One Step Above...

So tragic...

... a Charlie Brown tree. Actually, it's very nice. Just needs some beaded garland or something. We set the tree on top of the "formal" living room coffee table because the little alcove we had it last year has been taken over by our soon-to-be liquor cabinet (currently hiding wedding gifts and a catch-all place for Jal's junk!).

Last Thursday saw the sudden passing of poor little dumb-dumb Tiger. He would have been 7 in April. Although Tiger wasn't the most handsome of bulldogs, he was a sweet, side humpin', snorty friend to Freddy and Molly and we send our thoughts to them.


Molly and Tiger (1999-2005)

Happy 40th birthday to Joe Burdett! We celebrated his birthday with a surprise party thrown by his wife, Nancy, on Saturday night. It's been quite a while since I've been to a party with so many people. I thought Khalid's 40th in September was pretty big, but this was even bigger! Apparently, Joe knows A LOT of people! And the food... there were 3 rooms of food! We all had a wonderful time seeing old friends.

The new girlfriend of one of John's old high school pals looked a lot like someone who went to my junior high. Rick introduced her as "Teresa", but it's possible she changed her name from the girl I knew, Van-Ahn Nguyen. I'm not sure why I didn't just ask her if she went to Sligo. For some reason, we're not good at mingling with people we don't know. We've often tried to make a game of it where we send someone out of the group to mingle and bring a new friend back to us, but that hasn't been the case for quite a number of years.

This weekend, John and I also braved the strip malls of Columbia and Rockville to do some X-mas shopping. My problem is what I need is TIME, not shopping centers. I've got a number of knitting projects I need to complete, but instead, I'm blogging (LOL).

OH! Last Thursday night I went to a stamping party hosted by my co-worker, Mary. She's been creating beautiful greeting cards for a couple years and is associated with Close To My Heart products. She did a demo of the products and we made a card, tag and 6x6 scrapbook page using her supplies. It was really fun and I can imagine myself getting sucked into another craft/hobby. I ordered some things and gave her another order today (gifts for my nieces). I decided to stick to the holiday theme for now and do gift tags. I've done some gift tag stamping in the past, but the products from CTMH are really unique. Mary also introduced us to embossing (really cool!), but I decided not to do that yet. Knitting and beading are difficult enough to keep up!

Mary said her dream is to open up her own card shop some day. It's funny how I once put "creating greeting cards" as my dream career on one of those e-mail survey things. But the handmade cards and invites I've done in the past (which I thought were really nice) don't compare to what Mary has created! If you get a chance, click on the CTMH link and see what they're all about.

Well, must get back to my brother's b-day present. I have to finish it by end of the week!!! I'll post some pics once I've given it to him. I'm hoping it snows soooo much tonight they close the office. I doubt we'll get more than a few inches, but one can dream...