Wrong. Just, wrong!

Wrong
Originally uploaded by amkb

Anna: It's been a long time since I've posted a photo for the "Love My Parts" flickr group. For those unfamiliar with it, this is a group promoting body acceptance, encouraging people to post photos of those body parts they find a bit harder to love than others.

This morning, I just had to ask my husband to get this photo for me when I saw it. This rather horrifying photo is the back of my right heel. I don't have cracks in my heel. I have canyons. With little mysterious black bits in them. And pieces of fuzz caught on the rough edges.

Ew.

Ew, ew, ew.

I'm kinda glad I can't see that backs of my heels very often.

Though I have to wonder, which is worse. That fact that I asked my husband to dig out the macro lens and take the photo - or the fact that he did it! *L*

Everything and Nothing!!

Philippe: - The geometric Nucleus; only the geekiest of you will get this. :)

Merry Christmas!

Wishing everyone a safe and happy Christmas celebration, and a year of health and happiness in 2010!

Wide Angle

Philippe: Try and spot the hot air balloon :)

Minus 36

Philippe: Man, it's just cold...

Baby, it's c-c-c-cold outside!

Anna: After being spoiled by a long and mild fall (extra appreciated, after our extended, cold spring and early summer), the cold has finally hit. This is the view off our balcony this morning.






It was still -27C at the time I took these photos, though it's warmed up to -24C. We're supposed to go as high as -18C today.

I don't think I need to worry about the meat pies I set out on the patio swing to freeze last night.

In the Christmas spirit

Anna: I recently joined a local crafters group's email list. It's a very friendly and active group that gets together IRL (In Real Life) regularly. For Christmas, a bunch of us signed up for an Advent gift exchange. How it works is, the organizer partners up the participants, and we all had to get 24 small gifts (maximum $5 each) and one large gift (maximum $25) to exchange with our partner. I thought it was a really fun idea. Keeping in budget was an interesting challenge. On the one hand, it's really hard to find nice gifts for under $5. On the other, it's amazing what nice gifts you can find for under $5! Of course, being a crafter's group, we were free to make the gifts, too. :-D

Today's gift was a set of giant jingle bell ornaments for the tree. I happened to be sitting with my daughter's cat on my lap, and she thought they were quite interesting. LOL

The blanket under cat and bells is a crochet blanket my younger daughter is making. It's not done yet, but it is more than big enough to sling over my lap. She could have finished it off already, but decided to add another bulk ball of yarn's worth to the border. This cat LOVES the blanket, and immediately climbed onto my lap when I was done covering my legs. I got my older daughter to get this picture for me.

Preparing

Preparing
Originally uploaded by amkb

Anna:

Lately, we just haven't been taking a lot of pictures, and the ones I've been taking have been for my crafting blog. I figured it was about time. ;-)

We're slowly getting prepared for Christmas, including making tourtierre, the traditional French Canadian meat pie. Normally I use the blend of meats my MIL taught me, but not all of them were available, so this year is going to be different. Which is fine with me. I like experimenting.

I'd ordered 24 pounds of ground meats for 2 dozen pies. We ended up with a bit more than that, as the game meats come pre-packaged and frozen to the butcher, and they don't have control over the weights. I also bought a new pot, just for cooking the meats, as there is no way we could do it using the roaster like last year. We did only 12 pounds and it barely fit - stirring as it cooked was very messy. The roaster doesn't exactly fit on the element, either, and isn't long enough to fit over two. So I got this 16 quart capacity stock pot. It'll fit on one element, hold all the ingredients, and still have room for mixing.

I hope.

Tomorrow, the frozen meats should be thawed out enough for us to start cooking in the evening. Sunday, we make the dough and set up the assembly line. I've done very little baking in this oven since we've moved, but I know that one side of the element doesn't heat up properly. We'll have to make sure to work around that.

I'm really looking forward to making our pies!