Friday Cat Blogging

Ace looks forward to Spring.

Christmas Week

Some Christmas pictures for you

The outdoor decos

The big, bright blob in front of the door  is actually quite charming

So is this one.

There seemed to be a whole lot more of these before I started.

I wasn't sure if the video made it clear how far up he was.

Friday Cat Blogging

"I said: Back up"

Thursday

Rocket and I went to The London Bridge Bar and had another really fun evening benefiting Cause for Paws. Rocket met many new friends and greeted his old friends and a good time was had by all. This week we won the drawing for a $25 gift certificate from Unleashed, The Dog and Cat Store .

Rocket is so comfortable at  the bar that he spent the last hour  sprawled spread eagle wherever he felt would be the most in the way. And then we came home and we both went to bed.

List - Shortened.

Yesterday I featured a carol from  Somewhere and asked which carol it was and what langage was it in.

And we have a winner! Edie is our winner! She guessed Jingle Bells and Russian! She wins a free (to me) trip to next spring to Russia!  Congratulations to her!

Today I finished up my Christmas cards, I sent out the ones that needed sending and now I have the cards that can be delivered myself. Yay me! I still haven't wrapped anything but I may have one more gift to buy, so yeah.

Today's carol quiz. A language spoken in the US.

1. Pavetaa'eva nehe'xoveva Tsexho'ehnese ho'eva,
Jesus Vo'estanevestomanehe. Ehvo'estanetsehestaotsehoo'o
Tsexho'eotsestomotahaetse Vo'estanevehahtsestotse.

2. Ahaa esheeva nehe'xoveva Tsexho'ehnese ho'eva,
Jesus Vo'estanevestomanehe, Tsehvo'estanevehatano'toetse
Netao'o haveseveva, Tsehveno'ohaetse

Say it with me...

Two things I've learned today : Rocket doesn't mind that I throw like a girl

And

A counter surfing dog is the worlds largest cockroach. It is not the dogs fault it is behaving like this, this is your MY fault. This is I learned in my crash course called "How to stop your dog from counter surfing in one easy lesson" - Your dog isn't a bad dog, You (I am a) are a lousy housekeeper. If you don't leave food/dirty dishes/scraps out where your dog can easily access them, your dog WON'T BE ABLE TO ACCSESS THEM AT ALL.  No mess= No Surfing. A clean kitchen is a room with no clear purpose and thus of no interest to a dog.

You get 1) Your voice back, since you lost it repetedly screaming at your dog for doing what comes naturally to it - following its nose and  2) A cleaner, nicer kitchen . 

The next in my wildly unpopular series: Common Christmas Carols with foreign lyrics! Guess the language and the song! The language should be easy, but what song is it?

http://lyricstranslate.com

Колокольчики

Мчится сквозь снег в открытых
Санях, запряженных одной лошадью,
Над полями, где ходим мы,
И смеется во весь голос.
На хвосте у лошади звенят бубенцы,
Воодушевляя людей!
Как же весело смеяться и петь,
Песни, сидя в санях, в эту ночь!

Колокольчики, колокольчики!
Колокольчики - повсюду!
О, как же весело мчаться в открытых
Санях, запряженных одной лошадью!
О, колокольчики, колокольчики!
Колокольчики - повсюду!
О, как же весело мчаться в открытых
Санях, запряженных одной лошадью!

Пару дней тому назад я подумывал
О том, чтобы прокатиться...
И вот Мисс Фанни Брайт
Сидит рядышком со мной.
Лошадь очень устала,
Кажется, нас ждет неудача...
Мы провалились в сугроб,
А потом нас опрокинуло...

Колокольчики, колокольчики!
Колокольчики - повсюду!
О, как же весело мчаться в открытых
Санях, запряженных одной лошадью!
О, колокольчики, колокольчики!
Колокольчики - повсюду!
О, как же весело мчаться в открытых
Санях, запряженных одной лошадью!

Мчится сквозь снег в открытых
Санях, запряженных одной лошадью,
Над полями, где ходим мы,
И смеется во весь голос.
На хвосте у лошади звенят бубенцы,
Воодушевляя людей!
Как же весело смеяться и петь,
Песни, сидя в санях, в эту ночь!

Колокольчики, колокольчики!
Колокольчики - повсюду!
О, как же весело мчаться в открытых
Санях, запряженных одной лошадью!
О, колокольчики, колокольчики!
Колокольчики - повсюду!
О, как же весело мчаться в открытых
Санях, запряженных одной лошадью!

Wrap it up.

I was going to wrap gifts. I walked into the room where I moved the gifts,I stood there looking at them spread out before me and I put one into  a waiting box. And then I left, the room was too cold and I didn't think that I wanted to wrap anything in there.

I hadn't thought about the room temperature being a factor in my many reasons for not wanting to wrap gifts. I thought I had  all of my avenues blocked. The "I hate my paper, its old and now it makes me sad"- Wrapping paper makes you sad? You make me "sad"! What kind of paper did you buy 75%  off after Christmas at Big Lots  that comes with an expiration date?  They don't sell anything with an expiration date. If they sold eggs, they would be eggs that can stay on the shelf forever. Don't talk to me about wrapping paper that is "too old".

I bought new discounted  Big Lots wrapping paper. But not very much, I don't want it to still be hanging around next Christmas making me sad.

The "Oops, I don't have any tape! Well, I'm going to have to not do this now. I know that no where in this house are tape bundles,I never buy tape bundles every year and then forget about it and buy more. I couldn't patch the roof with the shear amount of tape I have in this house" . LIAR.  Sure, you can't buy tape everywhere, they are selling it in bakeries, the Church wants you to buy tape as a fund raiser.This is not a viable excuse.

I bought another bundle of tape.

The "I'm not really through shopping/ still waiting delivery as yet. I don't want to have to get all the stuff out again in a few days for just a couple of things. I am trying to be efficient here!

The "some of these are oddly shaped and  it will be "fun" to search for the right box/solution
        "I'm not sure I'm ready emotionally for this step"
         "If I get everything wrapped, Christmas is over"


SIGH

Art Walking

It was cold and nasty and gross and just perfect for a thick potato soup! I saw the opportunity to use a recipe that 1) uses potatoes, I'm always on the look-out for potato recipes and 2) I love garlic! This uses as much of it as you can tolerate -  and ran with it. Its called Lazy Roasted Potato and Garlic soup, but I worked harder than I usually do to make food and dirtied more dishes than I would have thought. But, the soup is divine and perfect for the winter! Its made with potato, onion, garlic and bacon and chicken stock. You roast the whole mess ( sans stock) in the oven and then dump it into your blender. Please note, if it suggests that you use a blender, use a blender. Save yourself some work.

I tweaked the recipe a little by not discarding the bacon, I cut it into pieces and blendered it with the rest, I think its a good addition.

This weekend was the Boylen Heights Artwalk - it was reschedudled from last weekend when it was miserable and unwalkable. This was a glorious weekend and next year I want to do my Christmas shopping there, this year I shopped ahead and while that's not a bad thing, I saw so many beautiful things that I would have bought had I not all ready bought other things. Sad making.

Next year folks, I hope you like art.

These were some of my favorites : Origami2go , Andie Freeman , Preston Montague , Stacy Lewis , and others that did some amazing work but who don't have it together enough to have a web presence.

All in all, a good weekend was had by all.

Friday Cat Blogging

You must love the baby kitty!

Thwarted.

All week I was excited about this Shop Local Bazaar, I thought How cool! I've been to church bazaars and they are kind of all right, this should be fun. I can finish up my Christmas list!

I could have finished up my list if I had anyone on my list asked for $20 paper thin tee shirts or multiple sizes of  hula hoops . Sadly, no one on my list is going to get paper thin tee shirts or hula hoops. I had such high hopes! I might have been slightly more successful if I could see what I was not buying, The event was held at a downtown club - I should have known to bring my own light, perhaps I didn't feel that there was much there because I couldn't see half of what was in front of me. I know clubs are not exactly well lit by nature, but the organizers could have brought in some of their own lighting to make their products more attractive to buyers.

 This was allegedly the third year they have held this but it was so haphazard and poorly executed that you could have mistaken it for a first annual spur of the moment thing, notsomething I've been getting emails about for weeks. I was so annoyed when I left that I fogot about a quilt show at Deco! I really wanted to go to that, but to be honest,quilts are always more than I can afford and I don't think any one on my list really needs quilted objects in their lives.

Where I also didn't buy anything. I'm now trying not to get too excited about the Boylin Heights Art Walk this weekend.

Hand made by me!

I made it a priority to get my Christmas cards out, I had started to receive them so I thought it might be nice if I was able to return the favor. I scoured my computers both at home and at work and  found my card list and updated it and remember to put both pages I found and updated on a flash drive and then remembered to take the flash drive to work and then remembered to ask how to print them out and when I looked at them at ten minutes before I was scheduled to leave for the day, they looked great.

"Looked great" being  the operative theme, "not great" was what they turned out to be.  They were not great for two reasons : Reason the first being that the last line of the address was on a separate label and Reason the  second being that I have a lot more people on my list than I had labels for.  Lot more.  Not that it mattered because I ended up writing almost all the address by hand because I wound up being only  able to use a total of six of my pre-printed labels at the the end. Which I did so I could avoid having to hand write any of them.

My hand writing which has always been bad, gets worse when I do a lot of it and I have a long list. I know people object to pre-printed address on holiday cards and I do understand this because it just looks</> so much  more homey and it just sends the "By Hand Because I Care" message that is so popular around the holidays. That's all well and good if your hands make pretty things! My handwriting is terrible" and is only borderline legible under the best of circumstances - which is not the set of circumstances I find myself when I am putting out cards. Enter the pre-printed label. I think I deserve some DIY points for not buying fancy store bought  labels but instead stealing state property with my very own hands! A much better use for them then trying to write out  homey, personal sure-to-be-returned-addresses because my hand writing is just that bad. The printed labels are kind of like a ramp for people with bad handwriting...

Labels are our friends! They are neat, legible and there is a better than average chance they will make it to you by Christmas! I also supply the image on my cards every year so I think I get adequate DIY points from that alone. The day after I sent off my sloppy addressed cards, I found the correct thumb drive with the correct list. Perfect.

Christmas Carol Trivia!

http://lyricstranslate.com

Veniţi, credincioşi, bucuroşi şi triumfători,
Veniţi, veniţi in Betleem,
Să-L vedeţi pe regele îngerilor,
Veniţi să-L preamărim
Pe Domnul!

Dumnezeu adevărat din Dumnezeu adevărat, lumină din lumină,
Întrupat din Maria, Fecioara,
Dumnezeu adevărat, născut nu făcut,
Veniţi să-l preamărim
Pe Domnul!

Cântaţi, coruri îngereşti,
Cântaţi în slava Cerului,
Slavă! Slavă întru Cel de Sus!
Veniţi să-L preamărim
Pe Domnul!

Celui care s-a născut astăzi,
Slavă Lui Iisus,
Întrupat din cuvântul Tatălui celor veşnice,
Veniţi să-L preamărim
Pe Domnul!

What language are the lyrics? And which carol is it?

Before and After Pictures

Did much this weekend! The best part though was taking the dog for his second annual picture with Santa.

This was one of last years pictures

He was a little exuberant... and  Santa ended up having to restrain him, this is not the way to make it on to the "nice" list.

This is one of this years pictures

What a difference a year a couple of obedience classes make! This year Rocket practiced self restraint and was happily added to the "nice" list!

Speaking of before and afters, this is tree before I tarted it up. There is nothing really "wrong" with it. but it wasn't finished.

And After. I picked and chose what went on, the boxes are not empty, but I decided that I don't need to put them on the tree if I don't want to. I stuck to pieces that mean something to me. I am proud that are very, very few balls on the tree. There are some, but they are there with permission. All in all, it looks great.

Monday evening I'm dedicating to getting my cards out.\, I spent part of Saturday getting my address sorted out and so once I have my labels made I can really get to work on them and get them out ASAP. I changed my mind and also got cards for Rocket this year to send to his friends after all. They were cheap and they turned out well and we are both happy.