Please Forgive Me...

Hello, I feel like I need to reintroduce myself. Even to close friends and family. It's been longer than long since I've visited these parts. I wanted to apologize for that, and for the fact that I'm updating the ol' bloggeroo. I can't seem to figure out how to get it offline while it's under construction so please just understand that while I have had this here blog for several a year already, I still know very little about blogland. Thanks and I'll see you soon...summer is coming and I'll have a little more time to visit. Bye for now!

Helloooooo? Anybody still out there?

WHOA...has it been ages since I posted here or what?? Embarassing. Things just got a little crazy for a while. And it's not like their slowing down any, I mean it's December people. So I guess you won't be able to expect much for the next month or so either. Sigh. But you don't mind do you? Because you'll be too busy with festive fun, friends, and family, right? To show I still care, very much actually, I will quickly get you up to speed. This will be a very abbreviated version of the past two and some months.

First of all I have to tell you that I love my camera. Superman and I had a bet going this past summer. It went something like this: If I could make it approximately three months without shopping (you know the unnecessary kind) then he would get me a camera (you know the awesome kind). Well, I did it. And it IS AWESOME. Way awesome. I love it. It's like a second child to me. Here is what comes out of this baby. I took these on one of our family walks this fall:

Next, we had a great Halloween. Sweet Pea is
getting older now and is beginning to really understand how this holiday works. We decided to be a whole family of Waldos from the Where is Waldo books. Technically Superman was Waldo, I was Wenda, and Sweet Pea was a little version of us. It was fun. We all dressed up for trick-or-treating. We also dressed up again for our church Halloween party. Yay! Sweet Pea is very good at saying "Twick or Tweet!" After our nice neighbors tossed the candy into her bucket she smiled her cutest smile and exclaimed, "Fank you SO much!" And raced to the next door as fast as possible for more delicious candy.


In November Sweet Pea turned four! Can you believe it? Squeak! four years old. Holy buckets of crazy. The time is whizzing by so fast. She is an amazing, curious, fun, energetic four year old. She is also getting SASSY. With a capital SASS. But we love all of her. So much. She wanted a rainbow party so we had one. With rainbow decorations, a very huge rainbow cake (six layers to be exact), a rainbow sweatshirt, pizza, and loads of fun. The highlights of the party were the very tall cake and the swing that Daddy put up in the basement for loads of swinging fun all winter long. The best.

And that is all for now. I'm signing out. Because I'm tired. And my arm and back really hurt. Know that I've missed this place. I've missed you. But I hope you'll stick around for my sporatic (at best) posts. Please say you will. You will? Well, fank you SO much!

A few things I've finished...

Just a few more things I've completed. It's actually taken me the better part of a month to finish them but they are completed as of today. Yay! Both are watercolor and ink. I'm not sure of titles for the pieces yet. Maybe you have some suggestions?

Here are a couple blogs I've linked to. Drop by and enjoy all the wonderful, creative splendor!

Pumpkins, pumpkins, pumpkins

My wonderful and super talented lil' sis asked me to stop byand share something pumpkin related this week for “Pumpkinspiration” and I washappy to oblige. BUT, given the state ofmy life right now it’s break neck pace I had certain criteria my pumpkinproject had to meet. First I didn’t havetime to go out and find materials. Second, I didn’t want to spend any money on said materials. Third, it had to take me one sitting,because, of course, I don’t have time for much more than that, not to mentionpatience (I don’t have much of that either). So I chose a throw pillow. Hereit is:

Sort of cute. Iactually like it. And very easy.

First I looked through my stash and found the fabric Iwanted to use. I also had fiber fill soI spent zero dollars on my project. Here’s the fabric I picked out:

I cut my orange fabric into strips of different widths. I cut a rectangle out of the green fabric, aswell as three strips.

I sewed my orange strips together length wise, placing rightsides together and stitching a quick seam. I did this with all of them. Ipressed my seams and turned my “pieced” fabric over. Nice.

Then I cut two large squares from my gray knit fabric. I drew a pumpkin shape, including stem, outon one of the large knit squares with a fabric marker.

Then I pinned myorange fabric, right side up against the back of my knit where the pumpkin wasdrawn out, and the green rectangle, right side up against the back of my knitwhere the stem was drawn out.

I sewed a quick running stitch just on the outer edge of mydrawing. I removed pins and used ascissors to cut my gray knit pumpkin and stem out to reveal the cute orange andgreen fabric underneath. It’s a reverseappliqué.

I gathered my three green strips and sewed them on below mypumpkin to look like vines.

I pinned my two gray knit squares, right sides together andsewed around the perimeter. I left asmall opening, turned my pillow right side out, stuffed it, and sewed ittogether by hand. There you haveit! Easy. Fast. And kind of cute. And zero dollars spent. Happiness all round. Today when she saw it, my daughter asked meif it was hers or mommy’s. Smile.

Last Weekend

We're enjoying a pretty great autumn around these parts. (We had a very brief little cold snap for about, oh I don't know, threeish days but other than that...beautiful.) Our grass is green and lush, the temps have been warm but not too warm, the leaves are turning all kinds of wonderful, and I'm loving it. Tonight, as I'm typing this I can hear the pitter patter of a gentle rain. It smells like autumn. It looks like autumn. But it feels like early summer days. I hope it lasts just a little bit longer. Last weekend we decided to get out of town to see the colors. We took Pumpkin on a hike. She super-duper loved it! Her favorite part was running off the trail and climbing up the rocks and over tree trunks, tripping all the way. These are some pics from our adventure. Right out of the camera...

These two

When things get crazy around here these two keep me grounded. These two keep me going. These two keep me smiling. These two make my world go round...I love these two.

Whew!

Well...yesterday I hit another personal best. Five miles. Of my slow and awkward running. Graceful I am not. (As I've stated many times before...openly.) It took me about an hour. I can't believe I ran for an hour. I also can't believe how crappy I felt when I was done. It's crazy because I felt like a rock star when I hit four miles several weeks ago. For some reason five was just too much for me. We'll see if I do that again any time soon. I'll have to wait a few days and maybe I'll forget...and try it again. Or maybe I'll just stick with four miles for a while.