My Talented Sister

For Christmas my talented sister Becky made me this purse. It's made out of different colors of silk and is beautful.

In the past she has made these other beautiful purses for me. And there are many more that I haven't taken pictures of.

I have a garmet bag and a gym bag.

This is a cute tote bag she made.

This is a small bag from Whole Foods. Becky put presents in these bags for each of us. This makes a great environmentally friendly gift bag! And they are cheaper than regular gift bags.

I treasure everything that Becky has made for me. They are always unique and quite beautiful. I love purses, and love having one that no one else has!

Baking

Anyone that knows me will tell you I'm not much of a baker - despite my name. I do love to cook but appetizers are usually my forte. For some unknown reason, I decided to bake. I think it's because I'm leaving Bill for a few days over the holidays and wanted to leave him with some goodies.


I don't even own a mixer so this is all done with a hand mixer.


I made some shortbread cookies because we both love them. At first I followed the recipe and put them in a pie pan but decided to use my silicone molds for them. They turned out so cute and are quite tasty.

















I made peppermint bark that came out quite well too. Did you know that more peppermint bark is sold than any other item at Williams Sonoma? The batch I made cost about $3.00.

I made bite sized brownies in my silicone molds. I also made chocolate chip cookies, not very Christmasy but Bill's favorite. And I made gingersnaps. They did not turn out to what I really wanted. Then I read Kimmie's blog and she had exactly what I wanted. So I hope she brings some home for Christmas. I will now be using her recipe. This recipe was good, but more of a molasses ginger cookie.

I love technology

And shout out to Becky.


Yesterday we finally got fed up enough with our wireless setup to buy a new one. We had our motorola modem for the DSL and then a Linksys wireless router. For wireless, the router was very good. I actually had no problems with it. But late at night as Bill is playing Warhammer, it would just drop and he was wired to it. Every once in awhile, it just would not connect to the DSL and we would have to wait for awhile.


So our solution was to get a box that is a modem and router all in one.


So true to form, I researched them out, or so I thought.


First I stopped at Circuit City. They proceed to tell me they don't have any. Now I don't believe them but that's another story. They told me I had to get one from ATT.


Next I go to Frys thinking that Best Buy wouldn't have them if Circuit City didn't. This was wrong. And this is 2 weekends before Christmas in the middle of Saturday afternoon. I'm so smart, NOT. Of course Fry's true to form, has stuff all over the store. I look in the aisle with the wireless routers, but of course it's not there. So I finally find someone I can ask and they tell me aisle 38. Well, aisle 38 had something completely different. Then I track someone else down and they tell me aisle 43. So I get to aisle 43. And there is a hole where the router should be. But I get the model number.


So here is where technology comes in. First of all we use wireless-n because when I bought my new laptop, I got it with a wireless N, I wanted to be ready for the latest and greatest. So for my desktop, I have an Airlink wireless N adaptor. It was cheap and works all the time!

At Fry's they tell me the only wireless N they had was a Netgear. When I did my research I thought I found a linksys that would work, but ends up it was not a modem and router all in one. And I saw where they had it at Best Buy, Circuit City and Fry's. So that was what I was searching for.


So here is where technology comes in. I call my sister Becky on my cell phone, she gets on the internet and finds the Best Buy that I'm near has one in stock. And it's $15 cheaper than Frys. Granted, the Fry's is not in the best part of town. And I have to cross the parking lots of Office Depot, Walmart, Home Depot, just so I don't have to flip around I45 which is a nightmare 2 weekends before Christmas.


I arrive at Best Buy. The guy shows me where the modems are and it's an ATT Wireless G. I told him I wanted the Netgear DGN2000, and of course it's in a different part of the store. He had no idea it was a dual because they had it in a different place. but he was totally helpful.

I hook it up at home, put in the CD and this baby worked without a problem. I can not say that about the modem that came with the DSL or the Linksys wireless router. Both of those required calls to the ATT and Linksys to get them working. We have two computers wired into it and right now I have 2 computers working wireless and one iPhone. Now all guests to the house will be able to use their personal laptops too.


And hopefully the gamer in the family will get over his frustations of being dropped. I told him that I set it up to drop at 10 PM so he would get off of his game and go to bed. I like the fact we don't have 2 boxes that need to talk to each other.


I highly recommend Netgear DGN2000 to anyone! My computers are at the other end of the house from the router and it works just fine!

Kudos to Channel 2 Houston

Anyone that knows me, can tell you I'm a big Channel 2 fan. I especially like Owen Conflenti and Stephen Dean for all their help to us during Hurricane Ike.

Last night the station reported on one of our pet peeves. They did a story on the government (our taxpayer dollars) leaving the lights on all night. The Harris County Law Center has a light bill of $17,000 a month. The City of Houston has a building at 611 Walker St. Their light bill is an astonishing $133,000 a month. Both buildings would leave their lights on 24/7. Channel 2 talked to all the facilities managers of the buildings and immediately noticed a difference in most cases.

This is our money paying these bills. Just doing simple tasks of turning off the lights in the room when you leave makes a difference.

At HP we had instructions to turn the lights off in a room when you left. The security guards making their rounds would turn out any lights in rooms if they found them on. I got put in the dark many times when they didn't see me.

At BMC the lights automatically went off at a certain time. You could turn them back on if you were still working. They also powered down the A/C or Heat for the hours people were not there.

If every business would take simple measures of turning off lights, informing employees of the options to saving electricity and having the guards turn off lights, everyone would save money and the resources would not be used as fast.

Lights Out Houston is a great website. It gives lots of information on what a company can do to save.

Shout out to Channel 2 for their Green solutions!

Weekend in Calvert and Hearne

After Turkey Day my friend Maryloretto and I decided to venture to Hearne/Calvert/Bryan for 2 days.

I started out at the Bush Library on the campus of Texas A&M University. I am a University of Texas graduate and I have never been to the A&M campus before. I drove past it once in high school on my way to my grandmother's in Louisiana. Then I met Maryloretto at the Wind Dancer B&B. It is located outside of Hearne, TX. If you need to go to A&M for anything, this is is just 20 minutes away off of Hwy 6. It's in the country so it's nice and quiet. Breakfast is fabulous. Denise is finishing her culinary school in December.

We then went to Calvert for lunch. We went to Cocoamoda. They are known for their truffles, but have a restaurant too. They were totally overwhelmed but the food was fabulous. You just can't be in a hurry. Maryloretto had the cassoulet and I had the monsiuer something or another. We split a salad to begin with and it was all excellent.

Next we were off to Messina Hof. We did a wine tasting first and then went to dinner. You can get a dinner for two that includes appetizer, main course and dessert with a bottle of wine. Each person gets to select their own course. The food was excellent. One of the desserts was great the other was OK. This is our dinner at Messina Hof. The wait staff was fabulous.

Saturday morning after our fabulous breakfast, I went to see Twilight. I know it didn't get great reviews, but I enjoyed it. Then Sunday morning I saw Australia. Hugh Jackman deserves the Sexyist Man Alive award.

New Washer and Dryer

We had a new washer and dryer delivered this week. I am so excited. My laundry room is hard to get a good picture. They are amazing. The washer uses 3.5 gallons of water where the old one used 15 gallons of water. It also uses 60% less electricity than our old one. The dryer has a rack that you can put in it to dry sweaters or shoes. Our old dryer would put everything in a big ball and I would have to go in there every 10 minutes to separate things. I washed the cat beds and they came out so clean.

Little Kalliope does not know how to use a pillow. She crawls under it and goes to sleep.

Thank you Kimmie

Thank you Kimmie,

Kimmie over at Living in Dallas and Loving It has given me an award! Thank you, thank you! Her posts are great, she shares her cooking adventures, her wine adventures, her food adventures and anything else that comes along. In case you don't know, Kimmie is my favorite niece. It doesn't matter that she is my only niece. She is still the favorite. I love reading about her and her friends. The scary thing is, they have the same fears, adventures and clothes that I had at their age.

First I must list 5 things that I find fabulously addictive:

1. Listening to books.

I love listening to books. The readers are so fabulous. I started listening to books on trips - in the car, on a plane, in airports - then along came the iPod, the best invention ever. The local library can save you a bunch of money. Our library, Harris County Library, as a fabulous online system. I can order books on CD online and when they are ready, I get an email. My branch, The Lone Star College Tomball, is open till 9:30 every night and has a drive up window. What more can I ask for? I load up my books, then I listen while sitting in doctor's offices, waiting in line, on my way to work, at work, while watching TV, you get the picture.

2. Reading recipes.

I don't always make them, but I love to cook and I have a lot of fun reading recipes. I do love making appetizers! Bill and I tend to eat in courses. I'll make one thing and if we are still hungry, I might make us something totally different.

3. Watching Dancing With the Stars.

Bill hates it but I love seeing the dances.

4. Watching movies.

I love all kinds of movies. I can't even list my favorites, since there are too many. But a few are Definitely Maybe, Stephen Spielberg's Taken, Mr. and Mrs. Smith (and I don't even care for Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie), The Incredibles, Breakfast at Tiffany's, The Moonspinners. Too many to list. The new movie theater in Tomball has a gelatto bar too!

5. Tea.

I love hot tea. And it has to be good loose leaf tea. And I love anything that goes with tea. Favorite places to buy tea are Teavana, Tea Embassy, The Steeping Room, and Chado Tea Market. I love going to high tea. The best so far is the St. Regis in Austin, second is The Adolphus in Dallas, then the Four Seasons in Austin. The place I want to have high tea is the Fairmont in Vancouver. Places I've had high tea is in Lisbon, Portugal, London, England, and Savannah, Georgia. There is nothing better than going to tea with friends and family to have a nice relaxing afternoon.

Now to share the love with 5 fabulous bloggers:

(Some of these are repeats because I don't know very many bloggers)

1. Ali and Pat at Bumfuzzle. They have a story of sailing around the world in 4 years and now are driving around the world in a 1959 VW bus. They are the nicest, most down to earth couple. Read about their adventures. They don't listen to others, they do their own thing. And what you see if what you get. There is nothing pretentious about them.

2. Amanda at Meet the Joiners. Amanda cracks me up over living in small town Texas after living in Highland Park her early years and Westlake for her middle school and high school years. I think I laughed the loudest early in her marriage when she realized that she needed to buy frozen food last.

3. Allison at Meet the Blogivers is Amanda's twin sister. Her fear of new things reminds me of myself at her age. And listening to the adventures of Wade the Treehugger is very similiar to Bill the Treehugger that I live with.

4. Tom and Amy at Dreamcatcher are a hoot. I especially like Tom's adventures in sewing. He has made some nice covers for his boat cushions.

5. Kimmie my favorite niece. She started all of this.