My husband is utterly besotted with Paula Deen. And I must admit, she does make some fine culinary creations. So when he made puppydog eyes at me a few weeks back and suggested that I do some of the Christmas-themed recipes in the "Paula Deen Celebrates!" cookbook, I said sure ( Read more... )

Someone at work pointed this out to me -- Mission San Luis's Flickr Site. There's lots of recent pictures and some rather old ones too, going back to my days as a volunteer at MSL ( Read more... )

I'm very much in the Christmas spirit these days. Peire & I got our holiday cards written and mailed, and today we put up the Christmas tree, wrapped some gifts and decorated around the house. We also ordered our big holiday gift to ourselves -- a cherrywood dresser that matches the other pieces of our master bedroom suite. Now all we need to ( Read more... )

Things have been mad wild, this last month. We'd just finished Halloween, and then came Thanksgiving, and Mission San Luis's "Giving Thanks" event (which went off very nicely, thanks in large part to it not raining like cats & dogs as it did last year). Now we're getting ready for the Commemorative Mass & Visitor Center Grand Opening, which will ( Read more... )

Have a wonderful Halloween -- and if you can come to our party, even better! I hope to see y'all there!

[EDT] The party was a great success! It started out at a sedate pace, but was really hopping by the end of the evening. Many thanks to palmetto & swanjun for helping me get into my costume! Little Rachel made it through a decent portion of the party, and then ( Read more... )

That's right, kiddies! It's the return of Izzy's (& Peire & Rachel's) Halloween Open House Party! Here's all the details ( Read more... )

October has always been one of my favorite months, for a variety of reasons -- the weather (although after a beautiful first week, it's gotten hot and humid again. Bah!), the fact that Halloween is approaching, the less buggy quality of the air, and sometimes the leaves even change color (I live in the South, after all. Color-changing leaves aren't ( Read more... )

Amazingly, it is not going to get as ludicrously hot as quickly as it normally does -- so this morning, Rachel and I will step out and go take a stroll with the pram (Rachel in it, me pushing it) at Mission San Luis. Rachel has never seen where mommy & daddy work! Not to mention the fact that my co-workers have been wanting to see Rachel, and there ( Read more... )

There are some days which just go well on all counts, and they need to be savored. Today was such a day, for a number of reasons:

( It was a productive day! )

Things have been going busily but pleasantly through Holiday Season 2008 here! I successfully sent greeting cards to many out-of-town family members & friends (although _geekie_, I think I must have an outdated address for you, since your card came back to me with a chastising note upon it from the postal service), I hosted my family's gift-opening ( Read more... )