Dudes, it's cold out!!

Ok so in rather short order our not-so-cold weather has dramatically disappeared.
Remember that huge icicle we had in front of our living room window? It fell off last night. The only thing I can think of was that the -35C temps last night finally did it in (it hasn't been this cold in weeks). I'm just glad it didn't break the window on the way down.

It's FINALLY Monday today which means that all the stores in town should be open again after being closed for the holidays - even boxing day - What retail store closes on boxing day?! I normally don't miss the stores down south but I really did this week when I wanted to go and buy stuff and have it NOW instead of ordering stuff online and waiting a week or more (which, I normally quite enjoy but I'm being impatient this week!). gah... Of course New Years puts a kink in the whole stores (and post office) being open thing... Annoying... Another annoying thing? My favourite hardware store in town is closed now - for good (and yes, I have a favourite hardware store). grrr... In a town with limited stores basically every store has at least one thing you can't buy in all the others and this hardware store was FULL of stuff that you could only get there (and for a decent price). I even buy my shampoo at the friggin' hardware store! I of course only find out about this news AFTER the store closes so I even miss out on all the deals! I'm really getting shafted with the shopping this week!

I took some crafty pictures last night but haven't had a chance to upload them. I wanted to write this quickly before I go out to some meetings to let everyone know that it's -37C bleh!


Temperature: -37C (it needs repeating!)
Sunrise: n/a
Sunset: n/a

Done for Another Year

So I didn't really end up getting any pictures of our dinner... I took a few of our tray of roasted veggies (before they went into the oven) and a picture of my first purple potato (have you eve had a purple potato? They're actually quite tasty if you can get over the fact it's purple) but no pictures of the lamb. A few reasons for that were 1. I didn't think anyone wanted to see a picture of a raw leg of lamb pre-roasting and 2. When it was finally done I was in a hurry to get it on the table. Despite the lack of pictures, everyone enjoyed the dinner - the landlords especially (*phew!*). Glen also enjoyed having lambie leftovers for two days.

Yesterday I took two of our residents to a friend/co-worker's house for Christmas dinner. The dinner was incredibly tasty especially since I didn't have to make any of it myself (ok, that's a lie, I made buns and brought them along with 2 lemon meringue pies - but y'know the main stuff I didn't have to do - yay!).

Since she was going to be pulling out the nice linens and the silver I thought I'd make her some place cards for the table with my Cricut (see how handy this damn machine is?!)

We all left pretty stuffed and I got to go back to work for 2 hours and try not to fall asleep (tough task!).

All in all it was pretty relaxing and the residents were on their best behaviour which was nice (sometimes you never know what might happen). Now that the stress of Christmas is over I can focus on the stress of being supervisor and being in charge on the 2nd when my boss goes on vacation for 7 weeks - ahhhhhh!


Temperature: -21C
Sunrise: n/a
Sunset: n/a

Fast Approaching...

Well, it's practically here! We're having out big dinner tonight because I work on Christmas Day. Since it's only Glen and I and the landlords are in town for the holidays (first time in 5 or 6 years) we're having them up for dinner. We do a very untraditional dinner for Christmas so I thought I'd share since I didn't blog about it last year.
Glen isn't a fan of turkey or ham (he'll eat it if he's invited to someone's house but it's a waste and a bit excessive to cook a whole turkey just for him) so I decided that on our first Christmas together we'd cook a leg of lamb (they eat a lot of lamb in Australia and he doesn't get to eat it nearly as often here). So a roast leg of lamb has become our Christmas tradition. Normally I roast some veggies with it (potatoes and carrots) and this year I'm adding brussel sprouts and corn on the cob to the menu (If you're going un-tradtional you might as well REALLY go un-traditional!).
My landlord's last lamb experience was a bad one so I'm hoping I change their mind about it ;-)

So yeah... I have some cookies to bake today and maybe some buns (maybe not on the buns... We'll see) aaaaaaaaaaand my Cricut arrived yesterday! Wooo!

I'd planned to use it to cut out some vinyl to etch some glasses for my landlords so I'm glad it's here! My original plan was to etch a pie plate and put cookies in it but certain types of pyrex don't etch... grrr... I got everything cut out and arranged on the pie plate and put the etching cream on only to find out it didn't work... bleh

So yeah! I should get going and start everything! Hopefully I'll be back soon to post pictures of our dinner!

Temperature: -20C
Sunrise: n/a
Sunset: n/a

Busy, busy, busy!

Ahhh I think I need two more weeks to finish all my Christmas prep! I've started the Christmas baking at work (40 tarts and 5 dozen chocolate cookies so far) and I'm kind of not into it this year... Part of the reason is I accidentally baked my cookies a little too long and their crunchier than I'd like (which is no big deal but I hate to give over-done cookies to people). bleh... I have to get a move-on though because the boxes should be handed out by next Monday.
I've had super lots to do at work too because I've been made supervisor (surprise!) so I've been typing up new forms, doing a lot of running around etc. At least being busy makes the day go faster.
I have a bunch of knitting that my landlord wants me to do for them and I've had NO time to do it. I've hardly knit anything since the craft fair - boo!
And on top of all that I'm way behind in shipping presents out. I have two more to send and I don't think they'll make it in time (damn).

I've been doing a bit more cleaning to get ready to have some company next week (landlords over for dinner, some friends over for a small get-together). AND I'm getting the packrat room cleaned and useable because I'm getting a Cricut Expression. I'm SO excited! I've been looking for something that does this for a long time... I've been diligently tracking it and it's just cleared Canada customs.. Hopefully it's here soon!

We had a bit of a blizzard today but I guess it was all done by the time I got up so that's kind of boring! I was expecting something a little more substantial than a few hours. Also, Glen hasn't really seen a blizzard so I was kind of hoping to get a good one.


Temperature: -17C (feels like -26C)
Sunrise: n/a
Sunset: n/a

Christmas Prep

Well! The tree is up here, the house at work is decorated and I'm about to start my massive Christmas baking at work. Yikes! I can't believe it's the 10th (ok technically the 11th) already! Last year I did over 400 cookies (as well as an unknown amount of tarts) and put together close to a dozen boxes to hand out (long term care, people that have done favours for us through the year, resident's families etc) and this year probably won't be much different. Our butter didn't get delivered so I have to wait for that (probably tomorrow).
I'm going to bring my camera to work because I'm really proud of how everything there turned out. For now though here are pictures from my own house (click for big):

We don't do a lot of decorating here - mainly just put the tree up. Our place isn't really big enough to go all-out. Now that I have my new lenses and a remote switch (in my opinion), I'm getting some great close-up tree pictures - probably the best Christmas pictures yet. I'm already thinking of next year's Christmas card design (I know, crazy).

The Hat of Doom is still in my possession even though my co-worker sounded DESPERATE for me not to give it away/sell it and she was FOR SURE coming to pick it up. Annoying.

I'm knitting some cute animals to hand out with a few of my presents this year. I bought some "gifts that give more" - among the ones I bought was a microloan for a pig and a microloan for a bunch of chickens. The people that get these gifts are getting a little knit pig/chickens. I thought about knitting trees for the tree ones I bought but I don't think I have time now. I have some knitted ornaments to make for the landlords and ideally for some other family (and myself) but again, with all the baking and stuff happening at work I doubt I'll have time now. Oh well though :-) The ornaments were so popular that I might knit some through the year so I'll have a bunch. Grand plans, right?

It has gotten REALLY cold here (which the current temperature doesn't really reflect). I think it has mostly been the wind chill but, walking just from the vehicle into the arena yesterday was BRUTAL! I was so cold! And even the arena itself was freezing (I know the arena is generally chilly but this was unusually cold). brrrr...


Temperature: -27C
Sunrise: n/a
Sunset: n/a

In Which I Throw My Knitting Across the Room... And Then My Brain Explodes....

A few weeks ago a co-worker (whom I greatly dislike) told me she had a pattern book for some hats and was wondering if I could knit her one. I told her to bring the book and I'd see what I could do. So she brought over the Paton's booklet "Where Did You Get That Hat!" (which I happen to own anyway). She picked out TWO hats the red beret on the front and the main cover image. I basically told her that I'd only knit one and I was only going to knit the red one. I ended up making it in black because I don't have any red yarn that was suitable...

This hat has been one pain in the arse after another!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I told the co-worker that I'd be able to knit her hat after the craft fair but I managed to find some spare time before-hand and got 90% of it done by then. On the last day of the craft fair (2 minutes before we're supposed to pack up) she comes by with a ball of yarn (a lady at the CF was selling her home-spun) and asked me how much of it I'd need to knit her hat. So I told her that I'd already started. THEN she decides that I should knit her TWO hats of doom! I leveled with her and told her I HATED knitting the Hat of Doom and there would be NO WAY I'd make another... Her reply? "Maybe I'll twist your arm and get you to make me another" - aksdflkajs!!!
She walked away and I thought that was the end of it... NO! She came back and starts talking to me about the Hat of Doom and I had to try to explain to her that knitting something you hate takes ALL the fun out of it (combined with hating the person makes for a pretty miserable experience).
The Hat of Doom is a shitty hat to knit and I disliked every.single.stitch.... Dislikeing something in such a way doesn't really lend itself to making you want to mass produce them! You know what she finally said to me? "Oh, I get it, you hate knitting hats" *cough* She totally didn't get that I didn't like knitting this SPECIFIC hat. My reply? "Yes, you're right. I hate knitting hats."

*blinks*


Temperature: -25C
Sunrise: n/a
Sunset: n/a

I Guess We Don't Open Our Curtains That Often...

Look what I found yesterday when I opened the curtains:

Yikes!

Where did THAT come from? And how come we didn't notice it a looooooong time ago?! I don't think something like that grows overnight - it would've had to be a few days - or at least a week! And we thought the one we had last year was massive...

Today's my first day at my new-old job. I had 5 days off (3 for the craft fair and my regular 2) and managed to get A LOT done. I took pretty much everything out of the packrat room and am trying to get it to be a more functional room rather than a room stuff gets tossed when we can't put it away... I should've taken a before picture but it was embarrassing (think NO floor space and things piled everywhere -- when we showed a friend that room she said "you can call one of the community groups and they could come and take all that stuff to the dump for you" haha :-( Its not all garbage just... stuff... We are clearly living in too small an apartment for my things...). Anyway, there's floor space now and things are a bit more organized but there's a long way to go. Our main hallway is cleaned out too and as soon as the livingroom is done I'll put our tree up (for the livingroom to be clean all the stuff has to be moved into the hall where the tree is going). Progress though!

I had hockey lastnight and it was fun minus the fact I think I'm getting a cold so it turned out to be pretty hardcore... I felt OK before I started and when I got home I was pretty exhausted and miserable... Almost got a few goals - it means I'm at least getting the puck and getting a chance to shoot!


Temperature: -29C (whaaaaaaaaat?!?!)
Sunrise: 1:03om
Sunset: 2:24pm
(only 3 days left!)