Sweet!

Today's Photo-a-Day prompt was Sweet.  I actually didn't have a picture planned (heck I wasn't even sure what the prompt was at the time) when I took this picture! LOL  Today was my middle son's Christmas Chorus program.  They had a nice little 'reception' before the program with treats and snacks for everyone.  I volunteered to make cookies.


I used a new-to-me recipe for sugar cookies that I found through Pinterest.  It's supposed to make Perfect Cut Out Cookies. I had no desire (or time) to deal with cut out cookies. So I simply used my small dough scoop and then pressed the cookies down with a sugared glass bottom. As the recipe was, I'm not entirely sure that I would use them for cut out cookies, as the dough was VERY soft. BUT that could have been my fault as I think my butter was softened too much when I got started and it did firm up when I chilled it, but I didn't have enough time to let it fully chill.  But for round drop-ish cookies they turned out lovely!  They were light, fluffy and just sweet enough.  I used a can of ready made frosting that I amended with some extra powdered sugar for more body (although I think I should have used more. C'est la vie, hind sight is 20/20)  The cookies were a hit, and not a single one remained at the end of the night! :-)

Photo a Day; Days 8 & 9

Sorry, haven't yet gotten around to finishing the girls tree decorating story.  Been in a bit of a funk worrying about some things I can't really control.  Nothing drastic, just inconveniences really, but they are annoying me.

Oh well, c'est la vie!

I'm gonna cheat a little bit today for the pictures, as I am using pics I took today for both today's photo prompt (Out & About), as well as yesterday's (Someone you Love). 

We had an ice storm come through in the early hours of the morning today, which caused the schools to be delayed 2 hours.  Can't say I mind that at all... love being able to go back to bed for a bit!  We ended up with a layer of ice over everything about 1/4 of an inch thick.  Thankfully the road crews worked really hard and the roads were pretty clear for Donnie to get to work and the boys to get to school.

Once the boys got home from school and did their homework they raced outside to play with their friends.  They quickly discovered that their sleds worked really well on the icy slope.  They had a blast sliding down the hill over and over again! :-)

ugh...

I have done absolutely nothing today. Zip, zilch, nada, nothing! And I don't feel good about it either.  :-(  But it's been on of those days.  Just bleh.  We are on day three of grey dreary, rainy/foggy weather, and it's really bringing my down.  It's hard to want to do anything other than curl up with a mug of something warm and a good book when the weather is like this.  It didn't help matters any that neither Donnie or I slept well last night.  I was woken up last night with a crazy uncomfortable cramp in my big toe...yeah, my big toe. Not fun.  I need to get back into the habit of taking my daily vitamins and walking on the treadmill.  And turning off my computer. And listing things in my shop. And creating things.  Ugh, just ugh. 

Sadly I didn't even get a new picture taken for today's prompt, which is From Where You Live, so I'm pulling one out of the 'archives' for y'all.

I took this shot in late summer from a Look-Out tower in the woods across the street from our house.  We live in the Hudson River Valley area of New York (that would be the Hudson River there in the middle)  This is definitely one of the things I will miss about this area when it is time to move next year.


Gosh just seeing the sunny skies in this picture makes me long of blue skies... I don't even mind if it's cold, I just NEED sunshine!

Well, here's hoping tomorrow will be a brighter, better day! :-)

Day 5 Photo and upcoming etsy shop items

Day 5's photo prompt was Looking Up.  So I decided to go with a shot out my back door looking up into the tree line above the house. The last 2 days have been really foggy... not great for driving but makes for an interesting view.


I never thought  I would find myself saying this, but I'm kind of wishing for some snow.  (If you had asked me if I missed snow, a few years ago I would have said NO quite emphatically too!)  But I find that with Christmas coming up, I would love to see some snow on the ground. Sadly when I checked the 10 day forecast, it doesn't look like any is in the near future.  But I'm holding out hope that we will get some for Christmas!

Starting tomorrow I will begin listing several new items in my etsy shop.  Among the newest are some lovely outfits for the 18" American Girl size dolls.  These pieces are being hand sewn by my mom.  She does the most amazing stitch work I have ever seen!

I am hoping that the pieces will sell well for her!  This is just one of about a half dozen dresses that she has made.  There are also a couple skirts, vests and adorable little capelets!

I'll share more pictures tomorrow!

The girls get a surprise of their own (and Day 4 of the Photo a Day Challenge)

Yesterday I worked on the next phase of my little Christmas tree decorating photo-story.  In this scene, it's the following day and Lena and Nance have finally started to decorate the tree... or they are trying to.

The rest of the story can be seen HERE on my flickr page.

(I've also set the scene for the introduction of 2 new characters next year! ;-)  I am hoping to be able to purchase a Pukifee next year.  I'm rather enamored with this little cutie named CUPID!

I also want to add a fella to my 1:4 scale family.  I want to go with an Iplehouse sculpt for him as they have some wonderfully mature looking male sculpts. I rather like COLIN with his smile, JOSHUA has a fantastic little smirk, and OWEN has a great brood-y soulful look.  I haven't decided exactly how I want his character to be, so I'm still tossing around between the three!

Today's theme for the December Photo A Day challenge I'm doing is Black and White.  I decided to capture my youngest son, while he was working on his spelling homework.  

(As you might be able to tell, it's not exactly his favorite thing. LOL)

Day 3--- Something you Held

Today's post is going to be a quick one, I promise a longer one tomorrow (including another little photo-story too).

Today's picture prompt was Something you Held.  I had initially planned a different photo for this, but when I decided to take this shot for my photo story, I knew THIS was the one I needed to use!

Abbie has just returned home from her trip to visit her parents and the girls are super excited to see their friend again.  (Even though they are a little bummed that she came home early, and they weren't able to finish decorating the tree.)

As a side note, I am in love with my new Abbie... she is on a resin body that poses very much like Lena does.  I'm hoping to do a comparison post showing the similarities and differences between the 2 bodies.

Also I'd just like to say that I was really stunned that I was able to get all 3 girls standing unassisted in this embrace!  (It was rather nerve-wracking to let them go to take the shots! lol)

Ok, it's late and I need to get to bed, but I promise more tomorrow! HUGS

Gonna try something new

 Like I don't have enough things to do... I'm going to try something new.  A friend of mine shared this list on Facebook, it's for a Photo a Day thing-y.  I don't know where the original list came from, but I thought it would be fun to try.

Since today is the 2nd, I'm just gonna start there, and will try to catch the image from the first another day.

I can't guarantee I'll get them all done, but I'm going to try.  I'd like to do as many of them as I can with dolls, but some might end up me or my family.

So without further ado, here is Day 2!

Today's theme was PEACE. While there are a lot of ideas and visualizations for peace, I decided to do something a little closer to home.
Peace to me (and Nance) is a wonderful comfy blanket, a couple of fuzzy critters and a quiet home.

The lovely blanket was crocheted for me, by the mom of a dear friend of mine in Canada.  Aren't the colors just lovely?

The Girl Plan a Surprise for Abbie

The girls found out that Abbie will be coming home much sooner than expected. She should arrive back home Monday or Tuesday!  =D 

Abbie just loves Christmas, so Lena and Nance decided to surprise her by getting the tree up and the living room all decked out for Christmas! 

 I hope you'll go visit my Flickr page so read their little story! You can find it HERE.

In this picture you can see most of the Living Room set up.  On the left hand side is a large wooden bookshelf that houses the start of an adorable snowman collection!

Then comes the Christmas tree!  I decided I wanted it to be fuller, so I used several packages of 12" long pipe cleaners that are the same style as the branches in the tree.  I also added a stand of battery operated lights.  There are only 20 in the strand, and I might decide to add another strand to it at some point.  But for now I think it'll be fine.

Next up is the fireplace.  This seems to be Snowball kitty's favorite place to hang out! I found this lovely circular wrought iron piece at a local store Friday morning.  It was on clearance for $2!!!!   The mirror is part of a set I found later that day at the thrift shop.  there are about 8-10 mirrors in several different sizes.  Thankfully they are plastic, made from plastic similar to CD's.  And why is this a good thing you ask... well because when I grabbed the one that looked like it fit and peeled off the paper backing (they are self-adhesive) and pressed it in... it went all wonky and fun-house-mirror-y.  The darned thing was like 1/16th of an inch to large!  AND it was wedged in tight so I couldn't pry it back out.  I grabbed one of the smaller extra mirrors and discovered that I could use scissors to carefully trim it down.  So that's what I did. And this time I squeezed out a thick layer of glue and just let it gently rest on top of that.  I didn't attempt to press it down at all! LOL

Also on the fireplace are a pair of silver toned wire trees that I picked up at the Dollar Tree.  They were supposed to be tree ornaments, but I used my wire cutters to trim off the hanging loop at the top, as well as the loop and bell that were at the bottom.  I grabbed a couple of 1/2" wooden blocks, painted them black and drilled a little hole in each one.  Personally I think they look fabulous!

The girls are currently trying to decide whether to decorate the tree in all the cute candy ornaments Abbie has been collecting, or to use the lovely snowflake themed ornaments instead.  they are kind of leaning towards the snowflakes, since snowflakes go nicely with Abbie's snowMAN collection.  Hopefully they will decide tomorrow and get started!