Heavens above

I am not out of stories! Although I do repeat myself a lot, some things will never change.


We had visitors! Brave intrepid adventurers who traded the mild rain for the mild winter, suffered though the exponential decrease in coffee shops (and people) and lived to tell the tale.

A short list of things we or they did over the course of the week:

* Used the cross country ski trains (x2)
* Snowshoes around a local lake
* hit up the hot springs (x2)
* Ate out in a bunch of new places (new to all of us, actually) and Boston Pizza (new to none of us but actually open Saturday evening)
*Checked out a couple art galleries
* Yukon Brewery tour
* Went to the closing show of the Frostbite Music Fest (SO GOOD!) (no actual frostbite sustained)
* Went to Rendezvous Winter Festival (risk of actual frostbite a lot higher)
* Made food, ate drank, hung out, slept in
* Dogledding on the Yukon River
* Flight seeing in a little Cessna (or whatever) for a 2 hour flight where I discovered I am not into little planes so much (no one barfed but for a hot second I found religion).

Did I miss anything major or minor?

Anyway, we had SUCH a great time and are SO happy that C&A came up and gave the ol' Yukon a shot. We miss the company very much!

I'll post pictures when I'm at home later on, everyone looks so cool in winter gear!

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Now the days are getting longer and longer and brighter and brighter. I think I've figured out my hack for making the bedroom good and dark without spending a pile of money, so I'm excited to try it out. I'm going to re-purpose the curtains I have hanging in the doorway to downstairs (blocking warm air upstairs where we live in the winter). I can drape them over the curtains we already have up making each curtain actually 3 layers thick, We'll still be able to open them easily and I won't have to spend $100 on blackout curtains.

Or maybe this year I'll just finally freaking adapt, but I don't know.

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Next big excitement is gearing up for a visit from my sis, brother in law and niece (!!!) in late May!!! A whole new season to max out the opportunities we have up here. We'll have a little over a whole week to tool around, maybe do some camping, see the sights, have some fun, visit like the dickens. I'm planning to fill up my cuddle tank with the niece, it is running quite low since my last chance to refuel in December. She is so freaking cute, it kills me.

I think we're going to ride the historic White Pass train! Fuuuuun.

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Other than that, everyday is every day! I'm trying to buy hormone/antibiotic free meat. I can get it at the supermarket. Local organic is sometimes possible but you have to know a guy who knows a guy and I haven't really worked that hard to sort that out. The local elk meat we bought is so good and we have been enjoying that a LOT. Kind of expensive though. We'll see. For now I'm trolling the supermarkets on lunches looking for discounted hormone free meat and hoping I'll get lucky.

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Recently I have found renewed energy and interest in being frugal, DIY and healthy. I was slipping quite a bit into convenience shopping and I noticed my grocery bills getting way off budget. I realized that I've been nickel and dime-ing myself with garbage like buying organic stock rather than making it like I used to. It has felt so good to get back to making new recipes and finding recipes to use what I have. We've been eating great and haven't had any "let's just eat out" impulses.

The budget is back in a comfort zone, ahhhhh. I like the feeling.

That said, I just bought two coats, although from consignment. I got the Lululemon Audrey coat in shark grey and a black nice fall/winter coat for $160 total. A little spendy but I'm trying to slowly upgrade my wardrobe here and there so I have options. Whatever, the only one who cares how much I spend is me ;-) Savers unite!

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Everything is generally pretty great, thanks for asking. How are you?