Sweet doggie portrait

Street Roots is an organization I like. I try to buy the paper from vendors whenever I see them. This past October they held a silent online auction and I bid on and won a custom pet portrait by artist Renee Hartig. I sent her several photos of Catalina, and surprised Bret with this lovely rendering of our sweet friend. It's now hanging in our kitchen, where Catalina can keep an eye on everything (sadly, no longer licking up my cooking spills!)...

Designing girl

I forgot to take a photo of the centerpiece Sabine made for the New Years Eve party -- with plastic shiny ornaments, a string of white lights and some plastic fish...very cool...but here is one she made out of greenery from our yard and snips from the Christmas tree. She found the glass bowls in descending size, and set it all up...



The flowers below were given to us from our friend who works in the floral department of our local grocery store -- she gave us a BUNCH of flowers that were on their last legs and Sabine arranged them like this (while friend Marley and Vivian played bride with the two "bouquets" of tulips):

Xmas, New Years

These were from Christmas morning, girls in their matching PJs...





Vivian sporting the Hula Girl outfit from Uncle Erik and Donna Sue!



Sabine is way into designing things, including outfits...(I admit to watching What Not to Wear and Say Yes to the Dress with her!)...these were the New Years Eve outfits she picked out for Vivian...


And herself...

Happy 2010!

We've been enjoying settling into our new house...

We even had some snow, a few days after Christmas...

As long as we've been together, Bret and I haven't been big on presents for each other...but this year with the sale of our house in Wyoming we treated ourselves to a used pop-up camper (to replace the Airstream)...

We found it on Craigslist...bought it from a family who was upgrading to a small RV. Can't wait to explore more of Oregon in it! (Sabine and Vivian are happy exploring it in the yard!)



And a piano...

we bought it from The Piano School for the Blind -- the only school in the world that teaches blind and visually impaired people to tune and repair pianos. They take donations of pianos that their students fix up then they sell them -- partially to raise money for the school. The piano we got used to be a school piano. I've wanted a piano for a long time, and am looking forward to learning and playing with the whole family.

We went to the farm of some other homeschoolers to cut down our Christmas tree (reminding us of Wyoming)...




We had a small New Year's Eve party (at which I completely forgot to take pictures!), and enjoyed roasting marshmallows in the wood stove when the snow fell!

All in all a lovely end to 2009 and beginning of 2010!