i made cookies today.

grendel and abby “helped”:

most of the cookies are of the bar variety, and not interesting enough to photograph. however, i am pretty excited about some of the sugar cookies i baked. some of them are the typical snowman, star and christmas tree shapes. the rest are meant to represent the animals of the house.

first up, abby, grendel and grendel’s best friend piggy:

you can read more about piggy by clicking here and scrolling down.

next is a sheep and a monkey:

the sheep represents all of the yarn around the house and the little sheep tape-measure that seems easier to find, lately, than the heavy-duty tape measure and so most of our house and belongings have been measured in sheep. the monkey is because monkeys make tom and me laugh and are often spoken of in our house. your’s too, right?

yup, a monkey makes me laugh…unless it is in a recent dream taunting abby and me in our backyard (despite my empty threat to throw a hatchet at it) and then somehow gets in the house, trapping me, tom, abby and grendel in our bedroom with no phone to call for help. that type of monkey is an evil monkey. you can tell by the eyes:

creepy.

sure, we have had a stove since we moved in, but we haven’t been able to use it because the previous owners had an electric stove (yuck). we thought it would be “no big deal” to get the system converted over to propane. ha! wrong. so wrong.

but we were patient and made due (and found many local tasty delivery and take-out options). we baked, and considered setting up some sort of system for cooking in the fireplace. we broke down and purchased an electric burner which helped us to survive for a month without fire, and also reaffirmed our strong dislike of electric heat cooking.

but today…today it all changes…today i cook soup:

so long, taking-40-minutes-to-boil-water-for-tea:

hello, power boil:

thank you, propane.

tom’s sister had her first baby early yesterday morning.

meet adam thomas:

he was born after 26 hours of labor, and everyone involved is healthy and happy…and tired.
here he is looking cozy in the hat i knitted for his baby shower:

new mom and dad, jessica and mark, had their choice of two hats, just in case:

they went with the blue one, i see. :D

i forgot to mention this earlier in the week, but i wanted to let anyone who happens to read this know about a great deal:

michaels arts and crafts store is having a sale this week on LP frames.  They are only $5!  We picked up 6, and still don’t know where we are going to hang them, but we couldn’t pass them up for that price. even not on sale they are going for $9.99 (which is less than what we paid when we gave them as a gift a while back).  they are also being advertised as scrapbook page frames, which i guess are the same size as albums.

so, if you need some, or have some and want more, run, don’t walk, to your nearest michaels!

you can’t quite tell from these pictures, but our new house’s kitchen was pink:

the countertops have a pinkish hue, the floors have rose tones, even the cabinets have a slightly rosy vein. these are things that we can not afford to do anything about. however, the light pink walls could be, and needed to be, tackled.

i now present to you our not-so-pink kitchen:

we still have to paint the moldings around the doors off-white, change the ceiling lights and put a piece of stainless steel behind the stove. but already i love this kitchen so much more. and the dark colors made the pinkish counters and floors seem not quite so pink anymore.

you know how there are just some random childhood art projects that have somehow survived moves, clean-ups, purgings, and all other situations that claimed the lives of all other childhood art projects? well, i am happy to report that those few random art projects survived yet another move and made it safely to our new home.

tom’s clay bowling ball (which weighs almost as much as a real bowling ball…how long did it take for this thing to dry?)

dated 1983

tom’s papier mache rhinoceros:

circa 1981

and, most importantly (to me), my pine-cone christmas tree:

dated 1980

the pinecone almost didn’t make it today, though. it survived the entire car ride and as i was bringing it into the house, i almost dropped it and the other things i was carrying. the top bent a little bit, but it survived. i just have to get around to putting it in some sort of protective clear box. it would have been awful to have broken it today after we were so careful with it.