The Original Plaid Cat

For whatever reason I've always drawn plaid cats - I would draw a little outline of a cat and then fill it in with a plaid pattern whenever I would doodle in school or whatever.  So, one year for my birthday my good friend Amanda made me a stuffed cat out of green and blue plaid cordoroy fabric.  He is so cute!  He even has a little bow tied around his neck!  I was recently going through some things and found this guy again.  This was such a great gift and since my blog is called Plaid Cats I thought that I needed to take some pictures of this guy and post them on here - I also made one of the pictures my profile picture.  Here is the original Plaid Cat and inspiration behind my blog name:

A close-up of Plaid Cat.

Craft Table

Chad made me an awesome craft table for my birthday last year.  I was so incredibly surprised too!  I have been meaning to take some pictures of it and finally post them!  He got me various colored cloth bins to store my supplies in and also made a matching shelf.  I love having all my craft supplies organized and together and now I can keep my sewing machine set up all the time too!  Here are some pictures of my craft table:

This picture is my whole craft area set up with the table and shelf.

Here is just the craft table.

January 10, 2011 Snow

We had our second snow of the winter on January 10, 2011.  We got about 5 inches at our house and then in the evening it turned to freezing rain, so everything was covered with a crust of ice too.  The library was closed for two days, so it was nice to have a 4 day weekend too!  Here are some pictures from our snow days:

Random outside pictures

Some birds at our feeder.

A really pretty sunrise at the beginning of January.

Visit to T & D Farms

Chad & I have been buying all of our meat from local farmers at the Farmer's Market.  Since the market was not open as much in the winter we decided to go out and visit one of the main farms we buy meat from so we could stock up until the Farmer's Market re-opens.  The owners were so nice and let us walk around the farm and even showed us some of their "pet" animals - goats and a few calves.  We go to see some goats that had just been born the morning we visited!  It was really great to get to visit T & D and see all their animals.  Here are some pictures from our visit:

2010 Year in Review

For the past few years I've been posting my Top 10 books of the year that I read - not all were published in 2010, but were ones that I read last year.  In 2010 I read 69 books total.  So, here is my Top 10 Books of 2010:

Fiction

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Rescue by Anita Shreve

Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner

Non-Fiction

Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost

Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern

The Dirty Life: on Farming, Food, and Love by Kristin Kimball

Food, Inc. edited by Karl Weber (companion book to the documentary)

The Kids Are All Right by Diana and Liz Welch

2010 was a crazy year for me at work with two rounds of lay offs in the spring and summer.  Thankfully I survived both rounds and even though I was reassigned after each round I still have a job!  Chad had a great year with his business too.  2009 was really, really slow for him, but thankfully things picked up a lot for him and he was so busy that there were weeks where he worked 7 days and had to hire people to help him.  We are both so thankful for our jobs!  We were also able to pay off both of our cars and Chad's student loans this year - so now we will enter 2011 debt-free other than our mortgage.  I also kept track of how much money we saved in 2010 by using coupons and we saved a total of $1,205.86 - an average of over $100 per month!  2010 was a great year for us and we're hoping 2011 will be even better!

Sandy & Roxy's Christmas 2010 video

Last year we shot a short video of the cats playing with their Christmas toys, so we decided to do the same thing this year.  Some friends of ours gave the cats some new toys - including a treat ball.  You put treats inside a ball with a hole in the side and the cat has to hit and play with it to get the treats out.  Roxy LOVED this new toy - she is very food motivated, so this is perfect for her.  Here is their short video from Christmas 2010: