a little bit of this, a little bit of that

• These days Jon and I have found ourselves rushing to bed before the cats arrive so that we can get settled and designate the appropriate amount of blankets and sheets to ourselves. If we get in bed after the cats, a night-long fight over who sleeps where occurs. I woke up this morning to a Shinji pushing my legs out of his way. If you haven't noticed already...we've turned into those crazy cat people.

• Speaking of being a crazy cat person, I found a kit for knitting catnip mice at a yarn store and made a few mice for Shinji and Nuku Nuku to play with. They enjoyed licking the directions and the box it came in better than the finished mouse, but that's okay...I learned how to increase and decrease.

• Jon and I are trying out meal planning this week. We picked out 6 recipes to try and bought all of the ingredients on Sunday night. So far, so good. It's nice not having to decide what to eat while at work and then stopping at the grocery store every day to pick up one or two ingredients.

• Jon is my hero (again)...he reformatted and fixed my work computer this past weekend. Now everything is running better and faster than ever! And...the other day I got a weird muscle cramp in my foot and he says: "Do you want me to get your heating pad so that you can look at it again?" Does he know me or does he know me?

• I finally painted over the last patch of old owner color last night. I'm really glad to have that last bit of peachy cream gone from the house. We bought a new programmable thermostat and it saved us $40 on our heating bill last month (that's more than the unit cost itself!)..

• Great news: The Shins released their newest album, Wincing the Night Away, today. It's on my nonexistent "albums to purchase" list. I pulled out my old albums tonight and have been enjoying their music all evening.

• We finally bought our Japan tickets last week, and actually saved a lot of money because we waited forever. We're leaving in just under two months! Can't wait for the big trip and the break from work.

• And...I'm almost finished with Jon's looong scarf. I really hope that I can finish it tonight and move on to something different!

blood oranges

I am seriously addicted to these little red oranges. I have two or three a day and I've bought out most of the stock at Trader Joes. Don't let the name fool you...these blood oranges are tastier and more tart than your typical orange.

weekend project

Jon and I had a very relaxing and low key weekend. It was our first weekend at home with no pressing house projects or visitors, so we relished in the freedom. We watched a few movies that we rented at blockbuster and we had some time to ourselves in our separate rooms. Jon, the perfect example of an only child, has fully taught me the joy in alone time and I think I appreciate it almost as much as he does!

I pulled out some of my leftover fabric scraps from the first quilt that I made and decided to make the "Hold Me Close Heating Pad Cover" from Quilts by Denyse Schmidt. The book has inspired me again and I think I'll be making the Big Zig quilt in grey and green for Jon sometime soon. He requested that I make him a quilt to match his edit suite a few months ago and I always need an excuse to buy more fabric, right? : )

I spent Saturday evening cutting, assembling and quilting each side and finished it up yesterday afternoon. After I finished, it occurred to me that it's not a very useful project because I'll only really look at or use this heating pad a couple times a year. Oh well, I guess it was all about the process, right?

Jon's website

Check out Jon's new website. He finally got it all up and running yesterday. I love the colors on it!

craftspace

oops, what have I done?

I was trying to be a good wife today. I agreed to take Jon's car in for an oil change even though I loathe sitting in the waiting room at the car dealership waiting for the car to be finished (there's just something about that smell). I got his car out of the garage this morning and started backing up, only to hear a horrible screaching sound. It took me a while to figure out where the noise was coming from, but when I looked over, I saw that I had driven the car the metal fence along our driveway. I got out of the car and frantically started rubbing the white paint off of the car. Things did not look good...I had carved a three foot long scratch along the door, side panel and rear panel of the car. I did what any normal person would do and kept on driving to work.

My coworkers started laughing when I told them what happened. My boss even walked outside to size things up. Her prognosis: "you're not going to be able to cover that thing up very easily." Some other coworkers advised me to blame it on a grocery cart or play dumb, but I couldn't do it. I decided to call Jon to tell him the bad news. I could tell he was really disappointed, but he did a nice job of not blaming me. He told me that it's pretty tough to back out of our driveway because it's so narrow and that at least it's on the passenger side so that he doesn't have to see it every day and that it's just a car and I shouldn't worry about it. It still didn't make things any better.

I have a feeling that this is the last time I'll be driving his car for quite a while.

In the meantime, I'm hoping that my collection of gifts will smooth things over (that, and the car wash did wonders for minimizing the scratch). A Japanese book catalog, a free sushi calendar and a new ginger grater wrapped in Japanese newspaper.

another scarf finished

I've been knitting away because Jon has told me that I'm not allowed to buy any more yarn until I use up the stuff that I've bought so far. That equals three more scarves to finish. I put the finishing touches on this Manos del Uruguay scarf - it was the first scarf I started on using a simple garter stitch.

Jon stayed home from work today because he wasn't feeling well. Funny that he felt well enough to take some pictures of our lounging cats...

If you look carefully, you'll notice that Nuku Nuku has not strayed from her new favorite green blanket...she loves that thing! Thanks, Jodi!

in the spirit of new year's workout routines

My sister, Ruth, introduced me to the wonderful world of Bodyflex a few years ago. She discovered it through a friend's mom's workout video collection and bought her own copy on ebay. It's more of an ab workout, I'd say. Just pop in the video and you are sure to work those ab muscles while you laugh at the host and the ridiculous way she contorts her body. Our family has watched it quite a few times and Ruth always gets a kick out of showing it to new people. Here is the highlight reel from youtube (fyi: she's demonstrating a form of aerobic breathing).

happy 2007

We rang in the new year last night with a low key gathering. Jon created some more guitar hero and Dance Dance Revolution converts... And the party got wild after midnight with a rousing game of catch phrase. What is it about that game that makes everyone laugh so hard that their eyes start watering?

Our mountain biking buddies from Ohio, Scott and Melissa, spent the night and Jon quickly learned that asking house guests what time they are leaving in the morning is probably not the best way to make guests feel welcome. Oops, we're still laughing about that one. I got up this morning and I thought they had really left without saying goodbye. Luckily they were just loading up their car and we got to have breakfast together before they departed.

We spent the rest of the day relaxing and catching up on our guilty pleasure, The OC Season 4. The Christmas tree and all of our decorations have been stored away and now our living room is looking a little bit emptier. It's back to work tomorrow for both of us.