Eddie got some gorgeous solid wood tap handles for his kegerator for Christmas from Bean. Something tells me, that with the way she puts away the milk, she's going to be our drinker when she gets older...

I made some custom beer labels for each of the taps. We discovered the perfect beer combination for the kegerator: one side we keep Laurelwood's Organic Free-Range Ale, a delicious medium red ale. The other side, is Boneyard Brewery in Bend, Oregon's RPM IPA. It's a terrific IPA that compliments the red next door. Plus, the keg and brewery are big on the skull and crossbones theme so that adds a fun element to the kitchen along with the monkeys on the walls.

I decopaged the labels and love that the free-range rooster is layered atop an old-time map of the Western Hemisphere!  I should add that the tap handles have a wonderful heft to them. They look great in the kitchen. (The staff at Laurelwood were impressed with the handles when I brought them in when asking for some extra bottle labels of the red ale so I could do my craftywork.)

I had to go to Michael's craft store to pick up some more supplies for our big holiday work event at the end of the month. Bean and I arrived about ten minutes before the store opened. However, they had already put the clearance bins out front, mostly, Christmas and winter holiday decorations. Perfect!

I found a wreath for our work event that goes nicely with our theme and then I found this beauty:

This gorgeous wreath is made of feathers in the most delicious shade of teal green...And as you can see above, they've included some peacock feathers as well. I'm not normally a blue or teal-girl, but I'm suddenly loving this color and it actually looks great with the front room color scheme.

When we were checking out, everyone who worked at Michael's and saw it kept saying how that wreath was the best deal in the store and it's true! The wreath was 80% off from it's original price, so I got it for basically, $4. I couldn't make this wreath for that much, so it was a total steal.

Eddie thought it was beautiful, too. He didn't realize I was going to put it up on the door as a non-holiday wreath. Why not? It's too pretty to only have up for a short time during the Christmas holidays.

There is a movie with a cult following called "Being John Malkovich" which I finally saw just a few years ago.  The movie was released in 1999 so that shows you how behind I am with the times.

Anyway, in the movie, actress Cameron Diaz plays a woman with this incredibly curly (okay, frizzy!), crazy hair:

Her hair in that movie has always reminded us of our Bean, if Bean goes a day without getting it washed and conditioned in the shower or bath to keep her curls in line. She becomes a total fuzz-ball!

We regularly refer to it as her "John Malkovich Hair."

Seriously.



Alas, Bean's hair is getting so long (we've never cut it, yet) that she is now developing some nasty birds nests in the back due to sleeping on her back at night.

Which means, I'm going to have to (gulp) cut them out. I don't want to have to do this, but I have no choice, we've got to get them out before birds figure out what's up and decide to roost.

I've tried in vain to get them out with conditioner and tangle-free spray, but all that did was just make the messy clumps smell really, really good. Not what I was going for.

I dread (no pun intended) cutting her hair. We simply adore her curls like you wouldn't believe, and cutting these two knots out are going to leave some gaps on her head. I hope that as she gets older her hair doesn't lose its curl and just become sort of wavy. The curly hair really suits Bean and her personality. She is always getting comments and compliments on it when we go out with her.

By the way, did you get the play on words with the post title???

Right, I'll get back to work, now.

After all the excitement of the day and night, we decided to be as low-key as possible for ringing in the new year: Our favorite Thin Man movie!

This was the first in the series (we love and own them all) and it was perfect because the storyline takes place during the Christmas holiday. One of the best parts of the Nick and Nora Charles movies, are the relationship between the two of them - So fun! They are always making faces and wicked but loving quips at each other.

But I especially love the costumes and set decorations. They were fabulous back in the day. No wonder I covet and buy Barbie dresses I could wear myself...

Not the easiest pictures to see (stills from the movie I found online) but the costumes were gorgeous!

Of course, being Team Camarillo, we had to send 2011 out with a bang. We're just grateful it didn't go out worse than it easily could have.

There was the birthday party for Eddie's co-worker's daughter, in which we arrived 24 hours early for. (I totally misread the invite Eddie forwarded and was convinced it was Friday at 2 pm instead of Saturday at 2 pm.) We pulled up on Friday and didn't see any cars in front of their house. The house looked a little dark, too. "Do we have the right day? Why aren't there more cars??" We all piled out of the car, walked to the front door and spied a red car coming around the corner where the house sat. It was Eddie's co-worker and his wife. They waved at us as they pulled up to the front of their house. Jose hopped out and ran up to us. "I'm sure I told you it was Saturday, my friend!" he exclaimed. We met his lovely wife, Sarah, who was almost 9 months pregnant with their second child. Everyone had a good laugh and we parted ways, confirming we'd do it all over in 24 hours.

So, when we pulled up yesterday, there were balloons hanging from their trees in the front yard, but again, no cars to be seen. Okay, obviously we had the right day, but now, we were second guessing ourselves on the time. The house still looked dark inside. We had pulled up right at 2 pm, when the party was supposed to start. Eddie and I were laughing so hard from cracking jokes at our situation, I was crying. Turns out, we were just first to arrive. Whew!

By the time we left, Bean had consumed a couple juice boxes, ironically, branded "Sensible Sippers". We had realized on the ride out, that we'd been bad parents and neglected to bring some diapers and wipes with us for the trip. All had been fine up until now. We'd just come out of the 26 tunnel and were heading over the Marquam Bridge, when we ran over something in the road. The whole car shook and rumbled!  Eddie and I both had a sense something might not be right. "Why don't you pull off at the Water Avenue exit..." I advised, "...and we can check it out and make sure everything is alright?" He agreed. We'd suffered a flat tire with his car a few years back in Vegas and both remembered that incident vividly. This seemed like it could be a repeat.

Sure enough, we had a back, flat tire. It was now almost 5 pm on New Year's Eve. Fortunately, we called Triple A and they came to help change it quicker than you might expect on a night like that. Unfortunately, while we waited, we discovered Bean's diaper was huge and wet, wet, wet. While waiting for Triple A to show up, I had to pull it off of her but had nothing to change her into. Lulu was kind enough to give us her underware (Bean had a dress on) but then Bean wouldn't get back into her car seat. Once the tire was swapped, we somehow got Bean in her seat and headed home, first stopping off at the liquor store for supplies (priorities, you know). While I was in the liquor store, Bean peed in her car seat and Eddie said he could hear it trickling down through the plastic seat. He hoped it didn't reach the actual back set of his car. Nice! A flat tire AND a urine soaked car seat and seat. What could top this?

Once home, the wee ones were fed and we decided to do something fun with the girls before sending them off to bed: Floating lanterns like I'd done at my birthday back in June.

We bundled up, donned party crowns and blowers (it was almost 7 pm) and headed for the street. It was a bit colder and windier than it had been on my birthday in June. For my birthday, in hindsight, conditions were absolutely PERFECT. But last night, one Eddie got the lantern paraffin lit, it took much longer for the balloon to fill up with hot air. It finally did and once he let it go, it actually started floating up erratically because of the wind patterns.

Oh boy, maybe this wasn't such a good idea, after all.

But it was too late to change our minds. The balloon floated up at least ten feet, then went back towards the large hedge belonging to our next door neighbors house.

Ugh.

Eddie and both watched it, pass the hedge, and make a beeline for the same neighbors big, big, mostly leafless Oak tree...

And get stuck in the branches, about 48 feet high. While still burning brightly in the dark and windy night.

"Go, go, go, get in the house, NOW!" Eddie barked at me and the girls, calmly but sternly. I took them and rushed back. Lulu of course, never one to shut her trap when necessary, doing loud commentary, "Boy, that wasn't a good idea! Did you see it go up into the tree, THAT's not good!"

"LULU, SHUT UP!" I hissed at her..."GET IN THE HOUSE, NOOOOOW...".

I wouldn't advise taking her on any stealth missions, anytime soon.

The girls and I were inside, and no sign of Eddie from the other side of the neighbors hedge. We'd quipped we might have to call the fire department before he ordered us to get in the house, and I envisioned this massive tree, on fire, in the neighbors yard, on New Years Eve.

Because of OUR floating lantern.

This is how people end up getting sued and going bankrupt, because of making stupid decisions, in hindsight, that can change your life in an unfortunate instant.

I finally peeked out the back bar window, which had a good vantage point of said tree, but didn't see anything ablaze, thankfully. I did the see the lantern, still glowing in the trees, extinguishing, then reigniting, then extinquishing itself for what looked like for good.

Sweet Relief!

Eddie came back into the house. "Do you have anymore good ideas?" he asked me with a sly grin. He said our neighbor on the other side of our next door neighbor with the tree in question had come out to watch the lantern with him.

"I saw something on fire float past my kitchen window..." he'd told Eddie, "...and I said, 'What on earth is that?' and then came out to look.  How long is it going to burn?" he asked Eddie.

"It's suppose to burn for about 15 minutes but it took me a good five minutes to light it. Technically, it's supposed to burn out way up high in the sky and fall down to the ground without jeopordizing anything. Thanks for being so calm about this, I really appreciate it..." Eddie answered.

This neighbor just shrugged his shoulders like it was no big deal and then decided to go back inside because it was cold. Eddie told him he was going to wait outside until he was sure it was completely out.

And that was our New Year's Eve excitement, and it wasn't even 7:30 pm yet. Needless to say, we hadn't intended it to get crammed with excitement and debauchery within the final hours.

But, we were grateful that it has been quite wet and rainy this past week. I think that's what really helped things not go more horribly wrong last night.

Do you see what's left of the lantern above? Here's a hint, it's the pale green paper in the branches.

The angels (finally) are sleeping!

We're working on getting the girls sleeping together in the same room and the same bed. Which means, we can eventually put the crib way at the end of our bed, for good.

Last night, the second night of our experiment, they slept together until 5 am, before coming in to wake us up for breakfast.

Eventually, maybe we can all sleep in, in our own beds, until 6 am.

A girl can dream, can't she?

I have a Barbie dress to wear to the opera (and perhaps my birthday in 2012!) and I am so excited to wear it!

I spied it in the window of a vintage shop down the street from our house and stopped to check it out with Lulu on Friday afternoon. So pretty! It is strapless and has a pale pink lining under the black lace and pink ruffled netting under the black lace netting at the bottom.

It has a tapered skirt (longer in the back) but doesn't come all the way to the floor on either side. Lulu made me twirl around in the shop and I happily obliged! The dress fit, perfectly! It just needs to have the bodice boning replaced which I can do easily enough. What's currently there is brittle and broken in places. I have the perfect shoes already to wear with this, as well as gloves and a vintage mink stole.

The dress on was on display in the shop window with the following rhinestone bow necklace. Very Barbie, too! Of course, we had to get it as well...Below, Lulu models what will eventually become hers.

That little girl has no idea what a fabulous vintage wardrobe she'll come into some day!