Payton Claus

My poor little puppy dog... Still trying to come up with a genius idea for Christmas cards, I came home from work and tortured Payton with a photo shoot this evening. I spent about an hour, took 100 photos and came out with a couple of possible usable photos. Still don't know if they will make the Christmas card cut, but I think he's so stinking cute in his santa outfit!

(Abby, I was working up a sweat with just one dog, I can't imagine 3 children + a dog. There is no way you should start over!! )

Our Thanksgiving Weekend

Here's a quick recap and some photos of our Thanksgiving weekend!

Thanksgiving: First to Albany with my family, and then quickly back to Portland to spend the afternoon with Ben's granparents. More time spent driving than visiting.
Friday: Skipped early bird shopping and slept instead. Much nicer, and cheaper this way. Went to Costco and got our free cookbook and some groceries. Went to Garden Vineyards in Hillsboro for wine tasting. Went to Ben's parents to put up their Christmas lights. Put up our own Christmas tree.
Saturday: Went to Bridgeport to window shop and watch Mr. Magoriums Wonder Emporium. Cute movie.
Sunday: Ben's watching football and I'm blogging. I'm also trying to think of a genius idea for Christmas cards.

Daa Bears!!!

Aaron and I drove up to Seattle to watch the Bears game. It was our second time going up there to watch them lose. The last time we made the trip was back in 2003. We had a great time during the game. Lots of ups and downs though.

Some of the Seattle fans were really great and classy, others, not so much. We got back to my car after the game to find some unwelcome surprises there. Let's just say the fans didn't represent their team very well that day.
The Bears jumped out to a lead but in the end they didn't have enough to get the job done.

It was still a good time to hang out with Aaron, a guy I've known for almost 20 years. We've remained close have tons of childhood stories shared between us.

Weekend Crafting

I visited my friend Jenny in Creswell for some craft time this weekend! Jenny and I have two major things in common... we can talk a lot... and we can craft a lot... both of which we will do into the wee hours of the morning. It was tough to pack up my stuff and leave because we were on a major crafting roll.



We will be peddling our goods at the Festival of Trees this coming week. Mostly we have cards for sale, but I also made 24 purses with Ghiradelli chocolates. These little cuties made their debut almost 5 years ago at Abby's baby shower. I can't believe how time as flown but they are just as cute today as they were then. Keep your fingers crossed we do well... we need to support the habit!

Christmas already?

Yesterday Ben and I had lunch with our friend Beth who works at PGE with us. This officially kicked off the Christmas season for us. Beth surprised us with a gift - which was a personalized advent calendar. So sweet of her to think of us. Ben has already started scoping out spots for it in our home. But it doesn't stop there...

This morning Ben got out all of the Christmas lights (and there's a lot) and started putting them up around the house. This is in spite of receiving an official letter from the HOA stating thou shall not have any holiday display in excess of one month before of the holiday. But thechnically the day after Thanksgiving is more than one month before the holiday, so that's a dumb rule. I guess we're going to be rebels.

Ben has plans for lots and lots of lights... thank goodness we get a discount on electricity.

This afternoon we went to Sleighbells in Sherwood to pick up some Christmas ornaments. We decided an appropriate tradition to go there each year and get two ornaments. I have officially started a collection of Krinkles, but then Ben declared he just doesn't like them very much... so he picked one and I picked one.


In case you're wondering.... you have 43 shopping days left till Christmas! (or somewhere around there)

Newlywed Retreat

We spent this weekend at the coast with the Newly Married group from church. We stayed at Lincoln Beach where we rented a gigantic beach house and a townhouse for 10 couples.

Being the early birds that we are, we left at noon on Friday so we would have time to shop the outlets and also eat the best clam chowder in the world at Captain Ron's before arriving at the beach house at 5:00. But sometimes being early means you're earlier than everyone else....it was nearly 2 hours later before anyone showed up with the key to get in the house. On the other hand, as the first ones there we also got to pick the best room in the house - with it's own bathroom. That was worth the two hour wait.

The weekend was full of fun and games and we made some new friends. We're looking forward to getting to know everyone better throughout the year.

We're Celebrating Tonight!

Our good friend Tiffany just had a milestone birthday today! We'll leave numbers out of this to protect the innocent - but she's fantastic and we loved being there to celebrate with her. For the occasion we went to Macaroni Grill and ate lots of yummy food. I might have made a few enemies by bringing along the nutritional information... but I'm a committed weight watcher, so I had to do it. It was tough to find anything under 1000 calories on the menu (Yikes!). It was a good night with good friends and some good presents.

We love you Tiffany!