You've got to be kidding me.

That's all it would take to make a delicious Kwanzaa cake? Oh well, there's always 2011.

Dear Santa, I would like an 8-day week.

Here are all the things I want to blog about but don't have time:

Mom & daughter aprons I made for my cousin... in October.

The fun baby shower decorations... from October (yes, it was a tailgate).

come on, folks, it's root beer and cream soda! :)

Scarves I planned to sell for $10... and made them in October.

The Blessings Board... from November (yes, I filled it out with very generic things for the photo, but added my dog's name for kicks).

The Advent wreath I made... in November.

The outcome of the Cookie Exchange Extravaganza... last weekend (no photo yet)

The Christmas card photos I took for a cool couple... on Monday :)

And, the centerpieces for my birthday party coming up on Saturday... which is like 180 miles away and I have to transport them. Great job, Kellerwoman.

And now I'll never get around to any of them, because I'll use this half-post as an excuse :).

But stay tuned in early 2011 for a post on the number one, super fun, racing heart, can't wait to start reason why I've been so busy lately!

Me and the Mister

Being spouses and co-workers is strange. Sometimes work feels like home and home feels like work and neither is terribly healthy :) But there are fun times to be had! I blogged about one of those fun times on a station blog, Newsroom Extra. You might enjoy it.

Free Christmas printable

Oh Come All Ye Faithful is my favorite Christmas carol ever! In fact, I wish we'd sing it all year long :)I guess you'd have to have a pretty great printer for this to look good, but I wanted to make something to add to all the pretty but secular Christmas printables that are out there. (If you click on it you'll get a large .jpg)

Maybe I'll make this my Facebook profile picture for Advent...

A rookie on the sidelines

Abilene High School and Cooper High School completed their 2010 football seasons on Saturday with games at Cowboys Stadium. Neither advanced any further in the playoffs, but we are super proud of both for making it that far. Here are a few moments from both games.

P.S. I had no idea what I was doing down there on the sidelines. I was much more comfortable up in the press box drinking the complimentary Pepsi.
Morgan and Tatiana are two of my students from last year. Now they're juniors. *Tear!
One of these days I'll get a good picture of a good play. For now, we settle for one or the other.

Those were Cooper. These are Abilene High. I found the double header exhausting! Maybe in a smaller stadium...

Mr. Play-by-Play, David Bacon. Abilene is lucky to have him!

A Christmas story

Curious Jacob here hung out with me on Saturday at the Gaylord Texan, where his parents asked me to snap a couple photos for a Christmas card. Jacob was being a stinker of the cutest kind, and I actually got a lot of great shots of him having fun. Pictures of all four of the Smiths smiling at the same time, however, proved a little trickier.

Nevertheless, we had fun walking around among the Christmas crowd.

Here's baby Noah, my godson!
I had read a lot online before we got there that the Gaylord Texan frowns upon photo sessions, but I couldn't find a lot about unassuming family portraits. There was NO problem. Everyone and their grandma had SLR cameras and babies wearing Christmas dresses. There was actually a sleigh set up for the sole purpose of posing for pictures. I didn't post that one here cuz I gotta feelin (woo hoo!) the Smiths are going to use that one for their Christmas card, and who am I to be a spoiler? The only problem with taking pictures was the fact that it was a Saturday morning and it was PACKED. No bueno.
The following picture cracks me up. It's so random. But the Gaylord was really crowded and we were trying to get creative. It looks like a photo from one of those university alumni magazines.

"Smith recognizes the importance of blending his interior landscaping and NFL marketing career with his role as husband and father of two."Over the past 10 or so years Carol and I have gone from friends to roommates to bridesmaids, and she's now a mother of two sweet boys! I love these pictures of her.
Merry Christmas, Smiths!

Simple coffee cozy

Starbucks was out of sleeves the other day, so they had to double up the cup. I had seen tutorials for coffee cozies before, and decided to make some to keep in the cars. Yes, I realize how ri.dic.u.lous that makes me sound, but what else am I going to do with them? Plus, I'm not sure, but I think it was the huzz's idea.
If you want to make your own coffee cozy, or use it around a glass to hold a cold drink, here are the instructions. Or just ask me to make you one. I'd love the excuse.

1. Measure around the mug, glass, or cup you want and make a template out of paper until you're happy with the size. Or, walk across the street to the other Starbucks that's not out of sleeves and grab one out of the basket.

2. Felt was my fabric of choice. It's stiff, easy to cut, and looks warm and wintry. I had leftover squares of felt that were embossed to look like leather -- both brown western and black crocodile that I L-O-V-E. (No pic.)

3. Trace around the template. You'll actually want to shoot a little wider and longer than an actual template, I realized, as the felt is thick enough to take away some of the size when turned inside out.

4. Sew the right sides together, 3/4 of the way around.

5. Turn it inside out and hand sew the last strip closed. I don't know how you like to hand sew a hidden stitch, but this is the kind that works for me. I tried to draw a diagram in for you, which is crude but gets the point across. When you do it like this, and do it uniformly (unlike my picture) you get a nice closed edge that doesn't look too different than your machine-sewn edges.
6. On two of them I created a snap closure so that they could be used on mugs with handles. For the third, I just sewed it closed with a button that's both functional and fashionable, don't you think? This one can just slide up on cups without a handle. Cold beer, hot coffee... the options are endless!
I took these pics on my iPhone, so they're not super clear and you can't see the pretty embossing on the felt. C'est la vie!

"C" is for Coma

Put on your Carpenters Christmas album and your elastic pants and get ready for the party of the year!

2009

I'm thrilled to announce that—yes—Kellerwoman will be attending the eighth annual Christmas Cookie Exchange 2010 hosted by my gals, E and M!

(It's like three weeks away, but who cares. I'm excited.)

See, I've moved around a lot since our days in Denton, when E and M hosted the first exchange with a whopping four guests at their little apartment. So I've only been able to attend this ever-growing party every other year or so.

2007

What's the big deal about it, you ask?

What's the big deal?!

This is no ordinary cookie party, AS IF I had to that point out.

2009

This is a full-on, blind judging, categorized, customized, prize-winning opportunity to show off your inner Martha and stick it to the competition!

2007

And by "stick it to the competition," I mean load up a tray with all of their delicious cookies and hit the road, trying to come up with a story for your co-workers about how you were able to bake mini-batches of 35 different kinds of cookies over the weekend.

And that's where we enter coma status, my cookie-loving compadres. This party gets bigger and better every year, with more and more guests bringing more and more varieties that, for balanced ballot purposes, must all be tasted by all.

Insulin, anyone?

Getting ready for Game Night

Whoops, not that one. :)

This one! I think this invitation turned out really cute. Sadly, there's a lot of turnover in the business we're in, so Mr. Kellerwoman (ok, fine, cat's outta the bag -- his name is Mr. KellerMAN) and I are frequently using our graphics skillz to create going away party invites, like the cute one below.Sometimes we have other kinds of parties, too, but not as many as we did in our younger days.

I was going to post a picture here of one of those "younger days" parties, but I've decided against it.

Soon I'm going to have to put together an invitation for my own party -- birthday #30! Mr. Kellerman could (and probably should) do it, but he's a lot busier than I am at this time of the year, and I think it's fun. Above is the Save the Date, which we decided to do since my birthday is in December, a month that fills up really fast.

Speaking of invitations, this one might be the best ever!

John & Julia

I donated a portrait session to the United Way silent auction at my office. Since Julia did write someone a check for this, I count it as my second paid gig. :)

So here it is, a simple sampling of the cutest couple in town!