A Bit of This and That

I have a really bad habit of accumulating pictures on the memory stick in my camera.  Then I never download them or get them printed in a timely manner.  Today I went through all the pics on my camera and decided to delete the bad pics.


Imagine my surprise when I realized I had over 1600 pictures on my memory stick.  It was pretty much all the pics from this entire year!  I deleted close to 500 pictures.  But, there were still too many pictures for me to download onto my computer all at once.  It got stuck at around 700.


Moral of the story?  I need to get these pics saved on a flashdrive (which is better than saving them on the computer hard drive anyway) and then I need to get them printed.  And, in the future I must be better about dealing with my pictures straightaway (New Year's resolutions anyone?).


All this to say, I have a few pictures I wanted to share with you today...




Do you remember this?  It's one of the new bookshelves I bought a few weeks back from Craigslist.

Well, I had books from an upstairs (small) bookshelf and the books from our corner cupboard (shown here) that I wanted to consolidate into one place...

As I was going through books it started to get a little overwhelming.  I actually ended up donating several bags of books to the library.

I still left a row of books on the bottom of the corner cupboard.  I didn't want to make my bookshelves overly full.  I still need to organize this cupboard.

Here is the finished product (more or less).  I've reconfigured it a bit since I took this picture.  But, you get the idea.

Here's another look.  That fourth shelf down has my photo scrapbooks and other photo albums.  This whole post is reminding me that I really need to do Joseph's baby scrapbook.  

 
Our (lived-in) living room.  It really is that small.  And, we do not have a family room.

This next picture is a classic example of me amusing myself at the expense of my children.  Joseph was eating breakfast and had this cheerio plastered to his forehead.  For some reason I thought it was completely hilarious and had to get the camera.

And now, for some Thanksgiving pictures.  We were at John's parents house.  They live 2 houses down from us.  John's brother, Jay David and his girlfriend Stacie were in town.  They live in Minnesota ( I think?).  So, it was good to see them.

Mia, the dog, was also visiting from Minnesota.  Isn't she just the cutest?

My husband took on the turkey carving.

Edison wanted the drumstick.

A couple days after Thanksgiving my boys asked if we could make Gingerbread men.  We read the story The Gingerbread Man and there was a recipe on the back of the book.  Also, I saw a tip in Family Fun magazine where they said you can make 'paint' for gingerbread cookies, sandtarts, etc.  by using an egg yolk and a few drops of food dye.  

I had never tried this before, but it turned out really well.  You simply paint it on the dough and then bake as usual.  Here's my gingerbread guy.

My boys were a little more creative...

We had egg paint leftover and I hated to waste it.  So, I put it in egg carton sections and then stuck the whole thing in the freezer.  Later this week I pulled it out to see if it was still usable to paint on some sandtarts.  After thawing it out, it no longer had a paint consistency; it was more of a gel.  But, the boys still had fun 'painting' with it.

Finally, look what my father-in-law brought us.  Jersey milk is so rich and creamy.  And, this was raw milk...completely unprocessed.  So, so good.  Oh, and that's from Pa as in grandPA.

Have an awesome day!