What is Wrong With This Picture?

This past weekend I was very happy to be lounging around in my new Snoopy pajamas. I remember the squeal I let out when I opened them on Christmas. I can’t think of many things that warm my heart like the sight of Snoopy. Karlo doesn’t understand this concept and wasn’t too happy with me when I removed a beautiful and sentimental piece of Croatian pottery from our display cabinet to insert my new Snoopy platter. He questioned whether I was going to buy an Elvis painting for the house too. If you find something in your life that makes you as happy as Snoopy makes me you should surround yourself with it.

So why was I staring at myself in the mirror one night questioning this theory? Here I was, in my “I love Snoopy” PJs, getting ready for bed. I was inspecting my recent hair coloring, applying my anti-wrinkle crèmes, and marveling at the fact that I was doing these things while standing there in children’s pajamas. Maybe Karlo is right. Maybe I am crazy!

I Must Have Been Very Good

I must have been very good this year because Santa brought me everything I wanted—including fish. See . . .


Not sure my guppies will be very impressed by their new tank mates, but at least my Christmas stocking didn't stink like Karlo warned me would happen if my 'fish wish' came true.

All in all we had a great Christmas. As usual, the dogs got spoiled on Christmas morning and watching them just made my day.

First they opened their presents.

Then they got treated to some bowls to lick.

Next it was time for some happy back rubbing. Notice the blurry tail in action.

And finally it was time for some posing for the camera.

I'm happy to report that I got a jump on my 'green Christmas' plans. So far I made 14 cloth bags (in addition to the ones I bought pre-made) and the best part is that I used scrap fabric from my quilt-making days. Nothing says 'green Christmas' like recycling old fabric instead of buying and throwing away lots and lots of paper. I'm very proud of myself!

I’m Dreaming of a Green Christmas

Next year I’m planning on making a lot of changes to simplify my life and one of them includes cutting down on the amount of time I spend wrapping Christmas presents. Not only is my new solution a time-saver for me, but it’s also much better for the environment. At the end of the holiday season last year a friend suggested making cloth bags for gift giving. She has been making some every year and now has enough to give everybody on her list a gift inside a pretty cloth bag. She asks for the bags back at the end of the present opening bonanza and is not contributing one piece of wrapping paper into a landfill. It sounded like a great idea and I had every good intention of making a couple bags per month so that I would be all ready for this Christmas. Needless to say, that never happened. But the good news is that I found some great cloth bags at Ocean State Job Lots. What makes them so great? The fact that they are already made and require no time or effort on my part. They are nice and big, include a drawstring for easy opening and closing, and they even have a name card holder. You can easily slip in new cards every year. I’m thrilled. I bought a bunch of them for next year and plan to buy even more the next time I get anywhere near the store. I’m almost looking forward to how easy the burden of wrapping presents will be next year, not to mention how much easier transporting all the gifts will be. So if you get a present from me in a pretty cloth bag, don’t forget . . . I want the bag back! Consider doing yourself (and the planet) a favor and stocking up on your own supply of cloth gift bags.

Winter Photos

Just for the record, we took a ton of pictures this weekend. You are just going to have to take my word for it because I didn’t get around to uploading them this weekend and forgot to bring my camera to work. All I have to share is my two favorites. Here is Peanut catching snowflakes off her tongue.

There is a story behind my next picture . . . I told a co-worker about my grand plan to recreate the Peanuts Christmas tree scene. Only problem was that I didn’t have a plain red ball ornament. A couple of days later I found a red ornament hanging from my overhead cabinet at work. How thoughtful! This coworker left me the ornament after hearing my story. And within 4 hours I managed to SMASH the darn thing all over my desk. I went to open the cabinet and the poor little ornament went crashing to my desk. Remember that scene when Charlie Brown shouted UUUUGGGGGHHHHH when he thought he killed the tree? Well that was me when I looked down at the shards of ornament and knew I killed it. I felt like such a jerk, but I fessed up the coworker. Low and behold the next day I found another ornament on my desk. This time it was wrapped in 6 layers of bubble wrap. What a riot. I couldn’t let him down. I was determined to come to work today with this picture:

Karlo and I hunted around the yard for the perfect little tree. Our first plan was to dig a tree up, put it in a pot, and bring it into the house. But with the ground frozen solid we decided to just decorate the tree outside. Karlo went and hung the ornament on my favorite pick and nothing happened. The tree didn’t droop at all because it was frozen. I told Karlo to ‘help it out’ and he proceeded to bend it. SNAP. There went half the tree in a solid break. So much for not wanting to kill a tree.

In the Nick of Time

Have I ever mentioned how much I love my car? When I made the decision to trade in my all-wheel drive, practically new Saab for one of the most impractical cars on the road I was definitely thinking with my heart and not my head. The closer and closer winter started to approach the more I started to imagine getting the MINI to and from the highway. If you ever visited us at home you would understand this potential problem. 95% of the time Karlo and I travel together in the trusty (and now 4x4) VW Golf, but that other 5% of the time started to terrify me. Who exactly am I going to call to come and drag me out of a ditch if Karlo is away? And even worse than that . . . What if I hurt my poor MINI? I couldn't bare the thought of it.

Taking all this into account, we decided to make a purchase. Here are the Top 5 Reasons We Bought Another Jeep:

1. I was too cheap to buy the extra set of snow tires for the MINI - great logic there, I know!
2. Karlo's shoes are too big to drive the MINI.
3. We didn't want the third garage bay to go to waste.
4. Karlo needed even more reasons to spend all night in the garage.
5. And lastly . . . It's a Jeep thing! You wouldn't understand. (Ripped off from the Jeep catalogs - not my words.)

Here's our new pet in this morning's sleet. I haven't named it yet.

Christmas Letter 2008

It’s that time of year again. Time to decorate the house, buy & wrap presents, send holiday cards, and reflect back on the last 12 months. I resolved that I would skip this year’s Christmas letter due to time constraints and too much on my “To Do” list. But the need to look back and document our year is overwhelming. It seems time is moving so fast these days that the events of our lives whiz by too quickly to really appreciate. My Christmas letter forces me to relive our year — at a much slower pace.

The first six months of the year were just about completely consumed by Karlo’s book project. We had no idea of the magnitude of that project when the idea of “writing a book” struck. I’m still not sure how we survived it. It was a long, slow, and very challenging process, but we endured. Karlo’s new book hit the streets in October and his is now a famous author!

We were privileged with a visit by Karlo’s mother for the entire month of April. It was so nice to spend time with her and hear all kinds of amusing stories about Karlo’s childhood. The language barrier wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought it would be and it gave me a chance to get to know my mother-in-law. The extremely unfortunate part was that we lost her shortly after that visit. We are so very grateful for the time that we did get to spend together.

Just before Spring I decided to start a 3-month training program to get us into great shape. Karlo, being the good sport, agreed to endure this program with me and together we spent 90 days torturing ourselves. The end result was an enormous sense of accomplishment and some new muscles to boot.

One big milestone of the year was me turning 40. This may have been the motivation behind that killer workout routine. The big day came and went and I have to say, not much feels different.

As usual, we took a few trips throughout the year. We spent one week in Washington where we hiked at Mt. Rainer, went boating in the Puget Sound, took a wildlife safari, and shopped and strolled in Downtown Seattle. One solid week in the Pacific Northwest and no rain. That was amazing.

Part of my birthday present was to do something that I always wanted to do . . . attend ballroom dance camp. I still can’t believe that Karlo agreed to this. We foxtrotted, tangoed, waltzed and rumbaed our way through five straight days and nights of dancing. It was my dream come true. We still aren’t very good dancers, but we had fun and made new friends.


In October we drove down to Virginia to visit the previous owners of our house, who just happened to turn into wonderful friends. Before visiting their new palatial residence we spent a few days hiking and biking (the motor version) the Blue Ridge Parkway and Shenandoah National Park. It stole my heart and now I want to move to Virginia.

And as usual, I’m writing this letter on an airplane (the only time I got to relax all month) coming back from a business trip to Orlando. Karlo and I were lucky to get the same assignment and travel together. It sure does make business travel more enjoyable.

I can’t believe how quickly the year went by. We are very fortunate to have enjoyed the past twelve months and find ourselves in good health, some money still left in our 401K, and still very much in love. We wish all of our friends and family the very best in the upcoming New Year.

Merry Christmas!
- Paula & Karlo

Scenes From Home

I had planned for today’s blog posting to be my annual Christmas letter, but since Karlo accidently took the notebook that I wrote my letter in, I need a Plan B. Instead I’m going to share my day with you. It’s been quite the exciting day here at home.

The long awaited chimney work began today. I have a team of very busy guys running all over the house and up and down the roof. It’s been non-stop noise, but the end result will be that we can burn fires in our woodstove without the high risk of burning the house down. Well worth a day of noise and mess.

So far no holes in the stone wall.

The driveway.

To take a break from all the noise the dogs and I went for a walk to check out the water level of our little river. I couldn’t believe how mild the weather was so I brought my camera along.

The river was up as high as I’ve seen it. It was so pretty with all the rushing rapids.

I even found some new water features that weren’t there the last time I hiked.

A section of our trail used to go right between these two trees, but it looks like one of the last storms did the big tree in, which in turn took out the little tree. How sad, but lots of fire wood there.

The dogs enjoyed lounging in the yard while watching the workers on the roof.

I got a rare shot of Bentley with his ears up as the sounds of drilling got his attention.

Barely Hanging In

This is has been a very challenging week. The stress level is always high, the work load constant, and the nights sleepless. As I laid in bed, wide awake, the entire night last night I struggled to figure out what the date was. I have enough trouble trying to remember what day of the week it is, never mind the actual date. I had to wait until morning to discover that I missed my niece’s birthday by 2 days. Good grief! Sorry Nicole. I hope you had a wonderful birthday.

My blogging has been non-existent because of all the time I’ve been spending processing my YogaDudes orders and the fact that nothing here in Florida has inspired me. The only photos I attempted were of food and most of those were a disaster due to my crappy camera. Yes, yes, I know . . . I just bought a new one, but like I tried to explain, I don’t deserve it because I’m too lazy to carry it around.

My days are consumed by the trade show and my never-ending quest to find MINI goodies. So far I only found an actual car, but no cute stuff to buy. I guess that’s a good thing. I did have an amusing conversation with the drag race car driver that works in our booth. He said, and I quote, “I could never drive a Cooper. I would kill myself in one of those. They go too fast and turn to good.” I just had to laugh. But Karlo did point out the fact that dragsters only go straight so that made it more understandable.

One more day of work before we fly home. We are both anxious to get back to CT. Hopefully our house didn’t float away and our dogs didn’t drown.

Greetings From Orlando

We arrived in Orlando yesterday after a very (and gratefully) uneventful journey. No travel dramas to amuse you with. Although it makes for pleasant travel, it makes for boring blogging. I don’t even have any trade show booth set-up horror stories. So far everything is going great in Florida. I wish I could say the same for my business at home. That is not going so well and it’s the cause of great stress. Every time I come to my computer I find more orders and more work to do and blogging is the last thing on my mind. I am so incredibly thankful to have my new buddy Robin at home, playing saint, and helping me out with some of the orders. So now, in addition to the stress of the orders that we can’t ship out, I have the added guilt of making Robin do all this work. Never fails, I can never leave home without guilt. I sometimes wish I never had to leave home. Sigh

Tomorrow is our day off and the forecast is promising temps in the 80s. I will be happy to just lounge by the pool and try very hard to relax and not think. I could really use day to decompress. I hope it goes as planned.

Sorry for the lack of pictures. I’ve been concentrating on this week’s Dig Our Pics theme which is Food & Drink. Gives me a good excuse to order dessert and exotic drinks with dinner. Maybe tomorrow I’ll take some non-food-related photos.

A New Addition to the 40 Club

Welcome Tammy . . . and Happy Birthday!!!!

Will I Survive?

This holiday season is trying to kill me. We still have three weeks to go and I’m not sure I’m going to survive. The house decorating went smoothly and the Christmas shopping even got off to a good start. But something happened along the way and chaos broke out. I am working just about every waking moment of the day. Between my real job, my freelance jobs, and my side business there just aren’t enough hours in the day. On top of that, I’m getting requests from more people to do more work. I’m just about to my breaking point.

Last night I got an order for not one, but seven items that I didn’t have in my inventory. I still have a lot of handmade items for sale (which seriously needs to change) and the smart thing would have been to contact the customer and explain that we sold out of that item. But I knew the purchase was for Christmas presents and I felt like Chris Cringle. I couldn’t let her down. So I proceeded to spend half the night hand-making these items. I need my head examined. I ran back and fourth between the office (where I was printing out shipping labels and packing the rest of the orders that came in) and the kitchen where I had the counter covered with paper, scissors, glue, paint, wire, etc.

Poor Karlo came into the house after two hours of chopping wood, hungry and ready for dinner. Dinner? Who has time for that? The poor guy had to make himself some eggs. I felt terrible. I really need to figure out a way for my side business to stop ruining my Christmas holiday.

It would be nice if my upcoming trip to Florida could serve as a nice break for me, but I know that I’ll be completely stressed about the orders coming in and not shipping for a week. Every time I check my email my blood pressure will rise. Well, at the very least maybe my skin will get some much needed sun exposure. Hopefully some of next week’s postings will include sunshine and palm trees, but very few. Most of the time I’ll be trapped inside an air conditioned convention center – wearing fleece.

Getting Ready for the Snow

Notice anything peculiar about the back of Karlo’s car? How many 4x4 VW Golfs have you seen? This is Karlo’s way of preparing for the snow. He converted his little car into a 4x4 . . . by sticking on a shiny metal sticker. So I guess we’re all set now. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow . . .

How’s This For a Quote?

Karlo and I had breakfast together this morning in the office. As I was at the water cooler filling up my glass he came over to me and swatted my bony elbow with his big heavy coffee mug. You could hear the sound of my bone resonating off his cup through the entire kitchen. I just glared at him with big eyes as if to say, “Why on earth are you HITTING me?” He laughed and said, “I’m sorry Babe, I forgot you are a girl.” He forgot that I’m a girl! He forgot that his WIFE was a girl??? Was he married to a boy before? Should I develop a complex that I look like a man? I’m even wearing a skirt today! Considering how much physical abuse I take from him on a daily basis I truly wonder how his poor brother ever survived childhood. He had to be one tough kid. Maybe I should ask Santa for protective boxing gear.