Christmas Scenes from our Home...

Merry Christmas from Buddy!!!

We received so many wonderful gifts from near and afar--thank you everyone! So, what do you think is the likelihood of receiving four Eric Carle games, and not one duplicate! We were thrilled, as the only games we had before were Crazy 8's, Hi Ho Cherry-O and Candyland--and the girls are old enough now to actually learn game skills rather than just run around losing the game pieces. So, a couple of weeks ago, we had established family game time, which we now do 1/2 to 1 hour every night before bedtime. We all truly love this quiet time together (and of course, don't tell them, but it's a great learning opportunity:)


Our Child-proof tree--we let them put all the child-safe ornaments on (I think many are currently scattered around the house:)--I filled in with the poinsettias so the tree still appeals to me:)--someday when the girls are old enough for the real ornaments again, I'm going to keep using the poinsettias, plus all my beautiful blown glass and ceramics, and it'll be gorgeous! (I think I'll take advantage of the after Christmas prices and run back to JoAnne Fabrics for a whole bunch more poinsettias--I never tire of the rich Christmas Reds!:)


Ok, if you've ever been to my house and saw the toilets, especially the powder room one, you'd know why I'm very excited to receive a toilet for Christmas:) (ok, it wasn't really a gift to me, but it sure would be an original, eh!)

Christmas Cake Diva

This year I decided to pass on baking all the cookies, pass on the pie since I'm not a huge pie fan (though I will eat it if it's put in front of me:), and bake a Christmas Cake! I will say this, I can bake--I don't think it's too difficult to do if you follow the directions and use quality ingredients, have good bakeware, and know your oven! And I've gotten really good at knowing when something is done to perfection--so generally when I bake, it tastes pretty good. But where I've never done very well was cake decorating--I CAN'T FROST A CAKE! Actually I LOVE looking at beautifully decorated cakes--I even admire them. I've come to love watching a couple of television series that specializes in cakes and (weddings, those are fun to watch too, and usually those involve a cake:) So, I decided to quit being a passive cake admirer and to take action! I decided it's going to be a new hobby of mine to learn to decorate cakes for special occasions (or whenever I have a few hours to do so:) I even purchased a domed cake plate, and semi decent cake pans for the occasions. So, this Christmas I made a Christmas Cake (of course completely from scratch, I haven't used a box mix in many many years)!
Here is my first pretty cake creation, and I thought I did a decent job frosting it (for the first time ever:)--I now have mastered the art of cooling the layers and doing a crumb layer first:

Three layer chocolate fudge cake, with a raspberry glaze between the layers.
Buttercream frosting with a hint of lemon.
Glazed fruit (this took two hours of simmering to accomplish), comprised of fresh orange slices, freshly diced pineapple, dried apricots, dried cherries, and dried cranberries, and toasted walnuts, all reconstituted in a simple syrup to create the glaze.

I'll let you know how it tastes after we cut into it tomorrow:)

Woodland Holiday Class

We had our Woodland Holiday class this morning at our local nature center
http://www.county.milwaukee.gov/display/router.asp?docid=10115
We started out sitting on the pond (carpet) where each child selected a stuffed friend to hold. My older angel selected a beaver, and my little fairy selected a squirrel. Miss Bev. Then read a beautiful story (that we have at home too) called The Snow Tree (I have these winter tales books in a series, and they are beautifully illustrated with raised embossed pages). As each animal was read in the book, the child holding that animal got to go to the tree and decorate with the appropriate ornament. My angel with the beaver decorated with a piece of fur, and my fairy girl with the squirrel hung red berries on the tree. After story time the children get to do a craft, and today they put little ornaments on the pine cones. I'm going to put some pretty yarn on so we can hang it on our own tree. And finally it was snack time, so the kids were each handed a cut out Christmas tree cookie, and got to spread different colors of frosting on (and then of course eat it). As the high today is ZERO, we didn't take the class outside for a walk in the woods (and somehow, I FORGOT to put mittens on my little angel--bad mom! She usually tells me things like that:) On a really good note, as cold as it is today, it's a heck of a lot warmer than it was yesterday, as we had 40mph winds that made it unbearablely cold--about 25 below zero windchill--and on an even brighter note, contrary to popular belief, there are actually colder inhabited places on earth--check out today's headlines, brrrrr!

A visit to the coldest town on Earth

Founded by Mongols in the time of Ghengis Kahn, the town of Oymyakon is the coldest permanently inhabited place on earth.

The village has a population of around 800 and is located 690 meters above sea level and lies in a valley between two mountain ranges (the reason for the low temperatures). The name Oymyakon means "non-freezing water" because of the natural hot spring close to the village.

The temperature this week is pretty low and the temperature tomorrow is a chilly -63C which based on the stats at Wikipedia equals the record low for December.

Ringing in the Winter Solstice

What a better way to celebrate the arrival of the winter solstice, than to go out and play in Mother Nature's beautiful playground. For the first time we ventured away from the safety of sledding in our own backyard, which has the perfect slope for small children---and we went to a REAL sledding hill. I forgot how much fun it was to sled. It was about a 300 foot hill, with about a 20 degree grade, and boy did we fly!! As you can see the girls ventured over to the play ground and literally flew off the slide as well:) It was a beautiful night, we went after dark, it was about 25 degrees (warm, today it's minus 6), with snowfall. The cardinal is a regular visitor to our birdfeeder.

Dreamin' of a White Christmas? No Problem Man!

I just did round one of snowblowing the driveway (and we only have a small electric one, thankfully it's not heavy)--but there were areas when I was just pushing the drifts around. So, did you know that when they say 8-12 inches of snowfall, that doesn't account for the TWO foot drifts---it's really hard to give you a true reference of what we're dealing with on a flat image, but enjoy the scenery. By the way, we still have a few hours to go. So, what are the chances that we have our concert tonight:) (oh well, more chocolate cheesecake bars for us----goes really well with the Weight Watchers program:)

Detailed Local Forecast--moving is sounding better and better everyday!

* Today: Heavy snow this morning will taper off as a few snow showers this afternoon. High 28F. Winds NE at 15 to 25 mph. Additional snow accumulating 3 to 5 inches. Total storm accumulations 8-14 inches.

* Tonight: Cloudy skies. Low 23F. Winds ENE at 10 to 15 mph.

* Tomorrow: Cloudy. Snow showers developing in the afternoon. High 26F. Winds ESE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 60%.

* Tomorrow night: Snow in the evening will taper to snow showers and gusty winds overnight. Low 13F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph, becoming WSW and increasing to 20 to 30 mph. Chance of snow 90%. Some snow accumulation possible.

* Sunday: Windy with a few snow showers. Highs in the mid teens and lows in the low single digits.

* Monday: Morning clouds followed by afternoon sun. Highs in the upper single digits and lows 0 to -4F.

* Tuesday: Chance of a few snow showers. Highs in the low 20s and lows in the upper single digits.

Main Yahoo Headlines today:

CHICAGO – A major winter storm cut a broad swath across the Midwest on Friday, snarling traffic and cutting power to thousands of households....

"We are pleading with the public to stay home today if possible," said Marisa Kollias...

In Wisconsin, more than 8 inches of snow had fallen by daybreak in Jefferson County in the southeast part of the state.

Milwaukee's airport was closed because snowplows on the runways could not keep up with "whiteout conditions," airport spokeswoman Pat Rowe said.

Christmas Art Exhibition, from the Gallery of My Little Angel (age 4)

And Now, A Christmas Carol from Buddy...

"Grandma got ran over by a rain dog. Walking home from the dog park Christmas Eve. Cimba and Babe can say there's no such thing as Santa, but as for me and Grandpa, we believe!
She'd been drinkin' too much green tea, and we really begged her not to go, but she forgot her gps Garmi and staggered out of Florida, back to the snow!
Now we're all so proud of Grandpa, he'd been takin' this so well. See him in there watchin' the Packers, drinkin' Lienincoogle, oblivious to it all!"

Merry Christmas, Woof Woof!

Winter Storm in Progress and Still Going Strong!

Fairy Art--mama Art

My three year old precious fairy who wasn't previously interested in the art scene, came up to me yesterday with her lastest masterpiece and asked me to put it on my blog --(now geeze, just a few years ago do you think a three year old- would have known what a blog was---heck, I'm 39, and I just figured out what it was just a few months ago, even though I remember them talking about it at the publishing company for which I formerly worked:)

Speaking of publishing, a couple of months back I saw an ad in our newspaper for a poetry contest being hosted by the International Library of Poetry. I also saw cash prizes (like several $1000 and greater), which is what grabbed my attention. I've been published on several occasions, starting with being a writer for my award winning high school year book (and being offered the Editor in Chief position). I've been published a few times in college---so anyway, my point is it wasn't the publishing part that grabbed me (as it seems that in this age of electronics, any Joe Shmoe can easily get "published"--isn't that technically what you're doing on a blog--self-publishing:), minus the copyright laws)--it was the CASH--and what does cash mean, SHOPPING! Ok, so I did it, I decided to go for the gold and submit a poem as I have several really good ones stashed away from my before kids and husband creative days. So, lo and behold, yesterday I received a very detailed congratulatory letter on my poem, entitled "THE FINAL SUNSET" (and trust me, this is a good one filled with alliteration, very vivid imagery, deep emotion, and a story to tell!)---tons of details were in this letter, and of course a book you are not obligated to purchase of where my poem will be published--and I was told out of the thousands of submissions, mine is one of the few that will go into the semi-finalist round (for the cash prizes:) Ok, so it all still looks good and enticing--but then they asked me to re proof my original poem before it goes to print---someone had retyped it into a small section and had too many errors in their "translation" to count. So THAT made me wonder about the legitimacy of this. I've done a LOT of editing over the years (maybe not always doing such a good editing job on my own blog at times:), and this just doesn't happen! I just took one quick look online for info. on the International Library of Poetry--and the link below is the first thing I found: http://windpub.com/literary.scams/bbb.htm

Ok, lesson learned--it looked fun and legit--but just in case there really is a cash prize, I think I'll go ahead and finalize the submission, but not buy into the book they sell ($50, plus another $25 if you want a biography of yourself printed as well:), and see what happens--hey, I'm not proud, cash is cash if that were to really happen:) (as an aside, I have it in writing that I still own the copyright to my poem, the publisher owns the copyright to the anthology as a whole).

Nativity Scene

It just warmed up to zero degrees outside, so I thought I'd warm your hearts with this sweet Nativity scene my four year old angel created yesterday!

Frosty The Snow Face!

I was too wimpy yesterday (and most days now:) to go outside and help my four year old angel make her snowman. So, she didn't give up, and I LOVE her snow face even more than the traditional snowman! (Although someday when I have a scanner, I'll have to post a picture of Big Bertha, the anatomically correct snowwoman my husband made our first year of marriage (we had 49.5 inches of snow that MONTH alone--a record snowfall--December 2000!:) Anyway, my angel named her snow face Frosty:)

Trimming the Tree

Christmas decorating has been scaled down since having my girls. When my husband and I were married, we were both in our 30's--my family wanted to throw me a bridal shower, but we really didn't need anything, because we were merging two established households---that's when I came up with the idea of trimming our tree--and received so many beautiful ornaments and decorations. Well, for the next few years, they'll be safely stored. But I found and purchased a few kid friendly ornaments which the girls had a ball with! Notice the bottom third of the tree is decorated (their height limit:) They did a beautiful job and had a great time! We even are in the process of a winter storm that started yesterday at noon, and is finally tapering off today (24 hours later, mostly wind now:)--tis the season, I had the snowblower out this morning already!

Fashion Diva Runway Show

It's Beginning to Look a Lot like Christmas?

Girls Day Out

Grandma made the three hour trip down yesterday to babysit, so that daddy and mama could have a night out. We had a blast! My friend and band director invited a few people out for his birthday bash (I'm honored to have been on the "A" list:) We started with cocktail hour, then moved on to hors d'oeuvres and pizza in an Italian restaurant. He brought a birthday cake in, it said "Happy Thanksgiving." Since he's a big turkey, we thought it was appropriate:) We then went back into the lounge for a few more cocktails and to listen to some questionable karaoke--it seemed like a bunch of regulars--they weren't bad, but they didn't let any "newcomers" give it a shot--a few of us were going to go up to sing Summer Lovin' from GREASE (the gals would have been Olivia and the guys John)--but the same people kept getting the stage--so the band people never got their shot at vocal fame:( (I must assume they found out there were a bunch of rowdy band people there, and they knew there was a reason why we play real instruments:) But, as soon as some one went up to sing SWEET CAROLINE by Neal Diamond, a couple from our party literally got up and RAN out of the room, I mean RAN--apparantly Neil Diamond makes her physically ill, and she meant this literally (so sorry Mom:) From there we hit a sports bar that had the band director's wife's guitar teacher as part of a great local band called Mt. Olive--and they were really good, and the music was GREAT--we enjoyed singing, dancing, and more "cocktails"! So we had a ton of fun! Happy Birthday Jay! Thanks for a great night! I think my ears have stopped ringing, so hopefully I'll be able to hear for rehearsal tomorrow:)

So today, as a thank you to grandma for making the drive down, we had a girls day out. We went out for a yummy breakfast. And after I've always wanted to show her The Gingerbread House--it's a very quaint and adorable coffee and pastry and craft shop just a couple of miles from us. I remember not too long ago when it was a beautiful old farm house, and watched the renovation for over a year (waiting and wondering what was to become of this old farm house!). I LOVE quaint shops like this--it seems like everytime I go into a really cute and quaint country type shop, I want to turn my house into that--but then if I start to do that with my home (making it country), I get sick of all the clutter and start bagging stuff for Goodwill and changing it back to more clean and simple (as much as you can with small children--I'm thinking in my next home, I should have one country room, but only where I can close it off if I get sick of the clutter:)--but it was a bit crowded for the girls, so we bought a couple of cookies, took a quick tour, enjoyed the beautiful original wooden flooring and all the decor, and left. Now the girls are enjoying their turkey cutout cookies. (And Thank you to Grandma for bringing the movie August Rush to me, I can't wait to see it!)

HOOT HOOT---Owl Class at the Nature Center

We had owl class at our nature center today--the little owl in the first and third pictures is named Tuft. She's an eastern screech owl and a resident of the nature center. She was blinded in one eye when she was hit by a car (unfortunately a very common occurrence with owls, also the fate of the large taxidermy owl in the second picture). The driver of that car brought her right to a vet who was able to save her life; but she could not survive in the wild now. She also has glaucoma forming in her other eye. She's fed one mouse a day, and by morning, it's pretty much gone. The naturalist took Tuft outside on a leash with our class. Tuft is a sweetheart!

http://www.county.milwaukee.gov/router.asp?docid=10115