Monday monday, so good to me

What a nice surprise this morning: there was a tiny violet-red crayon in the wash and everything is covered!  And, I won a book!  They sort of cancel each other out for me.

So Anita is gathering people together to show their crafty space on March 30th.  Are you game?  Get your little area spruced up and dusted, organized and prettified and join Anita and everyone else!  I’m working on it too… my new desk is hogging up space in the garage and my sewing room is a mess.  This makes it very hard to get all these little projects out of my head and into the 3-D world.

Speaking of projects, I’m falling in love with this quilt-along at Oh, Fransson! I don’t know what fabrics I would use, since I can get into my room to dig around!  But I would really love to use these beautiful Mendocino fabrics by Heather Ross.  I’d need some more to fill it out to 12, but I’m sure I could manage!

The desk will have to wait a little today for it is 60 degrees and we are off to the zoo once baby awakes!

Playing at the park.

 

An oldie, but a goodie

Cute post I wrote nearly two years ago.

 

Sunday Stash #2

Oh hey! Is it Monday? Oops! It’s still a good day for fabric stash, so here you go:

My red stash... that has since been added to!

I’m off to run some errands before the crap weather gets here.  I also have to get Leanna’s package off in the mail!

 

The end of the giveaway

First, I have to tell you that it is snowing pretty decent here and I just got home from work 40 minutes ago… normally I would have been home 80 minutes ago. My drive was quite unfun. My windshield was frosty and wouldn’t wipe off, but the hot air blowing on it from the defrost was making my eyes irritated and my nose itchy and me sneeze (I have somewhat of a crummy cold). I took the way home with less highway, so I wouldn’t have to deal with too much other traffic.

About two thirds of the way home, I notice that the gas is really low. I mean, I noticed before, but I thought I’d be OK. But this time I looked and it was on E. Before I left the last little city with an open gas station before home, I changed the little readout on my car to tell me how many miles I could go on what gas I had left (my car has that, I know! Crazy!). The little readout says: 9. Nine!? It is 10 miles to my house from the next exit!

I turned my car around and went back to that gas station that had its lights on. The deserted gas station. Great. I pulled up to the pump and checked the readout… it still said “insert credit car or pay cashier”, so I thought that meant I was OK.

I was OK. I mean, I had to stand out there in the blowy snow at the deserted gas station after midnight on a Friday, but it all worked out. I paid with my credit card and the pump gave me gas. I even washed that dirty stuff off the windshield. All while checking out my surroundings and making sure no one was coming. That would have weirded me out.

All gassed up, off I went home. Blaring my 3EB and singing mighty terribly with my hoarse voice.

Now that I am home, I can concentrate on more important things. Things like choosing a winner for my little birdy pouch! (Thanks for sticking with me!!)

It was a difficult task, because there were comments on that other post and my (lovely, pretty, FREE) blog does not let me move comments, which is what my original plan was. So I decided to go by the emails, since all comments are emailed to me. That way they are in there by the time they were left, despite what post they are on.

I tediously counted them up: 202! Wow people! That is truly amazing. I never thought it possible on my little blog. Thank you to everyone that stopped by and especially to SMS, who made this whole “Day” possible.

I plugged that 202 into the handy-dandy random number generator and got:

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

147

Timestamp: 2008-12-06 07:35:06 UTC

Lalalala I’m counting through my emails now…  And the WINNER is:

Leanna Says:
December 4, 2008 at 5:57 pm e

How so very cute! I love the birdies! Thanks for the chance!

Congratulations Leanna!  I’ll be emailing you to get your details so I can ship your little birdy pouch!  Thank you once again to everyone who entered.  I enjoyed reading all the comments… and YES, I replied to every one!  I did not think that I would get this many, so I replied to the early ones.  But then they kept coming!  So I didn’t want to leave anyone out… so you all got a reply.  I hope the next giveaway I have will be just as successful.

Good night now!

 

Hooray!

I made it through November unharmed and have a pot full of posts to prove it.  Did I come up with anything extremely poignant, probably not, but I did it!  And now I feel weird because I didn’t post yesterday and did lots of other things today.  Lucky for all of us, here I am, letting you know what’s up.

First off, I have a picture of my shelves for you.  I know I’ve been talking them up in the past few weeks with nary a glimpse for any of you.  So without further ado and without and hacks:

My shelves!

We rearranged the whole room so these would fit.  And they fit oh-so-perfectly in that corner, squished right in next to the window.  The desk is to the left there (it used to be under the fabric hoops on the wall), because it was too tight to the left of the shelves.  And the bed got turned and is now under the window.  And the dresser that was where the desk is now is next to the bed.  Did you get that?  I wish I had a picture of the rest of it, but I only took ones of the shelves!  And I had to stand inside the closet to take it!!

Here you can see the edge of the windowsill.

I have a picture of each shelf, too.  I spent a ton of time cleaning up my gigantic mess and worry about where the furniture would go.  But I am SO happy I have these!  Now all most of my supplies and fabric organized and it is so much easier to find things.  On the top shelf there, you can see the new fabrics I bought for my Bloom quilt and my antique tin and some old Ball jars (one of them has buttons inside!).

Yes, so the pictures of each shelf will get here eventually, most likely on Sundays for Sunday Stash.

Here is one last picture for you all: what started as Christmas presents on Friday and escalated into a big to-do and then I sewed a lot more today and you should go HERE and check it out!

Project for my niece.

 

Busy

Another day spent running around!  Today I cleaned up a storm because my in-laws were to arrive around 3PM.  I think I did a pretty good job!  I even baked 2 Norwegian Apple Cakes amidst the chaos!

Then is was off to work.  Not much going on there.  Same old same old.  And some other things I don’t think I should really talk about here.  Just something that makes things a tad bit awkward!

On top of cleaning and working (though I don’t work until Saturday), SM has a fever and SE has a cough.  The rest of us are OK for the time being.  There will be a status update tomorrow.  Also tomorrow: hopefully some pictures of my new shelves… which may be hard to come by being my MIL is staying in there now (my sewing room is also the guest room).

Bye for now.

 

Missed

Nothing like posting at the last minute!  I had a slow morning of lounging about and then left in a rush.  Thankfully, I don’t work any more days this week.  Nothing but relaxing and lots and lots of cleaning left!

 

Happy Hallowe’en!

Trick-or-treat was last weekend around here, but I’m showing you the picture today.  SE was a firefighter (costume from 2 years ago) and SM was Woody from Toy Story (costume from last year).

Hallowe'en 2008

 

And the number is…

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

1

Timestamp: 2008-10-28 13:16:53 UTC

That would mean Michelle is the winner! Congratulations!!

Sorry, Juddie, thanks for entering!

I think I’m going to have another giveaway soon, so keep your eyes peeled!

 

Stay tuned

I ran out of time today, but come back tomorrow for a fun little surprise!

 

Made it

Today, I have some pictures for you.  More pictures than usual and pictures you may or may not have been pining to see.  And most importantly, pictures of things that have been made.

First off, I have the completed fall table runner/mat.  It didn’t take long to quilt and sew on the binding by hand.  It’s only about 18 inches square (I don’t really know because I just cut some strips and sewed them together without a plan), but if fits right in the middle of our table.  Right now it has some gourds on it.  I use it for slightly hot bowls during meals.

I fussy-cut this pumpkin and crow for the middle.

Here is the outer border and a snippet of binding.

I used a black in between because the green of that flower fabric and the green of the pumpkin fabric don’t quite match.  The black puts them far enough apart where you don’t really notice it.  I like the way it turned out.

Secondly, I have a picture of the bracelet my beady friend Michelle made for me for my birthday when we had a swap a while back.  I’ve worn it a bunch of times by now, but I finally took a good picture of it to show it off for you.

Pretty pretty bracelet.

I love this bracelet because it looks awesome, but it’s so light, I hardly notice I’m wearing it.  Just look at all the little beads on it, too!  Definitely a lot of work was put into this pretty.  Hey, you could even buy one for yourself at Michelle’s etsy shop, Off the Beaded Path.

Look at all those little beads!

I really need to get a picture of the necklace next.  I have also worn it a bunch of times because I love it.  And it’s long, and I’m loving long necklaces right now.

Thirdly, one more “made” thing for you: a good old fashioned sand castle.  We went to the cabin this past weekend and it was so nice outside!  The best part (the boys think) is that the dirt is mostly comprised of sand up there, so the driveway is a big sand box.  I played in the same spot when I was little (gotta find a picture of that!).

SM and I built a sand castle.

Then we decorated the top with oak leaves, acorns, pine needles, some moss, and this really pretty dried feathery weed thing.  I was careful with the car to drive around it when we left, so it will be there to great Grandma and Grandpa the next time they go up.

Oak Leaf Tower

 

Small fry

I wrote yesterday (very very early yesterday) about our guppies.  And today, I bring you pictures!

Our tank.

Our tank sits on the end of the breakfast bar.  It’s an easy place for the kids to sit and watch the fish and it’s out of the reach of little hands.  Notice the little rock bridge in the lower left of the tank, that’s important for the next picture.

Here are two of the little ones!

The frys (I think this is the proper spelling, instead of “fries”) like to swim around the rock bridge and the plant we have in the tank.  I think they eat the small bits of food that float down by them.  I have never noticed them near the top with the adult fish.

I’ll have you know, it is almost impossible to take pictures of fish in a tank, so I’ll leave you with a blurry one of some of the adult fish.  This was the best one I got.

These are both males. I think the one on the right is a reflection!

 

Fish stories

Just wanted to let you know that our fish had babies!  How exciting, huh?  There are four or five; they are very small and swim fast, so they’re hard to count.  I just noticed them yesterday while looking for our newly acquired ghost shrimp.  A fun 33 cents that one is.

We have had goldfish for a while now.  I guess it seems like a while, but it’s only been 10 months.  We started out with a fancy goldfish and a white one with an “orange hat”.  One of them died, so we picked out two more: a gray one with bulgy eyes and another goldfish.   SM fed them a whole can of fish food once, but I saved them from the slime.  After a little while, one died, and then the other two did.  My theory on this is that one of the cheap ones had an illness and the other two got it.  I am no veterinarian nor a fish expert, but they died and I come up with reasons that sound plausible to myself and to little kids.

We were off the fish for a while, but were wont to browse the pet store just to have something to do.  One day, I decided we needed some more fish and thought the guppies were small and varietous, so we got four boys.  A yellow, a teal and two with black spots on their tails.  The teal one disappeared one day and was never seen again.  Not even after fish tank quarantine in the garage.  Not even after a thorough tank cleaning.

So then there were three.

Last month, after another jaunt to the pet store, I decided we could do with two more guppies.  This time I got two females.  And as life is one to do, it goes on.  The birds and the bees and all that jazz.  I just thought it would take a little longer!

I don’t know which one was pregnant, or if she was pregnant when we brought her home, but here we are.  I just learned that the babies are called fries and a guppy gives birth to live fries.  That is interesting, no?  I wish I could have seen this.  Maybe I need to do more fish-tank-gazing.  Also, it’s usually around an average of 30 fries… so I guess the rest of them are hiding somewhere.  There is some more info here, more than I have time to look at right now, but is certainly interesting.

We literally have a school of fish!  The kids are excited and so am I.  I just hope I can take care of the new class.

 

Friday scraps

Aren’t you glad it’s Friday?

Today, I’ve been watering the grass.  It’s growing now; very green in some spots, still dirt in others.  But it’s grass and it’s amazing to think the yard will be a yard soon.  It’s really surreal being out there amongst the hay and the new blades.  I don’t know why, but it is.  It will be nice that the weather will be warm this weekend and will give our many little blades lots of sun and time to grow strong.

Today, I’ve been itching to sew.  I got a new pattern that I ordered  the other day from the Fat Quarter Shop along with a jelly roll that I’ve been eying up.  I decided to order the jelly roll after visiting my favorite quilt shop and seeing the fabrics in person.  They didn’t have that jelly roll and the woman there told me the jelly rolls are limited in quantity because they are cut during the first printing of the fabric and in limited quantity.  I had a coupon code too, so how could I not??  Haha!  The pattern was also on sale.  Actually, the Fat Quarter Shop is having a big sale, so go check it out.

So that pattern.  I am enamored with the colors on the cover, but I know that I don’t have those fabrics.  I would like to use what I have so I’ll have to take some time and see what all goes together.  I did buy this great Alexander Henry print at the quilt shop the other day that I think might work for the big aqua expanse on the front of the quilt.  I have enough to do it and then I could just find scraps for the strips (it calls for 9 fat quarters), since the front strips are so short.  The back is pieced of the rest of the fat quarters, so I could make mine extra scrappy.  I could even put a little bird appliqué near that big flower.

I also have a shirt cut out from late 1800s fabric.  I hope it turns out.  I don’t have a very good track record with clothing.  Sigh.

One more thing: I signed up for a fabric swap over at Chickpea.  I have to cut up some fabrics into 24 5′ squares and I’m going to get 24 squares from different people.  I’m excited about this too.  There are so many fabrics out there and quilt shops only carry so much.  Sure, you can look online, but it’s not quite the same as seeing them in person.  Getting the color and the scale correct in your mind.  Dreaming up new projects.  So with my squares I’m supposed to making a little bit with them and white.  I’ll have to be on the lookout for a good white… my stash doesn’t really have any!

Well, my ice cream is melting, I need to go eat it.  Also, we might go on a road trip this weekend… if I can come up with somewhere to go.  Have a great three-day-weekend!

 

Time is on someone’s side, but I don’t think it’s mine

I’ve been thinking about the time we have to ourselves lately.

I read an article that depressed people who take time to do something productive with their hands fair better and feel happier.

T and I discuss having time to ourselves and the fact that I spend 25 minutes driving home from work (alone) comes up.  He thinks this counts as alone time.  I do not.

I tell T that he gets tons of alone time because, after the kids go to bed, he has at least 3 hours to doink around and do whatever (which should or should not include some chores).

So, I don’t know, is this lack of time for sewing, crafting and thinking wearing me down?  Or is it the little molecules in my brain (and their lack of total medication – only every three days now)?  Here is a list about alone time, it doesn’t really make sense, just a list of things:

1. There is never really a bit of time I get to myself during the day that is not with kids present or in the car.
2. I don’t believe that time I have in the car counts as alone time.  I have to concentrate on driving, so I therefore and occupied with something other than my free time
3. I would very much like to be able to do a few projects.  I’ve had so many thumping about in my head that I forget what I want to do and never have enough time to do things that I do remember.  It’s also a big mess up there in my “room”… it’s hard to find things in a hurry to do a certain project I happen to have in mind.
4. For a while I was going to the Y after T got home from work (on days I didn’t work)… but that never seemed to help much.  Or I couldn’t get into it.  Or something.  And then, on occasion, T would say things like “I gave you time to go” or “I don’t get any time to workout” or “the kids were horrible while you were gone”*, so I didn’t much feel like hearing that much longer.
5. There is something wrong with me that I can’t take that leap to leave my kids with the daycare at the Y.  I don’t know what it is.  Oh, wait, it’s mostly because I have to make an appointment with them to drop of the little guy (any kid under 18 months).  Ok, so that’s a big part of it, but there’s still that other “something” there that I can’t explain.
6. I think I’ve been having some sort of dream about a magazine I want to read:  I bought the latest issue of MS Living  Monday and it has a pumpkin clock on the cover.  Somewhere I came up with a front porch of a house with a spiderweb made out of rope and gauzey material so there was just an inverted V opening to go through.  I swear I saw this on the magazine and was very interested in finding out how they did that because I thought it would be neat for the front of our house.  I just needed to know what to buy.  Last night I was able to flip through the first couple of pages of the magazine and today I took it to work with me.  I got the magazine out for dinner-time and looked through it all.  When I got to the end, I wondered where that porch was.  I flipped back to the cover, and there, of course, was that pumpkin clock.  SO now I have no idea where I saw this porch.  It’s very weird.  I don’t remember dreaming anything like that, I just remember seeing it, more than once or twice, and wanted to find out about.  I do not think it was on the internet because blogs are always changing and I’ve seen it more than once.  So weird.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on alone time and what you do for sanity!  Aren’t you glad it’s Thursday?

*I love my husband very much and he doesn’t talk like that very much at all.  I just didn’t want you to get the wrong idea about him )