Everything leads to Columbo.

It is interesting where a picture on the internet will lead. The above photo was taken by Julius Shulman in 1960. Shulman died last week. The photo is called "Case Study House #22. Stahl Residence at 1635 Woods Drive. Los Angeles. Architect: Peter Koenig."

Selena asked "What was a Case Study House?" Good question. So we Binged it. Wikipedia said that this house was as part of a 1945 program sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine that challenged the leading architects of the day to design and build inexpensive houses to deal with the housing boom caused by the end of World War 2.

Anyway, we also found out the house above was prominently featured in the very first episode of Columbo in 1968. Cool!

under every tree

I have a feeling this item will be under every tree this year. Awhile back Maddie had mentioned that this would be kewl to own, she eats lots of veggies as you would guess, salads, stirfrys, all things that include items to chopped small. So we checked them out at the "new mall" ( which will probably called the New Mall til the end of time ) in Balzac, and they had a wall of them, the commercial running, people milling around telling their loved ones what they would chop in it... but we left and forgot about it for awhile. Then we were reminded with the technology of TV, even fast forwarding the PVR, we still got a glimpse of it. So we head to the "New Mall" again... and the wall of slap chops is gone! sitting alone is one broken box on it's side.... we scooped it up quickly, looked over our shoulder to make sure we weren't going to be attacked from approaching shoppers, and made our way to the till. We checked everything, and all items were accounted for. We got home and made nachos (tip: don't try and do cheese! ) but the jalapenos were chopped in a second with no burning hands!! So I must admit this little device works as good as they say, made stew last night..... chop, chop, chop!! So, if your planning on getting one, get it quick, they seem to be selling like hotcakes!!

What the...???

Things you notice when you turn out the lights to go to bed. So it's 1:30 am we start to head to bed and we notice lights outside, so we look and there is a cop car at the corner, ok not odd so far, but then they turn off their headlights and back up into the position you see here, then stop the car. They sit like that for about 10 minutes, then an ambulance comes and turns down the street past them, a few minutes later the cops turn around and head down the street after them??? No lights, no siren.... what the heck is goin' on in the hood??? I have no answers, just question marks above my head.... if we here any news, we'll update you, in the meantime, good night from the Twilight Zone......

They Used To Do What?

This pic was stolen from this blog - A nice family Christmas from 1910. Look closely at the Christmas tree on the left - notice anything?

Yeah! Those are CANDLES. Wow, I guess burning the house down wasn't a big worry in 1910. A simpler time I guess.

Scrapbookers Christmas Party

Our Christmas party for Scrapbookers Paradise was last night. Thank you Shari for offering your house for the party! It was nice to have space this year :-) last time it was in the store and a little cramped! But this year we were in Christmas town Shari style. Her decorating was beautifully done. You just couldn't see everything in one visit! She had 3 Christmas trees decorated too!


tree 1...

tree 2....

tree 3....

adding goodies to the bags of mystery... this is one of the coolest things to do for a Christmas party, 13 of us each made, bought, or gathered 13 items and placed one in each bag, in the end you got 13 random, cool little gifts .

as always the food is AMAZING!!

Linda L made the cutest cookies I've ever seen!

Now the games begin, we bring a secret Santa gift and each person is given a card. The lowest number picks a gift from under the tree and opens it, the next person can either pick a new gift from under the tree or STEAL someone else's.... my card was #2, very low on the totem pole, the gift I picked was a blanket with gloves and a scarf. I really wanted the blanket, but "some" people were out to take it from me... here is Kate seeing how soft it is... she wouldn't believe me when I said it was scritchy and rough......

Dianne moving in for the steal, trying out the goods to see if that's what she'll steal

Gloria trying to hide her goods so they won't get stolen....

Gayle checking out my blanket.... ahem.... get your paws off.....

Kate had the Golden touch tonight, every gift she opened was stolen from her.....on the bright side, she got to open allot!

Megan and Jeanne sitting pretty by the fireplace, they were really plotting.... especially Jeanne since she had the 2nd best card!

what will Jeanne steal? At some point during the night, Dianne stole my blanket, so I stole Kate's snowman, once again Kate lost her gift, so Jeanne stole the snowman from me, and in a quick turn of events I was able to steal the blanket back from Dianne!!! Sometimes even getting the low cards can come in handy!

This is Dianne crying after she had to give up the blanket...back to it's rightful owner might I add.....lol

but she got a really cool journal instead.

Carolyn was the lucky one tonight and had her pick of the gifts, since the blanket was bought by her, my blanket was safe!

Gloria passed out our Christmas cards and everyone sighed that we could keep our gifts now, you just can't get too attached to anything until the last person has picked!!

Afterwards we went into the dining room and shared stamps, and colored. Since I don't own any of the cool markers that everyone at the store has, I had to use Shari's, which means even after everyone had left, I kept Shari up til my page was done!

Another successful party from the scrapbook gals :-)

Snow Day

Well, we got a bit of snow! On Friday Maddie and Dean stayed home to stay off the roads. It would've taken Maddie 3 hours to get to school!! I had to run out early morn but was back before it got too ugly. One of my stops was the dollar store to get Maddie a 6 dollar suit......

the snow was starting to pile up at the door!! Yipes could this be a snow day turned into a snow Inn??

seemed like a good day to make cookies, there is Maddies 6 dollar suit..lol

whenever we make cookies we have a hard time judging, so they always end being a big pancake that we have to break apart.... they always taste good tho'

time to clear the doorway before it turns to ice!

looks like this guy got stuck at some point in the night and abandoned his car, now it's buried!!!

Well hope everybody had a safe snow day.... we did :-)

If You Fly There, They Will Phone.

Something really strange happened at work today.

I work with dental offices maintaining their computers and software. My business partner, Cameron, developed some software that allows patients to confirm their dental appointments over email rather than over the phone. It is called (what else?) ConfirmByEmail - http://www.confirmbyemail.com/

Cameron is out of the office today as he is helping a friend import a car from the US. This morning Cameron flew to Dallas. This same morning we received a call from Advanced Family Dental asking about ConfirmByEmail. Can you guess where this dental office is located? In fact, the dental office is a mere 13 kilometeres from where Cameron landed today. This close:
(click to enlarge)

What is the mathematical probability of getting a call from a dental office in the same city where Cameron just happens to be today? The mind boggles.

Croppin in the mountains..

Wholly cow I can't believe I forgot to blog this!! I was so busy scrapbooking the event I forgot to post it!!
A couple of weekends ago, me and 3 other girls from the store went to Canmore for a weekend crop. OM Gosh was it ever fun!!!!! Yes we got allot done..... but was it ever FUN!!
We arrived at the Inn first so we got first dibs on our place at the tables, started to set up, and waited for everyone to arrive. We got all our many many many supplies ready for the nights ahead. Between the 4 of us we had an entire store there!

Meals were included in the package, and the food was awesome! There is a restaurant right in the room next to where we were scrappin, so we didn't even have to go far. We were also given wine glasses so we could drink our wine at our scrap table. Perhaps the people around us might have preferred we hadn't done that, we got a little loud in our uncontrollable laughter after awhile. But hey, fun is the name of the game! About midnight we left the table and went up to our room, we were going to head to Lisa and Carolyn's room, but it was too cold, so we went to Jeanne and my room... yikes! That's when we got in trouble, apparently our room was a "little" bigger than theirs?? We had like a honeymoon suite and they had a "room". After awhile we were forgiven for being lucky in the room draw, and we continued to have fun. ( I don't think we were really forgiven...) anyway.... we scrapbooked from 3PM on Friday til 3PM on Sunday.... did I mention how much FUN we had!!!

Jeanne in the tub....

me and Jeanne in the tub

our big room...

romantic view...

the scrappin area

Carolyn found a cool technique in a magazine, mix shaving cream and alcohol ink, place your paper on top, wipe it off and get a marbled effect on your paper, it smelled good too!!

the end result

not to be confused with shaving cream, the girls bought me whip cream so that all my coffee's can be fluffy, this came in handy when we had bailey's and coffee, and whip cream one morning!

Carolyn said she was a messy scrapbooker so she wears an apron, I brought a rolling pin to test out a theory for embossing paper, this pic was too good to pass up!

back in our room, after a day of scrappin, I think the laughing was more exhausting tho' my sides and cheeks hurt from all the giggle fits!!

more laughing......

this is the eatin' area. Fireplace, kewl decor, it was an awesome Inn

We headed into town for some Starbucks, but got detoured by the local coffee shop...

when you are waiting for your order they place a spoon on your table so they know where you are. Carolyn says you have to go often enuff to use all the spoons. The coffee was sooo good here! I think I'll take her up on that idea. When Dean came to pick me up on Sunday, I brought him here too. It's a quaint little coffee house :-)

Jeanne, Lisa and Carolyn in line for their coffee and treats.

Then we went to the grocery store for some snacks, and found these interestingly packaged sunflower seeds??? Canmoreians are weird!

Lisa and Carolyn fighting over who gets the sunflower seeds! hahaha

"it's all fun and games until someone gets hurt...then it's hilarious!!!" Oh my, did we ever laugh at these magnets!!! We were like teenagers in the store, annoying and loud :-) and giggly, even before the wine!

the view from our room in the morning

last day.... so sad, look at all that stuff!!!

packin up.....

Lisa made an advent calendar out of a muffin tin, very cute, I have to make one!

Well that's that, will we go again.... Definitely! It was a great weekend!