Happy New Year

Happy New Year! My Daughter decided to get her hair cut short on New Year's Eve. She had never had a real hair-cut up until August of 07. Her hair was all one length and went half way down her butt. Then she cut it to like the middle of her shoulder blades. Then in December of 07, she cut it to just touching her shoulders. Then in August of 08, she cut it to a chin-length bob with bangs (her first bangs). And now she decided to do short all over. It is so cute. (I keep saying "she cut it"--actually we had a stylist cut it.) The picture is her outside the mall right after she got it done.
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For new years eve, we had my folks over and had sparkling juices (grape, blueberry, and strawberry), veggies with a red pepper nut cheese for dipping an chocolate fondue with brownies, graham crackers, marshmallows, bananas, and strawberries for dipping (only the marshmallows and brownies weren't vegan--I didn't eat those). I know it's hard to imagine, but the veggies hardly got touched while the chocolate and goodies disappeared in minutes.
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I didn't have cocoa butter so I used coconut oil for the chocolate--here is what I did:
coconut oil (melted to a liquid in the microwave)
maple syrup
cocoa powder (I used Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder)
Whisked them all together (adding first more syrup and then more cocoa powder until it tasted good).
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I put it in the fridge until we were ready for it and was surprised at how hard it got. It melted nicely over a candle, though (my fondue pot can use a candle for just melting or has an alcohol burner for actually cooking--I learned the hard way that the alcohol burner is not for melting chocolate.) I'm thinking I could have put soy or coconut milk in for more of a milk chocolate.
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Then the folks went home, hubby and I went to bed, and the kids stayed up to watch the new year in the central time zone. (that put them to bed at 11-ish in our time zone.)
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On new year's day, we were just lazy for a while and then took a drive to look for the deer. They winter around our area.

This is a deer that was by a pond right next to some people's house.
These were some rock people and a rock cat that someone had built up on the side of the canyon. I had never seen them before even though we had been on that road before so I think they were new. Pretty Cool!

Here's the sunset. It was pretty overcast so the sun made beautiful colors on the bottoms of the clouds.

We had a really nice drive and the kids made the most of their new cameras. I would guess that we saw a total of like 30 deer--some were nice bucks, but we couldn't get close enough to get really good pictures of them. The kids each took probably like a hundred or so. Good thing they are digital cameras so I don't have to buy that much film or pay for that much developing.
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Today's going pretty good, so far. I've gotten lots of work done, I ate the left-over veggies from Wednesday for my lunch, the kids aren't fighting too awfully much, and hubby is at work.

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Well, I had better go and get back to doing something.

Ciao for now.