The Most Wonderful Time

Allie thinks it's the most wonderful time of the year... when the humidifier comes back out!

Humidity tastes great!

Porch

Our porch is officially ready for Christmas now.  It's complete with the boxwood tree I made, a wreath from our local nursery, and icicle lights hung by J.

... But the prettiest sight to see is the holly that will be

On your own front door.
 

A Griswold Christmas

Clark Griswold would be proud of our neighbors.

Sadly, there hasn't been a Cousin Eddie sighting.

Snow Day

It's a snow day for our entire family.  Hooray!

The snow is still falling as I write this post.  Not to worry, though - J brought home an emergency supply of Reese's peanut butter cups in case we're snowed in.

Update:  The snow has ended and the sun is out!  We even got to go for a long walk!

Santa Gator

Allie got to open her Christmas present early so she can enjoy it throughout the holiday season.

It's a Santa Gator!

For size perspective, here's the non-Santa Gator that was Allie's first toy when we brought her home.

Chomp chomp!

Boxwood Tree

Our church offered a boxwood workshop to make holiday decorations.  I chose to make a Christmas tree (the other options were wreaths and centerpieces).

One of the women has a large property with boxwoods, so she trims them once a year before the holidays and brings in the trimmings for the sanctuary wreaths and the boxwood workshop.

I started with a square, plastic dish with a block of moist floral foam.  After two hours of picking through boxwood, trimming pieces, and arranging them in the foam I ended up with a tree!

I chose the Santa pick from a box of decorations supplied and one of the ladies helped me make a big bow for the top.  I'm proud of my creation!

It's the perfect Christmas addition to our kitchen table.

Double Birthday

Happy birthday to J's mom:

and A's dad:

We hope you both have wonderful birthdays!

How Lovely are Thy Branches

Allie is very detail-oriented and particular about things around the house.  If anything is out of place or something new is added to any room, she feels the need to investigate.

Sometimes it's a good thing - as in the case of our missing smoke detector.  We got the lovely 'low battery chirp' in the middle of the night a few months ago.  J got up and removed the batteries until the morning (this is one of three smoke detectors in our house, so we weren't in danger of burning alive).  The next day, Allie started barking at something in the hallway - it was the missing smoke detector that had been removed from the ceiling.  Once J replaced the battery and hung it back up, everything was back to how it should be in Allie's mind.

Sometimes it's not a good thing - as in the case of J's wedding boutonniere.  We had let the boutonniere J wore for our wedding dry and had kept it on the shelf next to our unity candle.  One day as I was dusting I moved the boutonniere to a lower shelf while I was working on the high shelf where we usually kept it.  A split second later, Allie had grabbed it in her mouth and the poor dried flowers were crunched and fell apart.

After these stories, it's not a surprise that Allie is very, very interested in Christmas trees.  Lights, ornaments, branches... they are almost too much to resist.  In an effort to strike a balance between Allie's curiosity and our desire for a Christmas tree, we've decorated our three foot tree once again this year.  I never thought when I bought this tree for $9.99 at Target the first Christmas we were married that it would get so much use.

Despite its small size, it ends up being a cute little tree once it's decorated.

And the best part is that we can stand the baby gate in front of it in case a certain member of our household likes it a little too much.

Dog Teasing

Video evidence of the teasing Allie endures:

Ham Day

Our Thanksgiving wasn't Turkey Day, it was Ham Day since that's what we had for dinner!  We had ham, sweet potatoes with pecans, roasted carrots, cranberry sauce, fruit compote, and rolls.  Here's the spread:

Not pictured is Allie who completely wore herself out during the holiday.  She spent yesterday recovering from all the excitement:

Being a guard dog is exhausting work!

Nostalgia

Looking through old photos, it's hard to believe how tiny Allie was the day we brought her home!

Playing with her gator for the first time.

In the yard with her mom.

Our first family photo!

And now she's an adult - where did the time go?!

Short Shoppers

I saw a couple of very short shoppers while I was at Trader Joe's today.

Two guide dogs in training!  The trainers were working with them both outside the store on the sidewalk and inside the store walking through aisles.

What a great thing to see!

Questionable Products

A few questionable products seen recently.

This is the sort of thing that may have contributed
to the financial crisis in the U.S.
Seen at our church yard sale.

These jeans may prevent your wallet from being stolen,
but not your manhood.
Seen at Ikea.

I wish the inventor of this product would go on Shark Tank.
The comments would be hilariously brutal.
Seen at Wal-Mart.

Don't get your hopes up, people on my Christmas list - I didn't buy any of these.

Turducken

Did someone say Turducken?!?!

Product Review: Westinghouse 46" LED TV

From J:

Our house has a nice, large space above the mantle that's perfect for hanging a large TV. Naturally, we went out and bought one. It was a bit of an impulsive purchase - we were at Sam's Club one day and I saw this Westinghouse TV on sale. I was familiar with what TVs cost at the time and it was a very good deal; I pulled up some reviews on my phone and they were generally good. Awesome, we found a TV. Bought it, crammed it into the back of the Accord and hung it on the wall.

TV features:

• 1080p, 46"
• LED edge-lit backlight
• 2x HDMI, 1x composite, 1x VGA video inputs
• Multiple cinema presets
• Randomly turns itself off and won't turn back on after 1.5 years

Pretty good, amiright? Except for that last part...let's see if we can do something about that. A little bit of research on the internets reveals to me that, unlike the reviews that were posted when this model was new (when we bought it) the more recent reviews are terrible, echoing the exact same issue that we were having. So what's an enterprising young doctor to do? OPEN IT UP AND FIDDLE WITH THE INSIDES (this phrase is only appropriate for doctors of engineering).

23 screws later, the back plate is off and I can play around with the ribbon cables. Discovery: the right hand LED strip is shorting (dramatic sparking! Seriously, be careful doing stuff like this). I pulled the front bezel off and removed the bottom LCD screen retainer (14 screws) to expose the LED lighting strip.


Not working.

Ideally, I would pull off the LED strip power connector and try and put some insulation around it to prevent the short. The LEDs are mounted on an aluminum bar (the silver strip along the bottom) that's grounded, so that's where the short is occurring. But Westinghouse decided to glue the connecter into place, so that's a no go. Next solution: fiddle with its placement as much as possible to try and get the offending wire out of contact with the aluminum bar. A few minutes later:

Victory.

 

Missing is a photo of the intermediate step when I just had the left side LED strip lit up. I also reassembled it so that there's minimal pressure from the bezel around that connector. We'll see how long the fix lasts, as there's really no permanent fix that I can see that's available to me. Suggestion to Westinghouse engineers: save $0.05 by using fewer screws and buy nicer ribbon cables that won't self-fray and ruin your product. Suggestion to everybody reading this: don't buy a Westinghouse.

 

 

Verdict: 1/5. Would not buy again.

 

 

Update: 15 hours post-fix, TV is dead again. Never again, Westinghouse. Never again.

 



Kitchen Island 2.0

In the ongoing quest for additional storage space, J and I have been eyeing an empty corner in our kitchen for quite some time.  We had been talking about building a desk to fit in the corner since we couldn't seem to find one already made that would fit the space.

Yesterday, J had a brilliant idea - perhaps the island we've used in our kitchen would fit in the corner... and it did!

The former island is now our corner dog supply storage area.  I plan to get a second basket like the one on the top shelf the next time we're at Ikea and we'll be set.

You might be wondering what we did to replace the island.  Well, we got a bigger and fancier island!  The new island has more work space on the counter and more shelf space underneath, both of which make us very happy.  J and Allie did an excellent job assembling it.

And here's the finished island... drumroll............

11/11

Happy Veterans Day to all the current and former members of our armed forces, especially to my hero - my dad.

I Had a Cat Drawn for You

J and I love to watch Shark Tank.  And one of our favorite entrepreneurs on the show was the creator of "I Want to Draw a Cat for You."

$9.95-$14.95 was a little more than I wanted to pay for a funny surprise, but when a half price Groupon became available, that was a price I was willing to pay.  So without J knowing, I purchased a cat drawing for him.

Believe it or not, there is currently a 2-8 week wait for cat drawings, so it turns out that this business model has actually been working.  So after several weeks of waiting, J's cat drawing arrived... and here it is:

J loved it!

Well, At Least...

Even if our football team is terrible this year, at least our mascots are adorable!

Thank you for your continuous cuteness, Albert and Alberta.

Three Peas in a Pod

Today I had the privilege of co-hosting a triplet baby shower for my wonderful friend!  The theme was Three Peas in a Pod... I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

I'm looking forward to meeting these three little sweet peas in just a couple of months!