Christmas Eve

I worked from home today, because I didn't think anyone was going to be at the office.  Christmas Eve is a company holiday for Todd.  We went to lunch at Rubios and had some yummy tacos.  Then we got the house ready for my dad and Shelly to come visit.

The presents were all wrapped and under the tree.








Some Christmas decorations on the table in our front foyer.


Stairway


View from top of the stairs.


Dad and Shelly arrived around 5:30pm. They brought a TON of food! All kinds of fruits: guava and oranges (fresh off the tree!), papayas, longans, a pineapple, and a couple of other fruits that I don't know the English names for them.


And they brought a ton of frozen dumplings, and soy sauce roasted eggs, pork ribs, and beancurd.


Todd and Shelly got some stuff ready in the kitchen.


We had a wonderful dinner together. I forgot to take photos during dinner though. After dinner, we watched "Star Trek" in blue-ray DVD that we got from Netflix. We were all enthralled! Dad and I and Todd all loved it. I think Shelly liked it too, but she didn't go on and on about it like we did. It is one of this year's best movies in my opinion. After the movie we were a little tired, so we all went to bed around 11pm. After all, Santa is coming soon!

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Disco Christmas + Treat Bags

I made this video on JibJab last year. After a couple of weeks it was going to expire, so I purchased the download. After one year, it's just as funny and disturbing, LOL. So enjoy... and have a very disco Christmas!




I wanted to show you some treat bags that Todd and I made to give out holiday treats to some of our coworkers. First I cut the different colored cardstock shapes using my Silhouette SD digital cutter machine. The raw materials looked like this.


Then we both sat there and assembled the santas.
Here's Todd, helping glue santa together.


After putting santas together, we glued them onto some plain kraft bags that I got at Michaels.


Then we wrapped some peppermint bark in festive cling wrap and ribbons.


We put those into the bags, along with some more Ghiredelli chocolate, and several varieties of tea bags.

Then I made some gift tags, using my Silhouette digital cutter again, and glued the pieces together.

I strung them on some ribbons I got at Wal-Mart.

Viola! Cute huh?

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Finally starting to relax

Most of you read here that Listgirl and I took a trip last week. Vacationing in early-mid December is an interesting experience. We've done it a few times now. It forces us to get any holiday gift shopping done before everyone else. Well, I suppose we could have waited until this week but we don't want that kind of stress. So we had the different kind of stress of getting it all done early. Now that Christmas week has arrived, we're seeing the fruits of all our labors. As Listgirl said yesterday, we can't show the gifts we've started to give out (to coworkers and such) quite yet. But they were very pleasing I have to say. The giving is so fun but receiving isn't so bad either. I got the popcorn pictured from my coworker and blog reader, Julie. She knows me so well, LOL. The low-tech wrapping job was humorously her. Like Listgirl, my parking lot is very empty and my bosses are all out of the office. It makes for peaceful days - especially knowing all my shopping is done. Of course, family will be arriving soon so that will break the routines a bit but we are ready for it. I spoke one more time at Toastmasters today - finishing up my Advanced Communicator - Silver manuals. I managed 11 speeches this year. (I still have to give two more speeches to achieve that level but not from my manuals). The speech was on the fascinating mideaval alchemist and physician Paracelsus. Read up on him if you like. Most of the material for my speech came from this great book by Joe Schwarcz.

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No Time To Catch My Breath

First day back to work after a vacation is always the hardest!
When I pulled into the parking lot, there were a ton of empty spaces.


I guess a lot of people are off this week.  I don't have the luxury of taking days off at year-end, because I work in accounting/finance.  Since I started working out of college 16 years ago, I've only had one year where I took the days between Christmas and New Years off.  And that was only because I transferred jobs and moved from Dayton, Ohio to San Diego, CA during that time.  So I was "in between jobs".

Upon logging into my work computer, I got a ton of emails.  And a last minute conference call at lunchtime, from noon to 1:30pm.  I didn't bring my lunch today, so what should I do?  Hmm...  I ended up going to Costco between 11:00 and 12:00, so that I can pick up our photo cards, some spinach, and some lunch.  About the photo cards... of course I felt a little guilty not digi-scrapping our card this year.  But desperate times call for desperate measures.  I just didn't have the time to make them.  Costco to the rescue.  I uploaded the photo to Costco.com last night and picked a design.  Did the text and whole thing in five minutes.  Then just picked a time and my Costco location for pickup.  Duuuuuude... it was so reasonably priced!  50 cards + 50 envelopes for only $15.  Really can't beat that.  And my rationalization was... only my digi-scrapping friends would know the difference between a pre-designed Costco card and something I custom-designed myself.  Everyone else couldn't tell the difference anyways.  :p

Tonight Todd cooked a sausage and bean burrito for dinner.  It only took 25 minutes, which was imperative since he had to grocery shop after work.  It was yummy and it felt so good to eat a homecooked meal after a whole week of vacation and eating out.

Todd also put up lights up our staircase.  We've had the garland and lights strung since after Thanksgiving, but we had to find some extension cords for the lights.  So pretty!


It is 12:44am and I'm still not done with all the holiday tasks that I had planned. Some things will have to wait until tomorrow. I'm so tired. But I'll show you a sneak peek of something cute I made with my Silhouette digital cutter tonight. Full photos of project later this week.

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San Diego Ain't So Bad

I woke up after getting over eight hours of sleep. Hurray!  We really liked the condo we stayed at in Kauai, but the bed was really uncomfortable.  Sleeping in my own bed was luxurious!

Todd went back to eating popcorn for breakfast again.  I had a couple of Eggo waffles.  We unpacked and did laundry, and organized some Christmas gifts.  After watching some football, it was time for lunch again.  I pushed the external temperature button on the car and it said 71 degrees.  On December 20th.  I told Todd that even though we're not in Hawaii anymore, I have nothing to complain about!  :)  After all, I wore a tshirt and flip-flops today.  San Diego is an awesome place to live.

We wanted to get some Japanese food, so we went to Shien of Osaka.  What??  They were closed for lunch on Sundays!  Doh!  We decided to drive to Little Tokyo in Carmel Mountain instead.  I will get my Japanese food!  We hadn't been to Little Tokyo in a long time, maybe over a year.  They have renovated the place, and it looked like new ownership and new menu.  Todd ordered a two-item lunch combo with teriyaki chicken and fried tofu.  I had tempura udon noodle soup. Both were lunch specials.




All our food was delicious, and because they were lunch specials, they were very reasonably priced. Little Tokyo wasn't my favorite before, but now I really dig the food and the lunch prices. We will be back!

In the afternoon, we watched the Chargers beat the Bengals with a field goal with only 3 seconds left in the game. The Chargers clinched the AFC West title for the third year in a row! Very exciting end of the game indeed. 

We sorted our week's worth of mail.  Got lots of Christmas cards from friends and family.  If you've sent us a card, just know that your card will be a little late due to our Hawaii vacation, but it's coming!

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