And Then There Were Two...

Hamsters, that is...

The front cage is Pam's and the back house is for Jessica's new friend, Mallory.

Steve bought this hamster house from a co-worker.

The initial idea was to give it to Amy for Christmas as a new home for Pam.

The pictures we saw of it made the rooms look a bit larger than they actually are.

When Steve brought it home, I knew immediately Pam would become claustrophobic. Can't have that!

Soooooo, we decided to give it to Jessica on Christmas

and yesterday they went out and picked up 

a dwarf Russian hamster that Jessica named Mallory...

She is pretty darn small, but pretty darn cute, too.

For most of yesterday, she stayed on the middle level (where the food and water is). She would start to go down the tube, then backtracked because she just wasn't sure.

Apparently overnight she figured out the tube because she was on the bottom level this morning.

And this afternoon Jessica tried holding her. Very sweet and thankfully she didn't bite.

This capped off a very nice Christmas for the girls

Pictures Amy drew for Santa, along with the baggie she used for carrots for the reindeer. Too cute

Obligatory shot in front of the tree (decorated by the girls). We had gone to a party on Christmas Eve and when we got home the girls were more interested in going to bed to get to sleep than in opening one gift (jammies). Who was I to argue? LOL So Jess is wearing jammies from a couple of years ago which are obviously too small, but she loves them.

And this is something I pulled together after seeing this idea at my friend Becky's house. She'd received the decorated rootbeer bottles from a friend.

On the way home from Becky's, the girls and I slipped into Walmart to buy the rootbeer and I put this together for the hosts of the party we went to. They were a hit. *Ü*

Christmas for the girls was fabulous.

I, on the other hand caught a pretty bad cold, so I wasn't quite myself. It's much better now, thank goodness.

While I won't deny that not getting the Expression I was so hoping for was pretty disappointing, it was kind of nice watching the Broncos finally win a game on the 32 inch flat screen I did receive.

Thanks for stopping by. I hope your holiday was fabulous!

It's Beginning to Look a Little Like Christmas...

Jessica came home from school around 10am on Thursday. She has had a cold and woke up that morning saying her throat hurt, but I thought maybe it was because she was breathing with her mouth open and it was dry. She didn't have a fever and wanted to try go to class. Apparently the throat was still hurting (or hurting again) and she went to the school nurse, who had her gargle with salt water. It seemed to help. But 10 minutes later, Jessica apparently had a little upset tummy (from the salt water, I think) and she threw up a little. By then her temp started to climb. So I dropped what I was doing and went to pick her up.

She's had a low grade fever ever since, but the throat and tummy are feeling much better. She's been eating and drinking fine so I suspect it's just a doozy of a cold, poor thing. Maybe a little sinus issue. Behaviorally, she is acting fine today. I hope she can go to school tomorrow as they are scheduled to have their mid-year assessment and she'll only be there for an hour and a half. That is, if the snow we've been getting all day doesn't create a snow day.

Wave one of the snow has come, but they are talking about another storm due to come in sometime tonight, I think. Time will tell.

So, I've lost two school days of work time for me in terms of holiday gifts. This coming week I'll lose two more, with the assessment day tomorrow and a day off scheduled for Friday. Sigh...hopefully I can get what I want to done! Time will tell.

In the meantime I have a couple of things to show that I have been able to work on.

*Ü*

I started changing out the decorations for the winter season. Here's one of my new snowmen that I got at the thrift store for $1! Isn't he just adorable?? I love his feet! I filled the basket with some cinnamon scented pinecones and a few cinnamon sticks. The pine stuff is a cut up garland I got at the dollar store.

And I've filled the pots on the porch, too.

I found the greenery at the dollar store (I still can't believe it) and the rest are from Joann's, 50% off!

Here's what I did in the hanging pots. I have three of these snowmen and they all have a different looking scarf/earmuffs. You can see I cut up another dollar store garland to wrap around the base. The garland was 15 feet long and pretty full. I'm pleased at how it looks.

And, since I'm not really able to work on Jessica or Amy's gifts with Jessica being home, I decided to try my hand at crocheting some ornament covers. It took a few attempts, changing the hook size to make the cover bigger since it wouldn't fit the ornaments I picked up at the thrift store. When I checked the pattern again, I realized the ornaments I was using were too large. (**slaps self on the forehead**) Another trip to the thrift store resulted in finding the correct size (for $1) among other things (like another snowman, an OshKosh coat for Jess, a dress for Amy, a couple of books, the placement on my table on the porch and a few other things almost all at 50% off the ticketed price!)

Once I got the correct size ornament, I was successful in creating a couple of covers and thought you might like to see them.

The dark gold one is for Jessica and the red one is for Amy.

Front view close up

Side view

Front view

Side view

I'm not sure I would make a ton of these, but these few attempts were fun (once I got the correct ornament size, that is). The girls are excited to have some new "special" ornaments.

Thanks for stopping by! I sure appreciate the visit.

Hope your week is a good one!