My niece Stacie, her husband Pat, and 3 kids (Baily, Bryce, & Madisyn) were in California for a couple of weeks during the holidays. It was wonderful to see them again. We went to the park with the kids and then out to lunch.

Two new craft projects

This is a cigar box that I bought for $1.50 and turned it into a jewelry box for my granddaughter. I used supplies that I already had in my craft room and I think it turned out really cute and it was super cheap to make! I gave it to Lizzy last weekend and she promptly filled it up with her stuff.

I made these for the kids for Easter. There are candy bars inside those cute bunnies!

A Very Small Project

one more thing off the “To Do” list

This cabinet used to hold an old chunky TV and VCR player. We have it in our guest room and wanted more space for our guests to put their clothes, because this serves at the dresser.

It had a shelf hanging from the top for the VCR, which we removed. Hank built shelves and cut a backing. It turned out really good and we used wood, stain, and sealer that we already had in the garage.

Charlie’s Birthday Party

The party was at “Pump It Up” in Morgan Hill. It has private indoor arenas filled with gigantic inflatable slides, bounce houses, and obstacle courses. There were more than 20 kids and adults (yes the adults got into it too) having a blast. The kids ran around for almost 1 1/2 hours and they really got a workout. After working up an appetite, they had cake (before dinner of course). You can see by Charlie’s face… it’s red and sweaty. There was an after party back at the house with great food an of course lots of presents for Charlie.

Charlie is 7!!!

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Peter & Kaija came back to CA to visit us and other friends that they met during their 4 years here. They were here from December 16 – 30, so we were able to celebrate Christmas and an early New Year’s with them. We had a really good time and kept very busy. We went to a cocktail party at the Golf Club, had friends over for dinner on 3 different nights, we drove around and looked at Christmas lights, went to a Christmas Eve party at Tony & Phillipa’s house (ex-neighbors from Corsley Lane), went out to dinner a couple of times, breakfast and lunch, as well as a lot of good home made meals, and of course played lots of chicken foot dominos. Peter & Kaija LOVE to shop, so they did a lot of that too.

Homemade pizza… yummy!!!

We also Skyped with Kaija’s family in Finland on Christmas Eve. We have met almost everyone, so it was really nice to be able to chat with them.

Christmas Eve party with a special visit from Santa

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This is soooooooooooo disgusting!!! We’ve had a huge ant problem since December. We fought live ants for almost 2 months until we finally found the cure. Now we’re just cleaning up dead ants every day. After wiping away ants, spraying inside and out, and sanitizing, we finally bought a product that is Guaranteed to kill and boy does it work!! We figured out the ants had a nest in the wall between 2 of the bedrooms. They drink the poison we put out, bring it back to the nest and then they come back and die inside the house. At lease now we only have to vacuum them up instead of dealing with live ants. They are almost non existent after 1 1/2 months. Don’t worry, the Almeida B&B is safe to visit… we’ve sanitized everything and they are gone!
The last 2 pictures on the grey floor were in the garage. They were breeding underneath a rubber mat and they had eggs everywhere… gross!!!

Ants Anyone?!*?!*

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December One Day Project… Hanging a lamp over the pub table

It was too dark at the pub table, so we installed a light with the help of Peter & Kaija. The install went good (easy for me to say… Kaija & I were not the ones up in the attic crawling around), we put the light on timer and we’re good to go!
Before After