So...

It's almost 11:00 here and I'm not quite tired enough to go to bed yet, and I have nothing else to do, so I'm just going to ramble.

Wanna see some of the stuff I made for people for Christmas? OK. Probably not. LOL! But I'm gonna show you anyway. ;)

Here are the ornaments I made for everyone. They weren't that hard to do. The wood was precut into the shapes. I just printed out some digital scrapbooking stuff I did and then used ModPodge (like decoupage glue) to put them on the shapes. Sand all of the edges, add some twisted wire and a bow or two, and you're done. (The two boys on the mitten shapes are my two nephews. I figured my SIL would rather have pictures of her own kids on her ornaments than mine. LOL!)

Here are the CD calendars I made for a few people. And this wasn't my idea at all. It's a pretty common thing among digital scrapbookers. I just scrapped a page for each month of the year. Then you take a regular plastic jewel case for a CD, snap it backwards, and use it like an easel to hold each month's page. (One is in the "easel" in thefirst picture (upper left-hand corner).) My sister, my dad, my FIL, and my MIL all got one for their desks.

I also made my sister this cool tray/wall hanging thing using pictures of her two dogs (which are her "kids"). I do have some pictures of it, but they're on my other computer (which isn't turned on right now), so you'll have to wait until tomorrow to see those. I made her a cool clipboard/picture frame too, but I forgot to take a picture of it before I wrapped it, so you'll just have to go through life never seeing it, which I'm sure is devastating for some of you. ;)

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So other than that stuff, let's see what else is new:

**I still can't fucking breathe (because of the abundance of snot), which is getting kind of old.

** I got a new digital camera from my mom for Christmas, which has me all sorts of giddy. :)

** My mom and I took the girls to see "Charlotte's Web" today. Highly recommend it! Really cute and I'm not ashamed (OK... maybe a little) to admit that I got a little teary at the end when a certain main character kicked the bucket after giving birth to her 500+ babies.

** Steve is (finally) starting not to feel so well and has hinted that if he's still feeling like shit tomorrow, he won't be going to work OR hunting. Shit. [sigh]

** Twenty bucks says that if he does stay home, he'll lie around all day, watching movies and not doing anything. That's not a problem with me at all, but it would be nice if, for once, he'd acknowledge that I've felt like shit for over a week now and still managed to get everything ready for Christmas, including buying and wrapping presents, making presents, taking the girls to various Christmas-related events, and preparing food for 20+ people, all while also taking care of our two children. Seriously... when the hell does mom get to be sick and just stay in bed all day, dammit. [grumble grumble]

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TOYS I WOULDN'T RECOMMEND TO MY WORST ENEMY

(OK... so maybe to my worst enemy... but not to the rest...)

1. Baby Alive: This doll eats baby food, drinks out of her bottle, and then shits herself. Sounds cute, right? Um, no. It sucks. It wouldn't have been bad had the stupid little shit not had a big ol' diaper blowout, causing me to have to clean green "baby poop" off of her back, her legs, her hair, and her dress. Seriously, I felt like I had a damn newborn in the house again. What was really kind of disturbing is that the stupid thing talks too, and the entire time I was cleaning her up, she kept saying, "Let's play! Can we play, Mommy?" I was actually answering her by yelling, "NO! Shut the heck up! I'm cleaning the crap off of you right now!!!!" I think I may have scared my kids.

2. Barbie Dance with Me dance Mat/DVD: OK. So in theory, this one is cute. Hannah loves it, and it really is adorable to watch her in her little bodysuit, sheer skirt, and ballet shoes watching the TV and trying to dance like a ballerina. But the damn song is stuck in my head... And I can't get it out... And that annoys me.

3. The Fisher Price Karaoke Machine Thingamajiggy: Cute, again in theory. But my young children don't know ANY of the cool songs that come with the system, and ONLY know the "Who Let the Dogs Out" song. Cute to watch the first time they sing it, while watching themselves on TV, but now, in my brain, the Barbie ballet song and "Who Let the Dogs Out" song are raging a fierce battle and neither one will get out of my fucking head.

TOYS I WOULD RECOMMEND TO ANYONE:

1. Fisher Price "Read with Me DVD" Sytem: This thing is pretty cool. You pop in a DVD and a story (complete with words) is displayed on the screen and read out loud. It comes with a kid's controller with buttons on it, that allows them to play games on the TV screen after every few "pages" of the story. Cute stuff.

2. GameBoy: Keeps the kids quiet for hours. Good shit, I tell ya.

3. LeapPad Learning System: Again, keeps kids quiet for way longer than I'm used to. However, when buying one, you should probably just buy one for each of your kids so as to avoid the inevitable wars that will break out when more than one child wants to play with it at the same time.

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So my brother bought Grace "The Corpse Bride" DVD for Christmas. This totally cracks me up. He found out a few weeks ago that she had caught "The Nightmare Before Christmas" on TV and LOVED it. So he bought her "The Corpse Bride." It amuses me that any 5-year-old child receives a gift with the word "corpse" in it for Christmas. And yet, I think it's another sign that Grace just totally kicks ass.

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My brother bought Steve and I a "Deliverance" DVD. There's sort of a joke behind it. A few weeks ago, we were all at my sister's house and it came out that Steve never saw it. We were like, "What? It involves incest and banjos... how could you, of all people, not have seen it?" (Steve's dad plays the banjo by the way.) So that day at my sisters, we did a search online to show him the freaky, incest, banjo-playing kid and then when my sister left the room, we set her computer so a picture of the incest dude would flash on her screen every few minutes. It totally cracked us all up. So we open our gifts on Christmas and there it is... a copy of "Deliverance". LOL! We haven't had a chance to watch it yet, but I'm pumped. I only saw it once and it was a long time ago, but I remember really liking it. Of course, this will mean "Dueling Banjos" will be in my head for weeks, but it can compete with Barbie and "Who Let the Dogs Out."

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OK. I could babble for another hour, but I figure this is enough for now. ;)