happy monday!

okay i am back for another posting. This weekend i didnt post a single thing, because we did nothing but lay on the couch and watch movie after movie. Once a month we will take a weekend and just lounge around and catch up on movies. we watched:

• Babylon AD (good movie)
• A righteous kill (not so good movie, good twist at the end, but boring)
• Crank (good action movie)
• The golden compass (i fell asleep)
• Zodiac (pretty good movie, based on serial killer from Santa Rosa)
• Bangkok Dangerous (really good movie)
• Pineapple Express (pretty funny movie)
• Eagle Eye (great action movie)

So now its a monday and i guess its back to work. I have the week off, but have a slew of chores to get done. I am also working on a "special project" with my favorite pics. I have some pics from my "pre-Christmas" party i had two weeks before christmas. I would love to share them with you. so here they are:

First off, we had food! Joe and i didnt go too crazy, but we had:

• chocolate fondu with the fixings (angel food cake, cherries, bananas)
• Hot artichoke dip with homemade chips
  
• Homemade guacamole and salsa
• Pumpkin cookies (brought by Joe's mom
• Hot Coco, Coffee, and peppermint tea
  

Ninnie at the "food bar"
everyone chowin down

After we ate and visited for a bit, we got right down to business!
we had WHITE ELEPHANT gift exchange, and then i handed out the gifts i had been working for months to get


aunt brandi opening her white elephant gift
there were lots of oohs and aahhs
she got a candle set

Nana is opening her gift. (she got a mug boss, its a thing that goes over a coffee mug to organize your desk. they make them for paint buckets for your tools, and i saw this and it was too cool)

for some reason, the batteries died for the rest of white elephant, so i couldnt get pics. we did get them recharged for me to play "santa" though.

Jim with his gift. he got a $10 starbucks card.
(i figured a hot cup of coffee or coco would be nice when he was out there putting chains on his truck)

aunt brandi opening her christmas gift. I am ever the cheapskate, and i MADE the wrapping paper at work, and MADE the to/from tags on the gifts. The words i heard the most were: "where did you get this" at which i replied "i made it"
here she is asking me how i did it.

now she is opening her gift. I had gotten her $15 in fast food gift cards. notice Uncle Dave's face in the background? he knew what i was getting and why, so it was funny. I wrote on each of the gift cards EXACTLY what she could get (at jack in the box with $5 you can get 10 tacos, or 5 items from the dollar menu)

looks like she was pretty happy with her gift

next its Uncle Dave's turn


I found this thing that's called a "buttstation" its a guy that looks like he is sitting on the toilet. he holds a roll of tape in his hands, and a pen in his mouth. In the "bowl" is where you keep paperclips. and there is a magnet on the guys butt, so when you lift him up, they stick. It was soo cool.

he is looking at his notepad paper i made him, there is a slot in the back for a notepad

it has this on the bottom of the sheet of paper. So now, if he leaves notes they will have his "stamp" on em.

after he went back to work, he sent me this pic of the guy on his desk. i guess the people at work thought it was pretty dang cool.


now its Ninnie's turn. Ninnie loves thomas kinkade. Joe and I were out shopping one day, and found a mug/tea set with a thomas kinkade image on them. as soon as we saw that, we knew that we had to get it for her.
I had a friend who has rubber stamps of his art work, so i asked her to send me some. I then made a set of 10 cards for Ninnie to use for birthday or whatever she wants to . She really loved em.


Joe's Mom is getting into scrapbooking, so when Ninnie gave me some rubber stamps with borders and stuff, i knew what i wanted to get for his mom! i went right to where Ninnie got hers, and ordered every set of stamps they had! She was tickled when she opened her stamps.

Now its time for nana's gift. Nana is not too hard to shop for. Her gift was wrapped with my "handmade" wrapping paper. That paper was a hit for gifts.

i used alot of tape when i wrapped, so nana had a hard time getting it open......

.... but when she did it was worth it. I had some of her FAVORITE cookies imported from Holland and gave her some chocolate syrup to go with it.

now its Katie's turn. I had picked up some white t-shirts, and tye dyed them pink (i refuse to use gloves for any kind of project, so after i tye dyed, i had bright maroon hands for about 3 days). Then i looked for some cool graphics to iron on. i found two that i really loved. And i was so worried she wouldnt like them. But she LOVED her shirts.

she has this look, like what is it?


and then she says, oh my! sweet! oooh! my camera couldnt take pics fast enough.
(as you can see, these pics arent in order of when people opened their gifts. because uncle daves gift is sitting on his lap, unopened.)

katie with her shirt....
...and then she went and tried it on. and it fit. Yaay!


oh yeah, and my mom had some gifts for everyone as well, and i gave them out for her at our party. everyone got some nice goodies.

I also mailed a box of goodies to my brother, cheryl and jacob. And another box went out to Jess and Kayla. and yet another box went to my mom and dad.

Bob, Cheryl and Jacobs box had:

• movies for bob
• The whole complete set of Nirvana for cheryl (she is a big fan)
• movies for jacob
• and some onzies for jacob. she sent me this pic of him wearing his sailor jerry onzie

(i did some iron on transfers for his little t-shirts, but forgot to take pics)

my sister got some really neat shoes i found on SUPER CLEARANCE, and kayla got some hair barrettes i made for her, as well as a headband.

My mom and Don got some movies, my mom got a neat cold weather hat (see below) and Cds. and Don got a bunch of cool things for his bday and xmas. (poor guy has both on the same day!)