A Surprise Box!

I had fun mail today.  I received a Christmas card from somebody in England.  I'm in a couple of Christmas card swaps that is being done on Swap-Bot and the first one came today.  I forgot to take a picture of it but I will take a picture when I have some more cards from the swap.  I also received some other Christmas cards and, gasp, sent out the first batch of my own Christmas cards.  While I was at the Post Office, I snapped a couple of picture of the lights in the area.  The first one is Rosita's Restaurant and I liked how they decorated their outside patio.

This next one is how the light poles by the Post Office were decorated.  DeKalb has some trees that line the streets down town and they had the small lights on them.  It really does make it look so festive.

But wait, as the announcer would say, there's more!  I received a box full of goodies.  Look at everything that was in it!  Somewhere buried under the fabric is a magazine called create and decorate.  It looks very interesting.  I haven't seen that before so it will be fun to look through it.

That painted rock says "love" on it too.  isn't it so cute?!

 

Since it is the weekend, I've also done some cooking and worked on presents/not presents for work.  First of all my cooking.  I made a slow cooker potato, hamburger (although I used ground turkey), cheesy layered dish today.  Didn't take a picture of it since I dished it up for lunch before thinking on it and then the cheesy in it made it sort of slide and not stand up well.  It was good though.  I also made 5 minute sunshine sauce from Pinch of Yum.

It is hard to describe but has olive oil, various spices, a touch of sugar and either white vinegar or lemon juice.  I used lemon juice.  It is very smooth and, dare I say it?, almost velvety.  I added more sugar since it was a bit salty.  Don't know why I thought sugar would counter the salt but it did help a bit.  I would cut back on the salt next time.  It can be used on almost anything.  I actually used it on my eggs.  I'm looking for different ways to have fried eggs.  This was good.  I'll have it on something else during the week.  Perhaps a salad or over potatoes or just meat.  Not sure what I have around.

I then started to work on some presents/not presents for the office.  I have two co-workers who I gave mug rugs to last year.  Not a technical Christmas present but just a little something.  This year Dana and Debbie are going to get this.

I have another version that I will give to my student helper Noah.

Noah's bowl is microwavable safe (but not the lid) and the decals on it were put on with Elmer's Washable School Glue so they can be taken off and washed clean.  I used the same glue on Dana's and Debbie's jar so it can too can be washed and reused.

Employee Wellness, years ago, gave us all M&Ms when we had a lot of stress in the office saying that it would us de-stress us because everybody loves to eat M&Ms and if you look at the M is can look like a smile (we won't go that it can also look like a frown).  We all need to have a stress relieve and who doesn't like to eat M&Ms?  Even if they don't like it, there are enough people at work that will help eat them if they leave it out and then they can reuse the container for whatever they wish.

That's about it for me tonight.  I'm going to sign off of the computer and go and sit in a comfy chair and do some crocheting.  Tomorrow is working on the test pattern since it has to be turned in soon.  But that is tomorrow and not tonight.  

I wish everybody a great day.