Living on the Edge

Bald Eagle Hotel

I'm always entering things into the event calendar on my SpokaneMama website. Every time I hear of something, or noodle around on the internet and find something I make a note of it and add them to the calendar.  I had heard of this event before the website was up and running last year.  So I knew this winter, I would make sure and post the dates for it as well as drag the family out to do it!! 

We had a fun family day on Lake Coeur d'Alene with some friends.  Next winter we will bring my parents to do it when they come up for Christmas. (Don't worry mom, the inside is heated and has big windows)

Coeur d'Alene Resort Eagle Cruise

in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho  1-800-365-8338

This would be the resort.  Two things cross my mind as I placed this picture.  With the boats in the foreground it looks like it's literally on the water...kind of reminiscent of an airforce carrier carrying a hotel on top.  The second thing is....does it look like it should have flags flying from the turrets up top?

It's actually an awesome resort. Very lavish with an amazing view of the lake and the surrounding mountains.  Just not sure what the architect was going for..middle age naval ship?  I'm standing on the top deck of the Eagle Cruise Boat...see the snow on the tables?...it will become future fuel for a skurmish between dads and daughters.

Part of the view from the dock at the resort.

More view....this was the view during the whole cruise...just sprinkle in a few dozen eagles, some ducks, a few flocks of Canada geese, and a great blue heron and this was our day.

So we went on a 2 hour cruise...(the theme song from Gilligan's Island just popped into my head!)  It was very chilly when we headed out.  Even the kids ended up coming back inside till we arrived at the bay with the eagles...

You can't tell, cuz we grabbed the corner table, but the boat was full.  I'm sure they could have fit more people, but unless you went outside there really wasn't a single empty chair left inside. 

This picture was actually taken after the girls ran 247 laps around the deck of the boat (after the first couple laps they said "hey mom, we met the captain!"--yuh think?!), had a snowball fight (started by a couple of unnamed fathers), played animal mineral and vegetable, spotted a few dozen eagles, and drank some hot chocolate and nibbled a couple peanut butter cookies.

We think they will sleep well tonight!

Here's who we were looking for. Not a great picture...next year I will win the lottery and buy my dream digital SLR camera that will do all the hard stuff for me!

This one turned out a bit better.  They just wouldn't turn their good side to the camera for me!

How about a fun summer place like this one?  Little chilly this time of the year though!

Well to end the day...as if on cue...we had an awesome sunset!  We hadn't seen one of those in quite a few days too!

Thank You Cards with Cricut

I got a couple new font cartridges for my Cricut machine...so since it was Christmas...I decided to play with them.  What else should you make after Christmas but Thank You cards!  So here are a few I made...(plus one get well card for a sick friend).

The front of this one:

The inside:

and one get well card:

Snowflake thoughts

So I have to go shovel the driveway AGAIN this morning to get the car out of the garage.  The girls want to go shopping and spend their Christmas money...I don't really want to go to a ...you know....MALL!

I get all sweaty and nervous just thinking about it.  I'm not sure if it's the fact that:

1. There are no windows--you have no sense of what time or how long you have been in there.
2. The thought of the air in there having been breathed by how many other people?!
3. The place will be wall to wall shoppers with all the after Christmas sales.
4. The spending hysteria is so often contagious--which means parting with some of my money just being there --there is sure to be something that I will need to buy, but shouldn't buy!
5. Why for heaven's sake do they put a Barnes and Nobles right at the entrance--I don't stand a chance from the first moment I walk in there!
6. Or maybe (my mom will attest to this!) it's the fact that I get lost in malls.  Truly, honestly!  If I don't have someone with me, I'd be wandering lost for hours!  Even with someone, I actually have to grab a map each time because I get so disoriented in there.  I don't know which way to turn when I come out of a store! The Northtown Mall is a two story maze.  It's built in a big rectangle with a middle aisle down the center.  Talk about hard...it's not just a matter of left or right turn when you come out a store, it's which part of the loop am I in?

So I opened my email this morning and this is today's daily quote: 

“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.”
—Voltaire (1694-1788) philosopher, author

Which explains my thought process today...there are too many snowflakes in my head and you never know which one starts it all!  So I best just go burn off the calories and shovel the driveway...hmm, maybe I can talk the girls into cross country skiing today rather than going to the mall!?!

Sugar Cookies and Frosting

Well, what's Christmas without a batch of frosted and decorated cookies?  Lots of people send them off as gifts to the neighbors all wrapped pretty in a tin or plate with a big bow.  But these cookies are so yummy that you won't want to send them anywhere!

Here's the recipe I've used for a long time. I have absolutely no idea where I found it originally.  It's just written on a ragged piece of paper in my cookbook, my favorite cookbook that is falling apart at the binding from its years and years of use.

Sugar Cookies

1 1/2 cups sifted powdered sugar

1 cup butter or margerine

1 egg

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 tsp. almond flavoring (optional but yummy)

2 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. cream of tartar

Mix sugar and butter, add eggs and flavorings.  Mix thoroughly.  Measure flour and stir dry ingredients together and blend in.  Refrigerate dough 2-3 hours.  Be sure to cover it so it doesn't dry out while it's chilling--wax paper is fine to wrap it in.

Heat oven to 375 degrees and divide dough into 1/2 or 1/3.  Roll each section to just more than a 1/4 inch thick on lightly floured pastry cloth or cutting board.  Cut with cookie cutters and place on lightly greased cookie sheets and bake 7 to 8 minutes or until lightly browned. 

Makes 5 dozen 2 inch cookies.

Now to decorate you can make this easy frosting. Add food coloring if you like or just leave it white and add sprinkles, crushed peppermint sticks, mini M & M's, or whatever you'd like.

Sweet Sugar Frosting

1 egg white (we give the yolk to the dog-great for her coat)

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar

Beat egg white and cream of tartar until foamy in a small bowl.  Gradually beat in sugar.  Continue to beat until frosting stands in firm peaks and is stiff enough to hold a line when cut through with a knife.  Keep frosting covered with a damp paper towel to keep it from drying as you use it to decorate the cookies.

The girls love this part.  I think they love it even more than the part where they get to eat them!

Snow is Fun...

...for the girls!  The girls have a totally different view on snow matters.  They don't care how much snow, what type of snow, or if it will snow tomorrow....just...is there enough on the sledding hill!?

It was pretty fun once they made the 'air bump'.  Q gets a bit of air.

CC gets some air of her own. She is of course riding the sled that really puts the bruises in your behind!  She is just the right size for it though. She can go faster than anyone else...seems that the littler you are the faster you go!

They could...and do....spend hours doing this.  Over and over and over.  No couch potatoes in our house.  They nearly collapsed by the time they came home this afternoon. 

"Mom it's hard going up that hill over and over again!" 

Yup, that would be the understatement for the week.

Tomorrow look for the best sugar cookie recipe.  AND, "yes honey, I CAN make frosting from scratch!  It doesn't have to come out of a plastic container from the grocery store to be good!"

Snow is Fun...

or at least this is why I think it is fun!

There are great photo opportunities. This reminds me of Christmas in England.  Not that I've ever been there, I haven't. But do you think they do this to all their light poles?  If they don't, they should.  Then it would look like England should look! 

The other thought that popped into my head was A Christmas Carol.  Shouldn't this light pole be in that story?

Here's our house after yesterday's snowfall.  It makes me think of winter.  It also makes me think of shoveling.  when the house was built, couldn't they have put it closer to the darn street?  It's quite a long driveway to shovel. 

I'm kind of thinking of spraying water on it and calling it a hockey rink!  The girls would love that!  Oh, but then I'd have to dig out the darn hoses that we spent an eternity on draining and coiling up!

Then there's the artsy shots I try to take with my digital camera.  The lighting wasn't that good because it was about 3 in the afternoon, overcast and the sun was already well on its way down!  Gotta love the northern winters...they are dark even without clouds!

This would be me playing with my artsy shop.  I am in love with Adobe.  I play with it from time to time. Sometime I should actually take a class so I can learn what all the terms mean and what works best when.  The help boxes/prompts on that program are lame in my opinion. 

Well, this is why I like snow.  Tomorrow (after I play with Adobe a bit more tonight) I'll show you why my girls like the snow!

Christmas Tree Recycling in the Inland Northwest

Christmas is past and New Year’s around the corner.  No matter what your tradition is for taking down the tree, if you bought a live tree, it’s going to be pretty dead by the time you take off the lights and ornaments.  So what do you do with your tree after the holidays?  Do you throw it in the backyard, leave it by the road or (groan) burn it and watch the thick smoke fill the neighborhood?

Recycling is the way to go these days and if you haven’t found someplace to recycle your tree yet, here are some the local drop off sites for those of you in need around

Spokane

County

and

Northern Idaho

. 

North County Recycling and Transfer Station Drop-Off

www.solidwaste.org/solidwaste   Colbert, WA   509-625-6800

City of Spokane Curbside Collection Program

www.spokanesolidwaste.org   Spokane, WA   509-625-7889

Waste to Energy Facility Recycling

www.solidwaste.org/solidwaste/    Spokane, WA  509-625-6800

Earthworks Recycling

www.earthworksrecycling.com    Spokane, WA 509-534-1638

ABCO Wood Recycling Sponsors Free Christmas Tree Recycling in the Inland Northwest.  Dec 26-Jan 12

Drop-off locations in Idaho:  Coeur d'Alene, Hayden, Post Falls, and Sandpoint

Drop-off locations in Washington: Hangman, Liberty Lake, and North Spokane

www.abcowoodrecycling.com  1-866-303-0663

Merry Christmas!

Well, as it is Christmas today, it's only fitting to spend some time catching the family and friends up on our Christmas festivities.  Please be impressed that I have these pictures up the same day I took them!!

Here's our tree Christmas (this) morning. 

Believe it or not...I was the first one up!  I started cooking the cinnamon rolls, turned on the Christmas lights around the house, and fired up the Christmas music in the CD player.  The girls showed up about 20 minutes later, sat on the staircase and drooled at the tree. (You are never too old to drool at a tree full of gifts!)

What was our trick to getting them to sleep in past 8 in the morning (yes, 8 a.m.---those of you ready for bed by 3 p.m. cuz your chitlins were up at the crack of O-dark-thirty...I'm gloating and bragging and feeling very self righteous right now!) 

Our trick?  We let them stay up till they fell asleep on the couch!  We had a family movie night that didn't start till almost 9 p.m.!  This was instead of the battle with 12 trips up and down the stairs--water, spider, wierd noise, too hot, too cold, bad dream, can't sleep, lost the various stuffed animal, drink of water, sister's music is too loud, sister's light is too bright...you name it, it's been tried and said! 

So the girls weren't sent to bed till they passed out! And we had peace and quiet by 11:00 (we would have been up and down until then anyway) plus the added bonus of getting to watch a movie too!

So here's some of the gleeful looks this morning....enjoy!

The earring holder I made for each of them.

Q said as she opened this one: "Ooh, I see Target signs."  (in my day we used to say 'dollar signs'--guess it's synonimous now!)

Cold, hard, cash was also very popular--thanks Mip!

CC finally got her MP3 player.  Now mom doesn't have to hunt for hers! Actually I like hers even better...maybe CC will have to hunt for hers!  Hope she likes my choice in music!!

This was what Q wanted the most...the queen of hamsters--living, stuffed or now electronically created!

DD got the annual box of Sees milk chocolate buttercreams...oh no, a few dark chocolate ones somehow ended up in the box...How did that happen?  Guess I'll have to help him with those!

Yeah, cute picture!  DD likes his new goggles.  The girls are ready to leave home after he sat with them on while he drank his tea.  Hmmm, this would be a great picture to save for when he turns 50!  I can just picture this as a big glossy poster....

The final gift...they were in gift bags behind my chair.  We called the phones and just let them ring.  It was so funny watching them try to find them!!  Turns out they had an idea that they were getting phones....thanks to the Fed Ex guy!!!  He delivered them back in November and we weren't home.  He left them with the girls and told them they were phones! They didn't fess up that info till this morning! Pretty good at keeping the secret I thought!

Well Merry Christmas everyone!  Enjoy playing with all your new toys!

Twas the Night Before Christmas

Well, I just checked Norad and Santa is just passing Colorado so I have to hurry and post this. 

In case Santa has the ability to read blogs as he lets Rudolph guide his way...Just want to let you know Mr. Claus, the girls have been fairly good.  They set out some yummy cookies, carrots for the reindeer and a glass of milk to keep your bones strong.  Oh yes, they left reindeer food out for the boys too!  Just to let you know, it was 19 degrees as they bundled up to leave the goodies outside for the reindeer so I hope they appreciate it!

I hope you have a good trip, we have a full moon, but the clouds are moving in...so maybe a little snow may hit before we wake up...just to add to our mostly white Christmas.

Well, it's time to wrap the last few presents.  I promise to not bother you if you show up before I hit the hay.  I'll leave you to your work, since you have a few other places to visit tonight!  I hope you like the new cookie plate though.  I made it this year at a fun Mama's Night Out at Color Me Mine!

Merry Christmas Santa!

You Tube 12 Days of Christmas with a twist

Please, if you need to put a smile on your face, watch this on You Tube! You won't be able to not smile by the end of it!

12 Days of Christmas with a Twist