By Trisha
This is an awesome site for shoes, jewelry and handbags and it is personalized just for you. Each month, you will receive your personalized selections and you can choose to buy or not. The best thing, everything is $39.95!! Even better, if you don't like the selections they make for you, you can look at other styles that aren't in your personal showroom. And it is all the fabulous idea of Kim Kardashian, a style icon.
I have not bought anything yet, but once I'm teaching and earning a paycheck again I will treat myself to some new shoes every couple months. I have many favorites.
This is my personal link, if you want to sign up and buy some fabulous fashions:
http://www.shoedazzle.com/invite/lwqzdp0qp
You can sign up and post your own link and invite your own friends and family to join. When they do and three people have purchased something, you will get a credit for a free pair of shoes, purse or jewelry! And who doesn't like free shoes?? Or free jewelry? Or a free purse?
By Trisha
And I'm almost ready. I have all the boxes ready to ship out tomorrow and by the garage door. I just need to put them in my car for the morning. The thing I need to figure out is how I'm going to get then all into the post office in one trip by myself.
After the post office to mail off packages and Christmas cards, I have plans to hit the grocery store to buy what I need to do my baking and cooking. I'm starting my baking today with Peanut Butter balls, because I have everything I need for them already. I might make the Spritz cookies today, too, but we'll see how long it takes me to do the Peanut Butter Balls. I'll bake tomorrow afternoon and through the week until I'm done. I have 10 treats I'm making this year and I'll post the recipes as I get them done and have time, but they will all be up by Christmas. Two a day is good and then I can deliver our treat trays on Sunday, but you never know. I could do more than that if time allows.
After the baking, I still have some shirts to do, but they shouldn't take long. That is once I decide what designs to do.
Our Christmas Eve dinner is going to be turkey and ham with stuffing, rolls and green beans. Christmas Day dinner, I'm following Culpepper tradition with a prime rib, mashed potatoes, gravy, salad and rolls. I'm going to make breakfast after we open gifts-candied bacon, hashbrowns, eggs and waffles. I'm going to make a pumpkin roll for dessert and pick up a chocolate silk pie and a cherry pie for Jarom.
I'm excited for Christmas but I wish we lived closer to family so we could spend the holidays with them. But we were really blessed to be able to spend Christmas and New Years with family the last two years in Oregon and this year I just wanted to stay home in our house. I had hopes family would come to us, but now such luck. Oh well. It will still be a nice Christmas and really relaxed.
I've been working on an afghan for my sister but it's just too much for me to get done before Christmas. I didn't start soon enough. I've been making jewelry and I've made some of my best pieces, ever, I think. I've embroidered a number of shirts and painted two. Hat boxes decoupaged. As I finished everything, I wrapped them and put them under the tree. Now, our tree looks sad with most of the gifts packed and ready to ship. Guess I better get busy on Jarom's stuff so it doesn't look so bare.
I hope everyone is having a great season filled with happiness and joy.
By Trisha
I am a little closer to being done with Christmas. I have two gifts to finish that are on the "to be shipped" list; a necklace and an afghan. I have until next Wednesday to complete them. I know I can get the necklace done, but I'm really stressing about the afghan. Jarom had to remind me last night that when I make gifts I'm supposed to enjoy myself and I'm starting to stress too much and not have any fun anymore. He reassured me that if I don't get the afghan done we can buy something, and I can send the afghan later. Not really what I want to do, but I think that may just be what will happen. I started early this year, but not quite early enough. Oh well. I also had to scrap the table runners for our moms and those will be their Mother's Day gifts and the necklaces that were going to be Mother's Day gifts are now their Christmas gifts. And, sadly, I had to resort to boxed Christmas cards this year. My stitched beaded cards take about 1 1/2 hours to do each and when you have about 120 to do, it is a big time investment, so I will work on them throughout 2011 and they will be our card next year.
I've been burning the candle at both ends the last few weeks, too. And, Jarom reminded me that if I'm not careful, I will get sick.
All the gifts that are complete are just about all wrapped. I have about half a dozen more to wrap tonight that are done, after I'm done here that is. The rest of this week i will be working hard on that afghan and the necklace won't take much time at all to do. Tomorrow, I'm making a pumpkin roll for Jarom's Christmas party on Friday and one for our neighbors. I want to give them a day to really set up, so I thought I'd do it tomorrow instead of Thursday.
Next Thursday, I will get everything over to the post office and shipped off to their various destinations. I'll get all the grocery shopping done for my baking and Christmas Eve and Christmas dinner. I have 10 treats to make for our treat tray and I wasn't going to make anything new this year but I found three new recipes that sound fantastic and can't pass up-Oreo Cookie Balls, Cosmo Cookie Bars and Chocolate Filled Cookie Bonbons. They sound scrumptious! Those are in addition to my "old" regulars and "new" regulars from last year-Lemon Bells, Peanut Butter Balls, Spritz Cookies, Gumdrop Fudge, Cranberry Swirl Biscotti and Chocolate Fruitcake. MMMM! Yummy! I can't wait! I think this is what I'm really looking forward too and why I'm losing steam on making gifts; but I can't do my baking too early or they will go bad, so I'll start them all next weekend.
I've pretty much got our dinner list ready for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners. We'll have all the traditional sides, but this year we are having turkey and ham on Christmas Eve for dinner and prime rib (Culpepper family tradition) for Christmas Day dinner. And I'll do that shopping next week, too, when I get everything for my baking.
And that is what has been happening the last couple weeks-working on gifts, creating grocery lists, crossing things off lists and so on.
Happy Holidays, everyone!!!
By Trisha
Once again, this it's been awhile since my last post. It was a wonderful Thanksgiving. Although we had to travel, we didn't have to travel out of state, only about 3 hours south to Santa Cruz/Watsonville. We stayed at my Aunt Tracy and Uncle Dustin's house and had a great time. Thanksgiving and our days and evenings were spent at Aunt Teresa's in Watsonville. There were 18 of us this year. It was a bit cramped but it was cozy. I so love my family. I am so blessed with a big loving family that gets along well, and a fantastic husband. Two dogs and I cat I love and whom love me very much, a home, clothing on my back, food to eat, and great friends-and that is just the beginning of so many blessings I'm blessed with. I could never name or count all of them.
The days were spend together playing games, eating, of course, visiting, watching football and a little shopping early Saturday morning at Joann's in Salinas. I took a pre-made quilt with me for all of us to design a square with oil pastels and set it with a hot dry iron. I took an couple ornament kits too, but we didn't make them as a group, so I gave one to Coley and sent the other home with Madison and Emily. I tried to work on our card fronts but I only completed one and a half, so I have more than enough work cut out to do to get them done. I had hoped to get about 30 done to send in the envelopes with the finished family calendar and family address sheet that I finally finished. Mom and Dad were kind enough to take the Oregon calendars home with them and Uncle Derek & Aunt Michelle the Utah ones. It only took me a year and a half to finish the family calendar but they are done and all are out except for 4, which will go out in the mail when I mail our gifts on December 15th.
I forgot to take our camera so I don't have any personal pictures, but Coley took plenty and they will soon be on Facebook and I can transfer some over here in a few days.
I know tonight I should be working on Christmas gifts, but I have yet to put up out Christmas tree and decorations. This is the latest I've ever decorated. If they are not up the day after Thanksgiving they always go up the weekend after and here we are almost a week later and they are just sitting in the storage bins in the living room waiting for me. When I'm done, it's back to work on Christmas stuff. Tomorrow, hopefully I will get out and finish what shopping I have left for gifts/stocking stuffers and supplies for gifts and baking.
I'm not doing any new Christmas treats this year. Last year, I tried a number of new recipes and through that experience I found holiday recipes for this year and the years to come: Peanut Butter Balls, Chocolate Truffles, Lemon Bells, Gumdrop Fudge, Iced Pumpkin Cookies, Cranberry Biscotti, Spritz, and Chocolate Fruitcake.
I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving, too!
