Birthday... extended

I had a great birthday this year. It was officially on Thursday, December 2 but has extended through this weekend. I received cards and calls from family and friends on December 2 and 3 - all much cherished. Kristine had been gone on vacation with Kent for 2 1/2 weeks and I sorely missed her. They got home on Thursday night and Kristine stopped by the office on Friday for a short visit. I really was looking forward to spending time with her to hear about their trip and catch up on things. We spent most of Saturday together running errands and doing some shopping. Kristine took me to lunch at Black Eyed Pea and we had a very nice day. I got to hear about the trip and it sounds like she and Kent had a really great vacation and Thanksgiving. Today I went to their house to do some felting and spend more time with her while we learned how to operate our new craft thing-a-ma-cricut. Here's what I found when I arrived this morning:

 Chef Kristine was busy in the kitchen making a birthday cake for me - isn't that sweet? She made my favorite - white cake with white icing. The cake turned out perfect. She baked two round layers and they were both exactly even and stacked without any layer gaps. Amazing!
I took my teapot and a flowering tea pod so we could share a pot of green tea with acai berry. The blossom in this pot was pretty but not nearly as dramatic as some of them have been. Never fear, Kristine. We'll make more pots over the Christmas holiday when family is here. I'm sure we'll get a few more breathtaking results as we work our way through more pods.

We spent time crafting, too. Here's a picture I took of Kristine taking a picture of the things we were creating. We fired up the Cricut and got out the instruction manual. The manual started out by saying that it would take 30 to 60 minutes to get familiar with the machine. Now, we're two pretty clever girls when it comes to crafting, but it took us more than 60 minutes to get to where we were comfortable with what we were doing. We cut some pretty nifty designs and only tried three different cartridge kits. One of the themes we worked was birthday (hmm, wonder why?) and we ended up with a bird, a dragonfly and some text that worked nicely on the birthday cake. Check out Kristine's handywork on the cake decorating.

 Anyone who's known me for any length of time knows that I've often wished my nickname was Kate instead of Kathy so Kristine gave me my wish by using "Kate" on my cake. Very cool and very fun! 
  We also made layered rooster creations. I didn't get a good photo of that today so I'm hoping Kristine posts a photo of it on her blog. You'll have to jump over there and see if she does.
   Thank you, everyone, for such a nice birthday! It was so much fun, maybe I'll do it again next year :-)

My Heart Belongs to Sam

This is my favorite photo of Sam, from among the many great shots Shannon took in PA in late September. I found a terrific deal on a wide format printer this weekend and got it to use for printing 12x12 scrapbook pages and special things. I was able to print Sam's photo in a 13x19 format and framed it in a frame I found at Michaels yesterday. Now I can see it every time I walk through the center gallery! Thanks, Shannon!!

 Val is coming for the holidays, with Amol & Sam - Yay!!
We all know Val's affinity for bandaids... is it genetic? Will Sam love bandaids? I thought I'd better stock up - 'nuf said: