Angie Windheim

I had a lot of fun creating this year’s Christmas card. I was inspired by an old Norman Rockwell print called “Tired of Waiting.”  I showed the kids the print and they played the part of the sleeping kids beautifully!  Otto, our mini-Schnauzer, got into the shot, too, though he wasn’t good at pretending to sleep 🙂

I upped the ISO to avoid flash and made sure to get plenty of natural light on the boys’ faces from the window. Then, I antiqued the coloring to make it look old.  I love photography.

Brian and I have created a pretty impressive Christmas music collection over the years.  We have classics like Nat King Cole, Bing Crosby and I’d even put Harry Connick Jr in that category.

More modern favorites are Bare-naked Ladies (that one rocks) and Sarah Mclachlan (beautiful).  My absolute favorite is their combo song, God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. I listen to that one over and over and over.

This year I added some indie chick songs with the Hotel Cafe collection. It features Lenka, Sara Bareilles, Colbie Cailat, K.T. Tunstall, etc.  It has a few duds (Katy Perry and Fiona Apple) but overall it’s given me some fresh tunes.

And, I just downloaded the Last Christmas song by the Glee cast.  That song puts me back into the pre-teens when Wham! released it.  I can still clearly imagine the video that MTV ran over, and over, and over.  The Glee cast nailed it and took it up a notch. Sorry George Michael 🙂

Oh, and Brian got the Heat Miser song remade by the Big Bad Voodoo Daddies. It’s great. Don’t even tell me you don’t remember that song from the animated classic The Year without a Santa Claus. That’s by far my favorite of all those old movies.

What are your favorites? I’d hate to be missing any gems out there!

I can’t believe that the Bunco Babes are going into our 4th year of getting together. We have such a good time. So good of a time that we hardly actually play the game anymore.

Got one more Christmas “to do” checked off my list. The Christmas candy is done, done, done. I made candied pretzels, dark chocolate-mint fudge, chocolate peanut butter balls and bourbon balls. Yum! The kids and Brian were awfully excited when they saw all of it. I had to start slapping hands ’cause they just couldn’t stop munching 🙂

I’m am cracking up! I suggested, half joking, that the boys try my Jillian Michael’s DVD to help build some muscles. Well, they are now on Day 4 of the 30-Day Shred. After their workout last night, we arm wrestled. It’s getting tougher (especially with my left arm), but I can still beat all of them. I should probably record it, ’cause you know it ain’t going to last for long!

This was a fun little project. Pretty easy, and not as messy as the old peanut butter methods…which I found out is actually not good for the birds. They can get it stuck in their beaks!  My instructions are now on eHow.

How to Make Bird Seed Ornaments for Your Yard | eHow.com.

A lot of getting good indoor sport shots has to do with setting up the camera. I just shared my Digital SLR secrets in an article on eHow. How to Take Youth Basketball Photos | eHow.com.

I’ve been having a good time gathering the birds to my yard this winter. This week I added some homemade bird seed ornaments to my trees and the Oregon Juncos found them today! I was so happy that I could’ve watched them all day. But, that would be silly, so I took pictures instead.

Joe and Ben kicked off  their league basketball season today despite the threat of freezing rain and snow…can we fire those meteorologists already?!  Anyways, both boys gave a good show for their first games. Unfortunately, we came out on the losing side at the end. Oh well, we’ll get ’em next week 🙂

And, with a new sport season comes a new photo op. I’ll be taking the team photos as usual…I’ll have to say I’m getting pretty good at the allusive basketball photo. Take a look at what I got from  Joe’s game…

The girls met for lunch at Pastini’s this week. I’d been there before when it first opened at Bridgeport, but didn’t have much of an impression good or bad. This time I was really impressed. It’s got a warm and friendly atmosphere and their lunch menu was excellent.  Six bucks got me just the right amount of a delicious pasta, caesar salad and bread.  I chose the Spaghetti Siciliano with capers, feta, sun-dried tomotoes, tomatoes, garlic, sherry and olives. It was truly excellent. And, it wasn’t the only thing that caught my eye on the $6 lunch menu.