Sunday, December 31, 2006

New Design

Thanks to the multi-talented Bubby for making me a new header as one of my Christmas gifts. And for figuring out how to get it to work. And for just being awesome in general.

Christmas Thrifting

Nobody told me you could find cool old Christmas stuff at thrift stores around the holidays. I discovered this on a quick run through my fave thrifty store a couple of weeks ago where I picked up this little guy. I think he is actually Pinocchio from a McDonald's meal, but I thought he was neat. His nose goes in and out.


I also got this little skater girl, a whole pile of Golden Books for Arwyn and two gifts for my MIL. I think I spent under $3.00.


Continuing the Krause Ban

Arwyn painted herself silly for an hour yesterday morning. She tried out all the colors, then just stuck with blue for the remaining 45 minutes. It's her Blue Period.



I let Bubby take my picture while still in my pj's. Have I even gotten out of my pj's this week? I'm not even sure what day it is most of the time. Ahhhh, vacation. As Bubby said yesterday, "I think I'd better take a shower today because I can't remember the last time I took one." Now that is relaxed.


The reason she wanted to paint: I had out all of my paints to finish up this gift for my cuz.


It's called 809 Dots. Yep, I actually kept a running total. Because I'm weird and anal like that.

Saturday, December 30, 2006

Last Christmas Post

I may be making my Crazy Mama Double Chin Face but I am wearing one of my totally cool Christmas presents from The Bubs. Does one cancel out the other?





Hope everyone has a safe and happy New Year.

Princess Arwyn

She is patiently waiting for all of us to hurry up and open the damn presents already! This was our Christmas exchange with Juju and Big D.


Juju gave her a Disney Princess pillow, plate, fork and bowl set, and robe and slippers. She put this on and promptly twirled around and said, "I'm a princess." Indeed, it does say Princess on the back and she does have the hair fling down cold. Bubby is a lover of all things Disney, I am a hater of all things overly girly and fru-fru. My daughter would have to love the Disney Princesses. And Barbie. And Kelly dolls. And Polly Pocket. We're amassing quite a collection already.


This was her outfit on Christmas day. I love this dress and want one for myself. Why must every clothing item I love be made for small girls? Why, Target, do you tease me with your perfect green fabric with brown apples?


The Three Wise Men had a very interesting conversation on this day that ended with "Let's go! OK!"

Milk and Cookies

These pictures crack me up. We had a very lengthy discussion with Arwyn on Christmas Eve about Santa coming to bring her presents and leaving milk and cookies for him to eat. She really, really wanted to eat the cookies herself.



Here she is looking at Daddy and saying, "I eat that? Arwyn eat those cookies?" No, honey. Those are for a big strange man to eat when he comes down our chimney with no fireplace and brings you lots of toys for no good reason. How do you explain this tradition?


After we put Arwyn to bed Bubby said we had to eat the cookies. I had already eaten more than my fair share of cookies that night and on the verge of cookie overload, I really didn't want any more. I wanted to stick them back in the cookie container and be done with it. As he was dropping crumbs everywhere on purpose, he said, "We are Santa. You have to eat it." So I did. Santa left a very sweet note for Arwyn. He's such a good daddy.

Friday, December 29, 2006

If Your Last Name is Krause Stop Reading

I made a small photo baby book for my cousin who is expecting her first baby in January. If you guys are reading this, stop now!

My dining room table while I was working on this project.


The front cover.


The illustrated pages are from an activity book that I bought for Arwyn at a Starbucks in Georgia last summer and has now been dismantled for artistic use.


The back cover.


I'm still working on one last thing to add to the box before it gets shipped out.

Cheese Is Good

I don't think I have mentioned it here, but Bubby got a new job at the end of November. We have a lot of good friends at the old job (we both worked there) some who still work there, some who don't. In honor of all this confusion, we had our First Annual Ex-Employee Holiday party in mid-December. Yes, I am just now blogging about it, shut up.

Here's the newly weds, Juju and Big D. Juju is sporting one of her Christmas pressies from yours truly. They have nothing to do with our ex-workplace, but they came anyway, MOOCHERS!


Juju and moi. I tried to give her a smooch under the kissing ball, but she was having none of that. She just likes to have her picture taken next to me so that she looks even more bean-polish than usual. I have no pics of me and Bubby, but you have to get the BFF shot!


A pink frosty beverage. Juju gave me a Cosmo mix and I erroneously followed the directions. Those puppies were strong! And they came with lovely sanding sugar for the glasses, which I also later used on some cookies.


The spread. It looks like a lot, but amazingly there really wasn't that much left over. What I'm really trying to say here is our friends are hogs. I'm kidding! I love you guys. I busted out all our fancy china, dishes from my grandma, and wedding presents that hadn't seen the light of day in over five years.


These flowers are just now starting to fade and the party was 13 days ago.


Bubby chillin'.


This one's for the boys.

Holiday Baking

Here are some of the goodies I made this year to enjoy and give away. I seem to still be in baking mode; I've been craving Puppy Chow.

These were Spritz cookies that I made with my cookie press. Someone who shall not be named used to make these for me every year and has wussily copped out the past several years. That's right, I said several. There goes my chance to stuff 50 cookies into my trap in one sitting. I found a recipe and decided to try it myself. They turned out pretty well.


Arwyn thought the dough was Play Dough and demanded to get hers out and make birthday cakes.


I saw the cocoa mix that Alicia posted about and decided to give that a whirl as well. I gave these to my siblings, my sister-in-law and iMollie (and kept one for myself).


The Lemon Curd was probably the most demanding thing I made this year, mostly because I'd never made it before and wasn't really sure what to expect. Oh, and because you have to zest and juice 5 lemons and cook it for 8 eons. I made this for my sister, who claims to love the stuff, and I really hope she enjoyed it because I'm not sure I'll be making it again unless she specifically begs asks me to.


The tags were from Jenny.


Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Two Days Later

We now have 47 million more toys than we had a few days ago. But she is having a blast playing with everything and isn't even asking to watch tv!

Arwyn on the way to Grandma's house Christmas Eve.





I haven't uploaded all my photos yet, but here are a few from St. Nick Day. Every time Arwyn opened a present, no matter what was inside, she said "WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"




I hope you all had a lovely and peaceful holiday.



Now back to doing laundry, cooking something besides cookies and finding somewhere to put all this trash.

Friday, December 22, 2006

Three Days til Christmas

We're doing a lot of cookie baking and last minute shopping around here. Not last minute frantic I-have-nothing shopping, just oh, let's go there! shopping.

Martha Stewart ornaments under a bell jar.


Vintage postcards in a shadow box frame.

Counting down the days tin sign.


Ho ho in the kitchen.


Glitterama on the tree.