I know it's been forever...

It has been a long time since I've blogged but I'm going to make a renewed effort again as not to get in trouble with certain CA cousins. :-) So without further ado I bring you...Turkey Cookies!

Right before Thanksgiving I had Gabriele over to help me create these. The recipe is on the Pillsbury website and was really pretty easy. A little difficult to squeeze the orange frosting for small hands but Gabriele did a great job and we both had a lot of fun.

Up next is Christmas cookies and Gabriele has asked for Elvf cookies. I'm still looking to find such a cookie cutter.

THANK YOU AUNT GENNY!!!

I came home from work today to find a package containing this:





It's a cricut!!! My own personal die cutter. So exciting. I had been debating about getting one but had held off and my aunt just sent me own. I was shocked!! Haven't been able to play with it yet but I'm definitely going to need some cartridges now. It comes with the George one which looks like a great font and has some shapes like flowers as well that you can cut out. Can't wait to start creating LO's with it!! Thank you so much Aunt Genny! It was a great surprise.

LO's from the Shack

Had a wonderful time at my annual scrapbook weekend at the shack. It was wonderful as always, much need and tons of food and fun.

Here are some of the 17 pages (a new record for me) that I created.

This was John's favorite from the weekend:

My favorite:

A few more LO's

Most are from my class. A few are some that I just finally got finished.

New Layouts

I've been busy this month taking an online class at www.nyscraps.com where I do one scrapbook layout (LO) every 48 hours. I've amazed myself that I've stayed caught up so far and have met every deadline and there is only two more LO's to go!! Here are a few I've done so far: If you click on the image, you should be able to see a bigger image of each LO.

Sad

Sunday John and I came home from my grandpa's to find this:








Sadly someone had vandalized our display. The arch was a total loss and penguin isn't usable any longer either, plus whoever it was stole another penguin that looked just like him before the beating. Very upsetting as it just seemed so violent. So we took down almost all the lights in the yard related to the arches and pathway and brought it several of the other small yard ornaments. For now we'll leave the lights on the house up. Not sure what we are doing yet with the inflatables as the officer who took the report mentioned that they had some trouble of people slashing them. We'll have to check all ours and then decide.

Meet the Grizwolds - Kuberski Style

First here are 4 out of 5 inflatables. I forgot to take a picture of the Santa. Penguin is in the back yard. Moose and Globe are in the front on the garage side. Santa is in the front, sun room side and scooby is in the side yard, sun room side.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/burgie11/Inflatables.jpg

And then here's the rest. Top picture is the front yard from the garage to the side yard. It's hard to tell but all the lights form a pathway from one sidewalk to the other (we are a corner lot) with lighted arches at both ends. Then there are some plastic figures, a train and a bunch more lighted things along it. Our neighborhood kids are loving being able to walk through it. So cute. The next picture down is the back yard with 3 trees, penguin and mama and baby bear. Mama bear is also pictured top right. To the right of that picture is one of the snowmen that run along the garage, which is pictured directly below him. The picture to the left of that is again the front of the house, along the lighted path with a picture of the train that's along side it. Behind you can see the inflatable santa and the edge of Scooby on the left hand side. Also the lights around the sun room and a few of the lighted candy canes by the front walk. Under that are the trees that go along side the garage. This pic is taken from the back yard looking toward the front. The Snow Globe and Mosse are in front of these. Then Finally are some of the small trees that are behind santa going towards scooby. What I didn't get pics of are the lights on the house, one the deck and the lighted rope latter that goes from up the deck, with characters on it so it looks like Santa and his elves climbing up.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y289/burgie11/Lightssmallversion.jpg

Landscaping

And catching up on one other big event. We had our yard landscaped in September and it turned out so well.

The front:


The back and side:

Behind the garage:



Another view from the side:


Alongside the garage:


The Japanese Maple right outside the front door:


Some of the stuff you can't see from the pictures is that there are 4 red maples along the road between the curb and the sidewalk. And instead of doing wood chips we used a type of coral rock in most of the beds which really turned out nice. You can kind of see it in the pictures of the pine trees. The guys from Everett's did an amazing job and we can't wait to see what everything looks like in the spring!!

An Addition to our Family

Meet Teddy :

He's a 2.5 year old long haired orange tiger and he's a sweetheart. He came home at the beginning of October and hid under the bed in the spare bedroom most of the time. We introduced Callie on day 3 and while Teddy was interested in his new sister, Callie wanted nothing to do with Teddy. The next day while John was home, he left the bedroom door open and slowly Teddy began to venture out and Callie, would follow him around but wouldn't get too close, as shown here:

A few days later though we were to this point:

And it's been all good from that point on. They groom each other and rough house like crazy. They love to chase each other around the house and tackle each other. It's so funny to watch, even though I'm a bit paranoid they are going to hurt each other. We also find them curled up together in a few different places. They really are cute together and Teddy's been a great addition to our family.

The floor is in!!

After a very long day for John, the basement floor is in. It took an entire Sunday with the help of our friend Dale and John's brother Randy but it looks awesome. Only a few minor glitches. John accidentally cut of the part that you need to snap the next piece into on one piece for a little built in shelving area and didn't realize it until he had laid three more rows. Thankfully Randy was over and they pulled the the needed pieces and fixed it. John still has to do the trim and a few little pieces but the majorirty is DONE!!

One more picture

Here I am with the rest of the instructors. In the back: Matt, Greg, and Angela. In the front: Jen, Heather, Me and John.


I had so much fun with this group and they were all wonderful in giving me suggestions and encouragement. I especially want to thank Heather for all her help. She's the one who encouraged me to get my paperwork in to become an instructor, made sure I submitted everything correctly and took care of a lot of other details!! I definitely owe her one!

Good News

Lots of good news around our house lately. First, I spent last week in Howell, MI training to become a Child Passenger Safety Instructor. I passed and as soon as the paperwork is completed I will be certified to train new technicians. I had to have a wisdom tooth the morning that I left but other than that the trip went extremely well and the other instructors were very encouraging and lots of fun! The picture is of me teaching on Wednesday and we were discussing proper use of the harnesses.

On the home front, we were thrilled to finally recieve our flooring. Home Depot called Saturday morning and we picked it up that evening. We have to fix a small water leak from the wall were the outdoor hose attachment is and then after that we will lay the floor. John laid out one box and it looks awesome.

And my flowers and garden is flourishing. I have tomoatoes the size of golfballs already. I staked them yesterday. My lillies are looking just wonderful. I can't believe how much they expanded in one year. For those of you who don't know these were given to me from a very dear friend who grows them. And the best news of all is that my allium has finally bloomed after 3 years of trying!! It got really close last year and this year it actually survived and has two blooms. Here are pictures:

Another Delay

Home Depot called yesterday an there is another delay in getting our flooring. First it was backordered until the end of May and then June 5 and now Pergo says it will be going into production June 9 and shipping out June 13th. We don't know how long it will take to get here from there but hopefully by the end of the month!!

Our Anniversary

Monday was our second anniversary. At times it's amazing how fast time goes by and other times it feels like it's been a lot longer...in a good way. We had orginally decided not to do gifts or just do something small, as we just purchased the basement flooring. John didn't listen and totally spoiled me. He sent me this beautiful and enormous bouquet of flowers. He had it delivered to me at work and it made me smile the entire afternoon. Then when I got home he had a card and a gift waiting for me. The gift was a beautiful mystic topaz ring that I had seen in an ad and really liked. It was a wonderful suprise...even though he's in trouble for not sticking to the agreement. He said he mis-interpretted small to mean small in size not expense. Sure! Anyways, we decided to go to Logan's for dinner which was really nice. John had a chicken sandwich and I had the porkchops. Yummy!! After dinner we went to our favorite Hallmark and I bought John some new beanie babies he had been wanting. I'll have to post a picture of them at some point. Then we had the great excitement of spending an hour at the store so that John could get ahead on his ordering as they had a big store evaluation on Tuesday morning and wasn't sure how much time he was going to have. I did some stocking while he ordered and we only stayed for an hour. We came home and watched the Piston's blow game 4 against the Caveliers and then went to bed early. A very nice day all and all. Here are two more picture, one fo the flowers close up and one of the ring sitting in a lilly.