post number two :]

as promised, here's another post for the day. i spent the morning making candies and wrapping up brittany's christmas gift. i took a break to go and meet brittany at perkins rowe for a bit of shopping and to exchange christmas gifts. i picked up the CUTEST bag from anthro, along with a french cuisine cookbook and oh-so-cute pot holder to put it in for the christmas gift exchange at grandma and grandpa's...i do believe i will have the lovliest little gift out of everyone! i'm secretly jealous of whoever ends up with it :] i also passed by sur la table (love that place!), z gallery (love that one even more!), and then a quick pass through UO to pick up a couple of new pairs of blue jeans. pit stopped at another store to purchase a few remaining items for the hubs' christmas gift then back home for a second string of candy making.

brit and liz joined me for this particular gift making session, which was great. brit had some packaging to do herself, and liz helped me dip pretzels.

brittany makes the best snowman poop and peppermint bark...mmmm

for some reason, this picture doesn't want to post facing the right direction. i apologize in advance for the crick in your neck for having to look at it sideways. :] these are my little packets of pretzels..."gone nutty", "coocoo for coconut", "peppymint" and more...

yummy...little boxes of homemade chocolates. delicious! and cute! every year for christmas, i make goody bags as gifts for friends and family. it's a more cost efficient way of giving, and i think it means more for them to know that i poured my heart and love into each sweet that's in the bag! hopefully i'll be finishing these goody bags up tomorrow so that i can spend the rest of the week working on the hubs' gift...it's a whopper, and i'm running out of time

so, for the gift exchange, brittany got me this:

it's the diana camera from lomography! i'm super stoked up!

and she got me this, just because:

it's the new keri smith book! i'm soooo excited! however, i know that once i start it, i won't be able to put it down, so i'm not even going to crack the cover until i have completed my christmas gift duties.

the gift i got brittany is still on it's way from the photographer i purchased it from, so i made her this to tie her over...

she was pretty excited, which made me even more excited about it as well!

well anywho, i'm off for the third string of crafting...i've put the candy making and baking away for the night, and now i'm on to painting gift bags and gift tags. i'll share photos when they're done! for now, i'll leave you, but i will return soon.

love love love

emjay

i know i know...

but remember? i said no promises! since it's been almost a month since i've posted, i'll be sure to have a lot of things to share with you today...but they might be split into a few different posts.

this post is probably one of the most exciting ones EVER! just a week ago, the unthinkable happened...it snowed in south louisiana. what's that you say? you don't think you heard me correctly? let me repeat it then...IT SNOWED IN SOUTH LOUSISIANA!!! can you believe it??? last wednesday, my birthday, rumors were floating around that it might snow that night. no one, especially me, took it seriously, because our meteorologists are generally off a bit, especially when they're talking about snow. i mean, our average temperature here during december is 74 degrees! last time i checked, it had to be much colder for it to snow. all the kids at work were getting super stoked at the thought of not having school the next day...but when i left work at 8 that evening, it was still 50 degrees...it wasn't looking promising.

the husband and i spent the evening at his brother's house, and we had fun watching movies and playing with our neice and nephew, and when we left around midnight, it still didn't feel all that cold. i pretty much gave up any hope i had of having a white birthday, and we headed home to curl up and get some shut eye.

around 6 o'clock am, my phone rang, and of course, it's still dark outside, so i'm unsure of the actual time, and i was thinking that something was wrong with someone...especially when i saw that it was my mom. i answered, and she was frantically shouting something i couldn't quite understand (keep in mind, i'd been sleeping very soundly and was quite groggy at this point). i shook my head to clear the fog and said "come again?" and she said "get your butt out of bed and outside! it's snowing! like REALLY snowing! big time!" i immediately threw off the covers, slipped my flip flops in and ran outside in my hoochie mamma sleep shorts and tshirt.

it was amazing.

the husband followed me in his skivvies, marveled for a few minutes and returned to bed. he said he was still tired and that he'd enjoy it after day light. i couldn't fathom how he could sleep at a time like this!

it. was. snowing.

and we've learned down here on the gulf, that in the event snow (or more accurately, an icy snow-like substance) falls here, it doesn't stick around after the sun comes up! the meteorologist had said the night before that even if it did snow, our soil temperature was too high (48 degrees) to allow it to stick more than a few hours. so here is the view i had when i opened my door that morning...




this was the most snow i'd ever seen here before. as i said before, usually what we think is snow fall here, is really just a wintry mix. but this time, it was different. huge, fluffy, fat snow flakes were falling, and they were falling like crazy! the hubs finally rolled out of bed to come enjoy it with me for a little while. we even bundled frank up in his jacket that aunt liz gave him and took him outside to enjoy the fun.






as you might be able to tell, frank didn't enjoy the snow quite as much as we did...brit was out of power so we invited her over to enjoy the snow day with the two of us. eventually, the hubs decided to return to the warmth of our bed, and he fell back asleep. brit an i continued to enjoy our time in the snow!







it truly was a wonderfully magically day...i felt like a little kid again... :) i'll leave you with a few more pics of my house, yard and neighborhood. the pics from my mom's house are muuuuuuch cooler, but i can't seem to locate them at the present. as soon as i do, i'll post those as well. now i'm off to finish making christmas candies and pompoms for my gift wrapping! will share photos of those later!