While the rest of my pictures remain still unposted, by popular demand I have put up this year’s family Christmas craft. But they’re not just for Christmas, baby. Oh yeah.
Time to post this year’s Christmas craft! OF course, we NEVER make a christmas themed craft, because after all, what fun would it be to look at after Christmas?
This year UT and AL came up with the challenge: a blank decorative bowl to be painted with glass paints (transparent OR opaque) and to eventually be filled with water and a floating candle. Ding! Let the challenge begin!
UT actually surprised us this year with a beautiful project. Usually he screws up the Christmas craft to be funny, but this year he really went all out! Check out the detailed flowers! Leafy foliage!
This year, AL says, “My heart wasn’t in it!” But still, it is really quite lovely and matches with all her thinga-ma-bobs hanging about the house!
Mom made me drag out my new pajama bottoms to copy the 50′s style motif for her bowl. Quel Inspiration!
Dave worked the hardest of us all. After an orange, blue, and brown menagery that was about to win the “Retarded craft of the year,” he peeled that stuff off and started over! I’m sure this candle holder will cast a romantic light in his office!
Oak took the definition of “fish bowl” literally. Or it could be that we had watched Finding Nemo before craft time. Either way.
I took inspiration from the Iron Chef-style challenge of the craft and went for SUSHI (if you can even tell… haha). MM, I could eat a spider roll right now!
I just realized, between Oak and I you’ve got the entire life cycle of aquatic life. Oh yeah, we planned that. 
We also have a blank bowl that Timm-ay was supposed to decorate. Shame on you Timm-ay – you get the retarded Christmas Craft of the year award! UT, I expect you to win this trophy back next year… or I just won’t feel the holidays are complete!
In order to get our week 11 coupon for the Texas slow cooker, Tuesday night Oak and I went to Harris Teeter (lovingly called “Hairy Peeter” by our neighbor) around 11 pm.
Bad idea.
Shopping was just FUNNY. Funny as in when I get really tired and laugh at everything. “But hon, it’s crispy flaky layers! The coupon is for crispy BUTTERY flaky layers!” Yes. Oak was getting aggravated with me for taking about half an hour to choose some yogurt (only fat free was on sale – whatever!).
Once we had a nice full cart full of over $50 of groceries (we were working at our goal, remember?), we discovered that only the self-checkout thingys were open.
And hilarity ensued. We made friends with the nice lady voice that’s inside of the machine. “Welcome to Harris Teeter. Please scan your vic card.”
“Please scan your item, and place it in the bag”
*beep*
“Please scan your item, and place it in the bag”
… you get the idea.
Except, the bag part got mighty full after a few minutes, and I was like, hmm I should start putting the groceries in another cart.
“Please place your item back in the bag and wait for cashier assistance.”
So the cashier had to sit and press this freakin’ button to cut the bitch off so we could put the freakin’ groceries in their bag.
The idea is really quite good until you get things that don’t have bar codes. Then it takes like 15 minutes to figure out the code. Yahoo!
Add on that we were over the midnight mark during checkout which meant that the sales were ending for the week, the fact that half of our coupons didn’t work, and then the stupid checkout thing didn’t even give us our SLOW COOKER COUPON!
A short 45 minutes later, we were done with the checkout. Wahoo!
And a slow cooker now graces the kitchen. Hot!
I almost totally forgot to tell this fabu story of Oak and I going to see Along Came Polly.
So we were a tad late arriving to the theater. We made it to the movie during the previews still, but there was this group of 14 year old girls gaggling about the hallway.
Little did we know, they would come in and sit in front of us…. and the Saga begins….
Like, Oh. My. God! Where are we going to sit? OK so Lorrie you definitely need to sit next to Jessica because you have serious breath issues and Jessica has all the breath mints. Oh wait, but Jessica also has to sit next to Nikki because she might have to borrow Nikki’s phone to call her parents. Ok. Great. We all sat down now.
Oh my god, Dana just realized she forgot to buy popcorn! Ok everyone has to get up because Dana is sitting all the way inside. Wait, why don’t a few of us move over to those seats across the aisle, yeah that totally makes sense because then we can text message each other during the movie. Like, awesome!
(at this point, we are about 3/4 through the previews)
OK, wait. Jessica and Lorrie aren’t sitting next to each other now! Crap! Ok, so like let’s fix this. But wait, Billy is in the back of the theater! We totally have to go talk to him before the movie starts so he won’t think we are lame. OK, we can’t bear to sit across the aisle from each other. But maybe we can. No, we can’t. Yes… we can, and do, we are strong and we can discuss the movie over scotch later on.
OK. Dana is back. But she was sitting on the INSIDE! oh no! At this point the Canadian Moose from Brother Bear tell us to turn off our cell phones. Screw that! What if Billy or even hotter, Tyler, called. Oh my god. Tyler. SO HOT! Don’t even get me started.
Then out of NOWHERE comes this huge security guard guy. He tells us to all like sit down and be quiet when the movie starts. What-ever! It’s not like we’re in second grade or something, geez.
(and the movie begins….)
But THEN! Amy and Nicole arrived! Crap, now there isn’t any room for them in our seats. That’s ok, though, they’re going to practice their yoga during the movie by sitting on the floor. They told us the FUNNIEST story about Tyler in gym class. But we won’t go there.
So like, the guy told us to be quiet so instead of talking, we can totally text message instead! Luckily our phones glow in the dark.
Oops, Dana’s phone rang. Yes, Mom and Dad, I WILL be home at 8:30. Geez.
Oh my god…. *heart beating faster**…………………….. TYLER comes walking down our isle. Nicole couldn’t help but say “HI TYLER!” in the middle of the movie. It might have been during a quiet part of the movie, but really, everyone has to understand this is TYLER we’re talking about. What a hunk of precious middle school man.
Wow. Can’t believe that was Tyler!!!! **giggle giggle*** Wait, we better make sure our makeup is up to par in case we see him after the movie’s over. But, so we don’t miss crucial plot lines, we go in shifts of three, then we can tell each other what happened over text messages! Ha!
Then the LAME-O usher has the NERVE to come ask us to quiet down. We aren’t even talking! We’re TEXT MESSAGING! (Ok maybe a few words here and there and some giggles on the side.. .what-evah.)
Before we know it, the movie is over! We were so confused! Who is Polly, anyway? At least now we can discuss Tyler’s bulging biceps. We’ve been restraining ourselves so long! But, we did learn some new yoga moves in the process. That AND seeing Billy AND Tyler has got to be work $7 at least, right?
You know you live Where the Geeks Are when you see a license plate that says:
10110011
It did, however, provide me some amusement during a somewhat lengthy commute today.
Then again, I might prove myself as a member of Where The Geeks Are for a)knowing what the license plate was and b) thinking, “Wow, I should totally blog about that!”
I blame RPI. RPI and this dude for having the audacity to teach binary arithmetic.
At least I can wear my geek glasses in pride. (Can Lisa Loeb say the same?)
Can we say that student loans are HIGHLY annoying? I think we can.
Trying to consolidate my federal loans has become a serveral month process. To those of you not saavy to this – basically I currently have about 6 different loans from 3 different companies for my stafford and perkins loans. It’s supposed to be easy, you give them your loan info and bam! Your loans are consolidated and you pay one bill per month instead of 6.
Aneeway, when I first applied (think November-ish) they recommended doing it online so I did that, and the system managed to crash 3 times, which meant I had to keep inputting the same crap over and over again. Then, by some miracle, it went through.
Several weeks later I get a notice that one of my lenders hasn’t replied. Great. So I call the consolidation people, and they are all like, WELL we can consolidate all your other loans and then you can just add this one on later. So I am like OK cool I will do that then.
Then, a few days ago my notice of consolidation comes. I am not missing just the one loan, but TWO! Turns out over the phone they only consolidate the Direct Loans loans. Well geez, thank you for telling me! They are ridiculous. So now I have to add 2 loans on. They also had the wrong payment plan chosen, so I had to get that changed too.
I’m sorry, giving away money should not be this hard!!!! lol. But soon, I’ll be down to 3 different loans per month instead of 85. Woohoo!
If you somehow escaped college without millions of loans, I salute you!
My lack of updates are for no good reason, other than I haven’t felt particularly motivated to do much of anything lately. I got a winter cold that I’m still sniffing over, and cold weather in general makes me lazy. Yes, folks, it does get cold here – we’ve reached below 20 degrees, which after having a few days that reached over 75 last week feels pretty damn cold. Nothing compared to the -30 windchill of Troy, but still chilly.
The winter hibernation mode has gotten me interested in working on my (paper) scrapbooks – I still have dozens of printed digital photos that I still need to make pages for. As much as I enjoy the online world, I still feel like it’s necessary to have printed photographs… they seem more permanent and tactile.. and besides, I like working with art and paper, and this gives me a reason to do so. Oak accompanied me to Michael’s while I browsed their 50% off scrapbooking supplies – he even helped me dig through all the deals. He (and I, I suppose) were very excited to find a piggy die-cut. Now we just have to go take some pictures while eating barbecque so I can make a scrapbook page featuring this star. lol.
We’ve also found it a personal challenge to Eat Out If There’s a Coupon. We had some yummy Mediterannean (Think Ali Baba!) pitas filled with gyros, dinner for two at Houlihans, and, breaking the rule, we went to The Q Shack. The Q Shack is now up there with Red Hot and Blue as my favorite barbecque. Plus, Paul Miyamoto (my favorite old graphic design professor) would approve of their corporate identity. Most barbecque places don’t understand the importance of their graphic designs. Anyway, Oak and I decided the next time a large number of people come to visit, we’re getting the tailgating pack. Lup lup!
I’m sensing my lunch break is almost over because my Lean Cuisine is gone and I have only a few Doritos left! Damn!
It was a great holiday of friends, family and fun! Tomorrow is back to the old grind. *sigh*
Oak and I had a crazy coupon grocery shopping day. We saved over $90 with coupons and VIC card savings! Only a few weeks left before we get our free slow cooker. Are we cray-zee or what? I am such a huge Harris Teeter fan. Food Lion is just no comparison.
Yesterday we hit *many* shopping venues on I-85. Let me tell you, it was hot stuff! I got a book on scrapbooking for only $5! ding. We also had some barbecque in Greensboro, which was a long way coming, and it turns out it’s not even the kind I like (i prefer the red sauce kind over the thin vinegary stuff). Greensboro, by the way, does not seem to have much to offer besides a few sketchy S&A/GW boutiques. We did find out at the visitor center though, that they have a water park! Yay. I love water parks. Only if it were water park season
So, what did everyone get for Christmas?
