The Nutcracker

The nutcracker is always beautiful, but if you have someone you know performing in it that makes it ten times more enjoyable to watch! This year I got to go see my friend Brenna! She was a Bon Bon. The bon bons were little candies with red cute doll cheeks that came out of mother ginger!

Brenna’s goal is one day to be the Arabian girl! I think she is quit capable! Here is a video of the Arabian dance. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKzcFo8Xn7U&feature=related

There are many parts in the nutcracker. My 3 favorite are Arabian, Snow, and Doll

Snow- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KG5MXgj1gJ4&feature=related

Doll- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q3k8P918s8

Dressed and ready...

a friend, Brenna - she's so cute with her stage make-up, and me

Mom's turn: The ULTIMATE Christmas surprise!

Sharing the incredible joy my husband brought me this year! He outdid himself and everyone kept the secret until Christmas morning. I'm so loved!!! For some reason the video loaded at 10minutes...it's actually a little less than 3 min, sorry for being so illiterate on Blogger's editing. Blogger also cut the pixles, so the quality isn't fantastic...but you'll get the general idea :-D

Mom's turn: Green Thumb, uh maybe

Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
how does your garden grow?
With horse apples and hay and leaves of the day…all in a row.

Mom's turn: Christmas Crafts

Christmas is a time of joy and love and not shopping. I think the world has gotten away from this concept with the commercialism and “consumer” mentality that strives in the US today. As a mom, it’s more important to me now than ever to share my beliefs and hope some simple traditions carry on in my daughter’s heart as she grows and comes to find the meaning of Christmas for herself. One of the main things I try to do is make gifts – as old-fashioned as this concept is, surprisingly many people still cherish it. What a truly meaningful way to show you love someone by spending several hours putting your heart into a gift made by your hands instead of purchasing something quickly. A few I did this year are the Swedish weave towels, Christmas tree ornaments (the one shown was for a specific gift…my favorite were the snowmen I made),a paper tree,

Adding the finishing touches

personalized gift boxes for tiny treasures,Christmas music CDs, and some acrylic Post-it note holders with matching pen.Thankfully, my daughter already seems to enjoy this tradition. Her personal contribution to the annual gifts has been her famous persimmon bread from the fruit she harvests every year from her grandfather’s tree. Hers seems to be the favorite of the recipients, as they generally start asking about it around September!!

“And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ‘till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.” – Dr. Seuss

Mom's turn: FABULOUS feet

Loving the Frankinstien affect!!!!

WOHOOO – I’m in party shoes and running again :-D

every girl needs a pair of peep-toe pumps

Don’t ask if I’m supposed to be yet…let’s not go there! It feels great to be “back in the saddle again” so to speak. However I’ve already lost precious, hard earned distance off of my weekly mileage – frustrating as a runner always trying to improve your personal best. My goal is to run the Crescent City Classic in March right at an hour…THERE, I said it to everyone – can’t take it back now!! Gotta love accountability, UGH! SOOOO, on to the training – counting on lots of new things to help me get motivated and make up for down time.

hmmm, I see new shoes in my future :-D

In the mean time – I need to get up out of the “CHAIR” and Run Forest, RUN!!!!!!

Look...it's the Bionic Woman!

I Love Cats!!!

I love all cats especially the cute and cuddly ones! My favorite cat breed is bengales. The reason for this is my top three favorite animals are 1) cheetah 2) leopard and 3) jaguar. What is a bengal cat? The bengal cats are a hybrid breed between domestic and wild cats.

The bengal cat was first registered into the TICA in 1983. At the moment there are three different bengal cats being bread, they are:

• The Serengeti Cat - developed from crosses with Oriental or Siamese with the aim to produce a domestic cat mimicking the appearance of an African Serval, without actually incorporating Serval genes by hybridization.
• The Toyger - developed from crosses with domestic cats with the aim to produce a striped 'toy Tiger.
• The Cheetoh - an attempt to blend two existing domestic breeds of spotted cats with defined characteristics (Bengal and Ocicat), into a third

The male bengal tiger can way as much as 15 lb, and the female averages between 8 and 10. Over the years the bengal cats have developed a friendly temperament while still strongly resembling the wild cats. Bengal cats are very energetic, intelligent, and curious.

What is funny about bengal cats is they enjoy water!! Bengal cats are almost more doglike then cat. They will play fetch and hide and seek! Cats that bond with there owners can be taught tricks such as sit, shake and go for walks on leashes.

The qualities you want when buying a bengal is rounded ears and fatter tails than a domestic cat. This makes the cat appear more wild!

Mom's turn:At last...in the Christmas spirit

The most exciting thing this year, aside from finally finding all of our Christmas decorations after the move, is to have a mantel to decorate and hang our stockings from! Now I am still waiting for our weather to get cold enough to use the fireplace again...the woas of living in a Southern state. But with the Christmas music in the background and the a/c down to 65 degrees - it's getting easier to pretend...as long as you don't go outside!!! heehee

Notice Santa's little helper sitting in the chair wondering where his stocking is!

The diligence of searching for the perfect tree paid off - look how beautiful...with one loan present underneath. SOMEONE's been good this year :-D

And it just wouldn't be complete without a visit to Santa Paws at PetCo!!! Procedes for the photos were used to help homeless pets.

O Tannenbaum - O Christmas Tree

My belief is Christmas is just not Christmas with out a real tree! We have only had one Christmas without a real tree. I was quite mad.

Last night we went tree shopping. Let me tell you there were not a lot of good choices, especially with my dad. He is the pickiest tree shopper you will ever meet. This is probably because he studied landscape architect. My mom liked all the skinny ones, my dad liked all the shorter ones and I liked the fat and tall ones. So we all disagreed on each others trees. But in the end we got an 8’ tree that was a happy medium between fat and skinny.

We are going to go light on the decorations this year mainly because we don’t quite know where all our stuff is from the move. The theme is going to be purple. It will be an awesome tree for our first Christmas in our new house

The perfect tree

Mom's turn: Young Eagles Association

TOTALLY cool – Teeny got to fly a plane courtesy of YEA!!! What a glorious day it was for flying, too!!! The sky was crystal clear and the temperature was a crisp 68 degrees. She flew in a Cessna with Mr. Will and got to see Baton Rouge from up high during a 20 minute flight. On the return flight to the runway Mr. Will let her take the controls…WOW! She was amazed that the slightest shift of the control stick had a big affect on the plane’s movement. She landed and came out of the plane grinning like the Cheshire cat! We asked if she wanted to take lessons now, but she said not yet.

Waiting her turn

Introduction to the plane and pilot

are you ready????

THAT WAS AWESOME MOM!!!!!!!!!!

Ikebana

Recently my mom bought an ikebana vase in Colorado. I decided to surprise her one day and make an arrangement, and it was fun!

Ikebana is a flower arrangement that the Japanese do, and take very seriously. They even have ceremonies over it.

Here are some arrangements I have done. In the last one I used the shampoo ginger I previously wrote about.

Mom's turn: Back in the Saddle Again

Christina was excited to be riding again…all girls seem to love horses! She has returned to Mrs. Marjorie, where she previously took lessons before we moved out of state two years ago. There, she rides American Saddlebred horses focusing on the Saddle seat style of riding – favoring the three-gaited horse showing in walk, trot, and canter. Here she is on Charlie – a new addition to the barn since we were here last.

Mom's turn: My boys

Caught all three of my "boys" soaking in the sun...too precious! Definitely one of those "awe" moments in my life - to realize the amount of happiness on one couch! How blessed am I!!!

Mom's turn: Scrap-mania

WELL - I was finally able to get in my new scrapping room and utilize it! How exciting - so here are a couple of the results. The "Easter" layout took hours...although somehow the effort does not come across in the picture. But it was worth it! I even got to use my beloved Cricut that's been collecting dust...
The second is the beginning of a Christmas idea...can't share the whole thing or it might spoil the surprise for a few ;-)

Thanks to my many gifted friends for sharing ideas and helping me out of a slump :-D

Mom's turn: This little piggy...

Okay - well I'm still on the mend and recovery has not been nearly as fast as I had hoped for. It's been almost five weeks and I'm still a bit gimpy and unable to run or bike. There is a fair amount of bruising left and quite a bit of tenderness both on top and bottom - which was surprising to me considering how well I've behaved...well almost :-DAs my girlfriend said "OH NO YOU DIDN"T!" Oh yes I did *grin* Somehow the gimpy walk took away all the "sexy" that the shoes might have brought to the outfit! HAHA And then I came down with severe food poisoning as a direct result of my night out...serves me right I guess! I wasn't able to get on my feet for another 4 days afterwards!!!! ARGH!

Shampoo Ginger

Does shampoo ginger work as well as factory shampoo?? This was my science project -

The shampoo ginger is a wild plant originating from India that grows a slimy shampoo substance. It starts off as a green pod producing small white flowers, almost like a pineapple. As it grows it gets taller and starts to turn red. The juice inside thickens up a little but not much.

The viscosity of the shampoo ginger when the pod was green was like water. When we squeezed it we got about ¼ of a cup. The juice did not smell strong. Then we squeezed the pod when it was red. The viscosity during this time was more like honey water. We also got more. About a 1 cup.
I found out many things from experimenting with the shampoo ginger. One is that they make real shampoo for a reason! The shampoo ginger smells nice, but it was not strong enough for my hair. When you use the shampoo ginger it doesn’t lather or anything; it is just silky. To get the shampoo you have to squeeze the pods until all the juice comes out. You end up getting about a half of cup and the pod is withered afterward.

Based on everything I have done I have concluded that factory shampoo is over all better. The factory shampoo cuts threw natural grease a lot better and makes your hair shinier. Shampoo Ginger works well for making an ikebana arrangement instead.

For more information, check out LSU's Ag site for a short video.

My pastime. My passion!

Arts & crafts have been one of my favorite hobbies for a while now! My first professional art lessons were given to me for my 11th birthday with Mr. Larry Casso at BRFA. I draw all kinds of stuff, but my favorite type of drawing is Manga. Out of all of the art mediums I’ve tried, acrylic, pastel, water color, and sketching, sketching is by far my favorite.

My dream horse!

Magnolia - our state flower

"I DO believe in Fairies...I DO!"

My dog, Samson...yes, he really smiles.

Spider lilly