Ta Da!

Oh man!  Guess what!?  Heh.  I'm posting again, and it's sooner than Halloween!  AND...I have pictures too, as promised!  Talk about a happiness bonanza. :)

I found my camera, and managed to find the charger for it too which was a good thing because it was d-e-d-DEAD.

Here are pictures of the baby blanket I made for my friends.  I thought it turned out to be such a cute afghan, but next time i will actually pay attention to the part of the directions telling me how to measure the gauge.  Turns out using a 4.0mm instead of a 4.4mm hook makes a difference. Hm.  Who knew? Oh well.  I plan to make another one of these some day...really liked the basket weave pattern & the girly border.

Looky what else was on my camera?  Wedding cake!  We had New York Style cheesecake for our wedding cake, and my mom did a superb job of wrapping it up.  After sitting in our frost free freezer (say that ten times fast!) for a year, which i hear is not the best for keeping things frozen long term, that cake was still in fine form!  Even so...it was so much cake that we couldnt eat it all even by having dessert every night after dinner for a week.  I'm pretty sure I didnt mean to celebrate my anniversary by gaining 10 lbs.  Oh, the things we do for love.  Love of cheesecake, that is.  NOM.

 

And, lest you think that I am someone who crochets & eats wedding cake all day, here is proof I do take some things seriously.  I mean, a girl cant do the YMCA at her wedding without feathers. And friends who enjoy funny poses & hats as much as she does!

Happy Birthday!

Today is my mom's birthday! Happy birthday!!!!

In honor of the occasion, I thought I would blog about my mom. I dont remember every having one of those days in school where you bring your parents to school & brag on them to your class...career day? i think that was it...anywho...here's what i would say if i had a career day now. :) (i'm a dork...it's ok, you can say it...)


Looking back on my relationship with my mom over the years, the thing that stands out to me the most is how close we are, and have been. Sure, you know those teenage years were rough...I remember asking mom how she ever got through it, b/c i know i was a real pain, and she jokingly said "Prozac"...hehe...at least, i hope she was joking...in her shoes i think i would have needed something much stronger...like Jack Daniels maybe. But I digress...even through all of that we still had a better relationship i think than many of my friends and their mothers did. I remember feeling sorry for girls who just resented their moms & everything they did...my mom was my friend too, and i thought they were really missing out on having such a close confidant, someone they could always always count on to be there for them. I think that has been the biggest gift my mom has given me, her friendship and support over the years. Sure, putting me through school, roof over my head, food in my stomach...all important things...but through all the challenges she has been there for me. That is a huge thing...something everyone should be so lucky to have. Thanks mom! I hope you have a wonderful day!!


Today mom is driving to kc to spend a couple of days with me in celebration of her bday...it's kindof an annual thing, every year she comes to kc & we spend her bday together. On the agenda: shopping, pedicures, good food. I am really looking forward to it!


Here are a couple of pictures of my beautiful, amazing mom.

Chuck Norris...be afraid, be very afraid...

So you know how we're having that chili contest? Our 'marketing department' has been very creative in coming up with an effective ad campaign for our team. Check out this poster...we are using this one and others (with the wording changed just a bit) to show our competitors that we are tough and mean business, just like Chuck Norris.


Although...putting a "silent rage" poster with a chili cookoff contest does give one pause...this chili is not for the weak!!


C'mon, you know it's funny! :) I'm laughing out loud just thinking about it...

winter doldrums?

yeah...so i'm ready for spring now....I decided today that i am tired of the cold weather. It was supposed to be mid-50's today, but the crazy weather people here revised the forecast & so (yes, i'm blaming them, not nature :) ) it was snowing like gangbusters by noon, sleeting by 3, and snowing AGAIN (big, FAT flakes) by 5. It mightve been worth it but unfortunately all that only amounted to like 1/4" of snow on the ground. Not enough to have fun with, but just enough to really dirty things up.

I do have something interesting to write though, aside from complaining about the weather. :) About a month or two ago my friend Leslina taught me how to crochet and started me to making this pretty afghan...it was of varigated (sp?) yarn, in white, blue, tan and green. I caught on pretty quick, and was happy to have a project i could take with me when i went to Chicago that following weekend. However...i think i was too good because i crocheted through a whole skein of yarn, and was only halfway through my weekend. So we went to walmart (oy...) to look for the same kind of yarn...which they didnt have. So we picked a color that went with what i was using, a pretty blue....but made the mistake of only buying one skein. Now i'm back in kc, crocheting away, and start to run out of yarn. I decided to crochet the whole thing in blue, and then use one of the other skeins of matching varigated yarn to crochet a matching strip on the other end of the afghan...beautiful! Oh wait...once i got a look at the afghan in natural light, i realized that the blue i had purchased in chicago was not the same shade of blue i had purchased in kc. D'oh! Right there on the label it says "no dye lot" which i interpreted to mean "this will be the same color blue no matter what part of the country you buy it in" rather than "we dont care enough about the color to make sure they're all the same." To the makers of this yarn i send a big "WHATEVER!!" It's just a smidgen of a shade off...just different enough that it's noticeable. Aww mannnn!! And the funny thing is, the one i bought in chicago doesnt exactly match the blue in the varigated yarn either...but i figured it'd be so close nobody'd notice it. Yeah...until i decided to come up with a different shade altogether.... it kinda feels like this project is slowly going awry. :)

Here's a pic of the handiwork...and of the offending label. :)

Winter Wonderland!

Imagine if you will, a snowglobe, with kansas city in the middle of it....now imagine that snowglobe being 1/2 filled with snow (much more than the average snow globe), and then being turned upside down & shaken. That's us right now!! We're getting TONS of snow, and it's just swirling around, just like in a snow globe. It's beautiful!! :)

So far we have around 5 inches, but they're calling for something around 8 by the time it's said and done...and all i can think of is, wonder if they'll have any sleds left by the time i get to the store? I know, I'm 27 and maybe sledding may be a bit juvenile...but darnit! there are some good hills around this place (i know, because i've had to run up them in my training runs!!), and with 8 inches of snow they most definitely should not go to waste!

La, la, la, let it snow! let it snow! let it snow! :)

Gobble Gobble!

GobbleGobble! :) My thanksgiving holiday starts tomorrow...I took tomorrow off from work in order to head back to the Lou a little early for the holiday. I'm hoping to get on the road by 8 or 9am so that i can beat all the crazy holiday travelers on I-70...cross your fingers for me!

In my next to last post I mentioned that my sewing machine had been fixed, and that i was itching to make something. I came up with some good ideas, and decided to make a table runner & some placemats for christmas decor in my apartment. Figured, how much easier could it get, pretty much i'm just sewing in straight lines, right? Wrong!! :) I had to go & make it complicated...BUT....i think it turned out beautifully! The original pattern called for one long strip of fabric with some sheer borders on each end. I chose dark blue damask silk and then silver sheer borders...and then purchased silver thread to use for finishing touches. Well, after i had it partially put together, i decided that it needed to look more like the picture! In the picture the solid fabric had embroidery on it...i have a feeling it was already like that when the fabric was purchased & sewn in rather than being put on it afterwards, but whatever...i thought 'i can do that!' and set to work. (this is a phrase that has gotten me into more unfinished projects than i care to count. ) So, i drew some vines & leaves on the blue fabric with chalk, and then set to work with the sewing machine & my silver thread to trace out the chalk lines. After a few minor setbacks, learning how to adjust the tension on the machine, fine tuning the start/stopping process, i was rather proud of the finished product! The pictures really don't do it justice. It's also reversible, the other side is solid blue from one end to the other, with a silver sheer band in the middle and an outline of silver thread around the outside seams. The furniture in my apt is blue corduroy, and the candle accents i have are polished sterling silver, so the fabrics coordinate rather well. What do you think? :)
There's more where that came from...there are 2 matching placemats that are cut out, just waiting to be put together. Can't wait. So what should I make next??

Well, i'm off to pack & do laundry for the road trip tomorrow. I hope everyone has a happy and healthy thanksgiving....

A few pictures from the pub crawl...

Kenny, Sarah, me & Jason at the pub crawl on saturday. Good times!!!

p.s...this was after we finished the crawl & were just partying at the beaumont...i think we look pretty good for having gone through 5 bars already!!