I am going on vacation for a little while. When I get back I will have bunches of pics & stories hopefully. See you all in the New Year!

Merry Christmas everyone! Just a little meme I found on some other blogs that I thought might be fun for Christmas day… Hope everyone is having a good holiday:)

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?
I love egg nog, but I think hot chocolate is probably my fav. Right now I am obsessed with Starbucks Peppermint Hot Chocolate!

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree?
Santa doesn’t visit for Christmas, but we do wrap our presents from each other.

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
White lights definitely (with colored beads and lots of pretty ornaments).

4. Do you hang mistletoe?
Nope

5. When do you put your decorations up?
Hmm, this year we didn’t put any up. It really depends… last year we put them up sometime after thanksgiving.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish (excluding dessert)?
My mother-in-laws homemade bread rolls or my mom’s stuffed portabella mushrooms.

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child.
Going out on a horse drawn wagon ride in the snow to get a Christmas tree.

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
I think I always knew. My parents always wanted the credit for buying the presents maybe;)

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
All of them actually! (There is no way I could wait until Christmas day!)

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree?
Lights, strings of beads, ornaments, and a star on top.

11. Snow! Love it or Dread it?
Love it when we are visiting our parents, dread it when it actually snows where we live.

12. Can you ice skate?
Yes I can.

13. Do you remember your favorite gift?
Umm, I really hate to pick a favorite gift since every gift is appreciated.

14. What’s the most important thing about the Holidays for you?
Hanging out with family.

15. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert?
Oh that is a tough one! Apple pie, the trifle my sis-in-law made this year, anything sugary…. :)

16. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
Opening Christmas presents late on Christmas Eve.

17. What tops your tree?
A star.

18. Which do you prefer giving or receiving?
Do I really have to answer this one?:) Giving of course:)

19. What is your favorite Christmas Song?
If I have to pick one, “You’re a Mean One Mr. Grinch” sung by Sixpence None the Richer.

20. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum?
If it is peppermint flavored, yum!

Today I….

• Bought a pair of shoes
• Got a haircut (just a trim, it isn’t like I could really get it cut any shorter)
• Tried to buy a purse, but didn’t find any I liked
• Started sewing a purse
• Stopped sewing a purse when I realized I didn’t like how it was turning out
• Thought about all the other stuff I should have been doing instead of sewing

Yesterday I…

• Cuddled with the cats (Yeah that is pretty much all I did yesterday, since Pounce decided he felt like it should be a day of cuddling. Apparently he reverted back to kittenhood when he would not let me even sit at the computer and read blogs or anything. So I cuddled him and Axel and just relaxed:)

Merry Christmas a little early everyone!

Having a slightly less than spectacular day….

• the bank messed up on my foreign currency exchange (gave me the wrong currency), I went back and got it all straightened out but it was still slightly stressful
• one of the cats threw up on the rug
• people are crazy & don’t know how to drive around here (I think I complain about this at least 2 times a week - or whenever I have to drive)
• I cannot find a small package of hand sanitizing wipes anywhere… (I want wipes not liquid people!!!)
• I have no idea what kind of toothbrush to buy (why do there have to be so many choices!)

Maybe I need a nap…. Actually what I really need to do is find a pair of shoes & a purse! Augh!

(At least I found the Vegetarian, Organic Worcestershire sauce! I am pretty proud of that, since nothing else seems to be going all that great!)

So I didn’t really get any sewing or shopping in this weekend. Instead Ben & I went hiking at a state park, I read a little (for the fun of it rather than textbooks), and just hung out with Ben and the cats. Today Ben had work of course, so I had the day to do whatever. I ran a few errands this morning and then decided to do some sewing this afternoon. Pounce is fairly happy with the results of my sewing. I made him and Axel a little cat tunnel:)

Pounce sleeping in his new little tunnel…

Axel watching Pounce and considering pouncing on him…

The tunnel is basically fabric sewn in a circle with a drawstring at one end. The outside fabric is a home dec fabric and the inside is some soft fleece. It doesn’t stand up by itself (which means you have to open it so that Pounce can get in), so I think if I make another one I may change a few things. I was impressed though, because I didn’t think my sewing machine could sew through all that material but it managed and didn’t do too bad…

Another fun thing about today…

I got my shoes obviously and they fit!! The heels on these are about 4 inches I think, which is kind of crazy but they are actually surprisingly comfortable (I think that may be because they almost hit my arch unlike most shoes). They are Steve Madden brand, which I normally wouldn’t get due to how expensive they tend to be, but Amazon.com had a great sale on them… So now I am just wishing Amazon would put the zebra prints ones back up for the same price;) (The part I love most about the shoes - they are faux fur, and if you look really close they look like how a leopard’s fur would look with fine hairs… pretty cool.)

Oh something else I did this weekend was wrap presents… It feels good to have all the Christmas shopping done and the presents wrapped. Merry Christmas a little early everyone:)

(I am fairly obsessed with blue wrapping paper… For some reason this is my favorite color scheme for wrapping paper every year and I always have to have at least two different designs - this year I have three but only two are shown in the pic.)

Finals are over! I passed every class (don’t laugh…. I know I have never failed a class yet, but still I was a little worried there for a bit) and even managed to get a few A’s along the way (always a good feeling)! So one semester down and 3 more to go till I become a vet tech. I really am loving it, and glad that I found this.

This weekend…. relax, relax, relax! Did I mention relax? Because that is what I am planning on doing. I think I need it after all that studying or my brain just might explode. Oh and I might actually get some sewing in and maybe just a little bit of shopping. (Not Christmas shopping though, thanks to my wonderful husband most of that is done!) I really would like to get a couple sewing projects done that I have been working on for awhile. Maybe there is hope:)

Oh yeah, funny story about my shoes! So I went to pick them up this morning at the post office (which I am on much better terms with today, thanks to the friendly postal lady at the counter who I chatted with about the Bee’s quilts stamps and sewing) and brought them home where I proceeded to open the box. Well so far so good, the packing slip said my shoe size (8.5 in Women’s US sizing if anyone is wondering) and the shoe box said the same. However, when I opened the shoe box the shoes looked a tad bit small, so I looked in the shoes to see that they were only 6.5…. What???? So feeling slightly frustrated I called up friendly Amazon.com customer service and explained what happened and why I didn’t just want a refund (these shoes were on sale, seriously on sale so a refund wouldn’t do me much good). So the nice customer service man found me the same shoes for the same price on their site in a different print (the print I had ordered was zebra and the print he found was leopard), the funny part is that originally I had wanted the leopard print ones but had settled for the zebra ones since they were way cheaper. So now I am getting my first pick for the amazing price, sometimes bad things turn out for the best! :) When the shoes arrive in the right size I will take a pic, till then you are just going to have to believe me when I say that they are very cute.

Now I need to go join the cats & be lazy for the rest of the afternoon…

Just one more final left and the semester will be over! Craziness of the good kind:)

Can I just say that the United States Postal Service is a monopoly that would not be allowed if it wasn’t owned by the government! That is how I feel about it today, oh and DHL shipping isn’t high on my list either today. If everything in my world could be shipped UPS that really would be ideal. Nothing against postal workers or delivery people from other companies, it isn’t the people just the system doesn’t work too great. Maybe UPS could give lessons? :)

Oh all that to say that the shoes I ordered online didn’t arrive today, because the postal person came while I was gone (which did happen to be way earlier in the day than they normally deliver my mail). Not really the postal person’s fault though, since the shoes were technically shipped with DHL who had a tracking message yesterday saying they were out for delivery which later changed to having handed them to the postoffice. Which made me have to call and talk to someone who was like oh yeah we get this question all the time. Hmm…. maybe they should fix that?

Okay none of that probably made any sense, I think the real issue is just that I was bummed about the shoes and tired and stressed from finals week. I think I will feel much better later, after my last final:)

Studying bunches for finals…. Just thought I would share a picture of Pounce hanging out with me (he has been climbing up on my back lately every chance he gets!)

Hope everyone had a great weekend! - Good luck to anyone else taking finals!

Ben & I went shopping this afternoon, despite the crazy pre-Christmas crowds. Oh and the crowds were definitely crazy;) Despite the crowds we managed to get me two winter hats (I definitely needed a hat, the second is just because I couldn’t decide which was cuter). Plus we managed to pick up a suitcase for me. The funny part about the suitcase is that we looked a lot of places for one, and at the last store we found one that didn’t have any tags on it. So we looked to see if there was another like it and there wasn’t so after wandering around we finally got some assistance from a store clerk. Well the store clerk had no idea how much it was so after a little bargaining I managed to get the suitcase for definitely less than it probably would have been with the tags on it. Definitely a nice deal (and I don’t feel bad about getting it for less, since we had such a terrible time getting any service at all to begin with).

Right now Axel is trying to kill the vacuum cleaner. He really hates it, and lets us know every time that we have to vacuum by attacking the vacuum afterwards. And I am not joking, he really does attack it. He stands there and will use his front paw to strike at it with his claws out. If I didn’t feel so bad about how much he hates it, it almost would be cute that he trys to attack it…