Deb's Birthday

For Debbie's Birthday on the 29th I got her something She has wanted for a l-o-o-o-o-ng time- a foodsaver. I got an amazing deal for it on Ebay awhile ago and it sat on the kitchen table for about a month all gift wrapped up waiting for the time to be opened. No amount of persuasion or begging would let it be opened early. No way man! So for her party on Monday she was completely surprised to get this.

Remember that big box full of green tomatoes I harvested from our garden back before halloween in a last ditch effort to salvage what I could from the freezing temps? Well, they ripened! We made homemade tomato soup from some (De-lish!), we dehydrated some, we have eaten some, and now we have "food-saved" the rest! There's nothing like having fresh tomatoes from your own garden in December! Maybe we will venture into ketchp-making next year.

 

It's amazing to watch the thing work. It's really like they say in the infomercials! You put the food in the bag, stick it in the machine, it sucks the air out and zips it shut! Presto! It even came with a special marinating bowl thing that you put the meat and the marinade sauce in. Somehow it's supposed to suck the juice into the meat and it only take a few minutes rather than hours in the fridge. we haven't tried that one yet but it will be fun to see if it works as well as the main machine.

Ta-da!

Callie lately

Here is a picture that I think is just too cute to not share!

One reason why they call me the plant doctor

This picture was taken in approximately December of last year. Shortly before this pic was taken the cactus was planted in a much larger pot. I planted it in this little plastic pot which was much more suitable to its size. Then awhile  later, in an unfortunate accident, the entire thing either fell, or someghow got damaged and it lost the farthest left branch and the branch that goes to the farthest right in this picture. The only part that was salvagable of the broken off pieces was one little tiny segment of one of the branches. That little segment got stuck in the soil along side it's 'mother' and the second picture is how it is doing today.

Ta-Dah!!!

Our new home

Here is the front view of our new place

the window on the right is the living room and the left is the kitchen. Here is a quick floor plan I drew up in Microsoft Paint(obviously not to scale, but it gives you an idea of what these pictures are referring to).

Kitchen

Master Bed/Bath

Other view of master

The rest of the rooms are pretty standard fare- square with closets. The bathroom is your typical mirror/sink, toilet, tub, combo- nothing special. You can see a tiny bit of the backyard through the sliding glass door, which is one of the nice perks of this place. It's not huge, but it is enclosed and its ours alone which means we don't have to worry about anyone's dog leaving us any lovely surprises.

The community bylaws are pretty strict about things there, but overall it's a very nice area and we are willing to put up with a few restrictions to be able to get to be in such a nice environment.

We like the vaulted ceilings, real wood cabinets, newer construction (they're only about 2-3 years old vs. the 20 or 40 years old of our last places) and the excellent neighborhood.There are tons of small families that live there that are in similar situations as our own and there will be lots and lots of kids for Callie to play with when she comes to visit.

 If you want our new address you'll have to email me that you want it and I'll send it to you!!

Take care!

 ~Z~

Pumpkin Walk 2010

Ok this is about two weeks late but I have to keep up with the tradition of posting our pictures from the trip to the Pumpkin walk this year! It must have been the camera's fault that the pictures got uploaded into the wrong folder so we couldn't find them for two weeks. Thanks to Debbie's studious searching practically every file on our computer, they have been found and now you get to see them!

 I think this year's theme was animated films. Every scene had one or two of those little green alien guys from Toy Story in it. i don't know if every picture I took had an alien in it, but maybe you can search and tell me!!

Peter Pan

A lot of these scenes deserve a few picures because they did SUCH a great job at them!!

 Amazing!

Don't know who totoro is, but apparently it's my neighbor!



Spongebob

Monsters Inc.

Mada-hoo-ha?

Gasgar, not hoo-hah!

Horton

How to Train a Dragon

Alice... In Wonderland....(I was was singing that part)

I couldn't think of her name for a minute...It's Rapunzel!

...and our very our "Goldilocks"!

Iron Giant (I never saw that one)

I had to zoom W-A-A-A-Y in on the sign in the corner to tell me what this scene was- 'The Princess and the Frog'





For an interesting flashback, Compare this picture...

With this picture...

With this picture...

And we're back to this year

Phew! It only took me 3 1/2 hours!