Anyone Know What Happened To July?

…. cause it went by in a total blur, especially the last couple of weeks!  Can’t believe I haven’t blogged in over a week!  Hope you’re all doing well, I owe so many people emails it’s untrue, I’m also behind on “phoning home” too, so I need to rectify that as soon as possible.

It all went pear shaped at work as not one, but two colleagues broke their ankles, and there was an awful lot of slack to be picked up by the rest of us!  The guys were hanging out together, doing guy things….. like messing about with a tree top zip wire without checking that the safety stop was in place!  The tree that Kazie smashed in to did a really good job of stopping him but Kevin mistook Kazie’s yell of “don’t come down” as an all clear and smashed in to the same tree!!  The result was a broken ankle each!  They both had surgery last Friday, Kazie has a relatively clear break and needed a pin put in to help the bone heal again but Kevin managed to break his heel which is an altogether much more painful and longer healing process, so he’ll be out for a while, Kazie should be back in a couple of days.  Talk about nominees for a Darwin Award!

I’ve also been making sure I spend a little time most days after work in the basement working on my fitness again, something I badly needed to do if you recall my self pitying posts before I went to England in May!!  I’m feeling better already, happier, healthier and I’m sleeping well too, I’ve also lost three pounds which is always welcome in the summer when the shorts and little tops are out and a bit more flesh is on display!

The final thing that came to a head during the last week was a frenzy of looking at “new to me” cars in three different dealerships.  Not sure if I’ve mentioned before but I’ve been seriously considering upgrading my 1997 Ford Escort with something much newer and safer with better features, warranty and reliability.  Andrew’s been bugging me to do this for the best part of a year or two, but I really liked my old car.  She certainly wasn’t the prettiest anymore but she was remarkably clean for her age with an excellent interior and very few body marks, there was also just 129,000 on the clock, which was slightly less than 10,000 miles a year, so very low mileage too.  Plus, having none of the “modern drive by wire, let me do it for you” kind of features, she was an absolute blast to drive, as input always equaled output, and if the back end stepped out around a corner it was solely and entirely due to the driver, who would have a grin a mile wide on her face!  I struggled to consider parting with her but after her last service Andrew warned me that she might not make it through the upcoming winter due to some corrosion that was taking hold under the drivers side foot well.

I’ve been looking around on and off all year, not too seriously, but I’d narrowed the prospective field down to just one type of car and then kept an eye out on the online trader sites.  We’d also been putting a bit of money aside as I didn’t want to get in to a payment plan, I wanted to buy out right, so I had myself a self imposed spending limit.  My car of choice was going to be a 2008 or 2009 model year Ford Focus, I really like the hatchback but they were proving difficult to come by with low mileage so I started to consider the 4 door sedan too, my choices were few and far between considering I was also looking for a manual not an automatic, they’re quite rare in Michigan, out of about 80 or so cars for sale in my area (50 mile radius of my address), typically about 6 were manuals.  Take in to consideration mileage, year and price and out of those six there may have been one worth considering.  So, out of the blue last week, not one, not two but three manuals with low mileage and at a price I could deal with turned up at three different dealers!  Sods law eh?  Talk about behaving like the the proverbial buses!

So to cut a long story short, the first dealership had only just listed their car and wouldn’t deal much on price and didn’t want my Escort as a trade in!  The second one gave me a fantastic price and a great deal on the trade in too but the car they had for sale had too many minor body blemishes and stone chips, plus it would need four new tyres very soon all of which worried us for a car with just 20,000 miles on it, it really looked like it had been driven hard and perhaps not looked after too well.  The dealer recognized this and cut the price drastically, but I wanted to look at the third one before making a decision.  This car was located just four miles from where I work so I went to see it on my own last Friday lunch time.  The Sales guy could see that I was serious, no nonsense, knew exactly what I wanted and how much I wanted to pay, so he talked to his Manager and the price was dropped by $1600 in about five minutes.  I knew this was my car, it’s been looked after and hasn’t a single mark on her anywhere.  The dealership took it on a trade in for a new Chrysler and they’d waxed, polished and prepped her very well, plus you could just tell that the car had been looked after, even the engine bay was completely spotless.

I took Andrew to the dealership on Saturday morning and we both had a test drive.  The dealer also put the car on a ramp for us so Andrew could inspect the underside, it was as perfect as perfect could be and so after a little more negotiating and a little haggle over the trade in price of my Escort I drove my new car home.  I do have to say I felt incredibly sad at walking away from my old girl, felt like abandonment!  We had a lot of fun together and apart from one small incident (the alternator about a month ago) she never gave me any problems at all.

So this is what was sitting on my driveway on Sunday morning, I took these pictures really quickly just before we headed out to the lake with our kayaks, to send to my brother.  She’s a very sweet drive, and looks, feels and drives just like a brand new car.  I spent a bit of time sitting inside her on Sunday afternoon going through the manual before I had to drive her to work this morning for the first time…..

And my favourite feature???  Being able to plug my Ipod in, press a button on the steering wheel, say “USB” for the device type and then say “Play All” – “Play Album xxx” – “Play KT Tunstall” etc.  I like it that my car talks to me!  Makes driving to work so much more interesting!  Now I just have to make her remember my name!

I Like You A Latte

Oh I had such a hideous, stressful drive to work today.  It took me 90 minutes instead of the more normal 30 mins, and 15 minutes of that was sitting completely stationery, and then we only started moving forward again because some vehicles in front of me gave up and turned around!  We have some snow you see, coming down pretty hard it is and all the roads are a mess.  The storm was forecast so they’ve been out plowing and salting all night but the temperature is hovering right around freezing point so all the melting snow keeps re-freezing.  Driving to work this morning was like driving across a ploughed and rutted field with absolutely no grip whatsoever in a huge, long, snaking line of cars doing about 20mph.  It was hair raising to say the least!  It’s still snowing and we’re under the Winter Storm Warning until 4pm today so I don’t suppose it’s going to be any better going home later!

Still, there was a bit of cardage going on this weekend, which was beautiful by the way.  We got up early and went downtown Detroit to Eastern Market with a friend of ours, she’s at a bit of a loose end as her husband got sent to Germany on business for three months!  It was a bit cool but turned out lovely and sunny.  Sunday wasn’t bad either and we went for a walk in the afternoon, in between bits of crafting, cake baking and soup making!

So here’s my first card from the weekend, I’ll show you the other one later this week as it’s for Andrew’s birthday, and just in case he catches a sneak peak of it on here, I’ll wait until after the big day.  This one here was supposed to be his birthday card but he wouldn’t keep out of the craft room Friday night and so he saw me making it!  I wasn’t happy about it I can tell you, and I won’t repeat what I yelled at him!!!

I’ve had this little The Paper Company set of coffee and tea stamps for quite a while but hadn’t inked them up.  I love some of the sentiments… my favourite being “I don’t have a problem with caffeine, I have a problem without caffeine!”  Pretty much sums me up!  What I set out to achieve was a wonderful warming cup o joe, drank in a relaxing and comfortable atmosphere with a real fire burning and a good newspaper or book to read.  That’s the look I was going for, like your favourite comfy pj’s, a little shabby round the edges perhaps but just so perfect to curl up in!  Yes, I’m describing a card!!  Really!!!

The center panel (the brown embossed bit) is the inside of one of those cardboard coffee sleeves they put on your take out coffee cup as an insulator.  I’d saved a few of them for an occasion just like this.  I wanted it to look a bit grungy so I ran the edge of a decorative edge pair of scissors around it (in lieu of a distressing tool) and then daubed ink around the edges before crumpling it up a bit.  I also rubbed some of the ink over the embossed bits of the sleeve.  The ink, by the way, was the perfectly named Tsukineko Coffee Bean Brilliance ink!  How amazing was that!

The background was coloured with Distress Antique Linen, edged with Coffee Bean and then overstamped with an Inkadinkado wood mounted script stamp in Coffee Bean, after first stamping off to get a lighter impression.  I then did the same again with a Rubber Stampede wood mounted Harlequin patterned stamp in Antique Linen.  The orangey/red card is stuck directly to the card base and both the center panel and the image are popped up on foam dots.  The image is also stamped in Coffee Bean, clear embossed and water coloured with Memento inks.  The jute twine and the lovely wooden button were from my stash, and I frayed the edges of the twine.

Recipe:

• Card: 4″ x 5 1/4″ white card base ~ The Paper Company coloured card ~ Recycled coffee sleeve
• Stamps: Inkadinkado Script ~ Rubber Stampede Harlequin ~ The Paper Company clear set Coffee Cafe
• Inks: Tsukineko Brilliance Coffee Bean, Summer Sky, Danube Blue & Wheat  ~ TH Distress Antique Linen ~ Colourbox Q Black
• Tools: ~ Clear embossing powder ~ foam dots ~ twine from Michaels ~ wooden button from a pack bought a Meijer (like a big Asda, sells a bit of everything)

Sunny Days And Snow Days?

Just a quick post today to show you the beauty of my amarylis in almost full flower, it was really making me smile this past weekend. As was all that glorious sunshine pouring in through the windows, it’s been a while I can tell you, although at -6C with a vicious wind blowing, it was far too cold to actually do anything with it, but it was very nice to look at from the warm comfort of home.

We’re now also under a Winter Weather Watch for Tuesday and Wednesday as it looks very much like a winter storm is headed our way. Not as bad as the whopper that hammered the Eastern seaboard states this past weekend dropping 24″ to 40″ of snow in one storm!, but it’s still shaping up to be in the 6″ – 10″ range. I’ll definitely make sure that I take my laptop home with me for Wednesday, which is looking like the worst day so far. No point in risking life and limb when I can do it all from home quite happily, as long as we have power that is!  Might even be able to work on my Penny Black Challenge card if I’m lucky!!

Two Of A Kind

Well, where has the week gone?  I blinked and missed it.  I’ve been very busy at work this last week, our Financial Year ends on March 31st and there’s just a huge push to get everything done on time, it’s had me quite worn out, to the point where I was coming home most days with a bit of a headache and just flaking out on the sofa!

I feel a bit better today though and thought I would show you what I’ve been working on in the card department.  They’ve taken longer than they should have, purely because I was too tired to do much with them this week, it’s been a bit here, a bit there, but they’re ready now.  The idea for this lovely card came from the equally lovely and very talented, Claire Brennan at Waltzing Mouse Makes.  She makes wonderful, creative cards and other amazing items made from paper.  If you haven’t seen her work you must pop over to her blog and have a gander.  Anyway, back to the cards, I love wandering through blogs for inspiration, there are some seriously talented people out there!, but what I invariably find is that I don’t have all the supplies and tools required (such as a Scorpal or a Cuttlebug) so I have to think about how can I adapt ideas to suit the items I do have.  The original of this card has a double embossed frame for the ribbon border, I had no way of recreating this, without parting with quite a few pennies that is, so I mocked up a double frame on the computer in Microsoft Word.  I added the text that I wanted, decided on the font and colour and printed directly on to white card stock.

The four slots for the ribbon to thread through are made with a Making Memories Slot Punch, I didn’t have this either, but was so enamoured with the thought of making this card that I went to the craft shop and bought one!  It only cost me $6.50 as I had a 50% off coupon that I used.   I punched under the text with a Martha Stewart Lace Doily punch, and stamped the centre panel adding a little Stickles to the flower heads.  The ribbon was from the $1 bin at the craft store!

As you can see there are two cards…. one for my Mums up-coming birthday in April and the other for my Mother in Law for Mothers Day in May.  I love the way they turned out, I can see me using this ribbon technique again.

The Best Excuse In the World Not To Go To Work…..

Well I swear I left my car on the driveway as normal last night boss…. now there’s just this huuuuuuuge white blob in its’ place!!  As soon as I find my car I’ll be right in, I promise!

Christmas Cheer

NB:-  This post was meant to be yesterday’s, but with the impending snow storm bearing down on us I never got on the the internet at lunchtime.  Instead, my little group went out for lunch to say goodbye to one of our colleagues who is leaving.  So the snowstorm I mention in the last paragraph is upon us and I’m working from home today, as is most of the IT dept at work, one of the benefits of working in this department, as otherwise I wouldn’t get paid for a day!

*********

Ahh, that’s better, it’s finally starting to look very warm. cozy and Christmassy around here, the tree is up the decorations are up, some gifts are wrapped and there’s snow on the ground.  So without further ado, I finally present pictures of my lovely tree taken two nights ago, since then, some more pressies have appeared under it, so it doesn’t look quite a bare as it did here.  Though of course, there won’t be huge piles of things for us this year as one of our presents lives in the garage!  I decided to drop the shiny gold tinsel and red and gold beads this year, I wanted something softer and more “homespun”, instead of something too shiny and bright.  Simpler I suppose.  I love how it turned out, I think it’s my bestest tree ever, though A thinks it should be a bit more sparkly.

There are other areas of my home all nicely decorated now.  The bakers rack in the entrance hall once again received all the offcuts from the Christmas tree, along with other bits and bobs so is looking very festive, I’ll take a photo at the weekend.  Also in the hall, the banister railings are all draped with greenery and lights again.

Every year we also decorate our fireplace in the family room, we keep it the same every year, fairly simple, but we love doing it, makes everything feel so much warmer and cozier.  There’s a lighted garland which A strings up, the two black Caribou cutouts are actually our stocking holders, but for now they’re holding rusty looking metal snowflakes.  The mantle is always reserved for the cards from our close family members from home, and we have two Father Christmases there as well.  The blue one on the right is a hand painted gourd we got from a craft show years ago, and the red one on the left was hand made in Mexico from papier mache, the detail is absolutely stunning, I’ll try and get a good close up at the weekend.  A brought this back from a business trip he had there a few years ago.  The two topiary balls either side of the fire were bought in an after Christmas sale, I keep meaning to add some red ribbon to their pots to brighten them up a bit, somehow I never seem to round to it!!

This little pot was one of the first decorations I made for our new house when we spent our first Christmas here 10 years ago.  At the time, all I had to hold it in was a plant pot and as much as I’d love to put it in something more keeping with the season I really haven’t the heart to pull it apart and attempt to remake it again!  Some ribbon on the pot would go a long way I would imagine, but again, it’s just never been done!

[Photo with flash]

[Photo without flash]

There are some other things scattered around that I might show you in another post, my dining room for example, with my home made center piece.  But that’s for another day.  Have you noticed anything?  Have you noticed how traditional I am?  I love all manner of colours normally, but for me, Christmas is all about red, green and gold.  Couldn’t do without it, which is very odd as in most other aspects of my life I am completely non-traditional.  Don’t know what it is about Christmas that makes me this way, but I love the smell and scent of fresh greenery and the bright contrast of the red and the gold against the green.  No pink or purple for me, not much silver or crystal either, although I don’t mind a bit of white.

And talking of white…. what about the snow I hear you ask??  Well, we’ve had a bit of the white stuff on and off since the middle of November, until last weekend that is.  Last weekend the thermometer hit 50F (10C) on Sunday and it absolutely poured down with rain all day and all night into Monday.  When I left for work at 7am it was still 50F, balmy for the time of year, but by lunchtime it was 25F (-3C) and dropping.  Later, around five, when I left work it was 15F (-9) and all the puddles in the car park from all the rain and melted snow were frozen solid…. in fact, my two front wheels were now completely frozen to the road and I had to really give it some right foot to break then free!  The roads were an absolute ice rink going home, very dangerous.  Overnight Tuesday into Wednesday we picked up a fresh 4″ of snow, but the big one is coming tonight with a winter storm bringing in another 6″ – 10″ starting very early Friday morning about 1am, until lunchtime Friday.  I plan on taking my work supplied laptop back with me tonight as they say the heaviest of the snow will hit right around rush hour.  I also heard on the radio that there is a good chance of another storm in SE Michigan on Saturday night into Sunday which could be as bad as the one we’re expecting tonight.

I shall endeavor to catch some of this whiteness on camera, especially for those of you in warmer climes dreaming of a White Christmas!  At least it looking like it should still be on the ground for Christmas Day.

Pot Luck Monday

On a Tuesday no less, but never mind, I’m running a bit behind.  I never experienced the Potluck Lunch in England, the only time food was ever brought into work was on on your birthday and it was your responsibility to provide a cake for the office, home baked, store bought, it mattered not as long as you brought something in to share.  An evening Christmas meal was usually booked up at a local pub or carvery, and maybe, depending on where you worked, a few snacks might have been brought into work on the last day before the Christmas break.  But that was about it, then I moved to America and discovered the pot luck.

We have them where I work at least a couple of times a year, quite often as many as four times in one year.  The concept is very simple, you make something, bring it to work, set it out in the designated area, and then at lunch time everyone gathers, helps themselves to a plateful of food and sits down together for a chat and a jolly good feast!  A complete pot luck, you never know what people are going to bring in.  We always end up with a good range of food, from appetizers, mains, veggies and salad, bread, deserts, pies and cakes and soft drinks.  We put a sign up sheet out in the weeks before the event so we can make sure that 10 people all don’t turn up with cake and that we have a decent spread across all food groups and categories!

You don’t go hungry that’s for sure, and you can always tell the folks that participated in the lunch, right around 3 o’clock they become very easy to spot with their drooping eyelids and “out of it” expression that comes from eating too many different types of food at one sitting topped off with chocolate cake and all washed down with some pop!!  The 3 o’clock crash is a notorious side affect of pot lucks!!

My favourite thing about the pot lucks where I work is the sheer ethnic diversity of my colleagues.  The company itself is Japanese, and a number of people I work with are from India, China and the Middle East, so we’re always guaranteed a very diverse lunch.  Other folks are very aware of their family origins and often cook a traditional dish from their ancestral homeland…. for example, Jims ancestors came to America from Poland, Craigs from Sweden, Rolands ancestors are from Cuba, we also have German representation, and of course, English.

The other great thing about pot lucks has to be the invention of the slow cooker!  I love slow cookers and have three of them that do get quite a bit of use at home, but they’re fantastic for cooking something up for a large group, transporting it to work and plugging it in to keep warm, we usually have four or five of them lined up, all plugged in, keeping food warm.  The aroma is delicious and I often find myself wandering into the designated conference room, stirring this up, tweaking that, getting more and more hungry by the minute, watching the clock tick slowly to mid-day when everyone arrives and we start tucking in.

Our spread of scrummy food yesterday included, hummus and bread, homemade crab dip and spinach and artichoke dip in a hollowed out bread bowl.  For the mains, we had white bean chicken chilli, Swedish meatballs, baked chicken, Japanese noodles with shrimp, baked manicotti pasta, Indian samosas, a middle eastern meat dish that i didn’t get the name of, Indian mixed vegetables, cheesy potatoes, sweet potato and veggie casserole plus a couple of other items.  Dessert was a huge chocolate cake in the shape of a giant oreo cookie!, mango pies from my Indian colleague Sri (they’re delish, a bit like a baked custard but made with mango puree and served cold), apple and cherry pies, cookies and fresh fruit.  There were also things like potato chips and tortilla chips and fresh bread, pasta salad, potato salad, my God the list was endless!  I’m still full a whole day later, although Sri put a whole mango pie in the fridge for us to have in our immediate area with coffee this morning, and I do have to admit to finding the room for another slice earlier!  I’m bad, now I don’t want my lunch!

My contribution to this culinary extravaganza was the Spinach and Cheese Baked Manicotti, a really simple recipe that I used the slow cooker for.  Manicotti pasta is just tubes, like canelloni, about and inch in diameter and three inches long.  I made the filling with a container of ricotta cheese, mixed with freshly grated parmesan, a bag of washed and chopped baby spinach, some dried herbs, salt, pepper and 2 eggs.  The time consuming part was stuffing the mix into the pasta tubes with a teaspoon!  Took me an hour and a half to fill all 28 tubes!  After that, I made a tomato sauce, put the tubes into the slow cooker, poured over the sauce and cooked the whole concoction on high for 4 hours.  It turned out really well and most of it went at the lunch.  I couldn’t get all the pasta tubes in the slow cooker, so I’ve put a few (about 8 I think) into a dish with some extra sauce for a meal for A and I this week.  It will just need about 20 minutes in the oven and maybe some garlic bread or a small salad to go with it. Let me know if anyone wants the correct quantities and cooking times, it’s a nice tasty recipe and the spinach flavour isn’t strong at all.

So for your viewing pleasure today, here I am holding up a freshly stuffed pasta tube!!  Yes, I know, really scraping the bottom of the photo barrel!  The photo is a little dark because of the snow on the ground outside, makes the contrast bad.

And here are the stuffed tubes sitting in the dish that then went in the fridge for us to have later in the week.

I also read on the pasta box, that after stuffing the tubes with the filling they freeze really well, so you could always make extra and pop a few in the freezer for another time, thaw them out, throw over some sauce and bake them for 20 – 30 minutes.  Simple.

It’s going to be a culinary week I fear.  This Friday we have the company provided Thanksgiving Feast in the cafeteria…. roast turkey with all the trimmings and pecan pie or pumpkin pie for dessert.  Next Thursday (27th November) is Thanksgiving itself, so we’ll be preparing a nice meal at home, this is the American Turkey day, but being English we like to keep all that for Christmas.  A is thinking about roast goose!  I’ve only had goose once before and it really is yummy.  We get both next Thursday and Friday off work too, a nice four day weekend, I can’t believe it’s coming up so quickly, Christmas will be here before you know it.  So lots of good eating going on in the next couple of weeks, I can see I’m going to have to make friends with the treadmill again!!

The View From Here

This is what we woke up to this morning, another 7″ of snow!  I decided to be wimpy prudent and not get on the roads with the rest of the idiots careful drivers and try to get to work.  I’m very lucky in as much as they give me a laptop and a cell phone and I have remote access into work from both my personal pc and the laptop, of course, that very much works in their favour when there’s a problem too and they call me for support!  But, I was grateful for it this morning, and I’ve beavered away all day spending lots of the companies money on all of our license renewals for the upcoming end of our financial year on 31 March.

The day has turned out beautifully.  The temperature dragged itself up to 0C but the sun is out and the sky is blue now the storm clouds have dissipated.  I’ll be back in the office tomorrow though, at least from my point of view it gives the local authorities the day to get the roads cleared up.

Here I am, beavering away in the study first thing this morning, forgive the old lady cardy, it was a bit chilly when I first got up!

And finally, the background on my laptop….. hands up who would rather be there???

Do you like the artfully arranged flowering plant?  I can’t take credit for it, it was put there by A this morning to bring a smile to me face!

Nothing To Say…

At least nothing new to say….. it’s still cold (-16C yesterday, -26C Sunday gone), it’s still snowing (another 4″ yesterday), I’m still having hairy drives to and from work with the 30 minute commute taking up to 3 or 4 times longer occasionally.  We’re still managing to cross country ski for a few hours at the weekend, I’m still working on the odd card here and there, it’s still mainly dull and grey outside and I’m still busy at work!!  Nothing new, nothing at all.  Check back in about a month!  The white stuff might have gone away by then.

Some Wild Weather

Last night when we went to bed it was close to 50F (9C) and raining….. when we woke up this morning it was 10F (-12C)!!  It’s also incredibly windy, it woke A up a couple of times in the night but I slept right through it, with wind chill it’s -13F (-25C) and it’s getting colder!  The wind gusts average 30mph but have been up to 50mph; lying in bed listening to the local news before I got up, it was school after school closed, mainly because of building problems, traffic lights out at many junctions, roads closed due to a combination of blockages (telegraph poles, trees etc) or dangerously slick and icy conditions conditions.  Prior to this, Monday thru Wednesday we’d had another warm up with rain which melted all the snow we’d skied on on Sunday, and then with the sudden drop in temperatures last night all that snow melt and rain froze solid.  It was a hairy drive to work this morning, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected to be honest.  When I got here I found out that the building had been without power for almost 3 hours in the early morning, two smaller buildings on our campus are still without power, and with the exception of the datacenter which has backup power, everything else went down hard.  So I spent most of my morning checking all of the computers and users were OK, some small issues, nothing major thankfully.

Looking at the forecast for the next few days, it’ll stay coldish, the wind will diminish (good!) and we’ll get some more snow but I haven’t seen anything yet about accumulations.  Perhaps we can ski again this weekend after all!