♥ kai ♥

ivy brought kai in to work!  aaaaaaaagggggghhhhhh!  he's adorbs!  and three months old ☺

everyone took a turn holding him:

i was super excited to see ivy and meet kai.  i've really missed her the past 4 months.  i will be better about staying in touch with her!!!  

imissyouivyandiwasreallyreallyreallyhappytoseeyou!!!

my mom's delicious marinated veggies!

a couple of months ago my friend sarah and i had lunch and a canned food trade and i gave her one of my jars of my marinated veggies i made from my moms delicious recipe.  yesterday she decided to dive into the jar and apparently loved it and wanted the recipe.  

so here it is!!

my mom's delicious marinated veggies

the marinade:

• 1 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 cup oil (i used safflower)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• 1 tablespoon oregano
• 1/2 tablespoon garlic salt

the veggies:

corn, tomato, cucumber, red and green peppers, olives, onion, broccoli, carrot, really whatever veggies you want.

so basically, i just used as many veggies as i wanted and made enough of the marinade to cover the veggies.  you chop all the veggies up as small (or large) as you want and put into a container, cover with the marinade and refrigerate for one week.

after the week is up, take them out of the fridge and can them using a simple canning type.  i boil my jars for 15 minutes, the lids for 5, fill them with the food, put the lids on and boil for 10 minutes.  done.  so simple.  

here is the book i use for my canning, it's super simple to read and follow the instructions: small batch preserving.  i think it's a great book and there are fantastic recipes in there.  like the recipe for raspberry grapefruit honey jelly that i make except i use blackberries instead of raspberries.  there's also pickled ginger in there.  i really need to make that.  i loooooooove pickled ginger. mmmmmmm.......

state of emergency!

the weather is so shit here in seattle that the governor has declared a state of emergency.  tons of snow, ice and downed power lines are creating havoc.  in normal places that get snow this would be no big deal, but here in seattle...CHAOS!

since it was just snowing yesterday and the buses were running,  i decided (foolishly) to go on in to work.  it took me 2 hours to get there and 3 to get home.  and i only stayed for 4 hours.  needless to say, i did not go in to work today.  instead i'm staying home with maya (so far this week she's spent a record breaking 2 hours in school and today is thursday) and the cats and the dog.  alistair had to work a thursday, which never happens.  but we live so close to his work that he just walked.

maya and i just went over to the store and took some shots on the way.

here's the view from the porch

and the porch itself!

the street in front of our house: 35th ave NE, a heavily used and major street in our neighborhood:

the neighbors across the street made some snowmen!!

safeway is up and running and has plowed their parking lot :)

the front yard:

my little tacky quail is all buried!

and the gnome water sprinkler looks pissed at all the snow.

all in all, i feel like i'm back in idaho.  except you can't get to work.  i was telling maya how in places where winter actually happens, this is no big deal.  SNOW DAY?  who ever had a snow day?

ok...i'm gonna go make some cookies now and kick it in front of the tv!

wooooooo!

snow in seattle...

the annual once a year snow has finally showed up here in seattle.  and by tomorrow morning i expect the city to be in full panic mode.  this place is hilarious when it comes to snow.  totally not prepared, ever.  and the problem is all the damn hills.  since there is really only snow once a year, the city has almost no snow plows and will never buy them.  so therefore, complete pandemonioum reigns whenever it snows.
it snowed a little bit yesterday and then today it started snowing at about 8 am and didn't stop until about 1.  i walked on down to the library and got 1/2 block before the first ridiculous bus problem of the year was seen:

the bus is totally stuck on this little incline.  it completely ridiculous.  and turning the corner on the right there is the large metro semi out to pull the bus out of the street.  there is hardly any snow on the streets, it's not even icy yet and the bus is stuck.  hilarious!  this city kills me.

but the snow is really pretty and nice to see!

 a random side street where i'm sure an accident will happen. because people have no idea how to drive in snow and drive like complete jackasses.  kind of like how they drive in the rain.  like they have never seen it before.

our driveway is nice though!

and so is the yard:

q says hi.

3DS!!!

for christmas alistair got me a 3DS!  i'm super excited about it.  i really wanted it because the new version of animal crossing is coming out only on the 3DS.  and you all know what an animal crossing lover i am!!  i love that they put bunnie in the trailer, she's my favorite animal.  i really really hope she shows up in my new town!

anyhoo...joseph is the one who first told me about the 3ds (i'm not really into video games and was clueless) and animal crossing so i'm thanking him all around.  i'm super excited for may and the new animal crossing.

but the 3ds is great!  it has a camera, internet (yay, netflix!!) and the 3d is really awesome on it.  the new version of mario kart, mario kart 7, came out on the 3ds, so i went and got that the day after christmas and am racing away.

but i'll be carrying it around with me a lot and i didn't want to get one of the ugly cases for it...so being me, i made my own.  mom gave me some fabric for christmas that is SUPER cute and i thought it would make a great little bag.

here is the fabric.  adorable and textured!

some of the pieces all cut out (i'm padding it with quilt batting):

and super cute white and yellow lace that i've been dying to use but didn't know what the hell to use it on.

here it is!

 i decided to use velcro instead of buttons or snaps because i thought it would be easier to get in and out of and not snag on anything in my big bag.  all we had was black velcro...i would rather have had white, but i wasn't about to drive to ballard for white velcro.  why, oh, why isn't there a craft store in NE seattle?  someone please answer this question!

i made a little pocket on the outside back to carry the games in.  they're really small and fit great in the pocket!

and here it is...my new 3ds (thanks alistair!!!!!!) with the hello kitty earpods i got for it!

since we don't have access to netflix in the bedroom and i really really like to lay in bed and watch tv, i can now watch netflix on the 3ds and not drive alistair crazy, hence the hello kitty earbuds.  i think these hello kitty earbuds would have been AWESOME, but i just didn't have 75 bucks to spend on them!