Happy Day after Thanksgiving!

Did you have a great day yesterday? We sure did! Well, another year has passed and I have yet to roast a whole turkey! That's right, I've never been in charge of the big bird.

Ever.

in my life.

15+ years as wife and chief cook.

:)

Tim smoked our turkey again this year...and it was delicious! (His choice, I was actually up for trying my hand at the roasting this year.) He's really perfecting his technique. It was actually done about 5 hours before we had everything else ready and all our guests assembled for the big meal. Tim read up and discovered that you could keep it warm and juicy by wrapping it up and keeping it in a cooler. We left the thermometers in so as to monitor safe temps and it all worked great. Mmm good! We had a very enjoyable evening with great friends. And now we have lots of leftovers! I do LOVE smoked poultry for all sorts of recipes. Can't wait to use this stuff!

I had this great picture of the little girl digging into her big turkey drumstick, but unfortunately the file is corrupt. Bummer. Here's a photo collage of the kids playing in puddles the other day. We had massively heavy rain for about 24 hours and with all the leaves blowing off the trees too, the drains got clogged...great huge puddles to jump in while the cold rain came pouring down!

Know what else the passing of Thanksgiving means in our family? Time to pull together Christmas lists! As I was browsing through Black Friday on-line stuff last night, I was thinking we really should start doing this before Thanksgiving. But many in this family of ours are procrastinators (oh, yes, definitely me included!) and I find that unlikely to happen. But it really would have been great to know who my secret sibling is for gifts this year and what he or she is pining for. Or maybe she's Pinning for something this year!

Well, without further ado...I'm going to start posting stuff I find on here and my Pinterest board.

Pinned things on my All I want for Christmas board --

• Anything from Williams-Sonoma. Yep, you could just walk in there and buy me anything and I'm pretty sure I'll be thrilled with it. All sorts of fun, that store is!
• New cozy slippers. My beloved ATM ones pretty much fell apart from daily use for several years. I wear about size 6 usually.
• I want a food processor. Not sure which size. Seems like lots of recipes recommend using them though.
• Well, lots of cooking gadgets on my list...I think I'm gonna need a new kitchen too. Need more storage!
• I need a flash diffuser for my camera. Haven't done any research as to which one I want though.
• A good tripod for our myriad of photography and videography equipment is definitely in order! Again...no research yet.
• More stuff coming soon...as soon as I think of it!

*Christmas list image credits: Kate Teague "Berry Days", Bella Gypsy "Talk Like A Pirate" red alpha, Shawna Clingerman "Frolic" plaid alpha

It's Fall!

November? already? The year is flying by. Obviously I haven't spent any time on my blog. Three kids, job, crazy house, all those other distractions in computerland. (You know the ones...facebook, pinterest, a million cool blogs to read.) Well, I hope to get back here soon and share some fun creations as well as a few pics of my family. Until then....enjoy the beauty of the season!

Summer Vacation Bliss!

Well, we made it. We went on a wonderfully long and relaxing vacation to Texas. We visited family, friends and sealife too! I have literally 1000+ new photos to get through and figure out which ones I want to scrap. I did a fun little digi layout while on the road. The kids were LOVING the Texas heat and the opportunity for water play around every corner! It was all such a good time. I'll be back with some highlights of the journey soon!

Spring in the PNW - finally!

Hi there...been a while I guess! I'm back and excited to report that here in the Pacific NW spring has sprung, at least for a few days! Yes, it is finally not just sunny but warmer too! I just love the idea of not needing a coat at all, not worrying about whether my toes will be cold, wearing flip flops all the time! Yay! My boys are outside happily playing on our new playset and I'm in here listening to their chatter while I'm not cleaning the house! (Don't tell the Mr., ok?)

Other new exciting news...I've been selected for a digital scrapbook designer's Creative Team! I'm looking forward to a great time helping to show off Jeanelle Paige Designs kits! My first assignment was to use her new Cluster Essentials kit which she designed for recoloring and putting together clusters of embellishments. It's very cute! I think my favorites in the kit are the butterfly and vine swirl which works perfectly as a rub-on. What do you think? You can find all her stuff exclusively at A Cherry on Top.

That's all I've got for now. I should be back soon!

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

It would be Dr. Seuss' birthday today, if he were still living. We like our Dr. Seuss around this house...A litte One Fish, Two Fish anyone? How about The Fox in Socks? I love a good tongue twister at bedtime!

This past January, my daughter picked a Dr. Seuss character to adorn her birthday cake. Actually, this is the second of her 7 birthdays that she's picked this obscure but fun Seussical creature...the Zizzer Zazzer Zuzz. She's on the last page of the Dr. Seuss ABC book. It took me a while, but I ended up pretty impressed with my icing rendition. Here she is in all her buttercream glory!

As for the 7 year old? She said "Mom" (and then a very dramatic pause that I took for complete disappointment) "It's awesome! But her hair is too short." Oh well...never said I was a hair stylist!

I wanna win some stuff!

I haven't blogged in so long! After Thanksgiving we all plunged into the Christmas preparations of shopping, decorating and gifting. We had a wonderful lazy holiday here. No travelling and no visitors. It's never happened before and Tim and I really were able to recharge with all the nothing-to-do and hanging out at home without expectations. You might have thought that I would spend the time cooking, cleaning or organizing, but no...it was all relax and enjoy time together.

Confession: I signed up for a "post more often on your blog" challenge over on my favorite scrapbooking website, A Cherry on Top. The challenge started two weeks ago...and this is the first time I've got a post added! I'll have to work on that.

Oh yeah, the winning stuff part. Things are heating up in the scrapbooking world this 2nd half of January. The big product show, CHA, is coming up and all the companies are revealing their new products. Or at least tempting us with sneak peaks and snipits of their products.

Maya Road makes some really cute stuff. They are definitely one of the go-to companies for incredible chipboard shapes and 3D fun. In today's post on their blog, Day 2 of their reveal, they've got some adorable stuff! My favorites are the sun, clouds and rainbow chip pieces.

Hopefully this little post will help me win and I'll have some of those in my stash soon and then onto my pages about the kiddos! I mean there's no one who loves rainbows more than my sweet little girl!

Turkey Day, Delicious Turkey Day!

I came into the Thanksgiving holiday with plans to keep it simple and low stress, give myself some much needed time to relax. So we decided not to invite a bunch of people over and I decided to keep the meal simple and to the point - turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy and of course pumpkin pie. It turned out to be one of our best Thanksgivings ever!

Despite my plans to keep it simple, I had invited my brother and his family over for the meal, with the "simple" disclaimer. They decided to come over and they brought some delicious depth to our meal! Sweet potato apple pecan casserole, Paula Dean brussel sprouts (includes butter and bacon of course!), chocolate pecan pie. Wow!

However, the big deal is always the turkey, right? Well, let me tell you. My husband can cook a mean turkey! He can smoke a mean turkey, to be more specific.

Let me take you back 14 Novembers, to our first Thanksgiving as husband and wife, our first Thanksgiving thousands of miles from our families, our first Thanksgiving in the much cooler Pacific NW. We love smoked food, and we had a small vertical column style smoker that had served us well back in TX and in the early fall in WA. On Thanksgiving day, a typical 40 degree day for these parts, our relatively small turkey was in that smoker forever, just not getting hot enough. By about 8 pm we gave up with the smoking and finished it in the oven. It was pretty much inedible! (Oh, and naturally since it was my first turkey, we found the blue plastic bag of giblets in the turkey as we cut it up! Oops.)

Fast forward to 2010, we have this awesome new southern barrel smoker with the smoke box on the side and lava rocks in the barrel. We also have snow on the ground, and its been below freezing for the last 3 days. We cautiously ventured again to smoke the big bird, fully ready to finish it in the oven before it got smoked beyond being edible. But not this time...my husband aced the turkey smoking this time. It was ready on time and absolutely beautiful. Our kitchen smelled like a TX bbq restaurant...it was melt in your mouth yummy, juicy and tender. Take a look!

My what a difference 14 years can make!

And bonus? My mother-in-law, whom I love, showed up about 11 am to surprise us with a visit. How cool! She lives in TX and we didn't expect to see her until next spring. Boy were the kids excited to see Grandma! And she rocks...always helping with the kid stuff, the kitchen stuff, the laundry, whatever needs to be done.

And double bonus? The Aggies beat tu. Awesome.

Truly plenty to be thankful for in our house. How was your Thanksgiving?

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Seriously...it is raining AGAIN! Summer was about two weeks long (not even 14 consecutive days!) and it has been cloudy and rainy all the other time. Rain all through Memorial Day weekend, rain on the 4th of July (well, that's what I hear...we were in MI), pouring buckets of cold rain on my boys' 4th birthday, rain on Labor Day....and so it continues. Yesterday was a surprising sunny day. Today...raining, raining, raining again.

Credits: Bella Gypsy - Two by two, Kreations by Kami - Basic Needs, MC-Designs - Vintage Touch, Jeanne Marie Scraps - Daredevil (recolored), Page Maps sketch July 2010

Monsters!

Over at one of my favorite scrapbooking spots, A Cherry on Top, there was a challenge this past month to create with a digital kit. I had picked this kit back at the beginning of August during their on-line crop as an item that I want to buy, not knowing at the time there would be a challenge associated with the choice! The objective was to use the kit for hybrid work if you are a paper scrapper and/or digi layouts if that is your thing. So here are the three cards and layouts I came up with. If I had a little more time, I would have done more hybrid work, but I didn't find out about the challenge until 4-5 days before the deadline. Anyway...I just love the Monsters in Space kit by Crisdam Designs! What do you think about it?

Digital Card:

Digital 12x12 layout:

Hybrid card:

Credits: In addition to Monsters in Space I used pp by My Memories Exactly and a stamp by Close to My Heart.

We had two birthdays!

My twin boys celebrated their 4th birthday a couple weeks ago. It was a cold, rainy day and we of course had a big outdoor backyard party planned. Oh well! We made due since we are used to this here in Pacific NW.

The theme was Hot Wheels since the boys are really into them these days. We had rented a NASCAR bouncy house...luckily it had a roof. The rain still got inside which made it slippery, but we just kept wiping it off with towels. The kids loved it.

My favorite part is how fun the cakes turned out. I made them myself - I always make each twin their own cake. It's not their fault they were born the same day! In this house we live by the motto that everyone should be special on their birthday. Anyway, one boy asked me to make a cake "like at the airport", which meant the spiral ramps in the parking garage. And I did! It took a while but went together just how I imagined. Phew!

I got these wonderful reactions "[Brother], come look at the awesome cakes mom made us!" and "Mom, you make the best cakes in the whole world!"

Definitely worth all the work for happiness like that. :)