Archive for family
Hey Look…
It’s a halfway better looking template…
And I know I have ignored this blog for the past month and a half…maybe more…but life happens sometimes. I am trying to simplify everything in my life though so I have more time to do the things I want to do, rather than the things that just need done.
My new policy is that if I have some bit of clutter that I move around from place to place, and it doesn’t really have a place of its own, then it goes into a box to be donated. There is still clutter around, but it is mainly doll house and miniatures supplies/items/works in progress. I’ve even managed to kill off quite a few houseplants (odd for me) so there aren’t even as many of those to keep watered.
Ryan is coming home for a week, the first week of September. I am also taking a week off then.
Today Mom and I redid part of the kitchen. The landlady didn’t want the paneling painted, but I did get rid of the country blue wallpaper.
This is what my kitchen looks like now:
At least the side with the sink. The opposite wall has the refrigerator, microwave and a metal shelf with lots of glass jars and colored bowls on it. And that curtain material? It took -months- for me to find it, but I absolutely love it. Retro in muted colors. The painting you can sorta see over the stove is one I did in college, it is ribbon candy, I just never took it down after Christmas. The flowers are fresh cut zinnias.
Now I just need to get the rest of my house that clean…
As for this template, the blue text needs to go away. And those smiley faces…I assume those are new with the theme I was redoing, but they have to go. I’ll get to it soon. Really. I try anyway.
Just some stuff…
Saturday Mom and I finished painting a baby nursery. The designs were taken from a Pottery Barn Kids quilt. We added touches of ‘ceiling’ glitter to the clouds and bugs.
Meijer had these giant dog biscuits and I had to get some just for the novelty. After I took the pictures I gave Gurney one of them and went to the living room. I had forgotten about the other being on the edge of the table and a bit later heard a thump from the kitchen. Gurney doesn’t often steal things from tables and counters, but when he does normally he eats it to quick to get it taken away (like bacon). I took the bone from him though til the next morning.
I talked to Tana this morning (one of my cousins) and she wants to do stuff together on Saturday. She wants to go yard-saling in the morning and scrapbook the rest of the day. I won’t be scrapbooking, probably working on stuff for a festival I agreed to do in November. On the subject of yard sales…Mom and I went to one on Saturday and I think the lady just wanted to get rid of stuff. For $10 I got a solid oak coffee table and end table of the mission style. She threw in a wooden box that mom wanted and a new set of oil pastels for free. The tables had some water damage (discoloration) about an inch up the legs, but no matter as I don’t like light oak anyway. I sanded them down and painted them black. They are drying in pieces in the dining room right now. This weekend I will polyurethane them. When I was telling Ryan that they had ‘these oak tables for $5 apiece’ he commented, “And you had to buy them didn’t you?” Of course I did and he knows that perfectly well.
He will be coming home at the end of October and that makes me very happy. It also makes me happy that the new GI Bill will most likely pass, that will make life easier once he is home on the monetary front.
Did I mention?
I am going to change my theme a bit. For headers I am going to try to rely on photography, I like the look better. I’m going to get rid of the title/subject line as many times I sit here pondering what to put in it. It will be replaced by a larger date. Also, I wasn’t aware that the theme doesn’t display right in Internet Explorer (at least the version my parents are using). I also need to put in the ‘go back’ and ‘go forward’ links. I’m not sure that will get done this week, but hopefully this weekend at least.
On Saturday, Dad, Mom and I went to Findlay Market in Cincinnati. The farmer’s market is open now. I bought a some plants there-six lettuce plants, basil, cilantro, oregano, thyme, some hens and chickens and notably a mimosa tree. I have nowhere to plant this tree, but I am going to try and keep it in a pot till I have a place I can plant
it. Sometimes it is raised as a houseplant in climates like Ohio’s, but I’ve read that it is a finicky plant. I’ve wanted one for a long time as they are so interesting. Their stalks of leaves are normally spread out, until you poke them, then they fold up like a venus flytrap. In the actual market I bought some peppers, grapes, a fryer chicken and an apple scone. Here is an example of what the mimosa does:
Sunday we had a grill out for Father’s Day at my aunt’s house. That was a pretty good time, but in the 15-30 minutes I sat out by the pool I ended up getting sun burnt.
For Father’s Day I made my dad a stuffed teddy bear. While that might sound strange, in actuality it is pretty sentimental. He ‘had’ this pair of cowboy boots from when he was still a bachelor. They were made of eel skin and honestly, they were falling to pieces-but he still wanted to keep them. Mom and he were cleaning out the storage closet a couple weeks ago though and he decided to get rid of them. Mom kept them without him knowing though and gave them to me. Dad was very happy with the result.
Today Mom and I went to go draw a mural on a nursery wall (Mom will be painting it this week while I’m at work). After that I made a Lowe’s and Wal-Mart run while Mom and Kaylee waited in the car. Afterwards we all came back here and Mom helped me get the house clean-really and truly clean. I have a few things left to put away, and the sewing room is my job, but all the ‘seen’ parts of the house are spic and span. We had fun figuring out how the new slipcovers actually fit the furniture.
Ryan was talking about coming home over the July Fourth weekend, but come to find out he has a blood drive that weekend. It’s looking like I might not get to see him until October. That’s a long time-a month short of a year in fact. But we’ll handle it.
I had a fairly good weekend (except for a few things that started Sunday night…).
Friday night I spent the night at Mom and Dad’s house. I reformatted their new HP computer to put XP on it. I was advised not to (by HP), but I did it anyway and it works just fine. Even as they advised against it, they told me where to get all the XP drivers for the hardware.
Saturday I spent a lot of the day at their house transferring files and installing programs. That evening Dad went to a hospital to visit someone while Mom and I went to the thrift store, the Mexican restaurant and Wal-Mart. I have pictures of what I bought, but my card reader is at their house and the cord isn’t wanting to work, I’ll get that worked out tomorrow.
Yesterday I went to church, then the three of us went to Columbus. We went to the hospital (the James Cancer Center, one of their friends is pretty bad off) and visited awhile. We went to North Market, which isn’t nearly as good as Findlay Marke
t, but still a market. I got six gerbera daisies which are a satisfactory replacement for zinnias til they begin blooming. I have pictures of the flowers too, but as I said above.. After the market we went to Utrecht (really I was the only one that had a real interest in that store). I do love Utrecht. I could have spent a lot of money, but I was good. I bought a palette for watercolors. It has four mixing wells, but then on the sides it has little removable-sealable jars. I also bought six individual Prismacolor colored pencils to keep with my sketchbook. Oh, and a stick of Kiss-Off. If you’ve never tried this stuff you need to. It is a stain remover stick, but better than anything you buy at a normal store (since it is made for people who tend to get pigment in their clothes).
Today I finished transferring some files to my parents’ computer, then I ran to Wal-Mart to pick up a few things. Otherwise I’ve been cleaning all day, the down on your knees scrubbing sort of cleaning.
My clumsiness has worked against me in the cleaning aspect though… Last night I decided to dye some yarn while I was cleaning the kitchen. Whatever off brand drink mix (think Kool-Aid) I was using, grape, exploded in the microwave about nine minutes in. I had fun cleaning dripping purple water out of the microwave, really. Today I made sun tea and when I was bringing it back in I was holding it by the handle. The handle did not break, I’m not really sure what happened, but the jar came undone from the lid and shattered spectacularly all over the patio. A gallon of tea and a million shards of glass. Gurney couldn’t go out until the tea dried and I swept up the glass, though when I was out there when the sun was setting you could see it glinting everywhere. After that I was cleaning the bathroom. I picked up a full package of those little latex hair rubber bands-it was open-and I flung them everywhere, including in the toilet. Tonight I took a pitcher full of chicken broth over to Mom. It made it fine down my driveway on a hill, a stop at the highway crossing, and for whatever reason, when I stopped at their house the pitcher tipped, the lid popped off and about five cups of chicken broth ended up on my front passenger floor board. I really, really hope that the shampooer sucked it all out.
So now I am going to sit here and relax til I go to bed and try not to break anything else.
*yawn*
I’ve been so tired lately and I can’t quite place why.
I’ve also been pushing the blog to the back burner and I need to stop doing that, because blogging is something I really do enjoy doing.
Camping was fun last weekend. I learned to build a campfire. Sunday it was pretty warm so I let Gurney get in the lake on a 20 foot leash (no pictures of that though, I’d be highly upset if he pulled me and a camera in the lake).
He spent some time on a leash at the bottom of the hill in front of my parents’ camper, but he was pretty clingy all weekend. I had another leash that allowed him to be on the deck and just off of it. He was pretty content with that and slept on the deck a lot, until he would see a bird or a kid on a bike. He was wearing a coat because it was still pretty chilly in the mornings (and as my dad says, ‘He’s a wuss’).
Gurney took to doing something I had never seen him (or any real dog for that matter) do. I gave him a treat bone figuring it would occupy him for awhile-which it did, just not in the way I expected. He took it off the deck, dug a hole and buried it. He was then very diligent about reburying it in a different location every couple of hours. I gave him a milk-bone at one point and he buried that too. He dug the milk-bone up and ate it, but the bone is still buried down there, I lost track of where it was and couldn’t dig it up to bring it home.
My parents have one of the best campsites at the lake and it has nice scenery right beside it. This little stream is nice in the spring, but it will dry up soon and just be a dry bed.
We ended up leaving early on Monday. I made the decision to stop at Wal-Mart to see if they had any more Wii Fit’s in stock. I figured they wouldn’t, but they had one left. I didn’t need to spend the money, but I did and I am extremely happy with the thing. I told Ryan though, I’ve never had a video game make me feel guilty, but that one does. I’ve used it every day though and my weight has gone down and I can see that my muscles are getting toned. I spent a lot of my week messing with that.
Saturday of this weekend I went to Waynesville to go fabric shopping. I needed something for a cover for my moleskin sketchbook. I didn’t end up actually making it, but I did get a few different fabric choices.
Most of the rest of the weekend I have spent doing some major organizing/getting rid of crap/laundry. I put away the winter bed clothes and flipped/rotated the mattress.
I made homemade granola tonight which got a little dark, but luckily I didn’t burn it.
Well I’m off to go clean some more before work tomorrow.
Life Is Hectic…
I’ve been really busy the past couple of weeks between work and everything not-work.
One of the big things: Paul had surgery today to remove three large bladder stones and whatever small ones the x-ray didn’t pick up. Now, if you would have asked me two weeks ago, I would have said, “No, I would not spend that much money on a cat to have surgery.” Right. I did. $51 for the first vet trip, $35 for the second, $70 for the third and $250-300 for today. He is staying overnight at the veterinarian for observation, but they said he used the litter box after he woke up, which is a good thing (no blockage). He also has to stay on a special food now to prevent recurrence. Apparently some cats get them and some cats don’t.
Earlier I started to yell at Gurney and Paul to stop rough-housing, then I realized it was Gurney rough-housing by himself.
Another big thing: Our office switched over to Quark 7 two weeks ago. This week they are using 6.52 again. There was one day that I just dropped everything I needed to do and spent half the day with the open question, “So what is your problem?” x 20 people. That program (in my opinion) is a piece of crap. They are just begging people to switch to InDesign. In order for us to switch to InDesign though, we need to get the programmers from American Color in to see how well the database program works with what we do compared to what it will do with InDesign.
Lately, getting ready for work in the morning has been a trial because I have nothing to wear. Most of my clothes are winter clothes with the exception of about three work appropriate shirts. I’ve been wearing a lot of tank tops and sweater cardigans. Ryan told me to go buy clothes then as I was ranting about this last Monday on the phone while trying to find something to wear to a church dinner. Most girls would say, “Sure!” I for one, Hate Shopping For Clothes. It isn’t that things don’t fit (sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t), it is that with the current style trends I can a.) look pregnant b.) wear tie dye c.) buy pre-worn out clothing d.) any number of things I’m not paying money for.
Saturday I went with my aunt Teresa to the Dayton Mall (she had to return eyeglasses). Between a variety of stores I bought a t-shirt (not for work), a button up oxford shirt and a white tank top out of a nice fabric. I tried on lots and lots of shirts, but that is what worked.
Today I went to the outlet mall at 9am only to realize they didn’t open til 10. I wasn’t going to wait around until they did open, so I headed to Beavercreek to go to Goodwill which is where I actually wanted to go on Saturday. Normally at that particular Goodwill I can find tons of clothing in almost new condition. Even there though, there wasn’t a lot of good work clothes. I ended up getting two button up shirts. On my way home I went through Xenia and stopped at that Goodwill and found another.
I also went to Kohl’s. My mom could tell you how desperate I must be if I ventured in there. I found a pair of Lee jeans ($20) and a pair of Croft & Barrow dress pants ($8!).
So I guess I have a few more things to be wearing now. I am quite aware I wouldn’t have this problem if I would make it a point to let’s say, buy one shirt a month, but as previously stated, I don’t like clothes shopping.
In addition to buying clothes, I of course bought some other fun stuff:
I was being lazy and made the collage all one picture, instead of a bunch of little ones… 1. New Moleskins. I keep my ‘ideas of things to make’ magazine clippings in a set of small kraft cover, grid paged moleskins. Lately though I have found the need for a sketchbook again, so I bought the medium sized ones with blank pages. 2. Reader’s Digest Complete Guide To Needlework. Slowly I am finding the books that were staples of my childhood once I could check out ‘adult’ library books-mind you, they were mostly craft related. 3. Hamburger & Fry Baskets. These are from the Target Dollar section. There have been times I have wanted them in the past, now I have six. 4. Iron On Vinyl. I did not know such a thing existed, now I do. 5. Shish Kabob! So cute, this is from PetsMart’s new summer collection. The ‘meat’ pieces squeak and the red and yellow things crinkle. 6. Produce ball. I’m sure that has another name, but I don’t know it. Technically I also bought that last weekend, but I needed another picture. 7. Ice Cube Drink Stirrers. This is in Target’s summer section. Normally they are expensive, but this one was $2.99. 8. Wind Chime. This was in Target’s Dollar section too. 9. Bath & Body Works Shampoo & Conditioner. I did not know they started making hair care products again. I’ve used it once so far and am pretty pleased with it.
One last thing before I go to bed. Last weekend I needed to fit something new into one of the drawers in my kitchen, but it just wasn’t going to happen (see first picture). I took a three drawer storage container from my sewing room and repurposed it for the kitchen. Now the top drawer has cake/cookie decorating supplies. The middle drawer has sandwich/drink supplies. The bottom drawer has cupcake liners and treat bags. Cleaning that drawer out also enabled me to realize I could get rid of some of the stuff. Yay for organizing.
Tomorrow night I am going to try and upload all of the pictures and movies I haven’t messed with in the last month…
I should be in bed…
It’s strange, but for the past couple weeks, I haven’t been able to get myself in bed before eleven, let alone midnight… That isn’t good when you should get up at 5am in the morning to get ready for work. And when you are up until midnight, that 5am slowly turns to 5:30, then 6, then…
Anyway…
Mom and I went to IKEA last Monday. I was very excited and I wasn’t let down. I only spent $30 but got a lot of stuff. Here are four things I did get (I bought more, but they didn’t have pictures online).
Those aren’t in any sort of scale. For the dog leash hook, I got the black one to match the picture frames by the kitchen door where Gurney’s leash normally hangs. The multi colored boxes were missing their cellophane wrapper and were clearanced for only fifty cents.
We also had breakfast there which I thought was very reasonably priced and tasty. Dad though, pointed out that they certainly made their money back by the time Mom and I left.
Sunday Dad came over and tilled up my garden. He broke two bolts on the tiller before calling it done. Because of the broken bolts my brick sidewalk gained two more bricks (plus two more from planting marigolds earlier in the day).
I planted a window box again for the kitchen window and I will really try to remember to water it this year…
I also tried to get some good shots of Gurney. Gurney does not like cameras though and I think there was only one good one of him actually looking towards the lens… I really like this one though:
All of these pictures (except the IKEA ones) were taken with a Canon PowerShot A550. It is my grandpa’s camera that he said doesn’t take as good of pictures as his HP. I’m tempted to agree with him after one day of using it. The shutter speed seems laggy. It has a manual feature on it, but most of the time, I just want a camera to take a picture and be done with it. At one point I had to turn it off and turn it back on to get it to use the flash. Every time I held the button down for it to focus an icon would pop up telling me that the camera would shake too much if I took the picture (i.e. it should have been ok since I was outside, otherwise it should have used flash, what I was doing had no need of a tripod). Many of my pictures of Gurney turned out blurry anyhow. There is a setting called ‘Kids & Pets’ but I don’t want to have to switch from setting to setting all the time. My Kodak camera does not have that issue. I think it also goes into digital zoom too easy as well. I will mess with it some more, but from a day of using it, I don’t think I would want one.
Finally…
Oi this weekend has been stressful.
Between church, me breaking my website, my car and trying to take care of this house by myself…
New theme. Upgraded WordPress.
I only took took two pictures this weekend. One was of 6 gallons of used oil that Ryan had stashed in the garage. One of which was in a milk jug. Keep this in mind for future reference: if oil is left in a milk jug for a year, the milk jug plastic will start to go away. Yes, that made for a pleasant morning. After halfway cleaning out the garage I decided to clean out my car. I had put a bag of sand in my trunk in the fall. I don’t remember why I didn’t take it out. I believe it had something to do with it being wet. It didn’t occur to me why it would be wet. It was wet because my trunk was (is?) leaking. After emptying my trunk of sand and now ruined watercolor paper, I found somewhere around an inch of water in the spare tire well of my trunk (also where the battery lives). That made for an even more unpleasant morning turning to afternoon. After drying it out I poured water all over the trunk and couldn’t get it to leak.
I have a cleaner car now, and a cleaner garage. There is a place nearby that recycles used oil for free. I took as much as I could carry in one trip. There are three gallons left.
I used my last vacation day on Friday, but this weekend has been nothing of a vacation.
Tomorrow Mom and I are going to Cincinnati/West Chester. Gurney needs a bath really bad and hey, it is a good excuse to go to IKEA. I have never been to one and I am very much looking forward to that-and a clean dog.
Lots of stuff…
So I realized I never posted a picture of the new new guinea pig (or maybe I never even said for sure I got one?). Either way. I’ve had him two weeks, which makes him nine weeks old. He came from the show in Springfield. I wanted to name him Bradshaw, but it just doesn’t fit. Ryan says he should be called Mortimer, which I really don’t like (sorry if you read this). Mom says I should name him ‘Inches’. To go with Miles… Ha ha, right? It has been two weeks now though, and I just need to pick a name. Miles doesn’t particularly care for the young energetic nature of his new cage-mate, but they are getting on better than they did the first week. Mom noticed today that the little one has a bite mark on his ear though. I’m not sure if Miles did that or one of his siblings before I got him.
I had the oil changed in my car today, and of course, since I was in
Washington C.H. I went to the thrift store too. I picked up a little bud vase, a vintage stitchery kit and a plastic box filled with reference cards for houseplants. I don’t particularly care for the butterfly on the stitchery, but I wanted to know how they did the fuzzy dandelion and I liked the wool and fabric colors. The box that the houseplant reference cards came in is tacky, dirty and discolored. In Mom’s words when she came in my house tonight, “What is that?” The box will be going, but I hope the cards will have some useful value. The whole thing was only $1.91 though. So for that much, it is worth the amusement of the 70′s style photography.
Sunday Mom and I went fabric shopping. Lately when I have gone fabric shopping I can’t find anything I like. Sunday I spent $50 and could have easily spent double that. I went to get two pieces of a fabric – a blue and a purple for a baby quilt I’ve been working on. I ended up getting two blues and enough purple for the quilt and to back the thing too. It has embroidery blocks in it. I copied patterns out of the Stampin’ Up catalog. There are two frogs, a snail, a dragonfly, a single flower, a long patch of grass and little flowers and a long patch of water and water lilies. I thought it would come together easier than it is. I’m just not feeling it.
The second thing I bought though… Mom says, “Come look at this, I just think it is so you.” Evilness. Look at those bugs in all of their cuteness. It isn’t designed by Eric Carle, but it could be. I bought a yard of the bugs, half a yard of that funky stripe and a fat quarter of the dots. A few of the others I bought fat quarters of, the rest came from Mom’s stash. I have designed a nursery in my head around this fabric. Just picture it, bright vivid colors for the crib sheets, crib skirt, bumper, etc. A patchwork quilt of all of that. For a mobile there could be little felt bugs mimicked from the fabric. Meh. Normally I get a baby quilt pieced pretty quick, but I am oh so tempted to hoard this for that day in the future when I’ll actually need to design a baby room…
Cluttery house…
Because of my normal lifestyle of leave, come home, drop everything, get new stuff, leave, come home, sleep, leave, etc. the state of my house has gotten a bit overwhelming. I worked on it most of the day til Mom called and wanted to go to Dayton. I mostly bought stuff to organize miniatures or things to make new miniatures (the second part of that of course just adds to the problem…). So, tonight until I go to bed, that’s what I will be working on.
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