For those of you who's interested here's the slide show I made for our open house at work. The amazing part about the whole thing is not the fabulous photography or effects, transitions or soupy music, but it only took the contractor 3 months to finish the project!

Way to go Hammerquist and Caselegno our brilliant general contractors!

So we're feverishly working on getting the office around for the "Community Open House" here at the Eastside Brick building. For those of you who don't know, the office bought the north end of the building just about a year ago. The "Eastside Brick" was the former Kalispell General Hospital built in 1911 and opened in 1912 with 30 beds. They added on the south wing in 1948 and our glorious north wing in 1968. It was the height of the 60's ugly architecture and when Lee walked through it the first time, he said, "I don't want to buy this building...it's ugly!"

But I saw the swan in the ugly duckling with the help of a bunch professionals we transformed it to IMHO a beautiful office space.

So we're having an Open House this Thursday. Karen and I went on a shopping rampage at Rosauer's and Costco. Lee said get some Champagne - so we bought 19 bottles of the bubbly (and three cases of beer and 6 huge bottles of wine). I sure hope the staff doesn't have a huge hangover on Friday!

We sent out 600+ postcards about the Open House, I hope a few people show up. Our office is not the only one joining in on the open house, I think all of the other businesses are also having the open house the same night so hopefully we'll have a few guests!

So I spent the past couple of days revamping my template. I think all that wasted time on the computer was worthwhile. I didn't get dinner made and I didn't take down my Christmas decorations. If you stopped by my house, my Christmas tree is still lit up.

Oh well the important thing is I learned how to set up this uber cool "Notepad Chaos" template . Here are the steps that I went through - (with out all the stomping and yelling) for the benefit of you template newbies...

Step 1 Find a template you like. I like this site http://btemplates.com/ because it has quite a few nice templates, you can download them directly from that site and most of all it's FREE! The other thing that I like about it is I was able to glean a lot of help from the comments sections.

There are a lot of other sites on the web and if you search for "blogger templates" on Google, you'll come up with a ton of them.

Go ahead and download your fav, download a bunch of them...

Step 2 Login to your Blogger Dashboard and go to the "Layout > Page Elements" tab. Write down which widgets you have and want to keep then head on over to "Edit HTML" tab.

Step 3 BACK UP your template by clicking the "Download Full Template" link. This will download your current template - and you have it just in case you really mess up. Then all you have to do is upload the backup file from your computer and you're in business again!

Step 4 This is the fun part. Browse to the new template file that you've just downloaded and upload it. DO NOT at this point click "Preview" button. All that will do is show you the old template and navigate you away from the Edit HTML page (I know, I've done it a couple hundred times!) Just click the "Save Template" (and if you're like me) you'll probably get this warning:

Widgets are about to be deleted!

What I do at this point is click OK! because it's a lot easier to reinstall the widgets (from the list you made in Step 2) through the Page Elements tab than it is for me to fool around with the html code.

That's it! NOW you can click the Preview button. It'll show you your new template with all the cool bells and whistles but not all the elements are really working until you actually hit the "View Blog" link at the top of the page. (I don't know why!)

Now go out and wow your "Followers" with your uber techno cool template!

This is the beginning of a whole New Year and of course we all have our new year's resolutions. (Actually I don't have any "new" New Year Resolutions, I have the same ones that I'm recycling).

So...what's new this year?

Becky's going to have a new baby.

Lee and I are going to get a new look - we're going to work out and lose weight!

My blog got a face lift ... how do you like it?

Last but not least - Chrissie is going to get a new car!

Oops! This isn't it - this is something we saw in Las Vegas LAST YEAR when we went there with Kagan and Becky.

This is it! A 2009 Ford Foci! Nicole is really jealous!

P.S. These are some really 'crappy' pictures that Chrissie sent me about her hot new ride!

Here's Sylvester wondering what all the to do is about on Christmas morning. Maybe he's grumpy because there are 4 extra people in the house. Chrissie, Josh, Debbie and Andrew. All these strangers...

Or it could be there's a lot commotion and he can't sleep as well.

Or he's saying Meow Christmas!

I know why people tend to gain weight during the holidays.
1) They don't have time to get to the gym because they're running around trying to figure out what to buy for that White Elephant exchange or that Chinese gift exchange. (By the way who came up with that name? - Why do the Chinese get that bum rap?)

2) They're depressed because they've ordered that hot new video game, Rock Band 2 from a whole bunch of online stores who consistently advertise it's IN STOCK when it REALLY ISN'T! Or is it...



3) Some of your relatives gleefully send you all the chocolate and fat you can eat!
Happy HOLIDAYS!

I bought a pre-lit tree many many years ago. Alas I fear it has come to it's last Christmas season...maybe I'll leave like it is for this Christmas.

I thought that with a pre-lit artificial tree, decorating for Christmas simple. So every year since the purchase I beg and cajole my husband and who ever else that had the misfortune of being in the house to drag the tree up from the basement.

So far - only a few groans and wails...

So it went for years - (I don't know how many because I can't remember when we bought this tree. I do remember we bought it at then end of one Christmas season from Shopko.)

This year, I was about 5 levels away from the top. (It has 11 levels I think) so, I'm halfway. Half of the branches lit up. Oh no!

I asked my brother in law the electrician to check it. He got out his handy dandy electrical device checkers and after about an hour found the burned out bulb. Yeah!

Then the next level was dark, but wiggling a few branches, it came on. (Whew!) I'm almost done! I'm at level 2 when - nothing the whole thing is dark. So what do I do - get on the internet to research how to fix burned out Christmas lights.

The Light Keeper Pro got some rave reviews. So I ran right out the next day and bought it! Lee says I love gadgets... He's right!

After reading all the directions on the web site (It seems so easy) and the paper directions, I was ready to go fix the branches.

Step 1 didn't work, Step 2 didn't work, Step 3 didn't work... It's a TOTAL and miserable FAILURE!! So after 2 hours tonight I GIVE UP!!!

I think it's time for a new 'granny tree' - maybe one that just unfolds when you pull it out of the box.