happy...

eighth anniversary, Mr. Lyons! How clever are we? The new set of flannel sheets we bought ourselves for our anniversary happens to fit perfectly with the 'modern' anniversary gift for the eighth anniversary: linens or lace. Now all we need to do to round out the 'traditional' side of the anniversary gift giving experience is to visit Doug when we're in San Angelo!

Doug needs to get his website up and running, but here are a couple pictures I borrowed from an old exhibit of his.

so...

I'm sitting at the computer catching up on everyone's blogs, getting ready to write out my to-do list for tomorrow and Wednesday, and I all of the sudden I hear faint snoring. I look down and find Caleb curled up at my feet, sound asleep. I don't know where my camera is or I would take a picture. It's very similar to this one from last September except he's a giant now and dressed in footy pajamas. I'm not sure when he curled up here or why I didn't notice him doing it. Normally when he wakes up after bedtime he will crawl up into my lap and fall back asleep in my lap. So weird!

Tops on the to-do list:

• catch up on email


• pack for trips


• double check gift list


• finish task for Patsy Grandma


• pay bills


• since Christmas is almost here...work on New Year's cards...try to get them mailed before the 24th...if I'm lucky.

can't catch me...

I'm the Gingerbread Man. The story was sort of lost on Logan since he is familiar with the Stinky Cheese Man version, but it didn't stop us from decorating our gingerbread men.



1. The first one I decorated. Plain and simple gingerbread fella.
2. The first one Logan decorated. I spread the icing for him, he put all the candy on the gingerbread snowman's body. Then we made the mistake of using the crappy "candy pen" that was included in the kit. Oh well.
3. The second one Logan decorated. I decorated numbers 4, 5, and 6 while he painstakingly placed every last one of those little colorful beebees onto this gingerbread snowman.
4. Logan felt like this guy would like to have some hair. And he didn't have enough candy on him either.
5. This one started out pretty cute...then I used the "candy pen" and ruined it.
6. He needed hair. More hair. No, MORE hair! Now he's a unicorn gingerbread man.
7. While I was decorating my zombie gingerbread snowman, Logan was working on his "favorite" cookie of them all:



8. He put candy on it and then proceeded to suck all of it off like a vacuum cleaner. Then he started in on the icing. By the time he was ready to eat the cookie, his stomach had "fallen asleep."

little tree...

Our little upstairs tree with the paper ornaments we made from Tomlitoo on Friday. I made a batch of little red felt hearts a couple years ago for this tree (they were already on it, so they stayed) and added a strand of repro tinsel garland. We had to make a holly leaf to cover the little angel's no-no area because Logan felt it was too cold for her to be completely naked. I offered to make her a little gown, but he felt the leaf would suffice. Logan put all our paper ornaments on the tree, making sure "Marty" and "Melman" were front and center. Caleb likes to walk up to the tree and talk to Marty and Melman. He asks were Alex and Gloria are. Then he dances and sings, "I like to move it, move it." I think we've watched Madagascar one (hundred) time(s) too many...

best link of the day...

http://www.tomlitoo.com/noel.php3 found via Meggiecat earlier this morning. Obviously, I had to quit doing housework and start making little paper animal ornaments. Obviously.



Now that some of the ornaments are finished I have to finish with the housework. Then we're going to get the little upstairs tree out of the attic and decorate it with our little paper menagerie! And maybe make some popcorn garland to go along with it...that's going to be tenative...we'll see how the stringing goes first.

i heart calvin and hobbes...

the longest trip ever...

made to Walmart in the history of my trips to Walmart took place tonight. OH. MY. GOD. A little ice on the roads here and people LOSE THEIR FREAKING HEADS! At 4:20 this afternoon, a trip that usually takes seven, eight minutes max took FORTY-TWO minutes. Caleb fell asleep within in the first ten minutes. Logan kept chiming in with, "are we there yet?" and "I thought we were going to Walmart." Logan ended up falling asleep about five minutes before I crept into the parking lot. We made a mad dash around the store to grab the necessities: milk, wipes and dipes (yes, STILL buying wipes and dipes), bathroom things and stuff to cook for supper. Twenty minutes and $100 later we ran back out to the truck and loaded up, ready to head home.

I decided to turn left from the parking lot to head home the usual way...HOOGANTIC mistake. Spent thirty minutes inching along a stone's throw screaming obscenities at the B. E. M. who felt the need to be ON my bumper the whole thirty minutes we were on the road together...everytime I looked into my rear-view I could see her drifting toward my bumper, coming to a stop just millimeters from impact. I seriously thought after the first two times it happened she would have given herself at least a half a car length to work with. But she didn't. Asshole. Made a U-turn just before the vein in my forehead exploded and headed back toward I-35 where we inched all the way home. The frontage road at the exit to our turn off is very steep. Steep and covered in ice with tiny little economy cars scattered all about it. I suddenly began to appreciate my Grand Cherokee and its gigantic gas tank all over again and then to miss my old V-8 4x4. After a few other trucks and SUVs managed their way around the mess, I followed suit and finally pulled into my garage at 7:05pm.

If I had any whiskey in the house right now, I'd be double fisting it, but instead we're popping popcorn and watching The Incredibles. I am also going to attempt working on some Christmas presents too...we shall see...since both boys caught catnaps after 4pm it's probably going to be a late night!

sigh...

If I thought I could get either of my boys to wear clogs I would totally spring for these.

speaking of saint nick...

I made this handsome fellow last year around this time. He is an APLCreations original and is one-of-a-kind. He is also available for purchase and immediate shipment. Click on the image for more information and photos.

my name is olive hill...

apl sterling, hill tribe silver, olivine, various jaspers, lapis and jades, miyuki glass. $68 plus postage.

I started on this necklace late Sunday night and finished it yesterday morning after I had a little help from Caleb with the beading...or un-beading as the case maybe. He wouldn't fess up to the small piles of beads resorted into silver beads and glass beads so we're blaming it on the bead gnomes again.

As always, click on the picture to see more images!

saint nick visits denton early...

Lynn begged to have St. Nick visit early last night so he wouldn't miss the boys' reaction. He was up and on a flight to Corpus Christi this morning at 6:00. So last night, St. Nick made the first stop of the evening in Denton, Texas.

Lynn took the boys out on an errand so I could wrap some presents and as they were leaving he asked me if he'd "heard right...was St. Nicholas visiting our neighborhood early because Logan and Caleb's dad had to go out of town early tomorrow morning?" I figured he'd heard right since we'd already put our shoes out on the porch anyway.

When the men-folk of the household arrived home, the boys checked on our shoes (just in case SN was early). Logan found a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle tin ornament filled with candy and a tiny rev-up motorcycle in his shoe. Caleb found another TMNT tin ornament and a wind-up puppy that does flips in his shoe. Lynn and I had cherry flavored candy canes in our shoes.

This morning Caleb wanted to put his shoes out on the porch again and Logan wanted to know when "Uncle Saint Nic[k]" would be stopping by again. Apparently there was some confusion...so we spent about twenty minutes on the Saint Nicholas Center website this morning. They have some neat interactive activities and print off crafty projects for the kiddies.

"i want push buttons"...

f g'
hhw,v lhjhjj
juu'yhlkxm,xckljj h

saint nicholas...

is coming...don't forget to put your shoe out on the front porch!

Tomorrow is the feast day of Saint Nicholas. We're putting our shoes out tonight and the boys are just tickled to death about leaving a shoe on the front porch. This is the first year we've done it for our boys so tomorrow morning should be a hoot.

a set, or not...

Last night I set out to make another bracelet similar the Ovoid Turquoise Bracelet. As it turns out, I grabbed the wrong gauge sheet of metal and didn't realize it until after I'd started working the piece. It was too delicate for the wear and tear it would receive on a wrist so I made a necklace with it instead. Then a bracelet was born and bringing up the rear...a ring! I haven't made a ring since college...once I made the first one, I had to make a second one because the first one wants to stay here.


unakite, miyuki glass, brass. necklace: 18 inches, bracelet: 8.5 inches, ring: size 6. $85 plus postage for the set or $28 for the ring, $32 for the bracelet and $48 for the necklace.


aaack! they're back...attack of the ashy, white knuckles.


see why i had to make a second one?

big ticket christmas shopping...

If my budget was open-ended I would by a handful of these clocks in a heart beat.

These are my favorites:









I would also buy a handful of Chris Roberts-Antieau's wonderful folk art quilts.

I had a couple other links I've recently come across...but they have escaped me for now...maybe later they'll come back to me.

i don't know...

either my husband's sons have hit a seriously stinky streak or I am totally delusional in expecting my husband's sons to behave remotely civilized during this festive and holy holiday season.

I have resorted to "Santa's watching you." "Do you think Santa is going to be happy with you poking your brother in the eye? kicking your brother? pinching your brother?" I have even gone so far as to make my cell phone ring and proceed to have long, very involved conversations with "Santa" about Logan or Caleb's stinky behavior. This tactic is, of course, almost completely lost on Caleb unless he picks up on Logan's reaction to it.

This tactic isn't something I thought up on my own (as my dear husband thought was the case...). Nay, comrades. My parents used this tactic on my siblings and me when we were growing up. "Amy, Santa's watching you." When I asked, "how? where?" my mother informed me I had an elf assigned to me and he sat in my bedroom window keeping watch over me, reporting back to Santa. I don't know if the tactic was their brainchild or just the traditional handing down of successful (or not) parenting techniques through the generations but I remember it quite clearly. And I also seem to remember it starting around JUNE some years! In any event, I was on the phone with my mom not too long ago when Logan was repeatedly interrupting our conversation. I countered his onslaught with, "Logan, Santa's watching you. He doesn't like it when you don't listen to Mommy." Since we were early on in this game at the time he was understandably incredulous of the all seeing powers of Santa Claus so I asked my mother to confirm my statement. People, my mother, the possible inventor of "Santa's watching you." declined to confirm my statement! "I'm not getting in the middle of this," she says. Can you imagine? Anyway, Logan always wants to know where Santa is...so he can talk to him...plead his case perhaps? Figuring that "he's just around," was wearing thin I decided I better come up with something tangible to point to.



I present to you: Santa's Spy-cam Necklace. It's similar to the Boo necklace I made back in October only this one (as far as my four year old knows) is equipped with spy capabilities so Santa can keep an eye on things here at the Lyons' den. I'll be making another one to put up fo sale ($25 plus postage) later this afternoon.