december recap! sorry but it's a LONG recap!

yes, yes...i know i should have name my blog "a LAZY walk through the park" since i'm probably the world's laziest blogger...

oh well, so here goes a not-so-quick december recap since today is the last day of the month and of 2009!!!  wow - where did the year go?!

let's see during the second saturday of the month we had our annual girl's christmas get together.  we did a potluck brunch, i brought some banana bread i had baked that morning and all the other food was oh so yummy!  then we did our secret santa exchange and lucky me!  my secret santa was Mia and she had me.  and yay - i got a Hobby Lobby gift card - the gift that never goes wrong and a lovely new Christmas ornament :)

this pic was taken later in the month after it was already on our tree :)

jane joined us from VA via Skype, we ate, talked, and just have a lovely time.  and it was my first time to meet Jenn's 3rd child and Steph's 2nd...all cutie patooties

Here's my first meeting with Steph's daughter- i must've scared her with my camera...

how cute are her "ears"?!

Here are Kathy and Kai and the kiddos chatting with Jane and her son over Skype:

Here are someone's funky Santa toe socks...you know who you are:

And finally our group pic (long distance friend included!)

Yay!  i think this was our 11th annual christmas exchange...i hope they never end!!!

Later that day...while some of the moms stuck around and had mommy bonding time...Mia, Kai, and I caught the matinee showing of Up in the Air.  Good movie.  especially if you either work in the airline business or travel a lot.  and Anna Kendrick's golden globe nomination was totally well deserved.  spoiler alert:  this is NOT a feel good movie...so if you need fluffy feel good...go watch Princess and the Frog.

AND my newly learned tip I learned from our friend Kai (who by the way has traveled to Houston from Dallas more times that we can imagine for this and other events...you are the BESTEST, KAI)...anyhoo - she let me in on a little secret. regarding gasoline gauges.  If you're driving a car that's not one you regularly drive and you're not sure which side the gas tank is on...you can actually look at the gas tank icon on your dashboard and there's an arrow that tells you which side it's on!  Case in point....I was driving her to the airport in my DH's truck...needed to get gas and she pointed this out to me (no, not the fact that it's below E):

who knew?!  although this may only be for newer model cars...my 10 year old honda doesn't have that arrow. oh well.

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let's see...what else.  ah yes, several of my co-workers and i chipped in for a gift for our CFO (the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader) but the gift won't arrive until February. but i was asked to make a card for us to all sign and here's what she received:

cute huh?  i thought so :)

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then we had our white elephant exchange with our house church...here's the group photo afterwards:

and, no, Eugene's gift was not his son but rather the journal and pen set that his daughter is holder ;o)

That day also happened to the Byon's 5th wedding anniversary (pictured Jen the wife is in the red top, her DH Eugene is holding their little boy and their little girl is in the pink bottoms).  so the girls and I went to a local bakery, picked out some desserts and came back to celebrate with them :)  Happy Anniversary, Byons!
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The next day we went to my company's holiday party (hosted by our CEO) dowtown.  Pics from the festivities:

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The next day we went to church, then had lunch with my FIL for his bday at Los Cucos where DH played with my food after the meal and left this on my plate:

After lunch DH and I went Christmas tree shopping...and lucky for us it was such a lovely afternoon!

we picked up this lovely tree for $35 (on sale!  it was originally $99!)

here it is after decorations:

let's see...then we also had a holiday potluck at work (i made red velvet cupcakes witih green sprinkles)

we collected food for a food drive...loaded up the trunk of my car and dropped it off at the Houston Food Bank:

after dropping off the food, Andra and I were on the way back to the office and were going to pick up lunch for ourselves when my transmission DIED.  oiy.  really?  i drop off food and then my car dies? :(  that's a bummer.  but here are the blessings in disguise.  my car's getting old (it's a '99 honday accord with 167K miles on it)...this happened 1) in the middle of the day (and not at night), 2) on the feeder (not the freeway), 3) while i was with someone (BFFNA) and not by myself, 4) where i could pull into a bank parking lot which was across from a policy station (rather than some scary 'hood), 5) when my co-worker Brad was available to pick us up, and 6) after DH had recently changed our insurance and we now had free towing service.  i'm telling you - God is Good...always!

Andra had her camera and took this pick of me and Brad and my poor car.

brad must've heard my tummy growling - i was HUNGRY.

car was towed to a mechanic's, we had the transmission fixed and it was ready by the end of the week.  hopefully a new car is on the horizon for the parks :)

the next day at work,  we had a white elephant exchange...where Vanessa won a Snuggie...she also got me one and my cube neighbor Drew got one from another co-worker...therefore we became Snuggie Central:

my BFFNA (best friend forever named andra) got me a bunch of GREAT CD's :)

after that day at work i was off until the end of the year.  but the next day...i got my first bday present from another coworker (apparently a chuck norris fan...well at least since i got him a Chuck Norris daily calendar :oP):

and I must say...these are the creamiest yummiest pears EVER.  DH and I gave a couple to my FIL and a couple to my mom.  FIL came back next day to drop something off and asked for a couple more ;o)

okay...so then on Christmas Eve I baked sugar cookies during the day and brought them to church where we had our Christmas Eve service.  didn't take any pics...i'm such a dork.

on Christmas day, DH and I opened our gifts with one another and i got what i'd been not-so-subtlely dropping hints for...an iPod and I got it - happy happy joy joy!!!

ok...so here's the story behind all the music.  7 years ago, DH then my SO got me a Nomad Creative...and i LOVE music so filling that bad boy up was not a big deal....then a year after we got married (so 4 years ago) our apt we where living in at the time was broken into (on the day while we were attending a church leadership conference nonetheless!)...and those jerks who tore up our apt stole my mp3 player aka Nomad.  luckily for me all my music had been backed up by my hubby and so for the past 4 years i've had my music on a portable hard drive.  which you cannot plug ear phones into, mind you.  DH was reluctant to get me a new iPod because I already had a iPod Shuffle (1st generation...it was a gift to me)...but that thing can only hold like 512 MB and you can't see what songs are playing. which is really kind of annoying.  but YAY, DH finally got it for me. i am a very happy camper.  i kid you not.

on with Christmas day...after my HAPPY DANCE...i made breakfast then really got cooking!  i made our entire Christmas dinner from scratch.  that's right folks.  no instant anything here today.  we had pot roast, smashed red potatoes, garlicky green beans, and a pear tart (i didn't use my special Riveria pears but rather the Bosc pears that the recipe called for). 

my mom and her long-time companion stopped by at around 2 pm and we exchanged gifts and took a couple of pics...

she's such a cute mom.  seriously.

then mom was off to my oldest brother's house, i went back to cooking...and by 5PM my in-laws showed up and everything was set and ready to go.

sadly, my camera battery died by the end of dinner so i didn't get to take pics of us opening gifts and our usual family pic.  hopefully my BIL will send pics our way soon! 

the next morning though i did take a pic of the nifty gift basket my sweet SIL put together for me:

don't be surprised if i start baking snow flake shaped cookies in the middle of the summer!

what else, what else...ah yes... i gave my BFFNM (best friend forever named Mia)'s son a hair cut...i didn't have any before pics (trust me...he was rocking a reverse mullet big time) but here's an after shot:

that was his sister's foot in the background...she was chillin' with her buddy K...who was playing with her momma Grace's camera...

we had our friends the Yoo's and the Choi's over for dinner earlier this week on Monday...where i recreated my Christmas day dinner for them :)

tuesday of this week, i worked from home a bit, then cleaned house, did laundry, and made some a lot of cards.

wednesday (yesterday) i met up with my friend Angie (the woman who introduced me to scrapbooking craziness.  she can be blamed for my scrapbooking supply addiction...i keed, i keed).  we met for lunch at Chuy's in River Oaks where I luckily happened to run into my CEO who is leaving at the end this month :(  i got to finally tell him thank you for being one of the best CEO's I've ever worked for and wished him well.  that was really awesome to get to see him this one last time since i know he'll be gone by the time i get back to the office on monday.

sorry, i digresed for a second there.  anyhoo...Angie and I had a year's worth of catching up to do but it was good :)

that evening i met up with jackie and my fellow friend and blogger, Anh and we had dinner at Hokkaido on Bellaire.  my first time at this sushi restaurant and it was all so yummy!

i didn't take a pic with the girls dang it. and jackie is already on her way back to Michigan :(  but she left me with this fabulous Christmas gift...and I'll think about her every time I have them on :)

how cute, right!?  and sooo comfy! :)  thanks, jackie!

and finally...i made lots and lots of cards this month...and last month...apparently they were very well received as gifts by some of our friends :)  yay!!!

okay...so that's pretty much my Dec '09 recap.  wow.  i really shouldn't procrastinate blogging.  this is what happens!

tonight, it's off to church for a new year's eve service and a giant joint house church pot luck :)

tomorrow, a new day and new year...I'll be starting my P365...a picture a day for 365 days a year!  hopefully my lack of blogging won't put a damper on this first-time ever project for me.

Happy New Year everyone!  May it be properous, full of good health and good cheer!

...and thanks for taking this LONG walk in the park :o)

furniture hunting

Note:  I originally started this draft on 11/30/09...a month later, I'm finally finishing this post - LOL...

On Black Friday, DH and I were off to search for furniture (finally) for our living room which as looked mostly like this since July:

except that the floor has been finished up to edge on that right wall.

I really kind of had my heart set on a sectional.  Reason?  Mostly because I think sectionals give you the most amount of seating space which is nice when we're hosting house church (what our church calls our small groups which meet every Friday evening).  Plus I think a sectional would fit well into our living room which, as you can see, is a pretty open rectangular space.

By far one of the most stressful things about furniture for this room was how we were going to have to set it up. We took a tip from one of the sales person.  Measure out the dimensions of the furniture that you are planning on getting and recreate the dimensions with newspaper.  Then you can move around the furniture until you get it situated to your liking.  Here's what we ended up with the the tenative layout:

So after visiting 7 Houston area furniture store...we found our living room set.  And it was delivered by the second week of December...voila!

and we got a new TV as a part of this packaged deal from Rooms To Go...so finally after many months of being empty...we're able to enjoy our living room.   And that's the last of the rooms to be furnished.  Now we need to get our framed pics back on the walls and we'll feel all settled in :)  Yay!

weekend recap...invitations, make up, cards,and AR

helloooo friends :)  hope everyone had a lovely snow-filled weekend. or maybe not if you don't care for the snow too much.  i did manage to take a couple of pics since it'll likely be the last time we'll see snow here in my neck of the woods...

this is right about when the snow flurries began...

and then a little while later

some snow in the front yard :)

DH ran out into the backyard and gather up a little snow ball and attempted to throw that at me inside the house...instead he got to stub his toe a bit on the breakfast table before being able to take aim...tsk tsk...when the wifey says "no throwing snowballs inside the house" you should really listen ;o)

So Friday was a nice day of rest and relaxation and and very fun joint HC with my BFF Mia's HC group.  some folks were hesitant about driving under the conditions...but the roads weren't bad at all and we're glad we didn't cancel meeting.  i had been taking pics of the snow all day and forgot to bring my camera to take pics...but at least we'll have the fun memories. ;o)

saturday i spent trying to crank out some sample invitations for my friend to choose from for her mom's 60th bday...and i finally came up with two options for her to choose from...here's a peak (sorry...wanted to blur the party details but give you an idea of how the cards came out...

on here the "60" was embossed in gold and then the "celebrate" was embossed in black on top

here's a closer up of the embossing/stamping

this one was a little easier and a little classier...and the one that my friend pick out fo the two :)

during the day, i tried several layouts...and even broke out my cricut to see if i could come up with anything...but i didn't.  instead i played around with some teal colored cardstock and cut out one of the borders from my Storybook cart (i think this is the 2nd time i've actually used that cart) and ended up using that  piece of scrap to make this card...

which someone will be getting this weekend and our annual christmas crew get together :)

Saturday evening my friend Nancy came over and we experimented with make-up.  for some reason nancy trusts me to do her make-up on her wedding day.  clearly she's not doing that based on how well i do with my own face. lol.  i've done wedding day make-up for at least 4 of my dearest friends and i will admit that they all looked GORGEOUS.  of course, that is because they naturally are so i had very little to do with the results. 

anyhoo - during the course of our make-up session, i did learn to use a feature on my camera that i hadn't utilized before.  with my trusty little Olympus FE-280, there's a Scene Function called "Smile"...apparently it takes rapid succession shots b/c when i thought i had taken one photo, on the playback there were actually three photos. 

this leads me to something i want to really try to do going forward...learn how to fully utilize my camera.  it'll likely be YEARS before i get a fancy schmancy DSLR.  but in the meantime, i could very well be underestimating my little red point-and-shoot Olympus that I got a couple of Christmases ago.

sunday after church i went to surprise my mom with a visit at her workplace and it was truly a nice time just hanging out.  i heart her more than words could every express.  i should really visit her more often.  but at least we talk on the phone everyday :)  yes, i'm her favorite daughter.  okay, i'm her only daughter, but i'm still her favorite as far as i can tell. heeheehee

Amazing Race (aka Best.Reality.Show.Ever) season finale was on Sunday evening and YAY for the winners - Meghan and Cheynne

source

totally wanted them to win!!! and they did - so congrats!  can't wait for the next season!

monday - i actually had the day off from work..but was out shopping for most of the day. it was a good day. and then today was back to the daily grind. 

okay - i'm off to bed now...hope everyone has a wonderful Wednesday!