a mishmash of stuff, but lots of Elise & Cookie

When we got up Wednesday morning (1/4) Elsie was residing in her cat house (a fairly unusual sight):  

Michael ran to the grocery store for me for supplies to make chili for quilting tomorrow and while he was gone, I SKYPE’d with Janice ..no…it didn’t work….AGAIN  :~(.  But we had a good time talking anyway.  After that I finally got to eat breakfast at 11 AM (my honey brought me home a smurfy egg/bacon/cheese sandwich from Harris Teeter) then went back downstairs to continue sewing together rows for the snowball quilt:  

Diane stopped by with a quilt for me.  Fort Mill Community Playhouse is having an auction at the end of the month, and one of the board members asked her if she would make a donation quilt.  I told her I would quilt it for her, so that’s why she stopped by.  My honey spent the lunch hour making potatoes/carrots and getting them into the crockpot for our dinner tonight:

After that he came down to run his emails….so we had this:  

But as soon as "dad" left the basement, we were back to this:  

I had a great, long conversation with my friend Cathy from Delaware, and ended up heading upstairs after that to get my ham in the oven, and to make my chili and get it in the crockpot.  I prepped all of my ingredients before I started to put it together:

And also started to clean out my spice cupboard while it was cooking.  I am really mad at myself that I didn't get a "before" picture of the cupboard...it was a total mess, and I think it will look great once I've finished!  Phil & Gale and Jan showed up at 5:30 for dinner (ham, potato/carrot mash, green beans, corn bread): 

We talked for a bit after dinner, but Phil & Gale left rather quickly as Gale’s knee started to bother her (she had knee replacement just a few weeks ago).  After Jan left, Michael and I settled in for TV and knitting.