This & That

30 Days of Thankful

I am current with this little album, which makes me very happy at this busy time of year. Here are this week's entries:

House Tweak Done...Finally

After nearly 3 months, the  exterior house tweak is finally done. I've said before that I didn't get this whole home dec gene, and that extends to things like how the exterior of the house might look, but I'm very pleased with the results.

For the time we've lived here, this is how the house has looked there in the background, with blueish paint and darker trim. The architechture is very 1970's contemporary, which again, isn't my dream house choice, but when we bought the house there were other factors that sold us....location, amount of pasture ground, mature yard for the kids.

We have talked off and on about changing it drastically...like putting stucco on it...but I thought it would look strange with the contemporary look. In the end, we decided to add more river rock to the front, extend the eaves out to give a little more protection to the wood and paint it a different color. And believe me, I sweated over paint choices.

In progress.

And the finished product.

You can see the eaves extended here and the new color. I had to fight DH tooth and nail to change the color and we are still having an ongoing discussion about wheather it's grey or blue. My goal was grey with eggshell trim. So please tell me this is grey.

More Jingling

More cards to look at today. The designs for these came mostly from the Online Holiday Card Class earlier this month by Kristina Werner and Jennifer McGuire. Again, I tried to do a non-holiday card with each design.

The holiday card in this set has snowflakes on it that are covered in glitter.

The lines in the card backgrounds are embossed with the Martha Stewart scoring board.

There are corresponding images behind the die cuts on these card. So, there's a brown snowflake behind the snowflake cut out. The heart and small circle are attached to the sentiment strip.

The card on the left has stamping over a piece of diagonal masking paper. Surprisingly, I really wrestled with this one for some reason. The card on the right is stamped and embossed on watercolor paper.

The card on the left does have an embossed background...it's numbers that didn't impress well. It's a metal embossing plate that I used with my Cuttlebug. I shimmed it until I could just barely crank it through and still the impression is very faint. Any advice on those metal impression plates?

And now, a little giveaway. I've made more cards than I can use this year, so if you leave a comment here, I'll use random.org to pick someone to send a few cards to.  Comments will close Friday night at 6 PM MST. I'll announce a recipient on Saturday morning. Cards will go out in Monday's mail.

It's on the Horizon

In the wake of the frustrating parent/non-teacher conference, DH and I came to the realization that our daughter was actually filling out college applications. No, it wasn't a total surprise. We had helped her find online links and such. It's just that it is another one of those "hit you in the face" lasts for this year.

My baby is going to leave home sometime in the not-too-distant future. She really is. She's going to pack most of her stuff into a car and drive away without much of a backward glance, because this will be one of the most exciting things for her ever....going off to live with a roommate, nobody to tell her what to do or when to do it.

Oh....laws....

Smothered Burritos

When I was in New Mexico earlier this year, I got a chance to taste some really authentic green chili, which was delicious. I found this recipe in a recent Taste of Home magazine and hoped it would remind me of the green chili taste. Of course, nothing is as good as authentic, but this was pretty darn good. I'll have to edti with a photo later.

Smothered Burritos

• 1 (10 oz.) can green enchilada sauce
• 3/4 cup salsa verde
• 1 pound ground beef (or ground turkey, Julie)
• 6-8 (10") flour tortillas, warmed
• 1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

Combine enchilada sauce and salsa verde in a bowl. Cook beef over medium heat in a large skillet until no longer pink, drain. (I also added 1/2 a large onion in with the beef to brown.) Stir in 1/2 cup of the sauce mixture. 

Spoon a scant 1/2 cup of the beef mixture off center on a tortilla and sprinkle with a little cheese. Fold end up and sides in and roll up. Put in a greased 11x7 baking dish. Pour remaining sauce over and sprinkle with more cheese. Bake, uncovered at 375 degrees for 10-15 minutes or until cheese is melted.

12...12....12

I'm sure you will all be relieved when the 12 class is finally over. In truth, while I have really enjoyed the process, it has been a little stressful at times to try to get things done. I do work better with deadlines, but sometimes I'd like to work on something different. I'm taking a break from classes at the first of the year and will spend some time getting unfinished projects....finished. On the up-side, I've managed to stay fairly current on both my 365 and my 180 day's albums. We'll see what December brings for this whole process, though.

This is my Personality category layout for the month and contrasts the different sides of SD Boy's personality. The design is the same PageMaps calendar sketch that I used for the layout about my usual breakfast, just in a different orientation.

This is the Inspiration category layout because, as usual, the design is inspired by an ad. 

Here's the ad I based it on.

The Things category layout, referring to the lovely vampire teeth. The design for this is also the ad.

30 Days of Thankful

It was a nice Thanksgiving here yesterday. We didn't have a ton of people, but the food was traditional, excellent and there are leftovers...which is a good thing. 

I put The Girl in charge of the centerpiece and she made a pretty table, working along the lines of the table we put together for the Sadie Hawkins dance. In keeping with the spirit of the day, here are this week's 30 Days of Thankful pages. I love the very simple format that has allowed me to write just a little, add a picture and be done. 

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope that your day is wonderful, that you have a slice of your favorite pie. The Girl is headed over to my mother's house this morning to make Lemon Meringue, her favorite, with Grandma. I hope you have your loved ones around you. I hope you remember all the things you have to be grateful for. 

And on that note, a brief retrospective of Thanksgivings through the years. You'll notice that some things change...and some things stay the same. *eyeroll*

26 Years and Done

Sometimes there are "lasts" that kind of creep up on you unexpectedly.

I had one of those last week when I went to Parent Teacher conference for the last time, after 26 years straight of attending at least once a year, often at multiple schools.

This is the paperwork I got at the conference. It is my girl's report card and a school newspaper article about a senior essay SD Boy wrote 6 years ago that has been used as a study example since. Yes, I know the title of the article says 10 years, but SD Boy is 6 years older than his sister, wrote the essay when he was a senior, she's a senior this year, which says somebody at the high school can't count...which in and of itself is kind of scary.

There are things you miss about having kids at home and things you don't miss. I'm not going to miss going to P/T conference. 

Several years ago our school district went to a "student led" format for conferences which means you sit down in a classroom with your kid and a random "advisory" teacher, who may or may not have your child in one of their classes, and your child tells you how they're doing in school.

OK, but if you have a child that's struggling in a particular subject, you don't have access to the teacher during this time, which to me defeats the whole purpose of parent/teacher conferencing. And if you're communicating with your kid, you should already know how they're doing in school. To me, the purpose of parent/teacher conference is to actually have some interaction with teachers...who have your kid in class. 

Call me unenlightened, but if I'm not going to get to interact with teachers then we have a bit of problem with the labeling.

They need to call it Kid Tells You How They're Doing Conference instead. 

Not going to miss it. Not even a little bit.

Stylin'

I think it says something about a guy who's secure in his masculinity when he can slip on these fairly glamorous cheaters to check things out...and then lets his wife take a picture of it.