Cheese and diamonds!

What do these two things have in common???

They are both gifts I received from Hubby for Christmas! LOL! I absolutely LOVE Horseradish White Cheddar Cheese. Kroger carries Boar's Head brand for $8.99/lb. See why I don't buy it for myself?!

But Hubby went to Target and got me 2 POUNDS of their brand for the amazing price of $5.99/lb. I would not buy it myself even at that price, but it made a great Christmas gift! Oh, and a round of Brie cheese, which I will rarely buy for myself as well.

And he surprised me with a lovely diamond bracelet that I have not taken a picture of yet. I got some other things, like perfume, a cutting board and a kitchen stool I asked for, but the cheese and diamonds were a total surprise!!

I got other lovely gifts, but another really great one was from my SIL. 2 new cases of jelly jars! WooHoo! I would have taken empty old ones, but jars are jars and I was excited!

The best gifts, of course, were getting to spend time with my 3 kids and 3 grandsons. I will put up some pictures when I get a chance. (I realized too late that I didn't get any of us together!. Oops!)

Hope everyone had a wonderful, wonderful Christmas!

We are ready for Christmas!

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care.....

Oh, wait, that is tomorrow night's story!

We are ready for Christmas! My jam making marathon is over. I don't even know how many jars I made, but the assortment is delicious!

I also baked 16 loaves and one bundt of Cranberry Almond bread and they are all nestled in the freezer. I will take them out tomorrow afternoon to thaw, label them Christmas morning and put them in gift bags with the jam.

This year, we have gone really green and instead of buying paper gift bags to be thrown away (although most of our family saves them to reuse), we bought reusable grocery bags to use in their stead. So, the bag is a gift as well!

Hubby and I only bought gifts for our grandsons and our great nieces and those will be bagged up tomorrow...in Christmas bags, as I didn't think toddlers and babies cared about being green. LOL! We didn't bags up gifts yet, as I was afraid our cats would have to play in them and would ruin the tissue. LOL!

Christmas cards have been made for the kids to insert $$ in.

Oh, I do have to make devilled eggs and green bean casserole tomorrow for Christmas dinner at MIL's, but I only have to work 1/2 day, so have plenty of time.

I am ready for Christmas!!

Merry Christmas to all my bloggy friends!!

The joys of apartment living.

I know that "at our age" Hubby and I are supposed to want to own a house. Well, it would be nice to have a yard, as Hubby is an excellent gardener. But, other than that, we just have not felt the need to invest in one.

This week, the advantages were obvious. We have a really nice washer...heavy duty, extra capacity. It WAS really nice and did a great job on our laundry....until this week. Hubby was washing a load and notice water coming OUT FROM UNDER it during the spin cycle. He turned it off and cleaned up all the water and called me at work to tell me about it. Well, I am a little more mechanically inclined than he, so I looked at it when I got home. I took off the front and checked everywhere, but could not find a clogged line. And I am NOT handy enough to tell if the pump went out or whatever. I COULD tell that it desparately needed a new belt, but it looked like changing that was way beyond my abilities.

We thought about calling a repair man, but since I bought the washer in '93 or '94, I decided that it had done its duty and should be allowed to die in peace. LOL!

So we called our apartment office. Our apartments provide washers and dryers in every unit, but since we had our own when we moved here, they pulled theirs out of our unit. Since they have not had to provide us with either (or a refrigerator, since we have our own) for 6 years, they were more than happy to send us a washer.

The maintenance guy actually offered to check ours out before just trashing it, but he couldn't find the problem, so pulled ours out and a little while later brought us a BRAND NEW, in the box washing machine. WooHoo!

If we lived in a house, we would have had to take care of the old washer, go to the store, buy a new one and wait for delivery. Sure, we can afford to buy a new one, but we didn't have to.

Yeah for apartment living!!

My hubby is just a big kid!

Hubby went to the library last week to take a test to apply to be a census taker. He is ready to get back into the workforce, since his foot finally healed from the last surgery. I told him he doesn't need to work, since we are doing fine, but he wants to make some money. He has been a substitute teacher for years and was going to go back to that, but when he went to re-sign up, the admin department had lost his transcript and said he had to get another one before he can work for them. Stupid district! He subbed for them for over 15 years. You would think that they know he is qualified. Oh, and you would think that they would have the transcript filed electronically. This ticked him off just enough that he probably will not go back there, even though getting another copy of the transcript would not be a big deal.

Well, back to the story. LOL! He was at the library and during a break he called me and asked me to bring his camera to him. Okay....I was only 5 minutes away, so being the good wife that I am, I ran it over to him.

He wanted it because Santa Claus was at the library! LOL! So my big ol' hubby got his picture taken with Santa Claus! Isn't he cute!!! First he was snooping in Santa's bag of toys.

Then he pouted bacause Santa won't give him a pony. LOL!

More jam!

I made more jam today and thought I would share the results. Okay...pics of the results. LOL!



17 jars of Strawberry Jam:
8 jars of Strawberry Fig Jam:

5 jars of Strawberry Jelly (I make jelly for our son, Chance, who does not care for jam, but loves jelly.) It looks darker in the pic than it really is: I am feeling SO Martha, today!!