New Year's Resolution

Happy New Year's Eve! So it is the time of year to make resolutions that will generally be broken not long into the new year and I will admit that I'm guilty of doing it. However I have already gotten a jump start of sorts on my resolution which is to eat healthier and to keep the costs down. Now I have to say that I love making meals that I can freeze and reheat and enjoy later, but I have very limited space. Or at least I did, until I realized that my brother doesn't actually use his freezer other than the ice maker and keeping a frozen pizza and bagel bites that he got when he first moved to the city something like 6 years ago and when he was in his first apartment. I'm trashing them and invading, he only lives a few minutes away and I can store the mass of the frozen there and about 6-7 servings at my place. If he wants to eat some of the frozen food, no problem My brother has been gone for the past few days on vacation and doesn't get back for another week so while I'm holding down the fort (collecting the mail and newspaper) I figured it might be a good idea to get a jump start on making meals. I also like when I can just go into the fridge and find something to eat. This also means that I have a basic menu that I can go to at any point during the week that will keep me from picking up food to go or just grabbing the first easy thing in the fridge/pantry.

Messy kitchen

 Ok, so it doesn't look too messy in this picture, but what you can't see is the flour, milk, butter, oil, water, salt and goodness knows what else all over the counters and the floor.  I have perfected the art of making a mess without trying,  oops. Oh, and I took the picture after I put a bunch of stuff in the dish washer, I think it is half full.

Lunch of fettuccine alfredo with leftovers in the freezer/fridge

The list of things that have been made over the past two days: pasta, alfredo sauce, marinara sauce, boiled eggs, mini cupcakes (for new year's party), black beans and kidney beans. Of course not everything is going in the freezer, but the sauces and beans are cooling off to be stuck in there. I really wanted to make some grilled rice balls, but I'm going to wait until my mom sends me my rice ball makers. I've tried making them by hand, but they tend to fall apart and the bear/star/heart shapes are too dang cute!

Another healthy eating goal for this year is for me to make a weekly menu and try to stick to it as best I can. I say if I can because sometimes I don't know what nights I will be nannying until an hour ahead of time if something has come up and I end up eating whatever the little ones eat. Still healthy, but a deviation from my menu. My plan to working on keeping to the menu is to only by what I need for the week based on my menu plus a few small healthy snacks.

Oh, and what to do while the cupcakes were cooking or when I needed a break?

Please excuse the pile of scraps

I brought a bunch of fabric over to work on cutting out. So far I have eight zipper pouches cut out, the picture was taken yesterday with only three in the lower left cut out. The purple pouches are going to be lined with the other purple fabric, but I think I want to line the blue/green fabrics with light blue and green fabrics which I need to dig up. There are somewhere...Or I might line them with white or a light grey. I'm also am going to make neck warmers out of the purple and tea wallets out of the blue/green leftovers. My friend will be getting six little sipper pouches with a tea wallet or two. There is also enough of the Nicey Jane fabric to make six more zipper pouches which I'm going to do who knows what with. 

And again...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Working away

Unfortunately I have nothing to show you at the moment, but that doesn't mean I haven't been working away like a determined squirrel. I just can't post what I've been working on due to the rules of the contest that I entered the project in, but as soon as I can you guys will get to see it. So in light of most of my time being spent on that (and that I haven't uploaded a picture of my holiday baking yet since the cord is...somewhere...) I leave you with this:

Yes that is a crawfish/crayfish/crawdad whatever you would like to call it. And yes, it is holding the tip while marinating in butter.

Mind you the picture is from last year and interesting things seem to happen around finals time.


And in case I am not back before then-

  HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!

Oh yeah, the fish pictures in the post showing my hair's length-not mine, they are the owner. They don't mind if I change them out, but I have nothing to replace them with at the moment, so fish it is. If only I had a Silhouette to make some fun decor with...a hint, hint to the family for a birthday gift. Is it an obvious enough hint?

CSN Love

So as I mentioned before while trying to decide what to get, I won a gift certificate to CSN from The Cape on the Corner. Well, I finally figured out what to get and ordered it a while ago and it came today! So what did I get, you might be asking. Well, it fits in perfectly with below freezing weather we are getting in my neck of the woods right now. Though it won't do much against the rain...eh, it won't be out in the rain anyway so that doesn't really matter. I got a ....BLANKET!!!!

And it came with a ribbon bow!

It is the Sherpini Throw in Willow which is a gorgeous color and the perfect size for curling up in front of the tv (or computer) and watching movies. It is also nice and warm and now I can curl up on my bed under it without having to unmake my bed for warmth.

Long Hair

I have hit the point where the longest parts of my my hair are waist length (and I'm going by my natural waist) and I love it. Four years ago I donated over a foot to Wigs for Kids and it was insanely short to me. My hair was barely brushing chin length. Now my goal is to see how long it will grow before it decides to stop cause yes, that does happen, it's called terminal length. Somehow I don't have a picture of  my hair down now, but I'll take one later and edit this post. Edited to add current length picture.

Where my shirt is pulling in and there is a black line, it is a ribbon that is tied at my natural waist so you can get a reference point for my hair's length

Anyways, the one little gripe I have about having long hair is that it tends to try to strangle me when I sleep. So I've had to start getting creative because how sad would it be to have an official cause of death be listed as strangulation by hair while sleeping? I do french braid it often to keep it up and out of the way, but there are nights that I am just too dang tired to even think about trying to braid it. I've recently taken to using hair pins and pinning up in a sort of spiral-ish pattern like the picture below. With the hair pins they luckily haven't been digging into my scalp, though it isn't the best for your hair to sleep with them in. If I decided to fancy it up a bit I will do the bandana curls (from a prior post) or rag curls to sleep in.

After a night of sleep and a day of babysitting

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years everyone!

The trouble with batteries

Is that they like to die. The even bigger trouble with batteries is that car use them. Meh. So instead of running to the store to get the materials you need to work on holiday gifts, you end up being stuck at home waiting for AAA to come. Some how I don't think I will be making it to the store tonight, how sad. So instead you get to see the many different projects in the works and the new books that I got.

Books!

If any of you are into costuming I highly, HIGHLY suggest the book on the left, Nineteenth-Century Fashion in Detail. It has amazing pictures of garments from the Victoria and Albert Museum and sketches of the entire garment with descriptions on every page. The textiles in the 19th century were amazing and I am seriously beginning to think I was born in the wrong time period. The Macarons book, I'm planning on tackling and attempting to make some this coming week when I invade my brother's place to use his oven. There will be some pictures and notes from the attempt. Finally, the cupcake book it just adorable!

Modular origami pieces and fabric for a bags

I'm out of glue AND thread at the moment since someone decided that my thread spools were toys and managed to put them in her water bowl. Not to point any fingers or anything, Tangie....The fabric is from Heather Bailey's Nicey Jane collection and is for a few little clutch type bags for my friend and possibly a little wallet with the leftover scraps. Or depending on what I feel like I might just make a wallet and a larger bag. We'll see what the fabric wants me to do when I get thread. Does that happen to anyone else? You think you know what you want to do with a certain fabric, but when you finally get to it it wants to be something else? Maybe it's just me...

Either late or absurdly early for Halloween

I'm going to go with absurdly early for next year. These wonderful little squares are slated to be split up into two different Halloween bags for my little sister and one of my cousins. There are two squares of each print, originally of 50 pints, but I snagged two sets for some bows. I haven't decided whether I'm going to split up the sets or keep them together. Luckily my little sis's doesn't have to be done until the end of January and my cousin and I are exchanging gifts in mid-January when we see each other so I have a bit of time left on these two.

Season for Giving

I know that many of us are strapped for cash at the moment and might not have any to spare, but if you do please thing about donating to Run for the Rose. This organization is very near and dear to my heart and is something my family and I have participated in for the past 7 years. If anyone has seen ABC's TV series 'Houston Medical' the run is in honor of Dr Marnie Rose who was one of the doctors featured in the show. The Marnie Rose Foundation has raised over $1.5 million that have gone to research for the treatment of brain cancer and the development of new drugs being used in clinical trials. They are getting ready for the third phase of trials in one of the treatments!

Sadly, this year has come with the loss of two participants of the past years runs. Two families will have to celebrate their first holidays without their mother, their sister, their daughters, their wife, their friends. If you happen to have even a dollar to donate it would be greatly appreciated.

The 2011 run is scheduled for April 10th if anyone is in Houston and would like to participate. If you do let me know, I will be there with my volunteer shirt and probably a golf cart! I'm on the setting up and tearing down committee with the my fmaily, relatives and the Rose family. I'm also planning on taking my camera and will be posting the photos in April! And hey, if you are a motorcycle rider in Houston there is also Ridin' for the Rose, though they don't have the 2011 date up yet.

Watching the riders getting set to leave! I still want to find a rider who will let me tag along. (I'm off on the right with my parents)

Pants of Doom

The pants of doom, or the butterfly pants, depending on who you ask. There are two stories behind these pants one on how they got their name and the other on their creation.

I had to enhance the color to show it correctly so other than the pants, everything looks a bit funny in color. Sorry!

Freshman year of college I had a roommate who was in love with the color pink and by that I mean the bright, radioactive pink color. And everything she owned was pink: bedding, storage, desk stuff, binders, heck, even her TV was pink. Now, I'm not a pink person to begin with, but after a year of that I really couldn't stand the bright color. And aside from small amounts of pink in fabric prints and pink ballet tights, I haven't worn the color since. I also swore at the time that if I ever wore anything bright pink that the apocalypse was sure to come and the earth was doomed. So....

Nicely washed out colors showing the front

What is a girl to do when she got out of rehearsal after midnight and had to be back at the theatre a 8 am the next morning and she has no clean warm pants? Well, she could do a load of laundry in the awful machines in the dorm which take 2-3 cycles through the dryer for anything to be dry or if she happens to have some ridiculous fleece laying around she could make a pair of pants quickly and then get lots of sleep. So I went for option two. In all honesty, I can't for the life of me figure out where I got this fleece because I sure as heck didn't buy it, but whatever. And 45 minutes after I got back to my dorm I was in bed asleep with a pair of pants ready for the next day instead of being up until around 3 doing laundry and hoping the dryer was going to play nice. The pants would have been 30 minutes-ish, but I made a mistake and had to seam rip. Great thing is these pants can be worn in 20-ish degree weather and your legs will be perfectly nice and toasty!

And even though they aren't the most flattering pants in the world they are comfy and that is all that really mattered. Plus I had a rehearsal skirt that went over them. And those are my pants of doom.

Regency Fabric

I now have the fabric to begin making the Regency dress and I'm rather excited. Being on a slight budget I decided to go look at curtains at Target and managed to snag two white sheers. Just have to toss them in the wash and I'm ready to go. Now I really wanted cotton, but they only had polyester (ick), but what could I do? Oh well, I figure if it turns out looking good then I know that the pattern will work and if it goes disastrously wrong then I didn't waste good materials.

Crinkly texture fabric which I like

Sunscreen, or the lack there of

So while I am freezing my toes off here (I don't do cold weather at all) I am dreaming of the wonderful hot and sunny days of the past summers. And then remembering the fact that I'm very bad about remembering sunscreen courtesy of a photo my friend has. I know it doesn't look all that bad, but wait for the close up.

Cropped to remove the silliness of the other two in the picture with me 

I had a white imprint of my necklace around my neck for a long time.

You see the pale strips of skin next to my tank top's straps? Yeah, that's my normal color. It was a running joke for a while that I was red, white and blue because I wore three of four blue tanks while I was still crispy. Mind you to get this red it only took me about somewhere between 30-45 minutes. Heck, I burn during the winter if I'm outside too long. And I radiated heat for a few weeks and had to go to the dermatologist for something else and boy was she shocked and also rather impressed.  Apparently, I am the only non red head that she knows who can turn that red in so little time. Sadly, I don't unburn as quick as I burn, 2 and a half years later I still have tan lines from that burn. Or rather, less pasty white colored lines.

Suddenly, I'm not wanting the warm weather as much, but I'm going to crank up the heat and enjoy the warmth. Just remember if you go anywhere or live anywhere crazy sunny this winter or heck even this coming summer, wear sunscreen cause everything hurts like the dickens when you forget. Trust me. And you can actually get kind of a purplish tint to your burn if it gets as bad as mine. And if you do happen to get one this bad, soak a hand towel in either milk or cooled fresh brewed tea or vinegar. Sounds crazy and you will probably smell a bit funny before you shower, but I went from purplish red to just lobster red after a few days of using tea and vinegar something like three times a day. Normally it takes a week and a half to two weeks to just turn lobster red from the purplish red. And amazingly enough I didn't blister or peel too badly.

I'm off for some hot cocoa and to snuggle under my comforter and watch a movie.

Oh, goldfish memory

I know I just posted, but this doesn't really go with the last post so it gets its own. Thank you to everyone who sent well wishes to my dog last month. She had an uncomplicated surgery and they ended up doing a biopsy on the lump and it turns out that it is cancerous. But the doctor got most, if not all of it out and Rita is doing awesome! Slightly hairless on one side, but she is up to her old troublemaker self. We decided to not do the radiation treatment and just enjoy what time she has left without putting her through it. So thanks again for the well wishes!

I think I have enough soap to last until next year!

No I don't really, but it sure seems like it at the moment. So I said yesterday that I would share what I got in my sampler box from Sampler Village, so here you go! And remember, I got the lavishly sample box, so I'm sorry for the picture overload. I also haven't counted how many samples where in there this time so I'm going to count as I post.

The entire lot

Edibles part one (6)

Edibles past 2 (2)

 And here is why I say I have enough soap to last until next year. I got sixteen (16!) soap samples and some of them are like a full bar of soap! They all smell so good too...

15 of the soaps

Lots of goodies (8)

In the back of the picture is an item with a bear holding a star, guess what it is? Have you guessed yet? Come on. I'll give you a hint: it is a genius idea. Does that help? No? OK, I'll tell you. It is a set of four mini emory boards in a fold over matchbook holder and they pull off just like matches! This went straight into my bag after the picture.

Paper goodies(9)

Spot the missing soap! And bubble bath, foot soaks, lotion, a candle, scrubbie, and other goodies. The leaf in the back (sorry for the glare) is a pin, but I might switch it to a hair thing. (10)

 There are makeup samples and a perfume sample.

More goodies. And a missing edible, er drinkable, hot cocoa mix in the white box (8)

 OK, I'll admit it. I have a slight addiction to lip stuff.

And what could the bubble wrapped item in the sideways picture be?

 Fleur de Sel caramels! Which I have already broken into. I have no self control, but it was amazing and totally worth it!

And the grand total, if my math is right, is 63 samples! YAY! Though some of these will be going into holiday gifts so they aren't all for me.

The pants of doom are in the dryer right now, so you will get to see them soon, when they are clean.

Another guilty pleasure

So I've been babysitting my bum off since I last posted and most nights it has gone past midnight and then starting again at noon the following day! Tonight is my night off and I'm free until tomorrow at 5pm. I did get my Sampler Village box the other night, but decided to be a lazy bum today and I slept until 2 and then clean some. It was nice, though I did wake up to a cat sitting on my chest and staring at me. I'm convinced that she is plotting something that won't end well for me.

Anywho, I have recently started watching Invader ZIM on netflix while both kids are napping and I love it. Now I really want a deranged minion robot who masquerades as a dog like GIR. Eh, no, I actually want GIR. He's adorable.

See? He's so cute!

But he's not the brightest crayon in the box.....

I'm going to get the fun from the sampler box photographed tomorrow and post it then. And I might show you the pants of doom which are also rather awesome, if I do say so.

Ribbon!

Half a pound of ribbon next to Tangie

I got more ribbon right before I moved from The Ribbon Retreat and finally got around to organizing it so I can show you. The above picture was quickly snapped after I dumped it out to see what I got and then quickly shoved back into the bag until last night. I got one of the small grab bags and LOVE it. It was really cheep due to it being one of the sweet deals of the week when I ordered it. So much ribbon goodness for more bows!

The small solid color grab bag loot

Spring Rain mix

I think Em bear has gone into hiding at the though of having to be a bow model again.

HAPPY CHANUKAH!!! HAPPY HANUKKAH!!!

Happy Chanukah or Hanukkah everyone! Wow, it sure seems to be coming early this year. I haven't even finished getting my menorah all set up, though all I really have to do is plug it in. Live flame around cats doesn't work so well, so electric it is! And, yes there are two spellings for it.


I also forgot to mention in yesterday's post that the Sampler Village Holiday Hoopla boxes went on sale today. There are a few of the lavishly sample boxes (60-80 samples) left, though they won't be there for long and there are still the simply sample boxes (15-20ish samples). I got my order in for a big box and I promise to share when it arrives! Though it might have to be two posts depending on the pictures. We'll see.


Anyway...

HAPPY CHANUKAH!!!

My new home

I'm still here, I promise! I moved to my new place a week ago and haven't had internet until last night so I have been watching tons of DVDs. Here are the pictures of my new place.

Entering downstairs

Upstairs. There is a dresser off to the left

Sorry for the sideways picture. It refused to rotate. But this is off to the right of the above picture

Tiny bathroom. I was pretty much sitting on the sink to get this picture.








So welcome to my new place!

Yikes!

So yesterday was only the second day of NaNo and I'm already falling behind. I think I wrote something like 100 words yesterday so I have...er around 3,000 to write today if I don't want to fall further behind. So...YIKES!

I'm going to warn you now there is a kind of, but not really, icky picture a bit further down of my dog's cyst. It isn't really graphic, but I just figured I'd warn you.

I was also going to try to post some about the Regency dress because I've finished the patterned pieces (not patterning the 60 inch by 40 inch skirt piece and then 60 by whatever back skirt), but I am off to the vet later this morning with my poor little elderly Australian shepherd dog. She has had a cyst the size of a large grapefruit on her side for somewhere close to two months now and it is pretty large. The problem is we have had it drained around 5-6 times by now and it just keeps filling back up so we have to keep going back. It isn't bothering her as far as we can tell, but then you run into the possibility of it bursting (when just makes me gag to think about). Apparently it is common for older dogs to get cysts and they can be caused by just falling and hitting something kind of hard. We are starting to get to the point where we have three choices: keep draining it which there is a risk of infection every time we have it done, surgery to put in a drainage tub (again gagging over here) or surgery to try removing the cyst pocket. So when we take her in this morning we are going to discuss it with the vet.

Cyst (on the left) from above

Slightly hard to see, but you can kind of see the lump of the cyst

Rita, my dog, has been through so much this summer and it is just kind of sad that she has. We almost had to put her down earlier this summer, but she is one strong little girl. I thing Rita's personality was switched with a cat a birth because she is terrified of water, even if it is just sprinkling she will go and hide under the grill cover to avoid getting wet. Well, that makes bath time rather hard. We generally take her to a self serve dog wash place since they have the raised tubs and the dog fur dryer things. She has always tried to escape the water so we go in pairs to wash her so there is a backup person to help keep her in the tub, but in early June/late May the only time in a long time my dad went without me she managed to twist away from his grip while he was switching back to Rita's collar and she jumped out. She slipped and hit her head and didn't get up, even for a treat. Heck she didn't even or rather  couldn't even wag her tail. She was paralyzed from her neck down. So my dad rushed her to the vet. They did x-rays and ran tests, but nothing was very conclusive. We were told that there was the chance that she would recover, but they couldn't tell us to what extent. So we took her home and I sleep in the utility room on the floor next to her so if she needed to go out I could carry her because my mom can't pick her up by herself and my dad had a really early shift at work. When I had to take her out she could move her front legs and kind of support herself on them, but her back legs still weren't moving so I had to hold her up and sort of waddle around the backyard with her. We went back to the vet the day after the accident and they were amazed by her being able to move her front legs. So again we went home, this time we had an appointment a week later that Rita walked into to the shock of all of the people working at the vet's office and us as well.

Sorry for the longwinded post, but if it wasn't this I probably wouldn't be able to post one until Friday.

This is even better than a cupcake covered in frosting and sprinkles!

So I have the date set for when I get to meet my little sister! Of course I'm going to have to wait three months, but at least we have it all set up and ready to go. I'm literally bouncing off the walls at the moment!


C (my birth mother) and I talked for almost an hour and got all the details of flight dates and what not set. And we also proceeded to get into a debate of who was paying for the flight. I've set aside money to go, my parents offered to pay half and C told me before that she has been saving up practically since she handed me over to the agency so that if I ever wanted to come see her she could get tickets for me (and it brings tears to my eyes every time she tells me that). What we decided yesterday was that since she has some sort of frequent flier miles with one airline that she would pay and, in her words, I am "more than welcome to attempt to pay her back while I am there, but good luck on that". I think we are both just as hard headed as the other so it could be interesting. Anywho, I'm planning on spending five days with her and my sister and her husband in February! And I get to see my sis, K, and her school dance team at competition as well. I didn't have a chance before we meet for the first time t put together a photo album of me growing up so I'm planning on making on to take with me that she can keep.

Ugh, now comes the hard part. Waiting...and waiting...and waiting....and guess what? MORE WAITING!


On a separate note NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) starts tomorrow and I still don't really have a plot idea. That could potentially be a small problem, you know, just a really small, insignificant, massively huge, little problem. I'm off to doing some reading of plots up for adoption and possibly adopt a poor, lonely, starving little plot from someone. I am beginning to wonder if I might be crazy to attempt NaNo in the middle of everything else I have going on, but I'm going to give it my best shot. Hello 50,000 words (hopefully) in November! If (when) I figure out my plot I'll let you know.

Crab Rangoon Part 2

So this time around I decided to try adding some say sauce into my mixture and figured that I should probably sort of, but not really follow a recipe. Mind you I'm not gong to be making 48 rangoons during a test so I scaled it down with a few grumbles resulting from trying to do math in my head while converting between teaspoons and tablespoons. I ended up doing the conversions online. I also have read that spraying them with cooking oil will help get them golden brown and keep the ends from getting too crispy.

Grrrrr, still very crispy edges

 The innards of this batch was getting closer to what I want, but still not quite there. Part three will be using some worcestershire sauce in place of the say sauce. Here is the filling recipe from today:

5 1/2 tbsp softened cream cheese

3 tbsp imitation crab meat chopped up

1 1/2 tsp soy sauce

Mix together. Put a small spoonful in the middle of wonton wrapper. Seal wrappers and spray with cooking spray. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes.

I also got more ribbon today! Be prepared for more bows.

Solid grab bag from The Ribbon Retreat in comparison to Tangie. She then tried to burrow in it.

Baked Crab Rangoon

Well, this is going to be an uncommon thing I can almost guarantee you. Sorry. But you get TWO posts today! This is also because the food won't last long enough to be photographed tomorrow and if I put off this post I'm going to forget.

I have a very nice love affair going on with crab rangoon, but it is also a very picky love affair. The name of the dish along giver you a hint as to what is in it: Carb Rangoon. I'm going to give you three guesses as to what is one of the ingredients and your first two guesses don't count. And the winners are anyone who guesses CRAB! It was a very trick answer wasn't it? And then you have cream cheese, green onion, salt, pepper, mayo (?), worcestershire sauce, fresh ginger, garlic, soy sauce, yada, yada, yada. I'm not a fan of having all that extra stuff in them and no, not all of them are in every recipe. I just like my crab and cream cheese. I also wasn't wanting to fry them so baked it was. Don't get me wrong, I love fried goodies, but I  had gross friend crab rangoon earlier this week so I was attempting to be healthy.

Crab Rangoon

I baked them for 15-ish minutes at 350 degrees fahrenheit. They were good, but are missing something (maybe fried taste). Anyway I still have a lot of imitation crab meat and wonton wrappers left and I have to use the crab meat soon so more experiments for taste will occur during the next week or so. I should probably measure next time around too. 

While I was playing with the wonton wrappers I tried a few more things. I either need to spray the foil with non-stick stuff before I try the soy sauce flavored thingys or just fry them. The ones I was trying to imitate were baked so back to the drawing board.

Failed attempt to make soy sauce flavored stick/wafer things. They stuck to the foil. Might have to try frying them as well.

And dessert! I think I need to brush the wontons with melted butter next time before sticking them in the baking cups or try something to get the cornstarch stuff off the wrappers cause it makes them taste a little weird. Or maybe I'll brush it with egg and sugar? They were decent though. No recipe used on it either just some melted butter, chopped apples, cinnamon and brown sugar.

Apple pie in a wonton wrapper

Fun, fun, fun

So I'm going to guess that at least a few you you have heard of Sampler Village. What do you mean you haven't heard of it? Go check it out now...I can wait. And while you are over there and decide you want a box, they are going fast as in there are only 9 left when I checked a while ago.

Ok, are you back yet? I hope so because I'm going to continue on while you wonder why you haven't heard of this funness before. And yes, funness is totally a word. Anyway, today I got my Autumn Celebration sampler box of goodies in the mail. Upon opening the box there were two things in the box: a tissue wrapped something and another box (please insert cheesy dun dun DUNNNN music here).

And it has tulle which is destined for more bow making and more Em Bear modeling

Inside the teal tissue paper was the edible portion of the goodies including Coe's Homemade Style Noodles, a black raspberry lollie, harvest spice sugar cookies, an old-fashioned chocolate chip cookie and a mint. I'm trying to be good and not eat all the sugary goodies at once, but I won't deny that the temptation is there.

And the non-edible goodies in the box I had to divide into two so you could see better. Some of the items smell so good that it is imaginable that they could be edible. I mean, I guess you could eat them, but I don't think it would end very well. And I take no responsibility for it if you try. One of the soaps, Peppermint Tea Soap, was a thank you from Traci who started and runs Sampler Village.

The bath goodies: soaps, lip balm, lotion, soy tarts, soy candles

Other goodies including the tea that was in the box :cupcake toppers, hair flower, paper embelishments

Em Bear was going to come out and model the hair flower since my hair is kinda icky right now since I just went on a 3 mile walk before i got my package, but he went into hiding.

I will say that opening it around Tangie was rather interesting because as you know cats will sniff just about everything and then get persnickety when it is too strong. Then you get the 'you are mean' glare while they slink off to sulk. And I will admit that it can be a bit overwhelming for those of us with sensitive noses after a while. I'm going to sort things out later by scent so it isn't a mishmash of scents combined.

I also can't wait for the Nov/Dec Holiday Hoopla boxes to be out (Dec 1st)!

Links to the Sample Stores in my box (23!!!) (in no particular order) I also haven't tried every sample yet, but when I do I'll let you know:

Groovy Spookieville (Ella Dean was this month's mayor)

Coe's Homemade Noodles

Purrfect Gifts

SBS Teas

Gingerbread Cupboard

e.e. cookies (Temptation was too much. That was one really good cookie!)

Fortune Cookie Soap

Amy's Sweet Dream

South Texas Naturals

Candle Kitty

Hurraw!

Almond's Grace

Just Scrappin' Happy

craftee mcgee's

BirchHillCrafts

Kittycrossbones (not open at the moment due to moving, but open again soon)

A Penny For Your Thoughts

Appleford Paper

Southern Girl Bakery

Favors For Me

Arychic4lyfe

WhysperFairy

Metropolis Soap Co.

On a side note, Jennifer Grey wasn't eliminated last night on Dancing with the Stars! I was really excited about that. Though I still think that the bum slapping on Brandy and partner's part was no necessary and was rather vulgar.

I love opening mail

As some of you may remember I posted about winning a give away from Shana over at Blaze'n'Crochet well, here it is!

Bag full of goodies

Every thing shot (minus the bag)

Em Bear being a bow model

I think Em Bear is going to have a gender identity crisis after modeling the bows.

L to R: Lip balm (wild berry flavor), iron on cupcake patch, owl stuffie and coffee cozie. Em Bear is also wearing a ribbon head band that kinda blends in with his fur.

From left to right: a desk note pad, small notebook, and a 2 year calendar

Somehow I didn't get individual photos of the really fun run-ons and book mark (already in a book, Blue Bloods, which I just discovered I am three books behind since I have read the first 2). I'm not sure how she did it, but somehow Shana got into my head as everything is something I had one my list of things to get and you can never have too many hair things. For example I just finished up my last tube of lip stuff yesterday afternoon and I finished the little notebook I keep in my purse last week during CPR/AED/first aid certification class. And I needed a new purse/bag.

Thank you so much Shana!

And because Em Bear wanted his own picture

Em Bear acting cool (or at least trying to)

And yes my stuffed animals have their own personalities...what are you going to do about it?