Awesome.

I've seen this before..but now I love it even more.


The Richmond Plate
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was just thinking that Heath as a first name is pretty nice. just might have to save that for the far future.

scrubbed the uggs clean today, inside and out. it'll probably take them a few weeks to dry at this rate, though. too scared to put them in the dryer, but they are on a towel and stuffed full of paper towels right now.

i really hope it snows here soon, for real. when i'm home, anyway. looking forward to tx trip-it's much needed. i hope to spend some quality time with the brown bunch and maybe explore around tx a little bit if there's time.

we leave on wednesday, so i'm leaving work early that day. my birthday is on the 19th, don't have any plans for it since we'll be at a wedding reception that day. we come home on monday the 21st, so that's a nice amount of time there i guess. then we have a friend coming to visit after xmas. i don't go back to work until january 4th, so it'll be a nice vacation i hope. lots of comfy home time.

a flickr pro account would be really cool to have. i hate being limited to the amount of photos i can have on my page there.

Vampires..

my angel cookies could totally be vampires if i put purple or black sprinkles on them instead of yellow.

cookies..

So a friend/coworker & I decided to have a cookie baking party/exchange type thing next weekend.

Kristen & I also decided to do one for Stamp Club next week.

Tomorrow I will be working for a couple of hours and then going home to mix up all of my batches of cookie dough.

I will need to make:

-cookies or some sort of holiday goodie for Stamp Club
-gingerbread dough
-nana cookie dough
-joe frogger cookie dough
-spritz butter cookie dough

That's probably all the dough I need to make. It sounds like a lot, but they will all be small batches.

Yay for December cookies!

silver white winters that melt into springs..

So today I put the wreath on our door. I would love to have an aluminum christmas tree, but it's unlikely i'll ever get once since they are so expensive..it's so weird how someone's trash is someone else's treasure. Anyway, so I figured this wreath would satisfy my yearning for an aluminum tree.

I put my vintage ornaments on it. Cute!








Also, not sure if you looked at the moon on Tuesday night, but we did. There was a lunar fog bow up in the sky. It's basically a ring completely around the moon, 360 degrees, spaced pretty far apart from the moon. Here's a picture we took, but it's kind of hard to see:



We had just gotten home from seeing "This is It" (the michael jackson film, very good btw, his concerts would have been awesome :( )..and came home to our neighbor looking up at the sky outside. So we did too, and we all just marveled over it. Anyway, it was really neat, and Daniel found this article about it online: http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/93215?fp=1

Some people say it's a predictor of bad weather, like snow or heavy rain.

AND it might snow this Saturday. I'm working & the parade is going on outside of the office, so I'll have a front row seat. Snow would be so neat this weekend!

Enjoy your weekends, everyone!

It's beginning to look a lot like..

Every year on Black Friday, after all of the shopping and craziness, I always set up our tree. We have an artificial tree, and yes we have storage for it in our apartment, believe it or not.

The first year (2005) we lived here, we bought a live tree from Lowe's, back when I worked there. Over the years there I had accumulated a lot of glass ornaments from there, since the discount was so good, especially during December (they always had a ton of specials for their employees).

After that first year, I vowed to never have a live tree again, because Dr. Wily tore it up, splashed water everywhere, and the tree was just sprinkled all throughout our apartment. Anyway, no more live trees. For now, anyway. Maybe once we're in a house with kids we'll try the live tree thing again. There's something heart warming about going out to the tree farm to get a live tree..

I really like our tree. It's pre-lit, just the right height, and just the right width. The tree topper is an origami star that Daniel folded with clear paper. I like it because the lights can shine through it and reflect off of it.

Here is a photo of our tree this year:



The ornaments we used this year are just about all glass balls. There are some from a wedding set Daniel's Aunt Georgia Anne & her husband Joe sent to us back a couple of years ago before our wedding. Then there are a couple of special ones that Daniel had growing up, and some I had growing up, as well as some that used to belong to my grandma Runyon.

Here are some photos of some of our ornaments:





I found the Jefferson Hotel ornament this year and bought it because it's one of my favorite places in downtown Richmond, and also since that's where Daniel & I spent our wedding night at. It's such a gorgeous building, inside and out.

On Sunday 11/29, Bonnie, Kristen, & I made our Christmas cards for this year. I am going to mail mine out on the 10th.
Kristen also got us some gingerbread house kits, so we put those together. It was really fun :)

here is a closeup of my gingerbread house:



And some of my grandma's vintage ornaments:



And a pyrex bowl full of ornaments, just for fun:




I hope that everyone is having a great start to the month of December. This is such a fun time of year, but it can also be stressful. I am looking forward to going home and checking my advent calendar. Usually Daniel puts a little origami piece inside there, so we'll see what we have today. I'll post about the advent calendar some more later this month.

Whatever holiday you celebrate, I wish you a happy one, love, peace, and joy.

Thanksgiving 2009

For Thanksgiving this year, Daniel and I hosted at our apartment. My parents and my oldest sister & her two boys were there, as well as Daniel's mother & her husband.

On Wednesday we did a lot of preparation so we'd have more time to enjoy Thanksgiving day. It all worked out so nicely.

We made all our pies on Wednesday. I made apple and Daniel made pumpkin. We had some extra pumpkin filling, so we made little tiny pumpkin pies too. The apple pie was delicious!! I will have to make one every year for Thanksgiving, it was my favorite thing making (and eating) this year. Yum!! I'm not a fan of pumpkin pie, but Daniel enjoyed it and so did everyone else.



In between making things and getting stuff ready, I was watching the parade. As it turns out, I had it on the wrong channel all morning. I kept waiting for Matt Lauer & Al Roker to come on, but they never did. I had it on CBS instead of NBC. Horrible!!


Here is a photo of Dr. Wily soaking up some sun:



Our table set up (Kristen let us borrow her 6 foot table & 4 chairs, thanks again K!) :



Closeup of a place setting:



Our turkey!:




It was a lot of fun making everything and serving it all, but I don't know if we'll host again in our apartment. The next time we host will be in our actual house, once we're in it. Looking forward to that one day.

Hoarders

Did anyone else catch the new season (first episode) of Hoarders last night on A&E?

So sad..

I spotted some pyrex in all of the clutter, junk, and garbage in her house. It's unbelievable that someone can let their house get like that. I felt so bad for her, though. She seemed like she was losing her mind, but apparently she had been like that for the last 28+ years. It was just horrible. They removed over 8,000 pounds of garbage from her home. How did she survive?

I'm not sure why I felt so bad for her. Maybe because she really did look like she needed help and really was losing it, it seemed. I dunno..

the whole thing just made me much more thankful for the space that I live in.