Long time, no post

It has been awhile, hasn't it? I'm still not ready to come back, but I wanted to take a minute to say happy birthday to my first-born.
Just a few pics - organizing pics is still on the 'need to do list' - maybe someday.


6 months


4 years


17 years


and now.

Happy Birthday, Brian!

(sorry - about the not so great photos - the first three are pics of pics and the last one I had to crop out of a group photo so it is a bit grainy)

I'll be back sometime next week - or maybe the week after - with a new post and will pick someone from the comments for a give-away. I'll count comments up until the time I make the next post!

Hope you are having wonderful fall weather wherever you are!

The birthday boy, missing posts and a break

First up - the birthday boy


at 6 months


and now!

He didn't get his favorite cake (Italian Cream) for his birthday last year but I've already got it baked this morning and as soon as it cools, I'll get it frosted!

Happy birthday, baby. Love you. xoxo

On to the missing posts - well, according to dashboard, this is post 498, but according to the archive count it is post 493. I have no idea as to why the count is off by 5 posts. Anyway - that means sometime in October I'll hit post 500. I think I'll do a little give-away. Not sure what (not a whole box like last time, but I'll find something nice). I'll just have to decide which counter I want to use - maybe I'll split the difference - which brings me to the break. I said earlier that September was a busy month for me. I'm having a hard time keeping up with myself. I keep thinking tomorrow I'll get caught up a little, then something pops up to throw my day off course and I just get more behind so I'm going to take a break from the computer. Usually when I take a bloggy break, I try to keep up with email but I am going cold turkey here and I'm going to walk away from the computer for the rest of the month. Hopefully by the end of September things will slow down a bit and I can catch up. Of course by then, there will be no way I'll ever catch up on blog reading so I'll have to decide if I want to just mark them all read or skim through as quick as I can. I'll figure that out later.

So, I'll keep an eye out for something to give-away when I get back to posting. I'll take whatever comments come in between now and then and draw from them. Since I won't be posting anything new for you to comment on - send the hubby a happy birthday wish, just say hi or go back and find an interesting post from the past to comment on and I'll put your name in the pot for the mystery gift. That's it, how easy is that? (contact info must be included so I can contact you)

Enjoy the rest of your month. I hope by the time I post again we will have a little cooler weather - it is still way too hot here! I can't even get in the mood to put out fall decor with it this hot!

See ya in a few weeks!

Detours

While Brian was here this past weekend he wanted to go to Ikea. Well, it just so happened that while hubby was out mowing the yard, 3 Stitches called to let me know the new JXS ornie issue was in. So on the way to Ikea we took a detour through Spring so I could pick up my magazine. Now, I ask you (stitchers) how often do you walk in a stitching shop and only come out with a magazine? That's what I thought.

Actually, I did pretty good - I only picked up two extra charts and the hanging pillow to go with one of them. Both are Little House Needleworks charts 'Peppermint Twist' and ' Liberty Bells'.

I've flipped through the mag a couple of times and found several charts I might stitch (eventually) but the first one I think I want to stitch is this one

Don't you just love sock monkeys? I saw some fabric with sock monkeys on it awhile back so I'm going to be on the lookout for it again because I think it would make a good backing fabric for this.

I haven't touched the Silent Sampler in who-knows-how-long. (since the last time I posted an update - however long that has been) but I think I'm going to pack it up for a bit and see about working on a fall piece, then maybe a few ornaments. I think I could use some time on some smaller projects and I never get as many ornaments stitched as I want to.

Update on the printer wars. I beat it into submission - okay, I took the printhead out and cleaned it with alcohol. It worked long enough for me to get my copy of the insurance card then printed out a couple of freebie charts this morning. I tried to make a copy a little while ago and it is being ornery again. It scanned, then printed but it printed a blank page! Scanned again and printed - worked fine. Turned the paper over to get the other side, scanned and got another blank page before it finally scanned and printed. I'm keeping my big stick handy, just in case.

I really should go catch up on ironing, but I might just have to kit up an ornie or two first!

Why not?

Since I don't have anything better to do, why not fight with the printer?


Argh - I hate it when it does this. The printhead is installed and I've already removed and reinstalled it once. For the most part, it is a pretty decent printer. Does what I need it to do - when it works - and the ink isn't super expensive like some are, but it has this little quirk where it wants to tell me it is missing the printhead. (sometimes right in the middle of a multi-page document - huh? where did it go?) Of course, you never print anything unless you need it, right? Well, I need a copy of the insurance card so I can mail off the car registration. Maybe if I just give it a good WHACK?

Sorry just needed to vent. I didn't really have much to post today, but I planned on it being better than this - this just happens to be where my head is at the moment.

Posts this month are going to be hit and miss - lots of stuffs on the calendar for this month. I will have to see how it goes - I may end up having to just get away from the blog for a bit, but for now, we will see how it goes. See - unlike the weather man who likes to say it is cooler when he really means it just isn't quite as freaking hot as it has been, I'm telling it like it is - if I said not as regular, well, that would imply that they come on a regular basis and we know that isn't always so! Hopefully if I make it through September, October will be better!

Okay - back to my rat killin.

Can you say humid?

Mercy, but it is humid here!
It has been raining off and on and between showers it is just down right awful! I went out to do some errands - the sun was shining and when I got out of the car my sunglasses fogged up! By the time I came out of the first store it was pouring again. Oh well.

I'm pretty far behind on most everything at the moment. We have made 2 trips to J'ville/Tyler this week. On Monday, hubby had a class in Tyler but it didn't start until afternoon so I rode with him, dropped him off and met a friend for lunch. After we finished lunch we took a jaunt through an antique mall. I only picked up a couple of small things but here is what I came out with.

This blue Coca-Cola glass. Most of the time Coke stuff is more green than this - in person this looks more like the color of the Blue Ball jars, which I love! At a buck and change, I thought it would be cute with some summer flowers in it. Love the pink edging on the vintage hankie too.

I also picked up this cute watering can. Right now I have it in one of the guest rooms.

Got change back from my ten dollar bill - not bad!

We had to go back Wednesday evening so hubby could make an early morning meeting, then we didn't get back until late last night. After having errands to do this morning, I'm beat! No rest for the weary though. We had plans to paint the master bath this weekend but the oldest kidlet called last night and said he was coming in tomorrow. I'm not sure exactly how much we will actually get done but we will see. I'll take the trade-off though if it means I get to have one of my kiddos here for a few days!

Have a happy and safe holiday weekend!

Three Houses

The hubby and I have lived in three houses over the past 31 years.

We moved into this house shortly after we got married.

2 bedrooms, 1 bath, 850 sq. ft. (or was it 825?) I had a hard time finding any pictures of the outside (organizing pictures is one of those things I was going to do after we moved, but I haven't done it yet) Anyway - this picture was taken a few years after we moved in. When we bought it, it was painted white and had blue shutters. I was probably standing in the driveway when I took this and you can't see the detached garage that was behind the house. The small window on the left (that is mostly cut off in the picture) was the kitchen window. At some point, it appeared that someone had added a few feet to the kitchen which cut into the driveway so you couldn't really get a car to the garage unless it was a small car and you were really careful! Other than some paint, we never really did a lot to this house in the 6 years we lived there.

In 1985 we sold that first house and bought this one.

This is the side/front as it looked when we bought it.

Back/side from the (dirt) driveway at time of purchase.
3 bedrooms, 1 and a half baths, 1600 sq. ft. and seven - count 'em, seven closets! Thought it was huge! We lived in this house for 24 years. We worked on this house pretty much from the time we moved in until the time we moved out. (My list was still not complete when we moved) We worked on both the inside and outside. Without adding on actual square footage we managed to carve out 4 bedrooms (if you count the converted attic) 2 baths and an office within the original footprint of the house. (We stacked the washer/dryer that were in that half bath and added a shower - much needed with 3 teenage boys and their friends!)


This is how it looked the summer before we moved. We added the flower beds around the front and side that spring.

The picture I showed yesterday was taken the day we left. We really hadn't 'lived' there for 8 months - we had been driving in on weekends to try and keep up with the yard and such but it is really hard to take care of it properly when you aren't there all the time. The flowerbeds hadn't had much attention all summer and the yard didn't get a final mow because the closing date got moved at the last minute and we had already given away the riding lawnmower. There wasn't time to push mow the 1/2 acre lot even if hubby had wanted to. We cut it close just getting the house emptied and cleaned before the deadline. You can accumulate a lot of stuff in 24 years!


This is house #3 and our current home. This picture of the front was taken before we actually moved in,

and this one of the back was taken right after.

We have been working on this one pretty much since the day we moved in. We have accomplished a lot, but there is still a long list of things to be done. (though not nearly as extensive as what was done to the last house! Mostly just things to make it work better for us - and banishing the beige!)
Even though we moved out of the Bolton St. house in August, we didn't move in here until October (we were living in a one bedroom apartment!) Pretty much everything we have done so far has been documented here on the blog, but when we hit the one year mark I might just make a list to see just how far we have come.
The other day someone asked hubby if he couldn't just buy a house and leave it alone. He probably could - obviously I can't.