It’s 70 degrees outside!!! I’m inside and wearing a sweater though.
Just got some bloodwork drawn this morning-terrible slow place-45 minutes with only 3 people ahead of me. The woman who draws the blood, does the paperwork too. She had to stick me in both arms-ouch! Wish me luck with that. Next week is my cornea thickness test as it got postponed.
I promised Brian a nice dinner, so I better get busy with that.
Please notice the face of ‘God’ in the clouds. : )
This is what Brian captured around 3:30 this afternoon after several torrential downpours. Now the wind is fierce. So fierce it knocked out the power at church about 15 minutes into the service. Talk about eerie! It’s interesting listening to all the different singing voices when there is no musical accompaniment!
We ran down to the Five Guys burgers and noticed the temperature had dropped. Man, those are great burgers and fries! Mom called to say she lost power about the same time as the church did. Weird.
I am finishing up the zebras quilt square, well they are finished, but I have the grass and letters to do.
Here’s a few ATCs I made out of junk mail. It’s amazing how you can be inspired by what you are about to throw away!
American Express (passport background and world letters) and Macy’s (women’s face)
<—Emily over at the Floss Box tagged me and I am sure I did this before. My normal may be your weird, so this wasn’t easy for me.
1. Not fond of handling raw meat and then cooking and eating it an hour or so later. Stews and spaghetti sauces that cook a while are much better for my palate. I’m fine in restaurants because I’m not cooking.
2. Books, books and more books-may not be weird, but when you have a bookcase or two in every room (almost), it’s time to slow down. And I don’t read a lot of them either, but I have to have them! (The old adage of maybe needing it one day)
3. Same with cross stitch charts. I only had a small box of them and then starting buying for eBay and my collection snowballed! I hope to have some local blogger friends here to go through a bunch, but when we can sit out in the yard.
4. My nighttime bed routine-must always wash my face. I also use zinc oxide on my face. I think I’m sensitive to the plastic nose piece on my glasses and the zinc seems to help. In the wintertime I use Vick’s Vapor rub too. That’s not all I do, but it’s not really interesting.
5. I do much better with cross stitching when I have a deadline. My latest piece, the zebras is driving me batty! I have to have it mailed by at least the 13th. I think I can swing that. I have half a zebra, the grass and some name stitching to do.
6. Not crazy about crowds of people. I guess a lot of people aren’t, but I don’t want them pushing into me or breathing on me. Didn’t I say I was going to the flower show this week? Yikes!
7.I tend to make piles of stuff around my house. I know this would drive my one blogger friend crazy! At least the stuff isn’t in a jumble across the floor. And along with trying to stay organized, I seem to have to dust all the time! I hate it.
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We are heading for 60 degrees today! I left the rake out (like my avatar above) to rake out my iris bed which looked bad last fall. I don’t like neglected gardens.
I was just telling Barbara on her blog that I faced the cold today-26 degrees and colder with the windchill factored in. Carole in Ontario probably thinks that’s balmy. I had to get some groceries in here and take a blouse back. And mail bills off. It’s hard buying food for two instead of three. I make too much and it’s not a pleasant task unless I’m going to Trader Joe’s, but that’s not often. Too far away. We have an empty grocery store here now as the Acme closed down the road. They built a new one near the hub of my town. Come on Trader Joe’s!
Brian just got his blood test results back and his cholesterol is high. His blood sugar was 106. He immediately says he’s not taking meds for it. The doctor didn’t call him or anything. The first thing he needs to do is some kind of exercise. He has a few pieces of equipment in the basement to use, but they are gathering dust. He has bad knees, but his extra weight isn’t helping. I have extra weight too, so now I’m nervous to get bloodwork checked out. I cook with olive oil, we eat a lot of ground turkey, hardly any red meat. Today my back is bothering me from sitting on the living room floor and bending down to put the snowbaby decorations away. I am pleased to say that nests and eggs, and a paper mache bunny or two are making there way into the living room to welcome spring!
I got a used electronic postage scale for a good price from eBay and it’s not working. Won’t weigh a darn thing! The seller is going to see if the part she thinks she needs (called company) is cheaper than what I paid for it. If I had known it was 4 years old, I would have passed on it, good price and all. She’s telling me I should have purchased insurance, but in the paypal check out, she didn’t have it as an add on-option. The box she used barely fit the postal scale box! That surely didn’t help. Hope I’m not out almost $20. : (
Off to watch my Thursday shows and do a little stitching on-you guessed it-the zebra!
Just thought I’d show a few ATCs I’ve done lately:
Around the area last night, the roads became really slick and there were tons of fender benders. Brian did arrive home safely, but wish him well in a few hours.
~Update 3:44 pm~
I have 106 comments here for my One World, One Heart Giveaway! Wow!!! If you are a blogger, you don’t have to be giving anything away. If you are my friend who visits here often, you have until midnight to leave a comment on this post only. Please do!!!
I was seriously thinking about this today-being a cross stitch pattern designer. I have a few programs, but what is blocking my mind is what to design? Mushrooms, Amish or primitives are things that pop in my head. Mushrooms, because of where I live and there is a store in the next town that sells mainly mushroom related things (they are the ‘Mushroom Capital of the World’) and each year the Mushroom festival in September gets a little bigger. Tourists do check out the store. What to do? See…I get stuck. And I live close to Lancaster, PA-Amishland, but I know a few well known designers have Amish designs. I visit so many cross stitcher’s blogs and I notice what you like to do. I don’t want to copy anyone else’s designs (and I wouldn’t but I mean taking their ideas), but I know I can be inspired by century old samplers like they are. Any input would be appreciated. I think I could do this if I put my mind to it!
We are getting a bit of a snow event, not a foot or anything, but maybe an 1 inch with some ice tossed in. I worry about Brian driving around in it.
Tomorrow at midnight I pick my One World-One Heart winners!!!
~By the way~people have really been clicking the links on the left to help feed children to rescuing pets-awesome!
~Update-I’m calling it ‘Toss it Tuesday’. It’s our third week of trying to pare down the amount of unless, dusty junk boxes that are taking up valuable space in the basement. The problem is everything is covered with that cat litter dust. I had asked Brian to switch to something else and it looks like he is back to the dusty stuff! Arrghh! What I do is put a load of laundry in (I only do about 2 a week) and while that’s washing, I start digging through the stuff. I do need to save some of the boxes for eBay (hey I found a ton more!) My guys are great at tossing electronic equipment boxes down there and leaving them after the alloted 3 month time to keep the box is over! I’m not going to talk about magazines and baskets right now, or tins or stuffed animals….
Thanks for your input Jennifer, I’ll check out the various sites for inspiration.
There is a hint of spring in the air on this, the 6th day of February! It’s 66 degrees right now. That’s the only nice thing about the day so far as it’s been gloomy.
I finally packed up Sean’s Valentine Day goodies-had to use the box my tea kettle came in! Funny thing, everything fit in perfectly! While I was getting the box, I did a little power cleaning for an hour in the basement-ugh. I was also looking through my old papers in hopes that the autographed John Travolta photo would pop out! It didn’t. Darn. I did find some journals I wrote and will check them out to see if I’ve changed that much in 30 years! ~LOL~ And don’t worry, I had a dust mask on, but my eyes were suffering. Brian has a nice pile to add to the trash this week including my old biology papers! I can’t seem to part with the Early Childhood Education papers yet.
We are suppose to get some bad weather that effected the southern states overnight (tornadoes down there). Since it’s Ash Wednesday, I requested pizza. We decided to try to give up McDonalds and similar places for Lent, but figure Subway is ok. Bri mentioned pizza, and I said it was too much of a staple during this meatless Friday time. I don’t agree with that, but go along with it. My thing during Lent and throughout the year is doing things for those who are less fortunate.
Still working on the zebra cross stitch (which is a charity item) but had to rip out his butt section as I was making him too short! His body is white, off white, dark brown and medium brown and it’s easy to mess it up. His head wasn’t that bad to do. And to think I have his little brother next to him to stitch too!
It looks like we’re going to get rain sometime this evening.
It’s so cold around a lot of the country these last few days. I really bundle up when I have to go out. My newest coat with the down is super warm. It helped me in my ice cold van on the way to the eye doctor in Wally World this afternoon. I didn’t think I’d be able to go as I had some tummy upset in the morning, but I was ok by the afternoon. I only needed a slight adjustment to my lens, so I have the option to get new specs or not. The only ‘problem’- the pressure in my eyes was high normal-over 20. I am going back next Monday for a quick check of that and may pick out new glasses. If she feels I need to go to my regular ophthalmologist, then I will. I told her I had my eyes checked in August for dryness, they did the same test and didn’t say anything. She replied you can’t get glaucoma in 5 months. Brian joined me and his eyes are good. He can swing by with his drugstore glasses for reading.
My brother is getting a dumpster at my mom’s and is really going to toss a bunch of stuff. She seems ok with it. I volunteered to go through boxes, but I can’t lift stuff. He said he’s not going to do it all at once. I hope it helps her a lot. I know she worries about it a bunch. Now to keep her out of the stores. Brian doesn’t think it’s solving the problem as she’s a hoarder through and through. I applaud my brother for taking action.
More tomorrow.
Just got on to take a quick look at a few blogs. Am not up to par, but I think it’s an allergy problem. We ate at a few restaurants over the weekend, the one last night we had a gift card for and it starts with ‘A’. Now we don’t eat there that often and I heard a lot of their food arrives to them frozen, I’m sure that’s the case in lots of restaurants these days. But I ate their boneless ‘mild’ chicken wings-they were a bright reddish orange and were spicy (not a good combo for me). Brian just shook his head. He was suppose to eat most of them. They have a deal-appetizer, main course and dessert for one price. The guy who waited on me gave me the incorrect dessert and I couldn’t eat it all and had to pay for it separate from the dinner (I told him and he ignored me)! Brian wouldn’t eat it (he was a fun dinner companion, but he’s still not well). So I paid the price today as my tummy is off. I am better, but I have postnasal drip still, but usually do all winter and summer….you know me, I live with it. I am doing laundry and still packing away decorations. I had my chicken soup and ginger ale too.
We didn’t get any snow, just a bit of rain. I forgot to ask Sean if he had gotten any up in the middle of the state. Sean had his first day of classes today and he said they are ok. He’s just thrilled to be in classes again. The reason for the sofa photo down below, that’s where he was parked for 3 weeks, most of the time watching tv and on his laptop. He’s lucky (knock wood) he didn’t get that sinus cold.
My friend Karin received her collage book and really liked it a bunch. : )
Have a great rest of the day.
Some of the fluffy stuff is falling as I type this. It really makes me feel like Christmas is around the corner now! I need to go finish making my Christmas cards, a bit different than most people are use to getting from me, but I think they are neat. The ladies at the copy shop loved them! I’ll show you one when I mail them off as a few of my readers are getting one and I want them to be surprised.
I did get out by myself yesterday for the first time in over a week. I was overdressed and got quite warm. I went to the stationery store and then to a local department store which happened to be ‘Tuesday over 50 club’ day. Yikes! I still have a few more years! It was filled with many senior citizens. I went to the young girl department for things for my niece and all the mediums were practically gone. I did find some cute tops that I think she will love. One is fuchsia with a crocheted butterfly as a decoration. The other is a coppery color with a sparkly belt buckle type piece. I got 40% off, but the original prices are so high! My nephew only wears t-shirts year round, but they didn’t have any I liked there. He wears the ones we gave him last year all the time. I’ll check online and at TJ Maxx for him. I know they are getting an awesome system-Wii and I know my brother will be playing with that a bunch. : )
I was allowed to take off my bandage yesterday (called the doctor’s office to ask) and it’s red and yucky looking. The doctor left a big tail on a suture and that is pulling. The main area has a big scab on it and is a bit raised and may have sutures there too. I hope they don’t have to come out, except the one with the big tail! Only two more days!
Brian was invited to a baby shower tomorrow. He asked me what to get and I said I’d check my eBay table! I have some cute figurines and one is a Cherished teddy piece that is also a music box. The music box wouldn’t work correctly, so I took it apart (like my grandmom would) and oiled it. Still no good. I think it was overwound. Well I fiddled with the spinner piece and broke it! Opps! I’ve got to have something else, if not, he’s on his own. He’s the first guy I’ve known who got invited to a baby shower!
Off to fill out cards…….
Collages & Creative Goodness 