Author Archives: Dianne

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About Dianne

Domestic goddess, wife, mom, gardener, paper and collage artist, geocacher, local traveler, cross stitcher, baker, crafter, Facebooker, blogger, decorator and photographer.

Or is it?

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Geez, who am I most like?

Jack
You are Jack. Self-appointed hero and doctor
extraordinaire, it’s your job to save everyone.
You have little time for fun and games, but you
do like a good stiff drink every now and then.
You prefer your stitches black and have been
known to make gross pasta comparisons. And if
anyone needs CPR or a tracheotomy, you’re the
correct person to go to.

Which Lost Character Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Map and stuff

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Found the map on another blog (Monster Crochet) and thought it would be cool to add it here. You can actually see my house from the satellite link! Feel free to add your link to the map.
I also added some more blogs that I have had in my Favorite Places. I have William Shatner’s too-just to see if he updates more. He is a man of few words.

We ate at a burger and hotdog place tonight called ‘Five Guys’ where Sean and his pals hang out. My burger was pretty good, but I won’t eat any pink burger and there was a wee bit in the middle of mine. In the same shopping center there is a ‘Tuesday Morning’ and it was about to close. That store is filled to the gills with stuff. Managed to get-two cookbooks (The Sopranos (tv show) cookbook and Retro Breakfast), a meat pounder (I was actually looking for one and Sean just randomly picked one off a shelf where it wasn’t suppose to be), a cute (and teenie) Easter hen topiary and some DMC pearl cotton. Not bad for 10 minutes of quick browsing.

Home Depot is coming up! Yippee. Brian doesn’t act that excited. I guess he’s thinking about the money part.

Ms. Fix-it

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About three weeks ago I was looking for a wrist watch to wear. I have plenty, but they were mostly duds, meaning their batteries were dead. So I divided what I really liked from the ‘so-so’ ones and took the bunch to the dining room table (my all purpose wobbly work table) and began to pry off the backs of several of them. Some wouldn’t budge (I use a mini screwdriver or a big darning needle).It’s like performing surgery-so exciting when you can see the guts of the watch! I finally ended up with 7 and I had to get the trusty magnifying glass to get the numbers off the batteries.
Brian and I went to Walmart and I got the batteries I needed ($20!). Instead of having to buy 6 new watches, I replaced all of them with no problem except for one Timex that took the biggest battery. The back just wouldn’t snap on again! Both Bri and I tried our best until I broke the darn thing. It was an Indiglo light up one too. Not to worry, bet one of my Mickey Mouse watches uses the mammoth battery. Now I have some fancy ones (marcasite) and plainer ones I can switch off with. Mom said I am just like her mom in this respect-I will try to fix anything on my own-well at least try first. : )

Cooking all week

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It’s a record! I made dinner for 5 straight nights in a row! We had gourmet hot dogs tonight (I get the lower calorie beef ones), but I made homemade potato salad (with egg, relish and fresh dill thank you) and zucchini with red onion and parmesan. The guys dove into the potato salad like it was going out of style. Last night we only had ravioli and salad, but the sauce was excellent-Ragu’s sun dried tomato and basil.
We are going to talk ‘kitchens’ at the Home Depot on Sunday! Yippee! I am a bit nervous, but excited. I know what I want-the offwhite cabinets, honey maple colored flooring (to tie in with the wood in the rest of the house) and probably slate blue countertops. I wouldn’t mind slate or marble, but I’m also the person who is looking at retro ranges which are sky high in price. I’d like a decent size pantry, a long counter for baking and appliance storage(maybe I can get a slab of marble there) and maybe a place for my cookbooks. I can’t wait to bring my 1960 kitchen into this century.

Stitching Blogger question

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Q. Have you had a happy dance yet this year? If so, tell us about it! (Or just point to the entry that talks about it.) If not, when do you predict it will be?
I guess we all do more of a happy dance over finishing larger projects. I don’t have any recent big finishes, just a few ornaments and I am about to finish my second Love Quilt’s square for 2006. It’s really cute and I’ll be sharing it within a week or so.
I am really happy about participating in the Neighborhood Round Robin and meeting new stitching friends who are mostly in the Netherland region. Our blog is over in the side bar ‘Our Neighborhood of Make Believe’.

Unfortunate but it comes with age

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Mom just told me tonight that my uncle’s wife is going in assisted living. Her three daughters (his stepdaughters) came over to talk to him tonight and he agreed to it. My aunt is in the hospital now! My uncle got out Friday and then my aunt couldn’t breath right (she has asthma) because of a bad cough. She’s been in the hospital all week. My uncle went to visit her, but he is weak and had to be pushed in a wheelchair. They’ve been married since 1959 (a few days after my arrival), so it’s going to be traumatic. She doesn’t know where she is half the time.
~Update~
Now my mom says that my aunt may only be in the assisted living faculty until she is better. The doctor told my uncle that my aunt isn’t very healthy-one thing is she has a tumor on one of her kidneys. She’s 90, so maybe there could be worse things. Heck, I have tumors (fibroids) and I am about half her age.

Tagged!

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Ok, here it goes:
Four jobs I’ve had:
Daycare assistant teacher
Uniform shop salesperson
Gourmet food take-out assistant
Teacher’s aid at local schools
Four movies I could watch over and over:
Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
The Wizard of Oz
Indiana Jones movies
The Truman Show
Four places where I’ve lived:
Media, West Chester, Drexel Hill and
Fort Pierce, Florida
Four favorite tv shows
Extreme Makeover:Home Edition
Survivor
The Amazing Race
LOST
Four places where I have been on vacation:
Orlando, Florida
Newport, RI
Cancun, Mexico
Mystic, CT (part of the RI trip)
Four favorite foods:
Chocolate,
chicken salad
lobster
peaches
Four places I’d rather be right now:
Hawaii
Florida
The Bahamas
a chocolate shop
Four sites I visit daily:
My eBay page
Tribe
MSN groups
almost all of the blogs
listed in the sidebar
Four bloggers I’m tagging:
Mindy, Vikki, Sandy and Zoey!
You see your name-cut and paste gals!





Adorable Cape May design

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While going through my xs freebie newsletter, I found Valentine’s Stitchery. I was so excited to find this design:

This is a xs rendering of Cape May, NJ one of my favorite spots on earth. So I looked around the different places suggested by the designer to buy it and I couldn’t find it. I then wrote to the designer, Nicole who lives in West Chester, PA., a few towns from here. She pointed me in the right direction (my fave LNS had it too, but I decided to order it online). She says she drew the design while sitting on the beach. To get this view, you’d have to be in the ocean, I had to chuckle to myself. My grandparents honeymooned in Cape May back in about 1921. I love nostalgia.

Chicken this and that

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Superfresh food store had two split chicken breasts for $1.00 a pound! I bought two packages and should go get more as that is a steal. Yesterday I boiled the one package with celery, onion and carrots and made a nice broth. We had turkey chili last night though ( from scratch). Tonight we had chicken noodle soup and pecan apple chicken salad. I learned from my cookbook Chicken Soup by Marcie Ver Ploeg that you don’t cook chicken soup all day long like our great grandmoms did. They were dealing with tough birds. Our chickens are not bred to be tough. I also learned if you don’t cook a variety of pieces together, like the wings, etc. your broth will be weak. Since I was just cooking breasts, I added three packages of boullion and that did the trick. I forgot I had the above cookbook the last time I made chicken soup. It has 75 recipes and is illustrated with little cartoon style chickens. The cover shows two chickens in a Viking style ship with spoons for oars. I guess you would have liked to see the finished product, but they were goobled up too quickly by the guys.
By the way, don’t store cooked chicken in plastic bags in the frig. I stored them this way a few times and they tasted odd. I used a storage container last night and the chicken tasted much better.