It´s the 29t of December by now, forgive me that I write that late and less this season. This were quite busy days for me, so I´d better start off right away :)...
First of all let me show you some lovely pics, hubby took auround our house during the last few days:
It snowed for more than 3 days and I really hoped, that it would stay cold and white till Jul. And guess what? It did! After many years of rainy, warm or stormy holliday seasons, this year we finally had a white one! This was one of the best gifts I got this year (despite that I hated to drive the car the last days ;) ) Unfortunately it melted again allready, only some small white spots are left on the lawn. But the weather forecast expects another wave of frost and snow for new years eve.
Now let me show you some of the things I´ve made for Jul this year, some were orders, some were gifts:
a bag for mom, made of two incredible IKEA fabrics, with inside pocket for keys, wallet or tissues. When I bought this fabric mom and I stood before it for quite a long time, pondering and laughing, because we could not imagine, what the hell the squirrel plans to do with the cheese slicer on that bird´s cave... free the birdie perhaps? Maybe one day I´ll write an e-mail to the designer and ask ;).
I made lots of the good pasta oil for friends and colleagues, nearly 3 litres. The receipe (in German) you can find in one of my first posts ever... If someone is interested in an english translation, just leave a comment here and I´ll do it!
This is a very bright coloured waiter´s wallet, which was ordered by a colleague.What else news to tell?
Since the 24th I work on getting all programms, applications and files I have stored on my new laptop, which is a fantastic fast and even good looking little cutie:
I wished for something like this for Jul, but now I´m still amazed, that I really should get rid of my old, slow and very noisy pc. Now more lagging in Dalaran (what a feeling! Even on a mount I was able to reach the bank in just one try and way below the usual 3 mintues!) , no more brewing another cup of tea, while the pc is starting or only saving a file... I still use LAN, but that´s not a big deal, since I´m quite sure, we will need to buy a new router when we move latest, and that one will have WIFI.
The current setting (on which I´m actually writing this just right now) is the new laptop, my old additional desktop speakers, a 2nd. screen for better working with photoshop or even playing and chatting at the same time and my good old 5keys mouse, because I cannot imagine playing with the touchpad, despite it´s "intelligent": you can rezise windows with 2 fingers, right click with 3 and so on... charming :)
Today, among other things, I checked out some multi messengers, little programs that connect you with several instant messengers in one place at the same time. Since I used to use MSN, but my girls and some other friends use ICQ I did want to combine both, plus twitter if possible, in only one skin and one login. Another reason was MSN itself: under Windows 7, which is the pre-installed OS on the laptop, the login to MSN using the Live Messenger did not work and after 3 days of searching for a solution I simply have had enough of it.
So I played around a little with several freeware solutions: first trying pidgin and finding the options not sufficient for me (I´m impatient and wanted to find cute skins immediately for example), plus the login to MSN again did not work.
So I installed Trillian Astra as second choice and found it perfect instantly: adding new connections is very easy, it even supports twitter; I can tweet from there directly. I checked the pre-installed skins and choose "Baroque" with a transparency of 80%. Looks classy and georgeous! A chat with mom went through perfect, no lags or delays in transmission... I just love it!
Ok, you need to register an Astra account, which is just another IM, but you can install the program on your phone as well, e.g. it´s even available as an app on the iPHONE store. From what I have seen so far, I only can recommend it. If you´re accidentially searching for a multi messenger, just check out the Trillian homepage. OK, enough advertisement for now.
I will work on the next little gift tomorrow. I´ll have to send out a little care package to one of my dearest friends, so I have to start with it asap... As usual ;)
New Years eve will be quiet, I guess, but maybe you, Girls (yea! YOU!), decide, that my plan was the best at last? Then it won´t be that quiet, sorry dear neighbors ;).
Later this night I will share some Jul photos, we had a great night with our family... and my self cooked dinner wasn´t that bad I hear ;)
Uh, before I forget: feel free to answer my question from this post´s title above and write it into a comment :) thanks a lot!
So long...
Mone
