Look Away

Christmas Wrap-up

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas! John and I experienced our first Christmas at home this year. Usually we trade off going to Peoria, IL one year and Omaha the next. But since we live in Omaha now, we didn't have far to travel. It was a little strange on Christmas Eve to not have anything to do, so we just started our own traditions and it ended up being a very nice, cozy evening. We decided to make a chicken pot pie for dinner (our first attempt at a pot pie) and it turned out SO GOOD. We quickly started referring to as the Yule Pot Pie and might have to make it a tradition. Then we exchanged one gift from our stockings, followed by watching A Christmas Story. Then we headed out for an 11pm Christmas Eve church service. It was nice.

On Christmas morning we exchanged the rest of our stockings (our big gift this year was new living room furniture) and then opened the gifts that my family had sent us.

Roxy got a big shoe box for Christmas. She loves it.

Look! I'm a present!

So after sufficiently lounging around on Christmas morning, we gathered up a bunch of gifts and headed over to John's parents house for the day. We had a great time watching the kids open gifts (and opening some for ourselves), eating, playing games and just hanging out together. I think this pictures sums it up:

Twas the night before Christmas...

I hope Santa knows we moved this year. And I hope he can figure out how to get through the gas fireplace. What if the reindeer can't land on our steep roof?

Never Far Away

Assisting me while I work:

Keeping me warm while I lay on the floor:

Christmas Decorations

This is our first year in a house, so it was fun to decorate for Christmas this time. I put up a set on Flickr of most of our Christmas decorations if you want to see more. I was going to take a picture of the outside of our house with the lights on, but it'll have to wait because of the cold snowy weather.

Straight Up

This was me a couple of days ago with straight hair. I don't know why, but every time I straighten my hair I feel the need to take a picture. It's a rare occurance and I think I just want evidence that it can be done. But I am starting to get better at the process and am beginning to perfect the routine. Maybe I'll start doing it more often. 

covered

The ground is covered with snow. The kitchen table is covered with wrapping paper and gifts. The coffee table is covered with folded laundry. My desk is covered with post-it notes and coffee cups. I think it's time to go dig myself out.

Nutcracker Cat

Cardboard Wreath

Craft time!

Okay, I did NOT come up with this idea on my own. I saw it here. So I stole the idea and made my own version, which ended up being more complicated and time consuming. Because why would I do anything the easy way? Anyway, go check out the link to see her instructions. She recycled different colored cardboard and cut them into leaf shapes. But I only had brown cardboard, so I glued paper onto my cardboard leaves. And I didn't have any buttons, but I did have bells that I hot glued on. It is suuuper cute in person and also jingly. You could make it in any color combo.

Update

I got a response from the Typepad people on how to get my blog to do what I want. And it seems that my main option is to "upgrade" to a "premium" account. Which I'm not going to do. There may be one more way, but it confused me so I'm going to have to spend some more time looking into it later.

I have a new post over at the Paige B. Photography blog. I have to spread the photo wealth, so I posted over there today! BUT, look for a second post back here later! I'm blog-crazy!

What I'm up to

^{_{photo by John}}

Well I've been working from home this week. I have various photography related things to get done and a couple of freelance design projects that need me. But I am suffering from serious procrastinitis. My brain tells me to buckle down and work, but the next thing you know my mouse is clicking on my Google Reader to check all of the blogs that I read (36 to be exact...I wonder what's average?). Or Etsy or Flickr. I have also been easily distracted by Christmas shopping. I don't feel quite as guilty about that since it is something that actually needs to be done and I am not doing it for my own pleasure, although I do find pleasure in it.

One thing that has been bugging me is the layout of this blog. Once I created my Paige B. Photography blog my eyes were opened to how large my photos could be. So now when I post photos over here they feel like tiny thumbnails. Typepad is great for a writing blog, but considering the fact that this blog is supposed to be a photo blog, I am torn. I like how easy to use Typepad is, but love the look of my Squarespace blog. Plus, I really don't want to transfer everything to a new blog. I just want this one to work better for me. I tried to change the layout but it wasn't doing what I wanted it to and I got frustrated. If there is anyone reading this that can help me, that would be awesome. I just want one sidebar on the left (like there is now) and one main section where my photos can be 600 px wide. Help!