...it's hard to find Christmas themed activities to do over skype)
9. Takis Chips & Guess Who (travel version, opened and sent 1/2)
10. Gingerbread Cookies & Battleship (travel version, opened and sent 1/2)
11. Cheetos & Draw/Plate Game (FOUND HERE)
12. Chips Ahoy Cookies & Christmas Bingo
13. Christmas Shortbread & Plastic Skeeball Game
14. White Tic Tacs & Guess the Song Christmas Printable (FOUND HERE)
15. Lays Chips & Roll a Snowman (FOUND HERE)
16. Gum & Tree Maze with markers (FOUND HERE)
17. Fritos & Foam Christmas Decorations to assemble
18. Oreos & Christmas MadLibs
19. Canned Lasagna & Foam Play Materials with list of Christmas items to make
20. Chips & Christmas Puzzle (raced to finish)
21. Peanuts & Christmas Word Search
22. Ritz Crackers & Christmas Jokes (we each had a different sheet and told them to each other)
23. Rolled Chocolate Cookies & Christmas Trivia Game
24. Candy Cane Kisses & Draw by Number Disney Sheets (played with my cousins)
25. Christmas Box...Open Presents

Most games/activities I bought at Dollar Tree, 99cent store, target dollar bins or joann fabric dollar bins.

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Military Boxes-December

 The Christmas Day Box

Decorated and All

Inside You'd Find:

His Favorite Snacks 

(in the red and green bags)

His Present: 

12 Dates (once a month)

 to do together once he's home 

All pre-planed activities we have never done

 and paid for (some groupon deals, some regular priced)

This book doesn't have any of the actual items

so he doesn't have to worry about bringing it back

plus, I scored the album for 50 cents at Salvation Army

A stocking with duplicates of his christmas ornaments

for the year (we do at least one to symbolize something we did).

This year I got keychains of the places we went when we was on leave.

And a puzzle of a picture of us with a message on the back.

This took me about 3 hours to put together to write the message,

so it will give him something to do Christmas Day!

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Halloween Costumes!

If I'm going to dress up it's got to be something original and homemade.  I was racking my brain for something to wear to a friends party.  Needless to say it was down to the last minute and I could find nothing as "inspired" as I hoped.  So, google led the way to a price is right costume idea.  

Here is how it turned out.  

It was a huge hit!

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Pumpkin Mashup Party & Halloween Decorations

I am not a huge fan of halloween, but wanted to get our friends together to celebrate with a 'fall festival' party.  First I decorated for the festivities.

We had pumpkin carving competitions, beer tasting, good eats 

and a few games that popped up at the end of the night.  

I made up a beer competition game we used as they

challenged in other in pairs.  Some were funny activities

(for those who didn't know much about beer)

and others required some beer skill. 

I didn't think it would be so much of a hit!

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