Yes, I did it!
Oh my, I really did it!
On Tuesday I stopped in at Salon Spectrum and screamed "get a tape measure, I'm ready for this hair to be gone." Not really, but I wanted to. My hair was calmly measured and it was determined that indeed I had more than the required 10 inches of hair Locks of Love takes as a donation. I made an appointment for the next day!!
In a few days Locks of Love will received this in an envelope....
Dancing Daughter, the next Vanna White?!
I'm kind of in shock!
Self teaching is something I'm all about! I love to learn at my own pace, whether it be fast or slow. I like to learn in the comfort of my own home. I've taught myself how to cook, bake, crochet, cross stitch, scrapbook, zentangle (I'm still learning this skill), use any new camera, use Excel and so on!
So with that attitude I'm self teaching how to use Photoshop AND to improve my writing skills. Being the good self teacher, I put a bunch of books on hold at the library. Going to the library is like Christmas morning, only less messy. It's always an adventure to see what's waiting on the shelf. I just love the library, the muffled sounds, the old book smell, the oversized chairs by the window to sit and sample what's behind the cover of a selected book.
Why December seemed like a good month to start these projects I'm not sure, but I'm going with it while I have the desire and motivation!
These are the Photoshop books from the library...
I have not had time to get going yet, but I have scanned through a couple of them. I might need to actually take a class, but we'll see.
The pile of books about writing is less daunting.
The Anne Lamott book is wonderful. It reads like a novel and is filled with the best advice and encouragement and it's funny, in an Anne Lamott way!
The Writer's Book of Wisdom is a small pocket sized book, easily carried around. It has 101 "rules" for writers and I've marked many pages (with Harry Potter Uno cards, don't ask) to go back and read again. I might have to purchase this book to have handy.
The Writer's Path is an instruction book with exercises. I've done a few of them starting with writing about my earliest memories, which Anne Lamott suggests too. I'm having some fun doing it, but also some uncomfortable moments as I relive some of those memories. There was another exercise where you start with a simple sentence, change nouns and verbs, add adverbs and adjectives, take some away. I loved doing this! I'm not going to show you how the sentence evolved over nine different steps, but show you the beginning sentence and where it ended up.
A cat walked into the kitchen.
Evolved to...
The extremely talented boys sang beautifully at the music studio.
Fun and simple stuff!!
My goal is to spend each Wednesday showing you what I'm up to with writing, Photoshop or other projects I'm working on.
(To see my photo of the day go here.)
This is the one time of year we invite a large number of people into our home. I send out 40 - 50 invitations to our holiday open house. Some years we get a large crowd, some years much less. This was a year when less people stop by, but the people who did come made it unforgettable!
We had the usual family, moms, dads, sister, niece, aunt, uncle, boss, bosses family... Word about the niece, I served her alcohol for the first time ever. Somehow she managed to turn 21 last January and I didn't know it... Last January?! Where does the time go?
We had two very special guests! First I have to give you a little back story, which is interesting because I was already planning to blog this story in the future. I guess the future has arrived!! One of my early childhood memories involves one of the guests who showed up at our party.
D and I used to walk to school together everyday starting in kindergarten! Our moms must have met at a school function and got to talking about how my mom doesn't drive and how she had to walk me to school everyday and how she HATES getting up in the morning (ok, that last part is me editorializing, but she might have said that!). D's mom probably mentioned that D walks to school and suggested since we only live two blocks apart we could walk together.
Each morning my mom would walk me to the sidewalk in front of our house and watch me walk two blocks down the hill to meet D. From D's house it was only a couple more blocks to school. The last block always seemed to be wet and full of slugs. We made a game out of walking on that block, a game of avoiding those slugs at all costs, jumping, skipping, walking around, you name it we did it, anything to avoid stepping on what seemed to be a million slugs. I seem to remember D maybe, possibly, poking sticks into the slugs and me being really grossed out. I'm sure, since he was a boy, he did that!
In the second grade he moved away and we lost touch. We found each other again in junior high and spent those years, plus high school, hanging out, saying "hey" in the halls and having a few classes together here and there.
Well that boy man D, who I walked through slugland with, showed up at our party with his wonderful wife P. D is the one person I'm still in contact with who I've known longer than anyone I'm not related to. Thankfully he showed up while my parents were there so they could see him too.
The other guest was a total shocker! We have a rental house in the next town south of us and our renter works with someone I went to high school with. That's not how she ended up being our renter, if was just one of those "small world" moments. She brought my friend N as a surprise and surprised I was!! N was one of those high school friends who I just connected with. She was one of those "girlfriends" who you pass notes, letters and cards to in the hall between classes. Who you talk about boys with endlessly. If we were teen friends today we would have thousands of text messages to each other. I'm sure you had one of those friends too! I didn't mention this to her when she was here, but I still have many of the notes, letters and cards she passed to me!
It was great to spend time with both D and N! I hope it's not 10 years before we all see each other again!
Why do my friends look so much better than me?! Thank goodness Asthmagirl got rid of the two inches of gray that was hanging out of my scalp! Man that would have been embarrassing seeing old friends like that!
(To see my daily photo go here.)
Saturday was our annual family holiday open house. It's a very casual gathering of friends and family where one can get a cookie or three or ten and a cup of hot spiced cider. It's something I start planning for after Halloween. First I go through my recipes and decide what I want to bake and make a list. After the list is made I check my baking supplies and make another list of what I need to buy. If the list is long I make my purchases over a couple grocery shopping outings, so it's not such a strain on the budget. The baking begins before Thanksgiving and continues until just before the party. This year I ran out of freezer space so I made rice krispie treats and pumpkin bars the night before the party.
I try to bake one new thing every year. This year I baked four (!) new recipes.
The best Christmas cookie ever! These were a huge hit!
Cheesecake squares (This was Dancing Daughters pick)
Fancy Date Ball - While these look really yummy I didn't like them that much and there were a lot left over.
Heath Bar Bit Snickerdoodles - Wow were these ever yummy!
All the new cookies I made were hits, except the date balls. Last years new recipe was chocolate mint cookies that everyone loved! This year I made some with Mint M&Ms on top, they all went really fast!
I also served hummus, crackers, veggie tray, chips and salsa, salmon ball (which I made), and cheesy bacon onion biscuits (that I also made)... No one went home hungry that's for sure!
Tomorrow, the people of the party!
You can see Monochrome Monday here.
A little bit of this, a little bit of that and a whole lot of everything.
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