A new year

I am an utter failure at doing nothing. Yesterday I cleaned the apartment, boxed up a bunch of stuff to cart off to Goodwill, found an awesome but totally beat up table by our dumpster and felt compelled to rescue it despite the fact that I have no idea where we will put it if we can ever fix it up (pictures coming soon) and then I reorganized all my crafting supplies and went to the library to check out a dozen books.

Are you tired yet? Me too. So in the late afternoon, I sat down for some much needed holiday tea (a gift from a darling friend who knows I have an addiction), leftover cookies and a big bout of thank you note writing.



It feels good to get the house all calm and quiet for the new year. I am so not a big New Year's Eve person. D and I have some nice champagne chilling in the fridge, but that's about it. I usually don't even bother to make resolutions, although I'm thinking about doing it this year.

Where do you stand? Do you make resolutions? Or ever stick to them if you do?

Camping in my apartment

So today is the first entirely free day I have had in almost two months. Seriously. Between family obligations and work, I've barely been in our apartment. I swore I would lie in bed until noon and then just sit around drinking tea all day, but naturally I am out of bed and itching to start re-organizing the apartment. It's a disease, I tell you.

I'm also tempted to run down to the stores and see if the deals are really as good as people say they are. Are they? Do any of you know? Is it worth a peek?

Meanwhile, I'm sipping tea and contemplating cleaning and making spaces for new things. Isn't this little candle holder darling? It was part of my Christmas loot from D. He actually got me a set of three different designs and they just make me smile every time I look at them. They are designed by David Weeks for Kikkerland.

See, if I reorganized the apartment, I would probably find the perfect place to put them.

What he got

I love buying gifts for D. He's pretty easy to shop for, to be honest. This Christmas, he got...

The Lucha Loco calendar, to go with the book he got for his birthday.

A set of mixed design pint glasses, from Etsy seller BreadandBadger. These are so awesome. Super high quality and all done by hand.

A couple of tee shirts from Etsy seller MisNopalesArt. Hilarious graphics, all printed on American Apparel shirts.

The new Sidestepper CD, which we've been eagerly waiting for.

Plus a fun architecture book, as usual.

Can you tell I usually go a little overboard with the gifts? I start buying stuff in October, so I end up ordering too much by the time Christmas gets here. Of course, it helps that I'll enjoy some of these gifts just as much as he will.

Another last minute gift

What do you give a 10 year old with a serious detective obsession?

How about a personalized detective notepad?



And some disguises (cut out of wool felt)?



We considered adding a trench coat and some crazy dark sunglasses, but we're trying to keep this strictly in the detective territory without letting it veer off into a scary flasher-esque costume.

Meal planning notepads, part II

Still whipping up a couple of last minute holiday gifts...

The meal planning notepads have evolved. (Click the picture below to see the full sized image.)

Want to make your own? Click the picture to see the full size image, save it to your desktop and then print it as a full page document. Print out as many pages as you would like (I make my pads with 50 sheets, which means I print 25 pages) and then cut them straight down the middle.

Bonus points: I perforate the sheets right above the grocery list portion using my beloved rotary cutter with the perforating blade. This makes it easy to simply tear off the bottom portion to take with you to the grocery store.

Create the notepad as described in this post. For more detailed instructions, see Sarah's post, where I got the idea from originally.

Use magnetic backing (I picked up some rolls like this at Home Depot) to allow you to stick them to the refrigerator for easy access.

I made a personalized version of these for each of the families on my Christmas list. Hopefully they go over well.

*This tutorial is provided for personal use only. Please do not sell this tutorial or create items for re-sale using this tutorial. Tutorial may be re-published only with my permission.

Sell out?

So on Friday I mentioned that we do not have a tree, despite our plethora of Christmas ornaments.

Well, last night I stopped at Home Depot for magnetic backing (this has been the full extent of my holiday shopping by the way, people - I have been way too busy) and I ended up walking out with a Christmas tree.

A fake one.

I'm almost embarrassed to admit it because I adore real trees, with the scent of pine filling the house. But you know what? I do not adore having to haul a dead tree out of my tiny apartment and down the stairs and out to the dumpster. Last time I had to do this it involved a hacksaw (I thought it would be easier if I took the tree apart before trying to move it) and ended in tears of frustration. Plus weeks of finding crunchy pine needles in my socks. Not okay.

So now I have a lovely, incredibly realistic, pre-lit tree that comes apart in three pieces and folds into a box. I'm officially a sell out.

If you're interested in fake trees, check out the GE Just Cut line. They are made out of some amazing synthetic material that looks and feels just like a real tree - not that weird paper confetti. Ours is something like this and it was on sale at Home Depot for $125.

I feel a little guilty, but I'm loving having the tree in my living room. I'm decorating tonight, if I can pry myself away from my craft table.

Not your mother's christmas ornaments

D and I do not have a traditional Christmas tree. Well, this year we don't actually have a Christmas tree at all, because we ran out of time, but that hasn't stopped me from adding to our ornament collection. As a nod to D's heritage, (but mostly just because we like it) our tree decorations are Mexican themed. Not meaning we have little glass blown tacos (although I would totally buy them, if I could find them), but we generally go for Dia de los Muertos-esque decorations. We have a great collection of little skeletons and skulls and I have some homemade ornaments using loteria cards. As a side note, I should mention that D's mom, who is Mexican, finds our Mexican themed tree completely bizarre, but kind of funny. I just don't want to mislead you into thinking that this is some kind of authentic Mexican tradition.

And now we have these guys.



As I've mentioned, we kind of love lucha libre, particularly after we were lucky enough to go to a real show while we were in Mexico last summer. So these little luchador masks, which I based on actual masks and then cut out of felt and glued together, will be making it onto our tree. Whenever we end up actually getting one, that is.