Painting!!

Steve decided to paint the master bedroom this week. We've lived in our house for ten years and have been slowly redecorating room by room. We've finally made it to the master bedroom. It was a medium pink colour with a border of pink and grey flowers and two walls wallpapered in a pink stripe. It really was not my taste at all! I've posted a picture that shows the pink colour, unfortunately I didn't get one of the border. We're painting it Late Wheat. I'll post another pic when its done!

My New Mandoline Cutter!!

For Christmas my Mom gave me a Zyliss Mandoline cutter. I've been wanting one for awhile and finally had a chance to try it out today! It works great. I've posted some pictures of the results! Thanks Mom!

Photo A Day

Well, its the time of year when we start thinking about new year's resolutions. So as I'm pondering what to resolve for 2007, I found a link to a Photo A Day. This would be an interesting way to make a record of all of the eventful and not so eventful happenings throughout 2007. I'm not sure if I am ready to commit to something like this, maybe a better goal for me would be a picture every other day. But if you are interested, here's the link to the idea and a few examples.

http://www.photojojo.com/content/tutorials/project-365-take-a-photo-a-day/

Back to the Real World

Yes, its back to work for me! Christmas is pretty much over except for the clean up. You know, putting away all the boxes, bags and decorations for next year. Taking down the tree and picking up all the pine needles! Although I will hold off on that until Jan 1, 2007! And luckily, Steve is off through the new year so he will be cooking dinner and have a glass of wine waiting for me when I get home after 5 pm! So I guess I'm not quite back to the real world yet!

Cool Christmas Links

I was just on the CTV website and clicked on Kris Abel's blog. There a tons of cool Christmas game links to while away your time. I checked out Pimp Your Nutcracker, Legato and Arm Wrestle a Reindeer!

Here's the link to the blog http://krisabel.ctv.ca/blog/start=2006-12-15.

Relaxing Before Christmas!

Yep, you heard me right! I've been relaxing before Christmas!
The Christmas prep has been finished the earliest ever this year(except for come cooking I'll do today!) So what have I been doing instead of madly shopping and wrapping?
I spent some extra time scrapbooking on Friday and was very pleased with the card idea I scraplifted from Paper Salon(picture on left).
Then yesterday we went to see Casino Royale and it was one of the best James Bond movies I've seen in awhile! Daniel Craig is an excellent Bond!

Joys of the Season

A couple of the many pleasures of the Christmas season is visiting with friends and baking.
This weekend we went to Vineland Estates Winery for a wonderful lunch with our friends Kathryn and Dave. Then on Sunday, we visited with John, Dana and their children Cole and Jaiden. It was a great opportunity to catch up with each other, relax and maybe have a drink or two!


I also finished up the Christmas baking this weekend. Tried out a couple of new recipes as well as the old stand-bys. Of the three new recipes I tried,the brownies turned out well, the macaroons stuck to the pan and the fudge didn't quite set properly!!

Brianne and Brittany made sugar cookies that look and taste excellent!












I also have had a recipe for ages that is a cheese ball shaped into a snow man.
I tried it out and I think it turned out great!

So now its time to finish wrapping the Christmas presents!

The Stockings were Hung......

Here's a few Christmas decoration pictures I took including one of our tree.

It's Done!

I was able to finish up my Christmas shopping on friday as planned. We also put up our tree(I'll hopefully post a picture of it later)and finished with the house decorations this weekend. Now its time to wrap and do a bit of baking! Only 14 days to go!

Checked it Twice!

Well, I've got my list and I've checked it twice and now I'm off this morning to finish my Christmas shopping!! Wish me luck!

Back From Texas Y'all!

Well, we're back from our five day trip to Austin and San Antonio, Texas. Steve had a conference in Austin and as I have always wanted to see the Riverwalk in San Antonio, this was my opportunity. I've added some of my favourite pictures from Texas to my slide show. They include pics of the State Capitol in Austin(taller than the White House!), some spanish missions, the Alamo, the Riverwalk, and a water tower from Gruene(pronounced Green). It was warm when we arrived in Texas, 75F then dropped to half that! It was their first cold snap of the year! But we still enjoyed touring Austin, San Antonio, the missions and the little towns in between. And it was warmer than here!
We also had the apportunity to try out some great restaurants and a couple of my favourites were Threadgills and Chuys. They both have great websites at www.threadgills.com and www.chuys.com. Threadgills is more southern homecooking with a great pecan pie(so Steve says) and Chuys is Tex-Mex. We tried some other Tex-Mex places but I did like Chuys the best!
The Riverwalk was decorated with twinkling christmas lights and was a great place to be on a Friday night with all the people, patios with gas warmers and blanket ponchos as well as school kids singing carols from the boats that cruised along the river!
All the people we met were very friendly and very proud of their state. In the state capitol even the light bulbs in the chandeliers are arranged to spell Texas! I found that the men were very gentlemanly, letting the women on and off the elevator first as well as always, and I mean always(!) holding open doors for women.

This trip was also the first time my luggage didn't arrive with me! But the airlines did get it to the hotel around 11:30 pm, I had arrived at 3:30 pm. On the way home, Steve used some upgrade tickets to get us seats in business class. So we flew in luxury from Dallas to Toronto and what a way to fly! I'd love to do that again!