Holiday Happenings

What has been going on? Well sorry for the hiatus but here we go,



1st The Christmas tree auction:




Hubba hubba. ( He never dresses up for me, so this is all I get) FYI beverage in coffee cup, red wine, yea hes no "snobby drink out of a wine glass kinda guy", actually I thought that he wouldnt spill on himself if it was in a coffee cup. Worked well. Its kinda like giving your kids only clear foods if they are dressed up before church or something like that. (or only serving clear sangria because you have a 80% chance that Tara will spill on the carpet). Always thinking ahead. Don't look at me like that, Tara, remember the guacamole? :) Or the ice cubes?








Jeff, Petra and I. Jeff became clever later in the evening, (did I mention the all you can eat food and wine?) and decided that Petra and I were his "shrimps", go figure.












Petra, Pat, and I, (hey, look at our faces) Sorry Pat!












Of course the infamous Chupacabra, and his date Julie.


















Gary and Barbara














Oh, and Santa and Mrs. Claus were there.








We had a Chili cook-off at work








I won! (no matter what my boss says) It was fun, I am glad everyone participated. Yes I won by one point. Still a win.















It was also Kirk's birthday, and Petra and I managed to convince him to buy us dinner. That is tempura coated ice cream.







I was also busy with this as a surprise for Jeff.






















should keep him warm at the station, He carried it around like Linus all Christmas day

I was also busy making these for Robin, couldn't post till after Xmas. Hand dyed wool. (by yours truly)

Christmas came and Lauren was very interested. It happened to sing spontaneously, (OK only when I happened to squeeze it)




















Jeff's parents came for Christmas and we had a great time, Rodney tried his hand at Guitar Hero.



I was also up to this. My first try, turned out well. Yummy! I might be a tamale genius (maybe in my own mind)






























Just wanted to share this pic with you, how cute is that? Since I pilfered from my friend I will keep the names anonymous. But isn't that adorable? Gimme that cheek!













And finally a dose of Lauren all cute and wrapped up like a burrito.














Disclaimer: I tried for 2 hours to format the latter part of this post and it was very stubborn and wanted nothing to do with me or my formatting. Any suggestions would be welcome. Please leave me a comment about that or anything else, Im about to chew off my arm and throw it at the computer!)

Happy Thanksgiving

Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving. (and no Woman I did not watch the Macy's parade) Jeff had to work that day, so Woman came to visit me and help me prepare dinner for Friday.


Since we were not going to have Thanksgiving dinner until the next day, we went to The Depot and had their delicious ribeye with blue cheese sauce. You should really try it if you ever go there its not always on the menu but they will make if for you anyways.




The next day everyone came over to eat, it was yummy too, we had prime rib, turkey, mashed potatoes (with bacon), sweet potato casserole, creamed onion, green beans and bacon, stuffing, banana pudding, cranberries, bacon wrapped shrimp and jalapeno, bacon wrapped dates and Cindy sauce: (see a trend? Yep the theme for the evening was bacon!)


Cindy Sauce:

1 part soy sauce


1 white onion chopped fine


2 tablespoons dried ginger


4 tablespoons garlic


I usually make about 4-6 cups of this at a time. This recipe is from Cindy K. Bessey, and since soooooooo many people ask about it here it is. Also the long awaited "How do I BBQ the prime rib?"


BBQ Prime Rib:

Pour a little Cindy sauce over the top about a day in advance. Prepare the BBQ with coals on either side leaving a space in the middle (indirect heating) place a piece of aluminium in the middle the width of the prime rib (this will protect your ribs for eating later). Take the meat out of the fridge about 2 hrs prior to cooking. Sometimes if it is large 7-8 bones I will cut it in half, this speeds up cooking time by double. Place the meat on the aluminium and close the lid. Get the temp up to around 300 and cook for about 15 min/lb basting approx every 30 min with the Cindy sauce being careful not to touch the meat with your spoon and contaminating the sauce, because its great dipping sauce. use a quick read thermometer and take the meat off when it hits 125 degrees. Immediately take it off and wrap tight with aluminum and let it rest. It will come up to temp (about 135). This gives you nice well ends and a perfect pink middle. Serve with Cindy sauce and horseradish, Enjoy!

Everyone ate well and had a good time. Jeff's friend Danny and his wife Jackie came over as well as Ron and his wife Joyce. Chris, Elizabeth, Eva, Rob, Toni and Petra also made it.







Rob, Toni & Elizabeth








Jeff, Ron and Danny













Chris, Joyce and Petra




And as always we celebrated the end of the meal with the Smith family tradition that started when Lauren was a puppy. (Don't get weirded out Tara, we sanitize it with bleach later!)





He use to hold her up, I guess he is getting lazy in his old age! After our first Thanksgiving with Lauren, Jeff thought she should get to lick up the juice and scraps, don't worry, Riley gets some too, we just hand it to him instead. It is Thanksgiving after all, they gotta get a treat too. This cracks me up though every time!







On Saturday we were lazy after cleaning up, as you can see the festivities took a toll on Lauren and Woman. We lazed around and went to have sushi for dinner.





On Sunday Woman and I went to The Gateway restaurant which is past Three Rivers by the entrance to the Sequoia National park about 25 minutes from here. They have great atmosphere right over the running river















and this....









Yummy.


Well you know I wasn't going to waste my manual labor while it was here so I enlisted Woman to help me put up the Christmas tree decorations:












And for some reason for the first time since we have been married (and have been asking every year for him to do it)





Jeff did this! Pretty.










Well anyways on another note, I guess you can see these since Woman snatched them up, even though they are suppose to be her Christmas gift, hand spun (by me), silk/merino:













Farewell to you all for now and I hope you all had a great Holiday! Next week is the Christmas tree action, will fill you in when that comes....











and just for good measure.... a Lauren fix!

We Got Spirit!!

Ok, First off...Happy Halloween!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where have I been you may ask...Well I suspect you do not want to check my blog unless there is something great and exciting to see. Im sure you do not want to just hear about TiVo, knitting and Jeff, so here we go....

So here is the excitement....Go Fresno State!


(Barbara cheering them on, she is the best cheerleader at all the games we go to)


Here is some of the ladies at the tailgate Kathy, Michelle, Laura and her daughter.



Kathy loooves Anthony....

Trina and I

Me and my scrawny Ribs...Yum

The food was delicious

Lenny and Kathy hammin' it up at the game, it was freakin hot!

Kathy, Me, Michelle and Petra

It was a great day, and we had fun.

This week in Visalia, knittin 'n' spinnin'

Hello all... It has been a while since my last post. I know, I know... but do you really want to hear about my adventures in TiVo that much? Well I have completed some great projects last week...

1st... Hand spun, from roving I dyed. Handy for typing in sub-zero workplaces like mine.

They are fraternal as you can see.

See the Pattern....Pretty!

2nd....


Ok I look like a pin head, Tara would say "Deer in Headlights" (SorryI am just paranoid about blinking) & Once again forgot to smile....




Self portraits are stressful







That is wool (the white) and Soy wool the variegated color pattern(Its soooo soft)....














3rd and yes, already spoken for (Shannon with the shoes!)..

Pretty cool, its Alpaca (grey) and Silk and wool, (skulls)! She should enjoy it, she bought matching shoes! Should be a good match.












I also attended the Handweavers of the Valley Yearly Show in Exeter today and scored big... For those of you who doubt my sanity, its not just me....

See the top one? The tan one? The one darker than the other? Look good, and know that I scored a beautiful skein of DOG HAIR yarn! Ha! and its soft too...(the bottom is a gorgeous kid mohair). I also got to speak with the creator Sandy Risley. She was so nice and wonderful and answered all of my questions on harvesting methods of the dog hair and her methods of spinning, hand carding and dying. She also has a spinning group I hope to go to soon.






She had a wonderful display of all of her handspun!






Something else happened......I met a ravelry friend! And we had a great time getting to know each other...Im so glad she recognized me and came up to say hi....(In my defense her pic on ravelry is that of a lovely knitted cranberry colored blanket, so I would have not recognized her at all)

Here we are taking pictures of each other for the blog, it was nice to speak to someone who understands KNIT (its a funny language), the only people I know who speak KNIT live in New Mexico...Very exciting..and I may have been an enabler, showing April the dog hair and a lovely variegated wool skein at Sandy's table I had been eyeballing earlier...








and may have talked at length about alpaca that would be GREAT for socks????May have?? But I am not admitting anything..








There were also spinners on the loose doing what they do best! Fun stuff, because this is the event I wandered into by myself last year on a whim and witnessed spinning for the first time. I was facinated and the rest is history..








And dont forget these guys out on display out front...I learned my lesson last year and waited till the end to visit them. I had fed them before I went in last year and had to search around to get the alpaca slobber off of my hand before being able to go into the show and touch everything!








Just for good measure, a daily dose of Lauren! (Just cuz u know shes so cute!)..

Next week, Fresno State Tailgate, and yes Woman has backed out on us so we will see...Let me know what you think!