Piglet knows how to get around town, be it by the tube or a black cab. The second picture is him barking orders to the cabbie.

Piglet and some interesting signs around London.

Piglet never passes up a chance to pose with a statue. He is a nut.

Piglet posing at some well known landmarks, Big Ben, Trafalgar Square and the Tower of London.

Aaron and I are leaving for London today to visit our friend Kristen and celebrate her birthday. She is the hallowed founder of birthday week, so I have an exciting lineup for her.

Since I will be gone, I did some pre-posts of Piglet's previous journeys to the UK. My favorite sister will be publishing them daily for me while I am gone. Cheerio!

You know it's cold when you keep finding your pug laying on the heat vents, his ears flapping in the warm air.

Yes, he is wearing a t-shirt.

It says "spoiled rotten".

He was chilly ok?

I used my egg pan for the first time. I had almost forgotten about it.

I realized how cruel it was to make him watch his friend frying away right before his eyes.

Same goes for the egg beater, slicer and masher now that I think about it.

But wow... did it make a tasty fried egg.

 

Bangs are not a thing to be taken lightly. Once there, they don't just go away in a week whether you like them or not.

I was in need of a change, so I have been contemplating and fretting over a haircut for weeks. And scouring magazines for The Perfect Cut. My hairdresser laughed when I brought her a clipping featuring a model at a close up three quarter angle view WITH a hat on.

But I did it. I got some layers. I got some bangs.

At work this morning Joel looks at me and says "Your hair is getting long."
Me - "Aaaand?!"
Joel - "What?"
Me - I was at V's on Saturday! (we go to the same salon)
Joel - "Color?"
Me - *sigh* and *walk away*

Some snow blew into our sunroom through a slightly opened window last night. Aaron and I scooped it up and made a mini snowman.

Very cute... but pathetic to see melt.

We once had a story on our website at work about a man who took a picture of each member of his family every year for about twenty years. It was amazing to see how they slowly changed year to year.

A friend of mine started his own photo sequence when he got married and started a family.

I decided since this is the first year Aaron and I are married I would begin one too. I took our pictures at my Grandmother's on New Years Day. I finally posted them to a website and hope to add to it every year.

Ok, so folks want to know how to post video to their blog? It's not too hard. If you have a 240x180 quicktime video this is what you do. Upload your video clip to your server space, just like you would a picture. Then in your post place this line of code...

<embed src="http://www.yourblog.com/movies/moviename.mov" width="240" height="200" autoplay="false" controller="true" loop="false">

Autoplay is whether or not the movie starts playing on it's own. Controller displays the buttons for playing the quicktime. Loop indicates whether you want it to play over and over or not.

That's all you do!

I have been inspired by all the cute videos posted on Shelby's site. Since my new digital camera shoots video, I have been recording a few of Oscar's exploits. It is harder than it looks.

Timing is everything. You have to catch him when he is doing something cute... and move quickly before he ceases the cuteness. He may be very good at sitting for photographs but he doesn't have the whole acting bit down yet. My technique involves lot of prompting, cajoling and begging. This clip isn't as interesting as Shelby's... but we're working on it.

A little bit ago, I knitted Oscar his own little scarf.

He liked it so much he wore it in our Christmas cards this year.

Very handsome.

(That is a mini sled. Oscar is not four feet tall)

Here is the project page for the scarf.

Now if I could just get the sweater I started for him last year finished.

 

One of these days I am going to do one of the Illustration Fridays.

And right after that I am going to do Month of Softies. That is what I tell myself.

These funny Sock Monkey's are good inspiration. I like the argyle ones.

You know you are in the depths of winter when you become overly excited because your husband brings you home a set of Artic Winter Wiper Blades for your bug.

I am actually rather interested in these silicone blades too... they don't freeze like rubber ones. If it's good enough for my spatulas, it's good enough for my windshield wipers.

When I was a kid there was a certain cake my mom would make for special occasions. She hasn't made it for years, but I asked her for the recipe. I made one today, even though I was nervous it wouldn't be as good as I remembered.

It was just as good as I recalled ... and easy. You just bake a regular box of yellow cake mix on a cookie sheet instead of a cake pan. (It doesn't take as long to bake, only 15 min) Then for the icing you mix a small box of vanilla instant pudding, 1 cup of milk, 8 oz of cream cheese and 8 oz of cool whip. Then you finely chip walnuts and sprinkle on top. I had to make half and half for the non nut people. Keep it in the fridge.

This evening Aaron and I went to hear one of my favorite, but little known bands Twin-A at Milestones.

Like Guster, I anticipate the day they hit it big and I won't be able to see them at such a small venue like Milestones, so I go whenever I can. They have a new CD out and it is quite good.

I feel like I need a VIOlight toothbrush sanitizer.

I normally just throw out my toothbrushes often, because I bite down on them and they get mangled pretty quickly.

But after reading the website, all I can think about are the millions of bacteria crawling on my toothbrush.

And I like the glowing blue light. The glowing blue light of death killing off all the bacteria.

At Sit & Knit tonight Aaron and I both had Starbucks new Chantico drink. Actually Aaron had two. It is drinkable chocolate. It was so rich and yummy. I think it made Aaron a little hyper though, because now he is hopping around the house... "Hey look at this website... a hook rug! let me try... come see Oscar chewing on his bone!... Oooooh shiny!"

It kind of reminded me of mexican chocolate. I had a cup of mexican chocolate in Toronto once. Here is a recipe for making it at home. It think it is the cinnamon that is key.

Melt 1 1/2 oz unsweetened chocolate, 1/4 cup sugar, 2 tbsp instant coffee, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, pinch of salt and 3/4 cup water over low heat while stirring. Heat to boiling then let simmer while stirring for 4 minutes. Stir in 2 cups milk, remove from heat and whisk until frothy. It's practically dessert!

Here is a post for all you fabric fanatics out there. Crypton is making fabric that is stain, moisture, odor and bacteria resistant. The cool part is they got William Wegman to design some of their patterns. This makes sense since the fabric is very dog friendly. You can buy pillows and bags made from the fabric, or the fabric itself.

I think the the dog patterns are so cute and would be great for making a dog bed for Oscar.

I am wondering if there is anywhere to get large amounts of small polystyrene beads. I have never seen them in craft stores. My mom once made Aaron a huge flannel beanbag, but she slashed two older beanbags to make it.

I think it would be cool to make a bean bag. I am inspired by these Sumo Lounges I saw online. If you could get your own beans there would be no end to the stuff you could make. Like the Cush pillow I got Tina that everyone in Brasil couldn't keep their hands off of. That would be great because those are hard to find, I've only seen them on eBay recently.

Aaron came from work rather excited to tell me that Wegmans was named Number One on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list. It is pretty amazing for a small company. Last year they were number 9.

He does like working there. Especially when he gets to taste new foods and recipes. One night he came home with a bottle of Pumpkin Seed Oil which we ate on vanilla ice cream. Sounds weird but it was yummy!

One of the things I love about going home is rooting through my mom and grandma's houses and getting the stuff they don't want anymore. From my mom I got this wood thread holder. My grandma gave me an extra applesauce maker strainer thingy she had. I can't wait to make homemade applesauce next fall.

Aaron thought they both looked like medieval torture devices.

Today we finally got some significant snowfall. Good thing Aaron got a snow gauge for Christmas. Our previous snow gauge involved sending Oscar out into the yard. "Yep... it's up to his knees.", "It's tail high.".... "Ummm, I can't see him."

For a dog that likes to sit on the heat vents he sure likes the snow. Here he is chomping at snowballs sailing through the air.

With all the Christmas cookies coming out of the oven and directly into our bellies, Oscar was becoming icreasingly bitter.

So Aaron and I made a batch of peanut butter dog bisquits for him and all his buddies. We used holiday cookies cutters to make them festive.

Instead of just the recipe I made a project page for them here.

I almost forgot... I also made a knitted tree garland for my grandmother. I used white eyelash yarn, hoping it wold look like snow.

I liked how it turned out, but one ball of yarn was not enough, so I have til next year to knit an extention.

Here is the knitted tree garland project page.

I am having difficulty easing back into the work week after my holiday spent as a Christmas slug. I lounged around my mother and grandmother's houses eating their delicious food for eleven glorious days.

We did get out to do some other activites... walks, day after Christmas bargain shopping, visits to various family and friends, movie watching, mushroom planting... here are some pictures of my Christmas Vacation. Several are of Oscar also lounging about.

The seven tots and five babies all got special little gifties this holiday season. The older kids got a totebag with their custom design character on and the babies got Shhh... Sleeping Pillows to hang on their doors. I don't think I want to do another project with iron on injet paper for quite awhile now.

Here is the project page for the totebags and the sleeping baby pillows.

Woo-hoo! I was just reading my comments and learned that my site is up for a BoB award for Best Craft/Knitting Blog! That is very exciting... I have never been in the running for anything like this before!

I'm back! And now that all gifts have been delivered to the recipients, I can divulge all the projects I was working on for the holidays.

Every year I have a holiday theme... this year it was the Christmas Duck. Everyone got a Christmas Duck with their name tag around it's neck on top of their gift.

Friends got a box with a framed picture from our June wedding, a hand knit dishcloth and a jar of homemade pepper jam.

Aaron and I were busy little chicadees the month before Christmas! Here are the project pages for Christmas 2004, Knit Dishcloths and Pepper Jam.