Only Two Years

I decided to look at my blog today and I discovered that it has been a bit over two years since my last post. It is hard to come up with an excuse for that...um, I've been busy?

This is more of an exercise to see if I remember HOW to work this crazy thing.

Step one: I signed in! check

Step two: say something

I will leave that to a poem I discovered today.

Vegetables
by Eleanor Farjeon (1881-1965)

The country vegetables scorn
To lie about in shops,
They stand upright as they were born
In neatly-patterned crops;

And when you want your dinner you
Don't buy it from a shelf,
You find a lettuce fresh with dew
And pull it for yourself;

You pick an apronful of peas
And shell them on the spot.
You cut a cabbage, if you please,
To pop into the pot.

The folk who their potatoes buy
From sacks before they sup,
Miss half of the potato's joy,
And that's to dig it up.

check

Step three: post a picture

check

Mission accomplished!

Now to see if anyone sees this.

I'd Like a Couple Chickens

So, it's only been a month and a half or so since my last post. Here are the babies you last saw in their little box. Sorry it was getting a bit dark out. We have been letting them out in the evening to hunt and peck their way round the ole homstead to try to keep them out of trouble. There are 11 chickens and 3 guineas.






Inside the Chicken Palace a couple weeks ago. Please excuse the poop...their housekeeping skills aren't up to par.


When I say 11 chickens I really mean pullets (girls) which is what they were supposed to be. For the last few days however, I have been growing more and more concerned that this one isn't quite who she is supposed to be. I believe we have a boy in the midst of our all girl club.
After we got those birds, I just couldn't stop thinking about the Light Brahma's that I REALLY wanted. I mean, how can you resist those big, friendly girls running around and producing an egg a day in all but the deepest, darkest weeks of winter? While I was thinking about them, Paul was dreaming of Turkens...the lovely chickens with no neck feathers that he loves so much. As we thought of them we seemed to think of others and of course you might as well think about 25 since that is how many you need to have chickens shipped here, and of course with an order of 25 you get a free rare breed as well as a couple extras thrown into the box for 'free'.

Before I knew what had happened...

Welcome to my world!

Cute Chicks

My house is full of cute chicks and I don't mean just me and my daughters!

I checked for eggs this morning, but no luck...maybe tomorrow.

Sorry Melanie

I just realized that I never posted the picture of Melanie's dishcloth that I made for her and forgot to take a picture of! She very nicely sent me a picture of it so I can prove that I am a good sister. :-)

I don't know why, but I felt like making her a Martini Glass cloth...

Spring Has Sprung

Here we have the first sign of spring that happens around my house. I used the warm weather this weekend to wash TONS of sheets, blankets and towels and hang them out to dry.


Wow, that was an exciting entry!

So, Where Do You Start?

Where do you start when you haven't blogged in almost 2 months? I mean, things DO happen, but which are the important ones?

I will start with a party!!

Deanna from Taking the Scenic Route to Parenthood puts on the best parties I have ever seen! This one was a Murder mystery dinner party set in Napa Valley, California (wine, anyone?)

We each had a part to play and game plays out with scripts for each of us and clues we must figure out to discover who killed Barry Underwood (whose body was discovered under a wooden floor in the cellar...)

We arrived to a beautiful themed spread that I'm sure took our esteemed hostess hours of work to put together.



We had a great time eating, drinking and enjoying general merriment as we played out the murder mystery to finally discover who the murder was. I will not give it away here, but we weren't disappointed in the story line.

Here we have Ralph Rottingrape, Bud Wizer, Otto Von Schnapps and Papa Vito all dressed in their party clothes.



And here are the ladies...Bonny Lass, Marilyn Merlot (yours truly) Hedy Shablee and Tiny Bubbles.

Thanks Deanna for the great time and we look forward to next months party!

Car vs. Deer

So, I guess it could be worse (actually I know it could be worse). But I am still really sad. Just look at my lovely blue minivan with the missing eyeball. It is hard to see, but the hood is also cracked and not exactly down the way it should be. This is the price I pay for no rust...fiberglass that is pretty much unfixable without a really expensive trip to the body shop and those of you who know my husband, know that isn't going to happen.

And close up you can even see little bits of deer hair where a lovely working headlight and turn signal light used to be.

I am very thankful that no one was hurt. Paul was driving 3 of our kids and one neighbor kid home from church (try not to take the wrong lesson from that) and in an instant it happened.

Oh, and if you are wondering who won, the deer or the car...the deer is now hanging in our garage and will become many meals in the future.

(Yes, he did get a permit to bring home a dead deer)

Don't You Just Love Gifts?

These are the goodies I got in a swap I recently participated in called The Winter Wonderland Swap. It was through Knitting Help and it was my first knitting related swap. I made my very first trip to an Actual Knitting store to pick up yarn for my swapper and got to touch all sorts of great fibers I have only heard about from other people! LOLSo here it is all opened up and posed for a picture. Please notice the cute snowman who ventured across the country to move in with me...cute! I haven't used the Alpaca yet because I am trying to find the perfect project for it and I have a huge fear of messing it up!

So thanks again Riss for being such a great swapper!

My Alter Ego

I thought since some of you know that I have an alter ego, I should finally introduce her to you.


This is Amerielle. She is a level 44 Human rogue and enjoys sneaking up behind bad guys and stabbing them in the back. Lately she has been going the Thug route and carrying around that huge ugly mace, but you will often find her armed with a beautiful, shining dagger. She also has that large sward that she carries just to save time during her killing sprees.

She is very misunderstood as most people find rogues untrustworthy, but she is just doing her part for the Alliance.

Amerielle also has a few friends that I might introduce to you in the future. Then again, she likes to keep her business to herself.

Girls Go to College to Get More Knowledge

...at least I am. As some of you know, I have decided to get a start on my second career. (What happened to the first one? I am calling it 20 years of being surrounded by kid stuff- from college to daycare to raising my own kids to substitute teaching.)

I made the decision to take the prerequisites for a degree in nursing and started my first 2 classes today. Fundamentals of Chemistry and Anatomy. Maybe I've made a mistake. I can't yet figure out why a nurse needs to be able to figure out...The density of titanium is 4.54 g/mL. What is the mass, in grams, of 17.3 mL of titanium? I hope it will become clear in the weeks to come, just as I hope the answer to the problem will become clear to me in the weeks to come.

To show my dedication to my classes, I give you the opening of the $188.00 book...


and the CD of the Interactive Cadaver Dissection Experience that tons of the grade will be based on.

Finally, Some Knitting

Christmas time and the knitting is secret. It is very difficult to post the knitting I have been doing when the recipients are the people (some of them) who read my blog.

I had this great idea to make a personalized dishcloth for each of my friends. I looked through tons of patterns until I found just the one I wanted to make for each of them. So without further ado...The parade of dishcloths:

For the Winter Wonderland swap I participated it: The Snowflake Dishcloth




For Deena: The Harry Potter Golden Snitch Dishcloth


For Deanna: Little Baby Feet dishcloth


For Amy: The Coffee Cup dishcloth


and because I can't remember to take pictures...

For Melanie: The Martini Glass Dishcloth
For Mom: The Christmas Tree Dishcloth


I think everyone enjoyed them (even if they might not enjoy using them!)

Very Intriguing

As I was browsing through blogs I found this nifty little test. I plugged my blog in as well as quite a few others to try to figure out how it was coming to the results it was getting. I am still not sure, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it might not mean what some of us think (or hope) it means. Running my blog and coming out with genius initially gave me a happy feeling, but the more I thought about it the more I have come to the conclusion that if it takes a genius reading level to understand my blog I must be a sucky writer! So there you have it, I am terrible and those of you who get high school or lower display it proudly in the knowledge that you are a great writer!

If you have any idea how it comes up with these results please let me know.

Crashing Down Around My Fingers

Ok loyal blog followers (follower). I know you have forgotten I ever had a blog so I thought I would surprise you and post something. I am getting my courage together because the last couple of times I have tried, my computer has crashed spectacularly.

I'm not sure what to mention that has happened over the last 3 months...


I made new friends.


Packed my kids up and sent them off to Florida where they became part of the show at Gator Land.



Had another one of my future funeral pictures taken. (There are very few pictures of me and those that do exist are usually blurry)

and posed the kids in front of a pond swarming with Gators (because I love them so much).
All in all it was a great vacation! If I can actually get this to post I'm sure there will be more exciting news to come!

My Power Increases

My blog power is widening! I would like to announce a new friend to the blogging world...Deena. You can find her at http://idontwannabolg.blogspot.com/ Please notice the "bolg". She mistyped and just went with it. Those of you who know her will say "That is so Deena!"

Homecoming

Last night was the big homecoming dance. I now have 2 kids in high school so we had double the fun getting all dressed up and ready to go. Here are the results...

And with their dates...

Back in the dark ages when I was in high school the homecoming dance meant walking from the football field back to the school where we danced the night away in our jeans and sweatshirts. How times have changed.

I think that I wouldn't have gone to the dance if it had been like today. I just wouldn't have been able to go out and buy a new dress and shoes for something like that. I will save my commentary on the state of money and kids in 2007 for another post. For now, enjoy the pictures of the girls in the dresses purchased for this dance, never to be worn again...

SMELLY

This weeks theme is smelly and this is the first picture I thought of. It was taken over the summer at a cross country party we held at our house. A huge storm came up and all the kids had to come inside to escape the rain, thunder and lightening. There were about 30 teenagers in all and this is just a portion of the shoes they all took off when they came in the house. I wish I had gotten a shot of all the shoes that were out on the porch too! (I have to admit though that I don't recall it actually being smelly but I may have just been occupied with other things with all those kids in the house!)

Must...Start...New...Project...

Ok, knitting plans. I know I have an inability to finish anything I start. I know I have a bunch of stuff just waiting for me to decide to pick it up and finish it. But I feel compelled to get started on the Zephyr Tree Jacket . Must order the pattern, must order yarn, must order a 20 inch circular needle, must order common sense.

I do work on things though. That ponchette of the disastrous gauge is almost done (for Claire).

Pretty lace edging.

And in other news...My son survived the sword fight and the H.S. band received a I (one) rating at the marching band festival last night!!! Great job!

Power

I am amazed at the awesome power I have over those around me! Melanie has decided to join the blogging world! Here is her blog http://www.livelovelaugh-melanie.blogspot.com/ for your viewing pleasure, but she seems to have missed the TAG part. She is however skilled at snagging pictures off from other peoples blogs.

Now we just need to get Deena going (I have a sinking feeling this may be a lost cause).

Tag

I have been tagged by Deanna so now I have to come up with 8 things you don't know about me but that I am willing to share with the world. Here goes...

1. I have earned a bachelors degree that I have never bothered to claim. Someday I will get around to doing the paperwork so I can 'officially' say I have that degree.

2. I am a HUGE procrastinator. (see above)

3. I always know where the exits are everywhere I go.

4. I dream of someday living on a sailboat.

5. I spend tons of time reading bike travel blogs. I really want to take a bike trip someday, but I am afraid I just wouldn't hold up under the dirt, cold and tent sleeping.

6. I have a belly button ring. (Yup, I'm cool like that!)

7. I have HORRIBLE eyesight. Without correction I would be almost unable to navigate through my own home.

8. I shave my legs EVERY day. I can't stand even one tiny bit of stubble on even the coldest of winter days.


There, more than you ever wanted to know about me! Since Deanna tagged all the blogging people I know I will tag a couple non-bloggers in the hope they will join us in the blogging world. Melanie and Deena

By the way, did you know that the blogger spell check flags the word Bloggers as a misspelling?

Proof

This post is being written to prove that I can write a totally Deanna free blog entry. I will not mention Deanna, Deanna's children, Deanna's husband, Deanna's home, Deanna's friends, Deanna's activities, Deanna's trips or Deanna's pets.

See, and you thought it couldn't be done.