Don’t know how much posting will get done over the next week or so. I have so much to get up and don’t know where to start. Still have pics to share and things I’m working on. I also want to tinker more with this blog, finish Ron’s site and blog and work on Claddagh Web Design with updates and a blog. Not to mention the Tae Kwon Do site and the Alumni Society site I’ve been trying to get to.

Shoot, I’ve been so busy I haven’t gotten Q to TKD in over a week. Forget about testing coming up this weekend. ARGH!

Right now Queen/David Bowie’s song Under Pressure seems quite appropriate for me.

If anyone knows of someplace like this in the Metro-Atlanta area, please let me know!

My Christmas gifts this year were CD case calendars. The cases flip to make an easel and the calendar pages fit inside. I used pictures we took over the past couple of years to decorate the pages of the calendar. Each month I will be placing the current month page here in case anyone is looking for a calendar or just wants to see the little things I make for my family and friends. Sorry this month is late. I will be on time for February. Also, this month you get a three-fer… Here is the cover, the holidays and January. Enjoy!

So, my father went in for surgery on Monday, the 14th. He had his aortic valve replaced. He is doing very well and should be out of the hospital in 2 or 3 days. His hospital is about a 40 minute drive from home, and with the exception of the snowy/icy day we recently had (look for a post with pictures!) I have made it to visit him every day. Tomorrow is the class on caring for cardiac patients once they are set free to terrorize the world. I will be attending this class while my son is playing with a friend in the anticipated second snowfall of the season. I hope I’ll get to play a little in the snow; I couldn’t Wednesday. Them’s the breaks.

I have some catching up to do, so I will finally make some time to post things here over the next couple of days. One of the things I said I would post was the holiday card I created. I actually tried posting it about 10 minutes ago, but somehow lost the post, so I’m trying again. Here is the postcard I sent to family and friends (if you didn’t receive yours, I apologize profusely.) The sketch was by Michael Green in The Unicorn Notebook. It was colorized by me and the layout of the card is mine as well.

Just trying a post from my PDA to see if it really works. This would be very cool!
Need to work on gifts!!! Argh.

Well, here I am procrastinating when I should be finishing my holiday gifts. Of course this time it is forced procrastination (sort of). Ron needed a gift for the holiday party tomorrow, and here I am, making it happen.

He has a limit of $20. We got 20 $1 scratch lotto tickets. Now, how to wrap them? We went through all kinds of ideas:

1. Put them with another gift (coffee mugs and flavored coffee, candles, etc)
2. Wrap each one individually and put them in a gift basket
3. Put them in a gift card box or money card

But nothing sounded good. So I was looking for wrapping ideas down in the basement, where all the wrapping items are, and ran across an old audio tape. The lottery tickets are the perfect size to fit in the case, as long as the spindle thingies are removed. So, I broke out the spindle thingies, put the lotto tickets inside, put a label on the back (so you can’t readily see the tickets) and made it look like an old mix-tape from the 80′s and 90′s. Names of the songs? (REALLY corny!!!)

1. I’m Scratching at the Holidays
2. Silver and Gold… and Lots of Green
3. Scratch Fever
4. Makin’ “Lotto” Money for Christmas
5. Jingle Scratch, Jingle Scratch
6. ‘Twas the Night Before “Scratch”-mas
7. Santa Scratch is Coming to Town
8. Santa Baby Bring Me Some Scratch

I hope she has fun!

… and so am I, sort of. Unfortunately, since I actually wrote the article, they thought it would look funny that the author was the wife of the subject, so no by-line. Oh, well.

The article is on the website, http://www.imidrinks.com/index.html. You must be of legal drinking age to enter the site. Once you are in the site, click on In the Mix Magazine, click on number 4 (Winter 07). As you flip through the pages, the first time you see Ron’s work (with the exception of a small call-out box on the cover) is on page 50. The big ceviche was made by Ron. Next, page 51, not only is the lamb dish prepared by Ron, the recipe for the sauce was created by him!

The big article is on pages 66 and 67. The whole article is on him and his career. I think it’s fairly well written. The pictures turned out great. (Now I just need to update his website and he’s good to go).

 Yes, this is my munchkin with Santa. The REAL Santa. Didn’t you know? He has a house here in the south where he visits just before Christmas. It is such a sweet little house. All decorated for the holidays. And he lets the kids come visit and sit on his lap and go through their lists. He spent about 5 minutes with Quentin Saturday night talking about his list and whether or not he has been a good boy this year. I had some great pictures of the conversation along with pictures of Mrs. Claus in the kitchen and her canned veggies in the pantry and the red uniforms hanging in the closet, but the little camera I was using isn’t nearly as user friendly as I had hoped. I haven’t figured out how to save pictures to the SD card. So all the fantastic pictures are gone. All I have is the one above that Santa was gracious enough to pose for as they were shooing every one out for the night. {sigh} Quentin was so much more grown up about than I was. He said it was fine, all he wanted to do was give his list to Santa and talk to him. Of course I was so upset because I’m thinking he is growing out of his Santa phase and I won’t have a chance for this ever again. But we’ll see.

Isn’t he a great Santa?!?!

I decided I didn’t like the parchment piece under the post headers. I took the flower from the unicorn mane and have that next to the post header. I like it much better. I also made my swirl footer a lot smaller. I want to make a horizontal rule image and would like to have a button for WordPress. It’s getting there, slowly but surely.