'Twas the night before Christmas.......

And all through the house......we wrapped last minute presents and vacummed the house.

Another college acceptance letter came for the CP today......it's hard to believe she's going away!

As early evening comes creeping in.........it's time for our holidays to finally begin.

Wishing you and yours a wonderful Christmas full of family, friends, joy and love.

~Allie

'Tis the Season....

Wow! December just BLEW into my world and it's been run, run, run ever since! Here it is December 15 and I just put my tree up yesterday BUT it's not decorated....that may not happen until Friday night. Seemed strange pulling out the tree yesterday when it was nearly 80 degrees.....not complaining mind you, it was nice having the doors and windows open. This morning we awoke to 31 degrees with the high only being 36 but they say by Friday it may reach 70....gotta love the Texas winters!

In the past month, we've taken the Cupcake Princess to two universities for a visit. One of the universities was UNT, my alma mater. Boy, was that a strange feeling!! Walking around campus, wondering what had happened to all of the frat houses, reminiscing about 10 cent beer night....how could my one and only be old enough for that kind of fun?! She also got her first college acceptance letter a few days ago. What a joyous time it is for her!!

Tonight we head over to the high school for their annual Christmas choir concert. Such a talented group of kids! That's the Cupcake Princess on the front row (one of the benefits of being short :D !) sporting the shades.

Busy times can be happy times. May this holiday season be busy and happy for you, too. More soon.........

~Allie

Feeling blue....

Although the sun was shining brightly today, in my heart, it felt like it was cloudy, cold, and rainy. A very dear friend of mine lost her husband the morning after Thanksgiving. She went in to wake him up for breakfast and he was no longer with us. He was buried yesterday. I think what rattles me so is that he was only 34 years old and had no health problems that anyone knew of. Scott leaves behind a beautiful wife, my dear friend Katy, and a sweet little boy, Max.

It's hard not to wonder why something like this could happen.....tests your faith a little. Hug your loved ones and let them know how special they are to you every day.

Lovingly,
~Allie

pictures from publicdomainpictures.net

Visions of Thanksgiving

Was running to the vacuum store yesterday afternoon because the belt broke on the vacuum cleaner (something always breaks right before the holidays) and heard the strangest sound. When I looked up in the sky, this is what I saw.........

A blimp! It used to be called the Goodyear blimp but now it's the DIRECTV blimp.......on it's way to Dallas Stadium for the Thanksgiving Cowboy football game. It was the strangest sound and so weird to see in our skies!

So, I've been trying to get ahead for the Thanksgiving celebration at our house this year. The table has been set since Tuesday night. I lit the candles last night and took some pictures. Nothing fancy, but wanted to have a nice place for the six of us to eat before we settle in for some football watching and napping.Wishing you and yours a wonderful Thanksgiving full of family, friends, love, and joy.

~Allie

This is what morning looks like!

"This is what morning looks like!" my dad would always say in a bright voice to me when I was younger. He got such a kick out of me grumbling about being awake so early in the morning and this would just make me grumble even more. I had an opportunity to tell my dad the same thing last weekend while we were staying at my mom and dad's home.


I have a simple, digital camera, so I wasn't really able to capture the beauty of the sunrise over the lake at my parents house last weekend......but I think you can tell that it was truely amazing. While I'm not a morning person at all, I was still awake enough to appreciate the spendor of the sun peeking over the cliffs. The air was cool and the only sounds you could hear were leaves scooting across the ground and trees gently whispering. I think my dad and my husband got a good laugh from me running out the back door in my p.j.s saying...."Oh! I've GOT to get a picture of this!".....at 6 in the morning.......especially because I'm still such a big grump early in the morning. Merisi, you created the new monster running around with a camera all of the time......I really am trying to see the beautiful little things in my world around me. What a gift! Happy Friday, everyone! :D

`~Allie

Birthday Wishes

"Mother is the name of God on the lips and in the hearts of children."

~William Makepeace Thackeray

Today is my sweet mother's birthday.

I'm glad we got to celebrate with you this past weekend.

As always, you were the Hostess with the Mostess!!

Hope today was a wonderful day with friends and family.

You are MY yellow rose of Texas!

I love you......

~Allison

Do you remember?

Do you remember your senior year of high school? Boy, I sure do! And now, my Cupcake Princess is enjoying her senior year. This is part of the group of 24 that went to Homecoming together last weekend. The CP is wearing the bright, sea blue dress. What a wonderful group of kids she hangs out with. They are all part of the Theatre Magnet at her high school, make good grades, and really don't get into trouble.....they just like hanging out with each other.

These are just the girls, minus one who was running late. Don't they look beautiful? It was November 1, around 6 pm......notice......no wraps, no jackets...and no, they weren't freezing. It was around 70 degrees and just a wonderful evening.

These are two of the Cupcake Princess's best friends in the whole world. They've been friends since 7th grade and just take such good care of each other. Being theatre students, they LOVE to "mug" for the camera! No shyness with this bunch!

This is another of the CP's best friends. The two of them just crack me up! They look like Mutt and Jeff!! Tracy is 6 feet tall and the CP is only 5'2"......but they wear the same size dress.......go figure!What a lucky young man to be surrounded by such beautiful young ladies!

I love my Cupcake Princess!

~Allie

Did you vote?

image courtesy of sprinklescupcakes.com

Dogs just don't get it!

I was SO looking forward to sleeping in and getting that extra hour of sleep this morning. But NOOOOO! Not only does Pippen not get weekend schedules, he REALLY doesn't understand FALLING BACK with daylight savings time! I must have been pounced a dozen times this morning in my bed and he was quite vocal....letting me know that this sleeping late business was just unacceptable to him. He wasn't happy being off his schedule!! Guess I'll be napping on the couch while the Cowboys play this afternoon. He's lucky I find him so cute!!
~Allie

Celebrating & Some Silliness....

I'm celebrating having just finished my final exam for my ninth grad school course. Only two more courses and the internship to go.....and the internship hours are already done. Whee!

Anyway, I'm spending waaay too much time playing around on the internet, waiting for the Cupcake Princess to get home from the homecoming football game. I found this cool little site. Now, I'm not much into Halloween, but thought this could be my little Halloween posting. Go out to this site and put in your name and it will give you your fairy name. My fairy name sounded perfect for Halloween. (I think I need some sleep!)

Your fairy is called Gossamer Willowglow

She is a caster of weird dreams.

She lives in spiderwebbed wonderlands and insect grottos.

She is only seen in the light of a full moon.

art courtesy of http://www.fotosearch/ .com

I LOVE the pink hair!

Happy Halloween!

~Allie

Treasures in the mail........

Look what treasures came in the mail this week! I had entered a giveaway over at Aged Vintage Papier back in July but didn't win. However, I got an email about two weeks ago saying the person who won never contacted them with a mailing address. SO..............they pulled another number.....AND IT WAS MINE! The gift tags are so feminine and sparkly. It doesn't show up in my poor photo though. Julie from Fabulous Finds was the contributing artist and the one who made all of these lovely things. They are so beautiful that I really don't want to use them as gift tags. I'd rather keep them and just look at them for inspiration. ~Allie

House & Garden

Just got home from seeing the Cupcake Princess in another high school theatre production. This one is called House and Garden. It's a British comedy, kind of a funny Upstairs/Downstairs kind of thing but it's quite unique. There are two shows going on at the same time. One is in the auditorium, that's the Garden, and the other one is going on in the Black Box theatre across the hall, that's the House. The characters travel from set to set. So you have to go to two nights of shows to find out the whole story. We went to Garden tonight and we'll go to House on Saturday night. What fun! I'm so proud of her! ~Allie

Racing through October

What a BUSY month this has been so far! I've hardly had time to spend reading my favorite blogs or posting anything of my own. Had a girl's weekend last weekend with my best friend, Julie. We headed down to my parent's house on the lake Friday night after work. Stayed up until midnight visiting and slept in late on Saturday morning. But not too late that we were out of the house by noon to head to a holiday craft show at the Belton Expo Center. After tasting every dip and soup and seeing some ideas for Christmas, we continued down the highway three exits to Salado, Texas.

Salado is a sleepy little art town in Central Texas. It's old time Main street is dotted with lots of antique shops, dress shops, art galleries, crafts, collectibles and so much more. The weekend we were there, they were having their Christmas in October Christmas Market that coincided with their Chocolate & Art Festival. There's SO much to tell that I'll have to break it up into a couple of posts.Christmas was EVERYWHERE! This is Julie checking out a sparkling, silver and crystal tree which I couldn't capture on my camera very well. There were SO many beautifully decorated trees. I guess that's why I'm having a hard time getting into Halloween and Thanksgiving. I saw a Christmas wonderland and I'm ready to celebrate the season now!I realy like these tall, skinny trees. Maybe this is the year to get a new tree. HMMMMM.......Big Daddy may not like that idea. But they are SO stunning! All of these trees had the coolest tops to them. A spray of sparkling, whispy "things" making the trees look like there were 4th of July sparklers bursting from them.

I love this tree top! Wish someone would come and decorate my tree like this for me........I'm not sure I can do it on my own. The picture is kind of dark but I think you can get the idea.

This tree with the feathers was also stunning. It would look great in my parent's house on the lake. We saw a lot of pheasant feathers everywhere we went on Saturday. I even found a darling cupcake ornament. Had intended to go back and buy it after I had finished looking through the whole store and then got so wrapped up in the holiday-ness that I walked out without buying it. Can you tell I was just a little overwhelmed. It was a fantastic day!

There's more to share from our girl's weekend but I haven't the luxury of time this weekend. More soon! Are you feeling in the holiday spirit yet? ~Allie

Show & Tell Sunday

So here's another way to get rid of "Bloggers Block"......Show and Tell Sunday. What a great prompt! Think I'll try it!! Today's offering is the art of

Thierry Poncelet.

I came across this print about 10 years ago and fell in love with it. Never had I seen anything like it before. And while he's not a Scottish Terrier (we'll save that subject for another Sunday) this gentleman's handsome, bearded face and elegant pose just captured my heart. Big Daddy even liked him! We bought a wooden easel to display this dapper chap in our home and lovingly named him "Dogman".

One day, I stumbled on some photos in a catalog of other prints that were done in the same theme.....classic paintings with canine heads instead of human heads. The artist responsible for these canine aristocrats is Thierry Poncelet.

Thierry Poncelet was born in Brussels in 1946. He studied Fine Arts at the St. Luc Academy and then joined Max Masot's workshop to learn the art of painting in the traditional way and restoration. However, his love of painting soon outgrew his interest in restoration, and he decided to become a full time oil painter, specializing in whimsical dog portraits. Mr. Poncelet calls his portraits "aristochiens".This morning, I decided to look around the internet to see if there was anything new about Thierry Poncelet since I last researched him. What is this?! There's a book with a collection of his art work and a humorous, biographical sketch of each of the portrait "sitters" is written by Bruce McCall. On the back of the book cover it says, "The fetching result is a vision of a society gone to the dogs.". Santa, I would like this book! (Thank you Alisa, for the tutorial on using links in my posts. I think it worked!)

Mr. Poncelet's art suits me to a "T". And thank you to my friends and Big Daddy for indulging me and contributing to two of my passions.......dogs and laughing. This was a LONG show and tell......thanks for staying with me to the end.

HAPPY SUNDAY!

~Allie

Celebrating 21 Years!

So the teenager came over and worked on my scanner but didn't get it up and running. Being as relentless as my scottie, I spent three hours today working on that blasted scanner and voila! Old Mom did it!! So NOW I can share wedding photos. 21 years ago this month I married my soul mate.

"Love is not a matter of counting the years; it is making the years count."~William Smith

While every day hasn't been a "piece of cake", we've managed to survive lots of lifes ups and downs. From a bouncing baby girl to losing a job, from earning Masters Degrees to fighting cancer, we're still facing the world together and meeting every challenge that presents itself.

"A happy family is but an earlier heaven"~George Bernard Shaw

Every step of the way, my family has been there to support me, my husband, and my daughter. When my world went flying out of control one Christmas with my husband battling cancer and surgery, they dropped everything to come be by my side.

"As soon as I saw you, I knew an adventure was going to happen." ~Winnie the Pooh

I love you, Patrick...........

Rounding Up Random Thoughts........

Downtown Dallas September 2008

It's been 14 days since posting......hmmmm.....partly because it's been a busy time and partly because I think I can safely say I've experienced my first spell of "bloggers block". Lots of random thoughts running through my mind.....but in no clear direction. How about a bulleted list? Let's see how that works :)

• Texas has made it through a terrible storm.....hurricane Ike. All of the evacuation centers in the DFW area are full but everyone seems to be taken care of well and there have been no major events of trouble. Why did so many people decide to ride the storm out in Galveston? It doesn't make sense.
• Would really like to get the scanner working. Asked one of the Cupcake Princess's friends if she'd set it up for me and happily I may be scanning by tonight :) Bringing in more pictures might break the blogger's block.
• Just celebrated 21 years of being married. Wow! I can't be that old!!
• Sarah Palin sure is getting a lot of press.
• One of the Cupcake Princess's friends from elementary school just turned 18 last week and this past Friday night we got a midnight call that she had been in an accident. She was driving her vespa home Friday evening and somebody hit her. Chipped teeth, road rash, stitches in her cheek, and surgery yesterday to put two plates into her leg. Horrible. She is like our adopted daughter. Couldn't sleep after the phone call. Was like the floor had just been pulled out from under me. She just called from her hospital room and sounds good. We're all going to see her this evening. It's scary when your kids go off for their first day of school and you think that when you get through that, things are good and you won't be experiencing that feeling again. WRONG! Now they are 18, driving, and your heart skips a beat every night that they are out and you don't relax your shoulders until they are home safe and sound. When does THAT feeling go away?
• Have been enjoying the new episodes of Gossip Girl. Am I too old to be watching this?
• Why does it always rain right after you give the dog a bath?
• Downtown Dallas is actually beautiful.

New Orleans on my mind........

It's early Sunday morning and I've been glued to weather news for 24 hours now. Hurricane Gustav is heading straight for the Louisiana coast. You might ask why that should matter to me as I live in Dallas. 21 years ago next Friday, I married my wonderful husband in Dallas and then we headed to our new home two days later. Our new home was in New Orleans. A refurbished, two story, anti-bellum home on Canal street.....the second floor....only window units for airconditioning and just blocks away from Lake Ponchatrain. We spent the first five years of our married life in this charming town and did our best to immerse ourselves in the culture and the history of this most unique city.

In those five years we lived in four different houses. Our second house was unlike any other I've ever lived in. It was this castle in a small, fishing village just east of New Orleans called Irish Bayou. We moved into it just before Christmas in 1987 and spent our first Christmas together as a married couple here. The photo I'm using is not from that time. I haven't been able to hook up our new scanner yet so I've pulled one in from Google Images (noteworthyinnola.com).

The yard is very overgrown, but what's so amazing is that this photo was taken AFTER Katrina hit. The castle was the only thing left standing in Irish Bayou after the storm. Amazing! My husband and I lived here with our Old English Sheepdog, Maggie, for 6 months. Big Daddy traveled on business alot then and would usually leave out of town on Monday and return home on Friday. Maggie and I spent lots of time here, just the two of us, and my biggest fear was that she would become dinner for a 'gator. When I get my scanner working, I'll post again about this bizarre newlywed home and show you pictures of the inside and tell your more stories about living here.
There are many old, beautiful cemetaries in New Orleans. Angels abound everywhere you look. As the city is now under mandatory evacuation, I pray that this storm will NOT be a repeat of Katrina and that the angels wrap their protective wings of comfort and love around this historic and charming city. New Orleans has not had enough time or support to get itself back on its feet yet. The news reports that are coming out of the city currently seem to point to a new evacuation plan that is more organized and the chaos is not like what it was three years ago this past Friday. Please keep this city and its people in your thoughts and prayers.

No Wakey-Wakey for me today!

Went back to work (school) three weeks ago. However, the kids came back to school this week and I was the lucky winner of the first two weeks of morning duty. Whippee! Getting up this morning was TOUGH! I felt just like this puppy. I've stayed up too late watching the Democrat's Convention and then reading for another 30 minutes or so after that. Next week will probably be the same because I'll have to watch the Republican's Convention, too. Gotta look for my dad on t.v. with the Texas delegation. Somehow, when I decided to become a teacher, I forgot about how much I enjoy staying up late and do NOT enjoy getting up early in the morning.....and teachers have to be at school before the kids! Thank goodness for the three day weekend! Hope everyone has a restful Labor Day!

The Cupcake Princess is HOME!

After puking on the plane from JFK, through Atlanta, an emergency stop in Jackson, Mississippi for someone suffering from an anxiety attack on their first flight, and finally arriving in Dallas an hour and a half late........I got to hug my Cupcake Princess. Dinner served on the flight from Edinburgh disagreed with her.........she'll never eat spinach pizza again! It is so good to have her home. The house is full of life again. Unfortunately, it's a week before school starts so teachers are back in school........this prep week is always stressful and too full.....but I'm leaving as fast as I can each day to spend the evenings with the CP. LIfe has just picked up speed again and I'm not ready for it...........I need a summer vacation to get over my summer vacation!

Scotland calling.....

The Cupcake Princess called this afternoon from Edinburgh. They are all settled in at the dormitories and have gone grocery shopping to save money on food......that's my girl! Lots of rain and cool weather.....unlike Dallas....but she says the people and the places are all beautiful. They've done some rehearsing and a tech run and everything's going well. The first show is in two nights. Only two people on the trip have tried haggis and those two are loving it...she's not one of them! It was SO good to hear her voice..........feeling a bit melancholy now.