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.
Apr4

Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind

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Sean and I watched this movie yesterday and we really enjoyed it! I so much prefer Jim Carrey in more serious roles, if you can call his Joel character serious. I really like Kate Winslet too and had just seen her the day before in Finding Netherland. In ES she has an American accent. You’ll love her technicolor hair too. Some of the supporting roles were miscast in my opinion like Kirsten Dunst was too young for the character she was playing. If you see the movie you will understand what I mean.
I don’t want to get into the plot, but it was different and if you don’t mind an occasional cuss word, then all the more better. Plus, they show a date written down (the only one in the movie, if I’m not mistaken, and it’s my birthday-November 19th (2003). Pretty cool.
See it for Jim and Kate. See Finding Neverland for Johnny Depp, Kate and the little boy who plays the real life Peter….and the guy who plays Nana.

Apr4

Stitching Blogger’s question

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How has your stitching evolved since you first started stitching?
The logicial answer is probably to say I went from less complicated designs to more elaborate and detailed designs and I can surely say I have tried a few harder projects. I guess it’s evolved in a way that I am not just stitching for myself and family. I am stitching for people I don’t even know because of my charity stitching. Plus, back in the late 70s there wasn’t a heck of a lot of designs out there like there is today.
I have always admired The Prairie Schooler and The Cross-eyed Cricket (I just finished up the girl in my side bar and she’s a CC and I started a CC nature sampler). I have most of these leaflets though I know I won’t stitch them all. My stash is huge! I really need to get serious about what I am going to do and what I need to get rid of. Whole other subject.

I was thinking about my stitching goals for April:

1). Finish up Sean’s graduation gift-a blue mortar board sampler that includes his name and school. I think I will try and make a tassel and get some metal numbers as not to use the real tassel he will be getting.

2). Get all the colors I need for my new big project ‘A Walk in the Woods’ by Cross-eyed Cricket. I am a little peeved as the fabric is only giving me an inch border on all sides. I machine sewed the edge and used fray check.

3). Work on the little linen herbal sampler by Shepherd’s Bush that has been a devil of a design to start.

4). Finish a Prairie Schooler Santa I started a few months ago.

5). Get another UFO out of the way, maybe the small swan on lily pad.

6). Get the charity quilt design ‘The Fledgings’ bluebird babies kitted up.

7). Start some Christmas ornaments to sell at Church bazaar in the fall.

Apr4

PJP2 and the rainbow

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It was a pretty weird day yesterday waiting for ‘the magnet for humanity’ to succumb to his illness. The Pope was just looking out the window a few days before! This reminds me of the passing of my mother-in-law who died from a massive infection herself. The Wednesday before she died we were visiting her in the hospital and at 9:00 pm she said visiting hours were over so we better go. Two days later she passed on and we never saw her again. She did get to say that she loved my son, her only grandchild.
But of course we didn’t know the pontiff had passed on until after we finished watching ‘Finding Neverland’. I swear I had a tear roll down my eye around 3 o’clock.
Church was moving too. The guest priest choked up a few times and I swallowed hard myself. Brian felt a bit dizzy. My head hurt when I sang. It was a coincidence that the reading about Jesus coming back to show his disciples that he had risen from the dead and that he said ‘Peace be with you’ was the same opening sermon that the Pope read about 27 yrs ago. I’m sure it wasn’t planned as the Pope died around 2:45 our time and church was at 5.
We stopped by a Wawa to get some hoagies for dinner and there was a rainbow in the sky, the first we had seen for a long time. See how things connect?

Apr1

Googlewhacking

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April Fool’s ya’ll! And yes the word above is a ‘real’ thing. The guy, Gary Stock who ‘invented’ googlewhacking was on ‘The Tonight Show’ last night. He’s an English chap who talks really fast. What it basically is- you have to put two words in the Google search engine. You are a true whacker is you only get one page back. No pages of words, but a real webpage. I was watching ‘Comedy Central’ this morning and in honor of the two comedians who used the word ‘midget’, I added ‘Scrubbable’ which isn’t a word (just checked) with midget and I got three matches-word lists. I guess ‘m’ and ‘s’ are too close together. So, I sent this on to a lady whose blog I read and if she enjoys it, I’ll update here. Maybe I’ll try ‘secure midget’ instead. : )

Mar31

Think first!

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You’d think that since I am a fairly intelligent creature that I would remember to use Flonase or my herbal nasal spray before I tackle the great outdoors! Well, I didn’t and not only is my brain foggy from PMSing but I am so stuffed up. As soon as I eat something, I’ll do the spray to see if it helps a day later. Even our friend Kathy says she takes Advil before she plays tennis to avoid the aches and pains that will probably settle in. Advil doesn’t like me, so I was popping a Tylenol at 1 am this morning. My body was like ‘hey toots, are you crazy? Manual labor and you do not mix!”

I heard that Terri Schaivo passed away today. Her husband is bringing her up to Bucks County, PA. to her final resting place. It’s beautiful there and we daytrip there once in a while. That’s where Terri and Michael grew up. I hope now that she is gone, that the story will vacant the news. We have to concentrate on getting our troops home. Mom was also saying she worries about her grandchildren being taken care of through social security when they are her age. I think people even my age have to worry! I don’t know what will happen in the next 20 yrs, but it’s not a pleasant thought to know that we may not get the help we deserve.

Mar31

The clean up begins….and a unexpected phone call

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Yes, you did feel the earth move today!! We were out cleaning out the flowerbeds of leaves and twigs today as it was nice and around 60 degrees. I got both fellas to help me in a few places. I wish one of them would blow the leaves out of the beds in the autumn. It would make a lot less work in the spring. I was around all those damp leaves and mold and so far the only reaction I’ve had was after dinner when I sneezed about 6 times in a row. There’s a ton more to do, the little pond is loaded with leaves on the bottom. I’m wondering if I have any ‘pet’ tadspoles in there. The spring peepers (Sean hates it when I call them that) are really ‘chirping’ lately. A nice ‘find’ was a bunch of crocuses under the chestnut tree. I must have gotten some as an Easter gift from years past and they got dumped there, so they were popping up in purples and white.
I’ve been in a dilemma since last night. Colleen, my sister-in-law was looking for a picture of her daughter Tori from her 1st birthday (needed it for a school scrapbook). She couldn’t find any! So I started to look, and then I looked some more. Finally, I came to the last stack thinking they were newer photos and there were the 1st birthday photos! Colleen didn’t take many shots I guess as she was in most of the ones I had! So I hope they were able to save the ones I sent through email.
While I was looking through the photos, I ran across one of our friend Kathy from Tennessee. About 3 hours later, out of the blue she called to wish Brian a belated Happy Birthday. Kathy shares the same birthday as me. It was nice to chat with her. She asked me if I was going to ever get my BS degree now that Sean was getting one, and I told her that I didn’t want to be a teacher and was happy with what I was doing now. Some career woman sure don’t understand us domestic goddesses!

Mar28

Interesting Easter

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It was the first time in many months that my two brothers, me and our families were together in one room. The blue eyes in that room were blinding! Out of 11 people, I have hazel eyes, Brian has green eyes and my brother Ken has brown eyes. So you see what the dominant gene is in this family.
Before we went to my brother’s house, we went to ‘brunch’ at a local restaurant that we had never eaten in. As soon as I walked in the door my throat became itchy and was that way the entire 45 minutes we were there. Seems the bar was open on Easter Sunday. That is tacky in my opinion. Along with a bar comes cigarette smoke. That was my problem. Brian and I thought we were going to a buffet.It clearly stated on the newspaper flyer that it was a ‘brunch’, so they had about 15 things on the menu. We all picked omelettes. When we got the food, I was a bit repelled by the smell of the onions in the overcooked red skin potatoes. There were mostly skins and I didn’t want to eat them. The omelettes had a ‘gas’ taste from the stove. It’s very hard to mess up a meal like this, but they did. No butter for the toast either. They won’t see us back and I feel like complaining about their lousy food.
We went to my younger brother’s house. It had been his son Kenny’s birthday on the 23rd and I had gifts for him and Easter things for him and his sister Tori. My older brother and his family stopped by too. My older brother has let his hair go almost completely white and I was a bit shocked when I saw him. Sean enjoyed hanging out with his cousins. I was always so happy that at least he saw them once in a while.
We dropped by my mom’s and Dave and his family came over there too. I threw Dave some ‘bait’ and he started teasing me like he has done all our lives. Like, saying ‘you can eat a hoagie in the rain’, etc. What really peeved me was him putting down Universal Studios saying it was a ‘glorified Great Adventure’ when he’s never been there. I think he is just jealous we are going to Florida. That’s a brother for you.

Mar26

‘Finger Food’ and Skunks

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The last few days have provided enough ‘gross out’ for everyone concerning the digit found in the chili. We were discussing how it got in the chili in the first place. I think it was planted there by a disgruntled employee who may have been in a gang. Someone else said maybe the woman who had it in her food is a weirdo and planted it to sue Wendy’s. I know how they make the chili-the burger comes from ‘leftover’ patties that were probably cooked too long. Someone who was an employee at the chain years ago ‘enlightened’ us about how it is made.
Tonight I was sorting through my cross stitch stuff (sitting on the floor) looking for another project and it started to get really stinky in here. Brian happen to be sitting next to me in the lounge chair. I was blaming his feet! But then it dawned on it that it was more of a skunky aroma. So we opened the front door and it was like 100 skunks had lifted their butts to our house! We can’t understand why it’s smelling so much in here, all the windows are shut. Maybe it sprayed on one of the basement windows, or I hope it didn’t stumble in the window well outside one of them! I was actually wearing a painter’s mask for a while. Phew!