Hope you Enjoyed the Holidays!

I hope you all enjoyed the holidays! It was very busy here, but nice too. I still have not taken photos of the house all decorated. I'd better do that before Thursday cause that's when it all comes down!

The day after Christmas hubby and I drove down to Kentucky to see my Mom. She lives south of Lexington... absolutely BEAUTIFUL country! We visited all day on Saturday and drove back home Sunday. Thankfully my daughter was home from school and in town so she was able to stay home with our whippets.

Merry Christmas!!

I hope you and your families have a "beary" Merry Christmas!!!
(I bought this cute graphic at Graphic Garden)

Holly & Mistletoe

Finally finished my last 2 bears before Christmas - Holly & Mistletoe - a pair of Pocket Bears (available separately) You can see them on the Bears for Adoption page.

Now I'm off to go thru my In box which I know has some emails that I need to return. They are hiding in all that stupid spam I've been getting this month. Then I must get some cards out and presents wrapped!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

A Blog Facelift!

No, you are not "seeing things", my blog DOES look a lot different! While I was blog hopping I saw some blogs that looked real pretty, and had that blue box in the upper left hand corner for The Cutest Blog on the Block.com.

Although I do like to play around with HTML code on my own, I realize I really don't have time for that... but I DO get bored with the same thing all the time - so this was an awesome idea! I almost can't wait till after Christmas so I can change it again, so it's so quick and easy to do ;)

On another note... boy am I glad for Cold Ezze! Those are those zinc drops that look like cough drops. I felt a bad cold coming on Tuesday evening. The symptoms were just starting to appear. So I started taking those drops right away (I keep them on hand). I hardly felt bad at all and my cold is already gone. The directions say you need to start taking them as SOON as you start to feel symptoms, so I did!

Hopefully I'll be posting about a couple of new Pocket Bears later... but there is SO much on my "to do list"......

New Santa Bear - Sneak Preview! Adopted!!

This is my 4th Santa Bear. He's a little different than my previous Santa Bears.

He's almost 9" tall and is free standing.

His entire outfit is mohair and part of his body construction. His hat is made from matching red mohair with white alpaca trim. It is removable (it is held in place w/ one straight pin in the back.) Santa's beard is snowy white kid mohair.

Santa will be on my website later today after his official photo session with several other bears, but if you'd like to adopt Santa Bear before then, his adoption fee is $125 including shipping.

Sorry, Santa is flying off in his sleigh to California.

Kids growing up.... a late night

I have a daughter... just one, from my first marriage. She's a great kid.

All thru high school, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop (parenting a head strong teenager) and it never happened. I thought we had dodged a bullet... LOL!!!

Now I realize it was just delayed - heck, she was born late, why shouldn't everything else be late (ha ha!) She's in her 3rd year of college now and lives on campus. Just hates it when she has to come home for break cause she no longer can do what she pleases. Last night everything came to a head. She's still a great kid, but these last few years I've realized this parenting stuff is a LOT harder than I thought!

I just wanted to send a HUGE hug out to all you parents out there!!! And yes, my parents will probably laugh hysterically when I tell them ;)

Thinking of my East Coast Friends....

Encased
Originally uploaded by Jeff Newcomer

I found this photo on Flickr. It's beautiful.... but certainly does not show the incredible destruction caused by the latest ice storm :( A very good friend of mine has been without power (or HEAT) since Thursday night/Friday early morning. I know there's many more of you too (who can't read this right now either!) but please know I'm thinking of you...

Christmas Cookie Round Up!

My friend Lisa of Q.D. Patooties came up with another fun idea. Many of us artists like to stay in touch with each other via email and our blogs. Although we'd LOVE to be able to get together and do a Christmas Cookie exchange, it just is not feasible. So Lisa came up with an idea to exchange our favorite Christmas cookie recipes and we'll visit each other's blogs to swap!

Feel free to come visiting to "pick up" the cookie recipes! If you want to start at the beginning, start with Lisa's blog here. Everyone will have the next "house" (blog) for you to visit in their cookie recipe post as a link. I hope you have fun!

Candy Cane Cookies

Yummy almond tasting cookies shaped like candy canes!

Sugar - 1C
Margarine - 2/3C
Eggs - 2
Vanilla extract - 2t
Almond extract - 1t
Flour - 3C
Baking Powder - 1t
Red food coloring - 1/2t

1. Beat sugar and margarine in large bowl until creamy. Add eggs and both extracts - beat.

2. Mix flour and baking powder in small bowl then stir into margarine/sugar mixture.

3. Divide dough in half. Add red food coloring to one half. Wrap each half separately and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

4. Divide each half into 32 pieces. Roll each piece into a 5" rope. Twist 1 red rope and 1 white rope together and bend top end to form a candy cane shape. Place on ungreased cookie sheets.

5. Bake in preheated oven at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes or just until set and lightly golden. Remove from sheets; cool on wire racks.

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I thought I'd also share a Christmas cookie recipe that is sugar free. It can be hard to find recipes like this for people that have to watch their sugars! My recipe is for sugar free Kolackys. I love them PLUS they are sweetened naturally - without any artificial sweeteners.

SUGAR FREE KOLACKYS

1C Flour
1/4 lb Butter
1/4 lb Cream Cheese
3TBL Evaporated Milk
1/8 tsp Salt

Filling of your choice -
my favorite is Polaner's Apricot All Fruit Spread.

Muffin Liners
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Bring the butter and cream cheese to room temperature.
Mix together all ingredients EXCEPT the filling.
Put in bowl and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.
Knead well on well floured surface.
Roll out to 1/4" thick.

Lay out muffin liners on cookie sheet.
Cut out dough with round biscuit cutter.
Place each dough circle in a muffin liner and press down.
Drop a teaspoon full of filling into the center of each "cookie".
Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes - keep a close eye on it for the
first batch to see how your oven does.

Let cool.

For the next Christmas Cookie Recipe -
visit the blog of my friend
Amy Thorton of Mutz's Tootz

Where have I been???

Wow these last couple of weeks have just flown by! Thanksgiving was at our house, and although I get a lot of the food pre-cooked at our grocery store (only cause it's absolutely YUMMY) it's still a lot of work!

The Friday after Thanksgiving is our traditional Christmas decorating day... another long and tiring day, but well worth it! The rest of the weekend was spent grocery shopping, doing housework and laundry... and then back to bears! I've been working on some custom order bears, but will soon have some fur kids ready for the website!

I haven't had a chance to take photos of our Christmas decorations yet, but will soon! Can you imagine... I've got a few bears involved?? LOL!