I’m a bad person June 30, 2009

Am I the only person who is happy to see when I’m not the only one who has gained weight? Hehe let me start earlier in that thought. Facebook. You can see all your old friends (and enemies) from school without one on one confrontation. And if they have pictures you can feel a little bit better about yourself when you see you weren’t the only one who gained weight.

I didn’t go to my five year reunion this year and that was at least a quarter of my reason for not going. Oh well.

Thanks so much Dana for sharing your wonderful readers with me today. I read comments and followed all the ones home that I could. Heheh it was fun- kinda like being a stalker…. I mean….. ahem I think I left the oven on at home

The dress and other things June 30, 2009

Well for all of you new here who commented and sent good wishes on the dress, its not done. I got the bodice finished and then lost momentum because I’ve been busy with some gardening stuff. Also I am sad to say that all future photos for  a while will be taken with my cell phone because my camera has gone to that great big photographer’s studio in the sky. It got knocked off my lap at our reunion but was still taking pictures even tho I could no longer use the LCD screen I could still take pictures. That is no longer true. I am so sad because I love taking pictures and I don’t know when I will get to replace it. Ah well c’est la vie. I plan to save for a really nice one. I have a whole $18 bucks so far…. but I’ll get there some day. I plan to watch Ebay and in fact I’ll be heading over there in a minute to see whats available. I want to have a nice enough camera that I can change out my lenses and all that fancy stuff. I’m learning about photography and I find that I am not completely disappointed with my pictures so I want to pursue this.

My day today and Sunday too was taken up by getting some free flowers for my garden. I made a request on freecycle for any plants that needed dividing and had two replies from some wonderful women who have the most gorgeous gardens. I brought home wisteria (my FAVORTITE), irises, lilies, hollyhocks, rose of sharon, angel trumpet flowers, some yellow flowers that might be a type of daisy, purple coneflowers, and a couple of small seedlings for trees (redbud and bald cypress) I also have an invite from one of the ladies to come back later in the fall for some different lilies and some lilac starts. This makes me so happy because landscaping is at the bottom of our budget list way below even my poor truck and yet I love to garden and want to make the outside of our house as beautiful as the inside. I am so happy to have these beautiful plants especially since they would have gotten the weed killer if I hadn’t brought them home with me.

Now I’m going to be busy finding homes around my yard for all the pretties. I love the feel of digging my hands into fresh damp dirt. So much so that I have to be reminded to wear my gloves. Theres just something about diving in and the sense of accomplishment when you’re done and you see the blooms where before there were weeds, grass or only dirt. Plus I’ve always loved playing in the dirt.

Sometimes I think I should twitter June 26, 2009

I have such random inspirations sometimes that I think I would be better at it.

So todays post will be random

My nose runs like crazy in the summer time. Why? not allergies. Rather because my husband keeps our house like an ice box. Seriously cold. And I understand- truly I do- that when he comes in hot and sweaty from working in the 90 plus temps (with a heat index of 105 or more) that nothing feels better than a refrigerator washed down with a nice powerade. I just haven’t figured out how to make myself a little oven to hide from all the cold yet. Its a family thing too- his next older brother is the same way and when I used to hang out with him and my ex I’d bring a sweater or light winter jacket. I feel bad for my poor SIL who lives with him cuz she gets even colder than I do.

I already mentioned this on my facebook so if you’re reading this there deal with it… I mean I’m sorry. Theres a road not far from here that I pass from time to time when taking the scenic route to town. It has a sign for a cemetery and funeral home. The name of the road? Slaughter. So I’m wondering if anyone else finds that slightly wrong. I mean I really want to have my (nonexistent) will say when my time comes just take me to Slaughter Road.

I’m sitting on my couch typing this on my laptop and for some reason my hair is in pigtails. Hows that for random? I went to put my hair up and for some reason my hands formed pigtails instead of one big ponytail. Who knows how my mind works sometimes.

Last night I decided I wanted to make a dress. So I dug for awhile in my fabric stash until I came to some orange and white gingham fabric. I know some of you are cringeing but you’ll see- it will be alright. I laid it out with the pattern and spent an hour last night on my living room floor cutting it out. I have a bit more to do today, and then I’ll start sewing. I’m picturing wearing this dress (a swingy wrap dress from a McCalls pattern) with a turquoise or red headband and large swingy earrings for our 4th of July get together next week.(I’m making the red one)

The heat has been horrendous here. Fortunately there hasn’t been much going on so Jarell has been able to just chill at home. We spent yesterday lounging on the couches. He watched old sci fi movies on tv while I spent time playing on the internet.

I want to go outside and play in my garden but the heat is getting to me. I dug up a good sized batch of new potatoes the day before yesterday and today my goal is to get the rest of the patch harvested because bugs have killed off my plants. I don’t mind too much tho because I can then have that spot for more veggies. Jarell will probably have a heart attack tho…. shhh don’t tell him yet

My wii fit age yesterday was 21. I was like “sweet!” today- 28. I can’t keep up with this stuff.

I’m reading up on dreams and having a lot of fun with that. What better way to waste time in the summer, right? and aparently all my dreams that my fish are dead or skeletonized and dying? It means that my creative side is not being taken care of. So thats why I’m making a dress.

Enough randomness for now folks

HOME!!!! June 23, 2009

I’m home! So glad to be here after the heat we had and the excitement of another tornado warning again this year. We cut the stay short due to exhaustion but we packed a lot of fun into our one week stay and now we’re recovering at home in the A/C. I took tons of pictures and I’ll try to get some of them uploaded here soon. I need to get them online for the family reunion website anyway so I’ll be using my FIL’s satelite internet which means you’ll all soon be sick of the pictures. In that vein and on a sadder note, my camera took a plunge from my lap while I was holding my neice and now the LCD screen shows only white. While I can still take pictures, I have no control over what mode I’m in and I can’t see on the screen what I’m taking a picture of so thats kind of a bummer.

I came home to a garden overflowing with peas and blossoms on all my squash plants. My tomatoes also have some blooms and the colored swiss chard that I planted is pinking up the patch of ground its in. The sunflowers are as tall as I am now and my volunteer chamomile is a mass of little daisy like flowers. I am just beyond words with happiness over how well everything not only survived but thrived while we were away. I hope to have pictures soon.

For now I’m off to rest but I’ll be back before long.

I’m a magpie; confessions of a craftaholic June 14, 2009

I’m a magpie. I collect, store, and hoard shiny objects that make me happy. I fill my home with them and surround myself with beauty at every turn. In particular though I hoard craft items. Everything from fabric, thread and buttons to paper, old books, beads, yarn, stamps, and ephemera. I can’t imagine many crafters out there who don’t collect the various supplies of their particular craft and in turn I can’t imagine many who don’t hoard the special bits that they find. Maybe someone with an unlimited budget and resources who could find and buy what they need whenever they wanted could avoid having a stash, but even they would be limited by having to go and get what they needed before they began to create. I personally need to have the stimulus of my beloved stash around me in order to inspire. I also need my supplies close at hand because when I get the urge to make something its almost a compulsion. I have to DO something NOW not 2 hours from now after going to the craft stores and searching for just the right paper or just the right beads, fabric, findings, thread etc. And so I keep close at hand any number of things that I can do at a moments notice.

I can cook too which will satisfy the beast just as well as any other outlet so long as I do something more than just make something from a box. It has to be involved enough for it to make my brain believe I have accomplished something. In this I hoard my spices- the expensive ones, the ones that came from my garden, I hoard the yeast for my bread and bread flour too. I don’t want these things to go to waste on just any meal but instead save them for the special nights when we need a pick-me-up after a long week.

In a similar vein I can work in my garden- planting, harvesting, and weeding all work towards that sense of accomplishment that I get from creating something. But again here I hoard. My seeds and plants are precious and I’m always concerned that I will waste them somehow. I worry that all the plants will die and I will have used all my seed. And unfortunately this year has been a banner year for that. My slaved over tomato and pepper plants went into the garden only to be killed 20 minutes after planting by a heavy hail. Not once but twice! My lemon and lime basil died only yesterday when the sun got too hot for the tiny seedlings planted in a very large pot. And of course I had used all the seed so I’ll have to settle for regular basil this year.

Mostly tho I hoard my craft supplies. Sketchbooks with page after page of pristine white for the day I become a perfect artist (without practice or teaching, right? Because it will just happen over night and I’ll wake up as good as my mom, my brother, and my sister in law) Fat quarters in the perfect shade of orange, pink, blue, red, or brown (my favorite colors right now) for the next purse or quilt or whatever. Scrapbook paper out the wazoo in every shade and pattern imaginable for cards or any other paper craft I can think up. Stickers and other embellishments too. Beads and findings for necklaces, bracelets, and earrings. All of these things and more live in my craft room (and all over the house at times much to my sweet husband’s chagrin) I hoard them sometimes for years until I find just the right project for them. Sometimes I just have them so I can pull them out and pet them from time to time (doesn’t everyone pet fabric? That’s just me? Oh…. Ok) They make me happy and eventually I find use for them.

But I’m always reluctant to use something that cost me a lot of money or an item that I know I can’t find again because I’m afraid that I’ll make a mistake. Beads are forgiving with mistakes- take them off and try again, but fabric can’t be uncut and paper can’t be unglued (well not usually and not always with good results) So some things sit and wait because I’m afraid that when I use them it won’t work out or I won’t like what I make. And I would rather not use them then not have them to use because I made a mistake.

I know I’m not the only maker who suffers from this particular malady. Many of us use crafting as a guilty pleasure- something we shouldn’t be spending money on when there are bills to be paid and people to be fed- but we do anyway because its our sanity. So if we use the things we shouldn’t have bought in the first place and they go to waste we are lower than dirt. We are our worst critics and that little voice in our brains that shows up at the worst times tells us that we better not use that special paper now- that picture will be better for another project someday. We tell ourselves someday and use sparingly.

Well folks, I hate to tell you this, but someday rarely ever comes until you decide that today is someday. You are not going to go without and necessity is the mother of invention and in turn creativity. Use your stash- you’ll get more somehow- God provides at the strangest times and even if you only create for yourself the lives of those around you will be better because you’re happy doing what you love best. So go create!

I’m goin camping and I’m taking….. June 10, 2009

My laptop, but unfortunately not my internet. At least not where we’re staying because I don’t have any cell phone service. *sighs dramatically and then brightens* Waitaminute! That means I can really get away from everything!!! How novel is that folks? And if I really need to talk to someone we only have to drive about 5 miles to get signal so its not a complete bust. I do however have a ton left to do before we go. We’ve been shopping like crazy with other people’s money (with permission of course!) to make this year a real success. (when I say this year I mean his family reunion) We bought goodies for contests and doorprizes and other random stuff just for the fun of it. We plan to have a good old fashioned tug of war and a watermelon seed spitting contest (because what small child doesn’t love spitting right?) We’ll have a bean bag toss for whoever wants to play and super stay bubbles for all the young and young at heart (I personally plan on testing those today… just so I know they work…)

I have been working on a special project for the auction this year as we’re asking everyone to bring something homemade or handmade to auction off. For of those of you who don’t know, the auction money that we raise goes to pay for all the cool activities we do every year plus food for the meals we serve the three days of the reunion. It works out great and all we have to do is keep receipts on our purchases so that everyone knows we didn’t just take the money and head to Vegas with it. Anywho back to the special project. I found a tutorial here for a traditional Japanese doll called a sarubobo which is the cutest and simplest little thing I’ve ever seen. I have made four of them so far but I changed things up a bit and I wanted to share my version of these fellas. I started out by following the wonderful directions on Mai’s blog with my first doll. Then for the second one I decided I knew how much fabric to cut and eyeballed it but once it was finished it was almost twice the size of the original (a whopping 2 inches from the top of its head to its butt) so I thought mom and baby doll. I figured a family would be a nice idea so I made what should have been the dad doll but it was calling my name to be another girl so it became the mother and the second doll the big sister. Finally I got a fourth doll made and he was the perfect male role model for the entire family so I left his gender alone. Of course having a whole family now I needed a home for them so I started work on a little bag that would have a door and windows but somehow it transformed into a little WWII era military style house and needed some color. A couple hours, one viewing of Anger Management, and several strands of embroidery floss later I had a rather respectable abode for my little family. Now all they need is a puppy and they’ll be the perfect family. I’m thinking something large like a New Foundland tho or else they sizes will be way off. *grins*

I lost a pound June 2, 2009

Way back in February, if I remember correctly, I decided that I was tired of being overweight, tired of flinching away from the mirror, tired of hating what I saw when I looked down at myself. And so I began a slow process towards a thinner and healthier me. It wasn’t always easy, but I was able to stick with my plan for the most part by not depriving myself of anything or doing anything that I didn’t want to do. I chose to drink a healthy smoothie for breakfast every morning and cut back slowly on my portion sizes. I started doing yoga every morning and drank more water. I also just worked on breathing deeply when I felt stressed instead of freaking out. I walk at least once a week to our mailbox which is close to a mile round trip (crazy yes?) and work in the garden too and all of this has finally begun to show. I have lost 4 inches off my waist and gone down 1 to 2 pants sizes depending on the pants. I have lost between 20 and 25 pounds. I flinch to show you the before shot, but am very proud of the after and I’m by no means done with this slow but rewarding journey.

See still here June 2, 2009

Hi all I just wanted to stop in to share a couple of quick shots. I’ll probably have more later today as I plan to take some of the camper I mentioned yesterday. The top picture is of Kevin and his girlfriend on the Carousel at a local mall. Yeah, I did say that was a carousel at a mall, how cool is that? Bet your mall doesn’t have one of those. The bottome shot is me and Kevin standing in front of a large tree shaped change machine at the same mall. I am wearing a shirt that I just made this weekend and feeling very slim in this shot compared to some others. *grins* Hooray for the Wii Fit and Yoga.

Okay thats all for now. I’ll talk to you all soon. Gotta explain to Kevin that yelling at the tv will not make the game hear him better.

Living June 1, 2009

I’ve been having so much fun this last week that I haven’t wanted to even go near the computer. I’m sorry but that just the truth. It started with Jarell and I celebrating last weekend. We were celebrating having our house to ourselves for a few days before my brother got here from California. We went out to eat and then on the way home we stopped at Wal Mart where Jarell bought me a belated birthday gift in the form of a Wii Fit. Now some of you are probably thinking, “How awful!” or something like that, but I was standing there with big sad puppy eyes holding it and saying “Pretty please!” so it was completely my idea. And I’m glad I got it because its so much fun to play with. It insults me a lot and sometimes I want to punch Javier (the name I gave to my trainer) but I actually enjoy doing the workouts and I like stepping onto it and having it tell me I’m on track for my weightloss. Its someone besides my loving husband to be accountable to for all the extra snacks and bad food choices I make.

Wednesday Kevin and Emily got here and they are officially at the top of the list for best houseguests ever. Its been a blast having them here and I wish the time would pass a little bit more slowly because I’ve always been close to my brother and his girlfriend is the sweetest girl in the world. We’ve just spent time hanging out catching up, playing games and enjoying each other’s company. Its been pretty peaceful aside from this weekend which was total chaos.

Three of my sister in laws and one of my brother in laws are participating in the Kansas City Renaissance Festival this year and they have some major requirements involved in this. They have rehearsals and meetings every week and often several times a week which becomes a bit taxing on one of my sister in laws because she lives about 35 miles east of me but the place where the rehearsals is held is about 30 miles west of me. Its hell on gas and time and so this weekend we offered her and J7 a bed here at our house since she had to be in Independence at 9 o’clock on both Saturday and Sunday. This would have been all fine and dandy if Jarell hadn’t also decided to have one of his friends over for the weekend so that all the guys could have a Halo tournament complete with two extra tv’s and J12 and J14 as well. It was a very full house and I was cranky and hormonal and by the time all was said and done I felt like the house was going to drive me insane. It would not be possible to find someone happier than I was last night when everyone finally left and it was back to just the four of us. Oh my gah I sat down and breathed deeply and then we watched a movie while enjoying a supreme feeling of peace and tranquility.

In the midst of all that chaos I managed to finish most of the replacement curtains that I have been making for the 17 year old camper that we’ll be using for this year’s family reunion because the poor thing was originally decorated in shades of yuck and Oh my god thats Ugly! (or dusty rose and watered down powdery blue with hints of beige beige and more beige) I’ll see if I can gets some pictures so you can truly understand my trauma now that my camera is functioning again. Not only did I manage make new curtains which were fairly simple affairs, I also made slip covers for the ugly ass couch so that it wouldn’t give me nightmares for the whole two weeks we were camping. It has a matching chair that will just have to be covered with a blanket or sheet, but anything is worth it to make that all slightly less unappealing and I am succeeding slowly but surely.

Finally and this is a bit out of order, during the Memorial day weekend my cousin and her husband came down from Michigan to visit her mom and we had a chance to all have a nice barbecue and do some catching up. I only wish we all lived closer because my family spreads literally from coast to coast and that makes it kinda tough to stay in touch sometimes. Thank goodness for the internet or I don’t know where we’d be.