To-Do List

John’s back in South Carolina, but so you guys don’t think I’m slacking, here is what I’m working on while not blogging, lol.

-General household chores (dishes, laundry, vacuuming, etc.). This is actually really hard with a puppy around!

-Working on my doll for the Momiji Couture Doll contest entry because the deadline was extended due to the UK postal strike. I doubt I’ll win, because I don’t think I’m very “couture” but I took the deadline changing as a sign to get back to working on it! (Sorry for the crappy webcam photo.)

- A present for a friend who reads this blog. I have a good deal of it done, but my end date is coming up way too soon!!! No hints though, sorry!

If I thought doing household chores was hard with a puppy, crafting is worse! She wants to eat EVERYTHING! I keep having to say “No, not a toy. No, no bite. No, No, NOOOO.” when I see that little mouth come close.

- Thrifting! Just clothes for the winter months, but yesterday I got a knitted (not by hand) vest, a couple really nice name brand sweaters, a stripped shirt that makes me feel French, and couple pairs of pants. I want to say I spent around $26 for all of it. Win! I’ll try to do a post about them later. They need to be washed and ironed, and one of the sweaters needs new buttons.

Does anyone know about these? My mom said that if the black is longer or the brown is longer that it’s supposed to say whether or not it’s going to be a long winter, but she couldn’t remember which color was supposed to be longer. Or something like that. Does anyone out there know what she’s talking about?

Living (and Loving) Life

Hello! I’ve been away because John is home! He is on leave for the month, and we’ve been busy busy busy! Once he’s gone, I’m sure blogging will return to it’s semi-regular state.  FYI, this is going to be a long post.

It was really nice being with John for is OCS graduation, but it was even better to have him come back home with me! (The captions are going to be above their corresponding picture this time, not below like normal.)

I don’t have any pictures of it, but we traded in John’s old car and bought a Prius, since he has to drive down to Ft. Jackson in South Carolina at the end of the month. It is so nice, omg. Also that weekend, we bought a puppy! Her name is Kipp, and we didn’t even mean to get her. We were sensing that Twilight was a bit lonely, so we went to scope out a kitty brother or sister for her, but when we went to the shelter to look at the cats, it was like I was dead inside. Too soon. But when we walked past the dogs, I saw Kipp and had to bring her home. Who knew? And Twilight is adjusting well, but she kind of doesn’t know what to make of Kipp. She’d never met a dog before.

And my parents are here visiting! Twilight is very happy to have her buddy back, much to my dad’s amusement. And my mom is a dog person, turns out… as long as that dog is under 10 pounds, lol.

My brother is here too. You can take the boy out of Florida…

Yesterday was super busy. We went out to lunch, then we went to Green Acre Farms in Greece to pick apples, ride a hay-ride, and go through the corn maze. Their website said they had pumpkins, and I was thinking pumpkin PATCH, but it just turned out to be pumpkins on some tables. Bummer. We’ll have to look for a legit pumpkin patch sometime this week.

We also went to an Amerks vs The Crunch game. The Amerks won. Go Rochester!

PS: Kipp thinks falling leaves are pretty awesome.

If you got any comments from me on entries that you posted, like… a month ago, sorry! This morning I had 400 entries to catch up in my “crafty” section of my blog reader! I got through 200 of them, but whew! 30 more have already been added since I started working on this entry!

RIP Dune

Dune lost his battle to cancer (?) on October 1st, 2009, right before I left for the airport to go visit John for his OCS graduation.

He was a good little boy, who lived a good life, and we will miss him dearly.

Towards the end, he was very mopey and didn’t move around much, but not so much that his passing didn’t come as a surprise. He was only 6 years old. We loved him very much, but are grateful that he didn’t pass while we were both away. I was able to stay up with him on his last night.

John and I laid him to rest on Saturday when we both got home. (John has leave until the 28th.)

Goodbye Dune, we will miss you.

Thrifting Buddy Needed!

I am on the hunt for a formal dress for John’s OCS formal! I would like something unique, and not crazy expensive. So I’m thinking of finding something used, and maybe altering it? Or maybe not if it’s awesome to begin with.

So I did some research and found these places to look:

Thrift Stores

• Salvation Army – opens @ 9:00
  535 East Ridge Road & 745 West Avenue
• Goodwill – opens @ 10am
  376 Jefferson Road & 1518 West Ridge Road & 451 South Clinton Avenue
• Thrifty Shopper – opens @ 9:00
  400 Jefferson Rd
• Volunteers of America – opens @ 9:00
  214 Lake Ave. & 89 Canal St.
• Second Season Clothing (Even though they advertise on PXY, blech!) – opens @ 10:00
  1555 Mt. Hope Ave – haha I found you online not through radio suckas

Estate Sales

• 321 Cedar Place in East Rochester 10am
• 1226 Stafford Cresent in Webster 9am to 3pm
• 12 Foxtail Lane in North Chili 10am-5pm
• 80 Sandbury Drive in Pittsford 8am-2pm
• 2981 Mt. Read Blvd. in Rochester 9am-5pm – numbers given out at 8am (!)

So… anyone want to go with me??  If you do, leave me a comment and I’ll email you tomorrow.

Sketch

Halloween is getting close. Even though I didn’t really have to, I sketched out my version of this costume. I need to go buy some fabric!  I actually don’t know if this will work though.  It will depend on how cold October is.  Although, I guess I will be most likely going to Monster Jam this year, and that always gets hot because it’s so crowded.  So who knows.

Twilight Hearts Yarn

I didn’t mow yesterday, but I did knit!

“Nom nom nom”

“WTF you mean stop?”

“But I waaaaant it.”

“Yarn yarn yarn.”

Should I just remake this whole post in the style of LOLcats?

PS: John was able to call yesterday. Yay!

Happy Anniversary

John and I were married a year ago today.

He is in the field today, so I went up over Labor Day weekend so we could celebrate it. In case you were wondering, it is possible, and not even problematic, to bring wedding cake slices onto a Delta flight.

It was fun, and I loved seeing him, but it’s hard being at work knowing he’s not at home to greet me when I’m done for the day. I don’t even know if he’ll be able to call me. He asked his cadre (spelling?) if he can and we have our fingers crossed. We’ll see.

It’s been an interesting year.  I love you John.  I miss you.

I’m going to go home, maybe mow the lawn, and work on his blanket.  I’m hoping to have it done for his graduation, but we’ll see.  When all of you look at me, confused, when I say I want to make him a patchwork knitted blanket, think this.  I have a Netflix movie, but it’s about a wedding, and I couldn’t get through it last week.  Maybe this week I’ll be stronger.

Silly Mood

Tee-hee, I match the parking garage stairwell floor today.

Yard Talk

I could have split this into a bunch of different posts… but I’m not going to. One of my neighbors brought over a bunch of raspberry bushes. Such a sweet old lady. When I finally planted them, I hoped for the best. I noticed that there was a teeny bit of tree stump left in the area I wanted to plant the raspberry bush in, so I just planed the little guys around it.

The smallest of the plants are starting to wither up though. I don’t know if I waited too long to plant them, or if it’s the tree stump that’s the cause, or if they just don’t like the dirt I put them in. I try to water them… maybe I’m over watering them? I don’t know. The larger ones seem fine. :-/

On the bright side though, yesterday, I noticed that my cherry tomato plant had a couple red tomatoes on it! Awesome! I meant to pick them yesterday, but forgot. Tonight, I guess.

In other yard work news, I spent a good part of the summer cleaning up the plants that were already in my yard. I trimmed the hedges on all sides of my house, and dug up the broken lights on the front right side. (I haven’t gotten to the front left side yet.) I don’t know how to fully get rid of them though… they aren’t plugged in like normal; there is just a box on the side of my house. *sigh*

I am wondering if it’s possible to trim shrubs too closely… patches of some of mine are turning brown. It’s really weird and not what I wanted.

For two weeks, on Friday, (but not last Friday) someone would come and mow my lawn! It was the weirdest thing! My lawn wasn’t over grown or anything… In fact, the days they mowed were the same days I had planned to mow.

I actually came home from work the second Friday to mow, instead of just going out with friends after work, and was almost upset that it was mowed. Just because I came all the way home for nothing. But that was dumb, so instead of being mad, I made a thank you sign at the end of my driveway with sidewalk chalk that wound up in my backyard somehow.

And I think that catches me up on all yard-related updates.  Some of the flowers I planted over Memorial Day weekend have died by now, so I am contemplating buying some replacement flowers.  But it might be too late in the summer at this point.  Thoughts?

“Home” Banner

I don’t have any finished pictures, because the ones I took didn’t come out, and Marya hasn’t hung it up yet, but here is the banner I made for my friend Marya’s housewarming party. Dune helped.

I did quite a bit of hand sewing on this, which probably wasn’t a good idea just for time’s sake. But I eventually did break in my sewing machine. It is still noisy, but very happy to be home.

This is the closest I have to an “after” shot. The more or less before/after combo of the above images. Marya really liked it, which was awesome. I was pretty please with how it came out too. What do you think?