A big pile of many things.

Accomplished, that is.

This weekend, despite the illness that had overtaken K-'s throat, was quite busy for Hubs and me.  We worked in the yard, cleaning through some of the plants, Hubs worked on clearing the shed out, ditching unneeded stuff (mainly Pergo remnants from last year) and reset everything.  I got the mums planted, trimmed up the ivy that was overtaking one of the basement windows, trimmed up the old mums and the attack rose bush, was finally able to take down the last tomato plant, drained the rain barrel and stowed that away, trimmed the peonies down to the ground, helped Hubs haul leaves for pick-up and helped to get the outside furniture picked up for winter storage.  Whew.

:side note:  K- is feeling back to her ole self.  I should have probably put that first.

I had a goal to have the Christmas card done this weekend.  I had an incident with our photo program about 2 months ago, where I had (what turned out to be 10,993 photos) photos in limbo that I could not find.  You see, we replaced our Kodak Easy Share printer (don't buy one, they are horrible) with a lovely Epson Work Force 630 (I could kiss it and tell it how nice it is to me).  When I removed the Kodak printer out of the computer, it decided to take all of Kodak off and took my Easy Share camera software with it.  That is the software that I use with the Nikon and I had years of photos (many on disk, but not since last Christmas!) that I just could not find after the program decided to take hostages with it. 

I was hating on Kodak Easy Share anyhow, but that really ticked me off.

Back to the subject at hand, right?  Well, I decided that if I re-installed the Kodak Easy Share camera software, perhaps God would smile on me and put the photos back in their proper creature home.

God is good.  He did smile.  My photos are back.  :deep sigh of relief:

It took quite a while to re-install and to import the photos back into the program.  Since the program has had an update or 10 since I originally had it, I fumbled with the workings.  After hours, and I mean hours, of work, I was able to get all the photos off the Nikon, combine photos that I pulled, burn a disk and download them to Shutterfly.  Because I failed to read the fine print, I designed a card that didn't qualify for my free 50 cards, so I had to readjust.  I went ahead and designed a few cards last night, but decided that I would order the cards this AM, when I had a fresh brain.  (We skipped church because of K-'s strep.)  What card did Hubs and I decide on? 



The merry moments collage Christmas card!  You can also get it with green blocks instead of black.

I'm thrilled.  Since what I chose was a flat stationery card, I could give a quick run-down on the back of the card and include one more photo of our family.  It negates the need for the holiday Christmas letter. 

:side note:  Yes, Aunt Patti, I know your fondness of the letter.  I tell you, I got quite a whisker lickin' for the letter last year as I had three women at a family dinner tell me about how depressing my letter was.  It wasn't my aim to list depressing things and have people all funky about them.  My aim was that though crappy crap happened, we were all taken care of, everyone is well and all is good.  Besides, Grandma was dying and I wasn't as chipper as I usually am.  Still, I had people give me a very hard time.  Sheesh.

Now that I have Aunt Patti's note all handled (hi, Aunt Patti!!!), I shall share with you the dealie-do of the day.  I purchased 65 cards.  Of those 65 cards, I had 50 + shipping provided to me for free from Shutterfly for blogging about their Holiday card selection.  I had no problem doing that, of course.  Then, when I received K-'s school photos, there was a $20.00 code for Shutterfly included in there.  On the remaining 15 cards, I was able to apply the 40% discount sale that they are currently running and the $20.00 credit, which left me a balance of $7.05 for a little over $200.00.  Hubs was impressed.  His second question was, "Do people really spend that much for their cards?"  "Yes, there are some.  I'm not one of them."  My sister told me that I was her hero.  God bless her.

I'm now left with a bathroom to clean and laundry to fold and! to put away.  Hubs has been quite the man today and in Mike Holmes style, he pulled the entire dryer and lines out, cleaned them all and put everything back together.  The dryer is running so much faster now.  It really needed a good clean-out and Hubs spent a few hours doing an awesome job.  Now he's tidying the basement.  What a man!

Dinner is in the crock pot and if you'll excuse me, I have a date with a toilet bowl brush. 

Have a wonderful day!