GAH

I miss John like crazy today. Someone put these flowers in my office after the party yesterday. We had these flowers in our wedding. GAH. Tuesday get here already. Then Wednesday. SIGH.

Family Day Outfit

I photoshopped this little mock-up of the outfit I was thinking of putting together to wear next week on Family Day, when I go down to GA for John’s basic training boot camp graduation. I can’t tell if it’s adorable (which I think it is) or if it accidentally mocks them. I just don’t want to trivialize the medals/stripey pins that real soldiers get that actually mean something… mine will just be embroidery thread glued to a Popsicle stick, lol.

I’ve already heard from my mom’s friend Linda, who is an military wife, and she likes it, even if the navy is “so air force.” So that’s good. What do you think?

Edit: I’ve decided not to wear the outfit. Maybe the dress, but not the whole thing with the ribbons and what not. An American flag pin, yes – and the army wife thing as a necklace. Much more subtle. My friend John who is in the navy pointed out that with all those ribbons, even though not real – it would look like I out ranked *my* John! LOL. Not good! Thanks for all of your input though!

Why, Hello There…

Hi! I’ve been living life! And work has been super busy! I’ve taken photos for blog entries, but then never sat down to actually blog about those activities. I really need to find a way to squeeze blogging in, or else how am I supposed to keep this up when I have kids?? Maybe blogging at work isn’t the best idea…

Well, I still plan on sharing everything I meant to with you, but because I think its kinda dumb to have an entry about Memorial Day with an end-of-June post date, I’m going to fake blog.  That’s right, I’m faking it!  So look for blog entries, coming soon, about the following:

• Memorial Day Weekend – Social
• Memorial Day Weekend – Planting
• Marya’s Aunt’s Yarn Shop in Jamesville
• My Parent’s Visit – General
• My Parent’s Visit – House
• My Weekends (2) in Cicero
• Sarah’s Goodbye Party
• The Taste of Rochester Festival
• Dave Coulier (Uncle Joey!!)
• Whatever else I have on my camera that I’ve forgotten!

See?  I’ve been super busy!  The (kinda) sad thing about all that is that it’s all life stuff, with a little thrifting. My sewing machine was supposed to be fixed on the 19th, but they haven’t called me back yet. I’ll have to give them a ring tomorrow.  But yeah, I haven’t been crafting much.    Once my machine is back at the house though, I hope to be making more stuff.

And, as always I do have my daily “photo” blog/note to John over here if you need a fix in between blog entries. I might not always get the picture up every day (fail) but I try to at least put a note on what picture to use. Which is more than I can say for this blog.

I’m sitting in on The Wease Show tomorrow to observe the show.  I’m hoping it results in some changes to my job description!  Nothing on air, but changes nevertheless!  Talk to you guys soon!

Hi, we’re from the internet

I met up with Stephanie, who saw my 20 Questions in the Insider, for lunch at Abyssinia today. I had never eaten Ethiopian food before, so I didn’t know what to expect. Well, my friend Jessica told me about when she went out an ate Ethiopian, so I guess I had a little but of an idea. But still, not really. I just knew there weren’t going to be forks.

And sure enough, no forks! Stephanie and I got “Special #1″ which was made for two to share. The food was served on this pancake-like food, and the actual meat and veggies were on top. Then there were more pancake things rolled up in a basket, and you used those to pick up the food. It actually turn out to be pretty good! I had lamb for the first time and it is delicious. The beef (I think it was beef) was a little spicy for me though.  Also, that potato-looking thing is a hard boiled egg.  Raaaandom!

Us! And see Mom, I told you Stephanie was normal.   We ended up taking a long lunch.  I was late to the meet-up and the servers were very…hands off, I guess you could say.

I used google maps to tell me how to get their and it was very very wrong.  Luckily I had my GPS with me, and I used that to get to the restaurant.  I think I could have walked there from work, so I’ll keep that in mind next time I want to go on another adventure downtown.

Starting of My Letter Wall

I forget which blog, but one of the blogs I read posted photos of their collection of “L”s, similar to this picture I found on google images, (edit: found it!) and I really liked the look of it. I decided that I was going to start collecting “P”s (for Panzer) and spread them along the wall going up the stairs.

I bought my first one last week from Paula. She was having a sale, so I got this for $2 + shipping. Sweet!  Now I want to have a painting party where I buy a bunch of “P”s and invite people to come over and paint them.  Would anyone be interested in that?

She even included these cute extras! Hello craft room wall!

PS: These pictures are brought to you by my new laptop, which has a webcam! Thanks Mom & Dad! Does anyone out there have Skype? I am so addicted to that now.

Gardening

I’ve been thinking about how I want my garden to look. I think I want it to be on the left side of the yard, and kind of start by the Lilac tree and extend to include the other two tree nearest to it. I made a sketch at work… it’s pretty rough. I did it on the back of a piece of paper… that’s what the typing is.

Oh, and this also includes the plans for the deck.

Click to see full size

The dotted line in the drawing that goes around the tree signifies the border of the wall. Now, I’m not sure how I want the wall to look… I know I want stone, but do I want a tall brick wall, or just some more flat stones lining the way? I like both…

picture by The Empty Nest

picture by Barney’s Garden

I know that no matter which wall I go with I want the plants to be surrounded by a mix of natural wood mulch, moss, and stones scattered about.  How awesome is the wood mulch and moss garden below???  And I love the mix of green and stones in the bottom image.

moss garden picture from Victorian Garden Tours
wood chips from IPMomedia

photo by Annie Johnson

Have any of you guys had any experience working with moss as ground filler? (For lack of a better term, anyway) Can you buy it at the chain stores? I have never looked for it before… I’m totally new to gardening, so any tips you guys can give would be awesome.

Hand Sewing

Tonight I am going to do some hand sewing in bed. Yup, this is my big plan for the evening. Just me, a needle, some embroidery thread, and a lot of TiVo.

Good times.

Couch!

I bought that couch that I mentioned in the last post. My friend Leah and I picked it up today. The lady lowered the price down to $100. I am not surprised she did though… that thing is CRAZY dirty. And the cushions aren’t even worth sitting on. They’re rocks! Just the seat part though; everything else is fine. And I was planning on replacing the seat cushions anyway, so WIN!

I have officially spent that $50 monthly budget though for June & July. Oh well! In August I’ll buy some fabric and hopefully will start recovering it.

I was reading through old entries on this thing and my sewing machine has been broken for over a year now. I am so lame. Like, seriously, what is my problem. I just need to find a place and bring it in.

Things I would like to accomplish

I don’t have any recent pictures that could be related to this topic, so scattered throughout this entry will be cute pictures of my second cousin, who had her first communion last Sunday. I hope you don’t mind.

My friends have all been whisking me away during my nights so I don’t get lonely. I have plans to go to the Lilac Festival tonight, and on Saturday, Leah and I are garage sale-ing and going to a comedy club. Then, I will be attending a “Swine Flu themed” party, hilariously entitled “Hamdemic 2009: Aporkalypse Now!” So, a busy couple of days. Tonight, whenever I get home, I want to try cleaning a little bit. If no other room, then at least the kitchen. I haven’t done dishes in a loooong time. And laundry. It will be sad washing John’s clothes, knowing he won’t be wearing them for years…

But, back to the subject at hand. I plan on watching a lot less TV now that John is gone (although my TiVo Season Pass Manager begs to differ…) and have big plans on crafting, thrifting, and other things that I don’t normally do. I have budgeted myself $50 a month, starting in June, that I must spend either on the house, or myself.

I would like to make…

• Plush dolls. I can only make really simple ones, and would love to be able to master some more 3 dimensional types.
• Crochet flowers. Really, I would love to be able to crochet anything. I just can’t make sense out of the instructions I have.
• A custom wordpress layout for a blog hosted over at colleeniscreative.com. Again, I cannot make heads or tails out of directions I’ve read. Because it’s an ugly mess, it is currently not linked from anywhere.
• Those wooden doll houses I blogged about a while ago. But I’ll have to wait until my dad comes up so he can cut the wood for me. I didn’t get a chance to draw out what I wanted before John left.
• Some small, simple paintings. It’s been a while since I lifted a brush to something other than a wall.
• The second curtain for the study. This would be the same second curtain that I never made for the living room in the townhouse…
• I WANT TO MAKE A GARDEN. Not a single spring flower grew outside of my house this Spring! Summer will not repeat this.

Things I would like to buy…

• Cute table cloths for my kitchen and dining room tables (maybe I’ll make these…)
• Two corner hutches/cabinets for the corners in my dining room
• Nice prints for my studio. I already have a bunch picked out on etsy.
• Curtains for the bedroom. Right now I have unfinished yardage that is pinned together at the top to keep it from falling down… not acceptable.
• Prints of all my wedding photos! Well, maybe not ALL of them, but I finally used my Bed Bath & Beyond gift card to buy a photo collage frame, so now I need to pick out photos that I want and get them printed!
• THIS
• and THIS couch OMG I want it so badly. BOUGHT!
• And this, but I can’t justify the cost let alone the cost + shipping

John Left on Tuesday. (Sorta)

He got picked up on Tuesday and spent the night in Buffalo. He flew out from there to GA Wednesday evening. I left work early yesterday so I could go hang out with him in the airport. We had dinner and I met his “battle buddy” for the trip. It was nice.

I took a long lunch on Tuesday so I could see him before he got picked up. I wasn’t planning on going to Buffalo yesterday, so I took lots of pictures, and we said what we thought were our goodbyes.

How foolish of me to think that would be enough when he was more or less an hour away the next day.

I sewed our last name onto the handle of his backpack and covered the messy backside with a yellow ribbon. The other soldiers had their names written on the back in sharpie. Unacceptable.