Insanity 2007 begins!

Well it's that time again. Here I am planning the cooking, baking and gift giving. When do the men get to do this. I am the ultimate list maker and planner and then it seems to all change before I can get the stuff done. Just one year it would be fun to watch my husband plan it all and then maybe I would be appreciated a little more. I'm sure he appreciates all I do, but when I'm trying to get all this done and planned and he asks if I'm done with the shopping yet, I just want to say nope and guess who's finishing it. You are!
OK, I'm over the whining now. I need to get going and start my holiday baking and planning. We are hosting the family Xmas eve dinner this year. So there is lots to plan and do. I need to go out in the rain and wind and get more wrapping paper for presents.
I also have a birthday party to plan for my daughter. Right in the middle of Christmas insanity, we have a birthday to do. What we we thinking 19 years ago when we did that. Well I'm off to get this stuff started. Happy Holidays to all!

Knitting Again

Here is a picture of my little pumpkin head wearing the hat I just finished for Hubby. I have finally accomplished something. I love these quick and easy short projects. I tried to get him to pose with it on and he was off to his computer in a flash. Hiding from the camera.

Here is project #2!!! I have finished another one. Can you believe it. This is the scarf I made for Grand baby Haylee. She is so cute in it. I tried to get her to pose and she kept taking it off. I have some more of the purple and plan on making her a hat to match. Right after I make her mommy a hat and scarf. I bought some Bernat Alpaca in Wheat and Natural. I can't wait to get started.

Well, I'm off to knit.

Frustrated Mom

There are times when being a parent is difficult. My 18 (almost 19) year old daughter was out with her friends Friday night. I'm OK with her spending the night with friends, but she needs to be home at by decent time on Saturday morning (with my car). Saturday is the day that I get the grocery shopping for the week ahead, done. It is very frustrating when I have to reschedule my day around her disregard for my time. I prefer to get my shopping done early so I can get back, clean house and get my chores done before to late in the day. I guess she doesn't understand that I have worked 40 hours and spent 10 traveling to and from my weekday job. Saturday is my home workday. I try to get things done so I can have Sunday to relax and refocus, before it starts all over again. Someday she will have her own family and home that she has to take care of. Maybe then she will look back and get it once and for all.
After all that frustration, she tells me she got a speeding ticket on Saturday morning. I just give up. I have been on her case about slowing down. I made her drive with her permit for 2 years, because she refused to listen to me about her driving. Well now guess what, she will have to pay her own ticket and cover the difference in the car insurance. Her only other option will be to get her own insurance and car or not drive. I am tempted to buy her a bike and bus pass for Christmas.
She is driving me crazy. I worry every time she leaves the driveway. I feel like she doesn't pay close enough attention, drives too fast and has no clue where she is. She calls me and give me streets and will ask how to get home. I don't remember feeling this way with our older daughter. I wish she would just be careful.
HOW DO I KEEP MY SANITY!!!

Back Again

At the prom having fun! Aren't they a silly bunch.

Finally got some of the pictures off of my camera. Thought I would post a few so you all could see my beautiful daughter at the prom. Daughter #2 is the one on the left, her best friend since 1st grade is the second one and Mr prom and the young lady on the right are friends since middle school. They all decided they did not want to go with dates, so they went as a group and had lots of fun.

The truck is fixed!!!

Finally after 3 weeks and $$$ later, the truck is working. It starts like a champ and is running good. The mechanic found where a wire had been partially pulled loose, from the wiring harness, under the dash. He thinks it had been that way for a long time, possibly when the alarm was installed several years ago. It just hadn't gotten bad enough to cause a problem until recently.

Now for something fun. I made this necklace, bracelet and earrings to go with an outfit I wore to a party last night. Lately I have been on a beading binge. I love to hold them and roll them around in my hand. It is fun to create something beautiful out of them.

Well I should get going and get ready for work tomorrow. The weekend mode is over.

Still no truck.......

Well, they replaced the ignition and the explorer will start one time, but not the next. The mechanic is pulling his hair out. This is the first time he has run into this problem. He refuses to give up, I am glad that he is not charging for diagnostic time. So far we have replaced the fuel pump and ignition, I can't imagine what will be next. I am beginning to hate cars. I just want it to start all the time. Funny thing is once it is started the truck runs great.
Enough depressing car news, I have been working on some bead work. As soon as I get new batteries for my camera, I will post some pictures. I made a turquoise and fresh water pearl necklace and a red jasper necklace, bracelet and earrings. It was relaxing to spend the weekend just playing with my beads. See ya later.....

Still in the shop!

They have had it for a week and the wrong part was delivered on Friday. Too late to reorder until Tuesday. Won't get the part until Wednesday. Three weeks and lots of $'s later, we might see the truck this next week. It better run like new. In the last year we have put new brakes, rebuilt transmission, replaced radiator, fuel pump and ignition on the truck. Hopefully it will be good for another 100,000 at least. We plan on getting a new car in the near future and giving it to our daughter. I want to make sure it is dependable and safe. It may be 13 years old, but it is in good shape and should last a few more years. Enough about that...
Today, I spent a few hours beading a necklace for my mom. Hopefully she likes what I came up with for her. At least I got something done that was fun. I plan on beading a rope for my niece. She picked out some gray and black sead beads that she wanted put into a spiral rope. She has a glass parrot bead that she wants to hang from it. I am going to try to start on that one tomorrow, after I plan dinner for hubby. Three day week ends are great. I get caught up around the house enough, so that I can do other things that are fun.
He has been working lots of hours and finally has a day off tomorrow. Thought I would BBQ some steak and fix up some pasta salad and black beans for dinner and then whip up a chocolate cake with fudge frosting for desert. I have been craving the cake myself, may as well get it out of my system so I don't eat more than I should. Since he works 6PM to 6AM, he will be sleeping all day, so I will have the kitchen to myself. No one to look over my shoulder and tell me how to cook (I hate that).
Well it is late and I need to get up early to cook some breakfast for hubby when he gets home in the AM.

Cars again!

We now have one of the two of the trucks running. One of the explorers is home and running well. The other was home for about 3 days and went back to the shop. Now the ignition seems to be acting up. In the last couple of weeks the truck has been at the repair shop more than home. I hope when it comes home, it runs good for a long while. It has had over $3000 worth of repairs in the last year. I wish we could just go buy a new car, but I refuse to have a car payment until we sell the house.
We are downsizing to a house that is easier to keep up with. I hate the large 4 bedroom. We don't need 4 bedrooms for two of us. the kids are out on their own or off at school. I would rather have 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms with a big kitchen and great room set-up. This 4 bedroom 2.5 bath with kitchen, family room, formal dining and living room. I think if we only have 3 bedrooms and 2 baths with a great room kitchen set-up. I will be getting rid of 4 rooms that I do not have clean. Oh Yea!!! More time to knit, bead or quilt. That's what I am talking about. The house is almost ready to put up for sale. Just need to refinish the hardwood entry and install moulding that we took out to replace floors. Hopefully it sells quick and we find our dream home and we never do the move thing again.

Fords argh!!!

We have 3 of them and they all have problems. I just want something that I don't have to work on, take to the shop or whatever. I want them to start when I turn the key, go when I put them in drive and get me there and home again. Is it too much to ask? It isn't like we don't take care of them. They get regular oil changes and tune-up as needed. I don't need a sports car, I just need it to be dependable, presentable and no dents. I hate it when the girls call and the car won't start. I just want something that has a warranty, that way someone else gets to figure out what is wrong. Well I guess I am done whining now. Sorry to have brothered all with my woes.

Bummer Day.....

I had to take my little truck to the dealer to get it checked out. It is running bad and hard to start. They told me the intake manifold seals are bad to the tune of several hundred $$$$ to repair. While waiting for them to get done checking and scheduling a time for it to go back and get done. My daughter called me to tell me that the other car would not start and she was stuck at the store with the granddaughter until I could get there. I got there and could not get it to start either. After several attempts and time on the phone with my brother who works on trucks. We figured out it was the fuel pump. Another one of them several hundred $$$ to fixes. I brought them home and went back to get the truck to the shop. I finally got home around 7:00 PM and had dinner around 9:00 PM. I left work at 10:00 AM planning on getting back there around noon and ended up being gone all day. I hope they are not mad at me.
I thought my day couldn't get any worse. I checked my email and found that a friend had died on Monday. It got worse. He will be missed by all that knew him. What a bummer of an ending to a bad day. Bummed to the max.

Just stopped by...

I can't believe it been over a month since I have updated my blog. Boy, do I have a lot to tell ya. We moved our oldest daughter and granddaughter to their new apartment and stored their furniture in our living room for a month until we had dry days and time when hubby was available to get the furniture to her place. We just have a couple of things left and all is done.
We haven't been able to work on the few things we need to get done on our house with all the extra furniture in the way, you could hardly move, let alone paint a room or anything. We now have a normal living room again.
We had the upstairs recarpeted. That was an experience. We stayed up all night and moved all the furniture from 4 bedrooms downstairs into the garage and living and dining rooms. Then we moved our king size matress to the family room.
We pulled out all of the carpet and threw into the back of our truck. We finished at 5AM and fell asleep on the matress in the family room. The carpet guys arrived about 10AM and started to work. It took them about 5 hours. My Hubby slept through the whole thing. All the pounding and banging and he never even stopped snoring once.
It seems like we are never going to get this house ready to sell. We still need to paint the molding and install the molding in the formal living/dining room after the new floor install. We need to clean and organize the garage and the shop. We need to touch-up around the ceiling where our daughters got paint on the ceiling when painting their rooms. The toughest thing has been finding the right color of paint to match the ceiling. Well its been great to catch up again.

Busy, Busy, Busy....

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. Life has been busy. We are getting ready to sell our house, so I have been busy helping hubby fix the little stuff. I have painted all of the rooms except the family room (the biggest). I am having trouble deciding what to do. We have a big brick fireplace that is done in brown tones. I think that some shade of purple would look awesome, but my daughter thinks I should paint a dark chocolate brown. My husband does not want to paint at all. He says it looks good as it is, boring white dove.
I hope the house sells quick so we can find something smaller. Since the girls are getting older and moving on, we don't need all this space for two people, a cat and a couple of dogs. My oldest has moved out and my youngest is graduating from high school in a couple of weeks. She is off to culinary school this fall and won't be home much. I would like to get moved and settled into a new house before she start school in the fall.
Well I better get going and paint something before hubby comes looking for me and finds out that I am on the computer.

Needles of some sort....

I guess you could say if it gets done with a needle (of some sort) and thread, then I like to do it. I enjoy knitting, beading and quilting the most. I used to also embroider, cross stitch, crochet and macrame. But the hobbies were taking over and I could not store all the stuff and keep-up. When you have 15 projects going at one time, it becomes overwhelming and projects get fuzzy. I had to scale down and take control.

A couple of years ago, I took all my cross stitch books and half done projects to the Goodwill and vowed not to buy any more. I got rid of my crochet thread and needles and kept my embroidery thread. You can always use that stuff on quilts.

The embroidery thread has come in handy a couple of times. My daughters used some of it when they were into the friendship bracelets and I have used it on crazy quilts and for decorative stitches and around other things on quilts. It always amazes me to find out how many ways some things can be used. My husband even used my embroidery thread for tying together chicken legs for the rotisserie. I'll bet you haven't heard that one before.

I also came to the conclusion that I could put beads on my knitting and I could add beads to my quilts. So the projects kind of came together and I could add all my favorite things together. The beads can also make jewelry when you need something special to go with that hot new dress you bought (and hid until the next night out with honey).

So I decided the hobby had to somehow be useful. Quilts give you something beautiful for your bed or can be hung on the wall as art. Beads can be used for jewelry, added to quilts and added to knitting. Knitting can make all kinds of things. So now I am guilt free and only take up one room in the house.

Quilts

I am having so much fun with my new camera. I have been taking pictures like a crazy photographer. Here are some of the quilts that I have made in the last couple of years.

This pattern I got out of a book. It's been a while so I don't remember the author/designer. I added my own expression at the top.




This one my daughter batiked the material in her senior art class and embellished it with beads. She had a lot of fun with it.



This one I designed after reading a book on feng shui.
I was inspired by Oriental restaurants and how they have fish tanks in the lobbies and what the water and fish in the tank symbolize. The black fish is to ward off evil and the gold fish are to bring wealth to the house. The water is embellished with blue beads. The fish are stitched around with embroidery thread to secure them.



Below is a close up so that you can see the beads and stitching.

Are You Kidding Me!

I've been working on this bag for my daughter and she just told me that she wants it bigger. It is not wide enough. So I guess I will be starting over. All that work and she is going to make me start over. Aaargh!!!! Once I get to this point in making a bag, I hate to start over. This is the part that is relaxing. Just knit, knit, knit..... So I guess I will take it out and start over.
I'm typing my blog with the help of Licorice. She is laying on the back of my chair with her head on my shoulder. Do you think she can actually read what I'm typing? I swear she can. If she could talk, I bet she would say get over it and tear it out. Okay Okay, I'm pouting but I will take it out. Better get going so I can take it out and start over....

Spring has sprung!

I couldn't help myself, I was out in the yard and had to take some pictures of the flowers. Can you believe it. They are blooming. I thought spring would never come. I love to watch the things I have planted in previous years appear out of the dirt.

The primroses are vibrant and beautiful. Now just how do we keep the slugs away. They will feast on them if we don't do something to stop them.

I even found a couple of the dwarf iris. These are so pretty in their pale shade of yellow.

I took a close-up of the bloom on the rosemary. This is the first one I have gotten to survive the winter. The last couple froze and died.

I couldn't help myself I had to take a picture of our little guy Junior (5 months old last week). Isn't he a charming little fellow next to the tulips and daffodils. I tried to take him for a walk today and he would have nothing to do with being on the leash. If I wanted him to move I had to drag him or carry him. The little guy was scared to be out of his yard.

Here is Licorice (Juniors mom) my sweet baby girl. She is waiting for me to throw her ball. As usual ,She is ready to play and full of bounce. Next time, I will get pictures of Mr Wedgy (her older boy, 1-1/2 years old) and Roofus (their daddy). Well, I've got to go and get my chores done and help hubby with diner.

Finished Projects & New Camera

Here it is Saturday night and I'm already in bed with my laptop and camera. I've had a dull headache all day and just decided to give up for the night. The house is clean enough for now and most of the laundry is washed, folded and put away. Hubby & daughter are at work, so its just me and the pups. Time to relax.

I got a new camera today. My mom and dad helped me buy it as an early B-day present (awsome gift). These are the first pictures I have taken. Hopefully after some practice I will get better.

Just a couple of the projects I have finished recently. The black and green bag is for my niece Kassy and the pink & black bag is for my niece Dakota. Hope they like them....

I got yarn!

It's Saturday evening and I got yarn. I got enough to make 2 pair of socks, just in case I get done with my first pair and have to start another pair right away. I also got 2 books on making socks. One that tells me how to measure for socks and another that has the instructions for making socks on circular needles. I just need to get some needles. I am not sure what ones I need 16" or 24" length or size #2 or #3. I also did not realize how much $ we spend for our hobbies. I always feel guilty when I get home and add it up, but the finished project is so rewarding.

Well, I should get going. Licorice my dog is standing with her front feet on one side of the laptop and her back feet on the other. She thinks it is time to play with her. It is a bit difficult to type when she is trying to distract me. I am having trouble seeing through her and she is just too cute to ignore any more. I will go and get her one of her treats (scooby snack as she calls them).
See ya later...

To Do

I read my horoscope today and It says it is time to start a project. You know one of those that I have been thinking about for a while. I'm sure it's not cleaning the garage, so it must be knitting socks. I will just swing by "All About Yarn" and get some sock yarn and maybe a new set of needles while I'm on my way to the grocery store.
I'm sure that Licorice would love to go for a ride. She is my best pal. she follows me everywhere and sleeps on my lap while I knit.
Well better get going so I can get back and make some food for hubby to take to work tonight. Those 12 hour shifts are long and requires a bit of extra food to get him through. Maybe I can figure out how to get a picture on here. If not I will have daughter #2 help.

Getting started

Well, I've finally gone and done it! I'm blogging! I'm blogging! I've been planning on starting a blog for quite a while. I love to write and have decided to start one about my hobbies and life. I do not have pictures at this time. I will. Hopefully sooner than later.
I started knitting about 15 years ago. With some help from a friends mother, I started a sweater and never finished. I finally gave it away to someone that would finish it. Then... About a year ago, my daughter Alex, saw a felted bag she just had to have, but she did not like the colors. I bought the pattern, looked up a few things on the web and was off with needles in hand. I finished that bag and made another one for my other daughter Andi. It's grew from there. Their friends wanted one and then my nieces all had to have one (4 of them). Several bags later I am still knitting and would like to try my hand at knitting socks.
I have recently been reading some of the web rings about knitting and decided to start my own blog. So here it is. I'm blogging!