Nov25

Blue Sunday

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Sean just left about 10:30 am. It’s his first solo trip up to PSU. He drove down with a friend, but the guy’s mom is driving him back. Tomorrow is the opening of hunting season and we think he should have gotten an earlier start. He said he didn’t get to sleep until 2 am as he was thinking about the trip. Wish him luck.

Barbara at Mainly Stitching sent me the sweetest birthday gifts that arrived yesterday. I love that the mattress style pin cushion was made as a stitch-along with her son (Brightneedles’ Mary Kirby series). I can see the two of them happily stitching away. And Barbara also sent a thougttful ‘Think Pink’ bookmark from Mosey n’ me. A few years ago I met the designer for Mosey n’ me, Frank Bielec as he’s a designer on the TLC cable show ‘Trading Spaces’. Thanks again Barbara!

I shamelessly hijacked her photo as I like how she had them set up on her blog. : )

Gifts from Barbara

So now I’m a little blue as all the ‘fun’ and ‘busy’ stuff is over until after this trying week ahead. I do go to church almost every week and last night the first hymn ‘O Jesus, Our Savior, Our King’ (or something close) had the word ‘benign’ in it. The lector also said ‘don’t just go by medical opinion, go by the word of the Lord’. Around the ceiling are smalls stained glass windows of saints and I ‘talk to’ St. Ruth as that was my grandmom’s name. So I’m feeling some good vibes in a spiritual way this weekend.

Nov24

30th reunion!

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Brian and I just got back about 45 minutes ago. It was interesting and nice to see familiar faces from so long ago. I dared Bri to take a photo of me and my ‘crush’ and he’s the last one he took a photo of. Closed that book in my life-lol. We had a buffet style dinner-didn’t eat until 8, so we were hungry! It was ok-with roast beef, sweet and sour chicken and flounder. The dessert was a nice chocolate mousse cake. We did have appetizers too.

Some photos: Before leaving-

D&B before leaving for the reunion

With Denice who I connected with through MySpace. She’s so sweet. She’s an actress out of Tennessee.

With Denice
With Todd the movie director. He definitely posed the best with me!
With Todd
With the reunion coordinator Scott-yep, I’m dancing!
Dancing with Scott
And finally Mike-this was the second attempt as the card was full and he wasn’t really paying attention this time. I was happy. : )
The crush

We sat at a table with mostly athletes, people who weren’t in my ‘middle-of-the-road’ group at school. There were 2 Diane/Diannes and 2 Brians(one being my Bri) and four of us were left-handed. One lady is a neighbor of Sean’s friend’s parents. A few live in this area. I believe we had about 8 couples marry from our class. The Diane at our table came from Honolulu! She said she was staying with her parents in Lancaster as her mom had just had a stroke. Of course we are all at the age where are parents are getting up there and moving out of the family homes. I know that will be happening soon enough with my mom. An old neighbor, Tim is married to a lady in my class and he remembered trick or treating with my older brother in a robot costume. Another couple use to be neighbors with my older brother and I had brought along a photo of him taken in September and they couldn’t believe it was Dave! Another lady’s mom was a neighbor of my brother’s and said her mom had just sold her house too. It was nice to get lots of hugs. I did connect with a pal who I didn’t recognize, Lil. She sat at a different table too. Wow-she glammed up since high school and made us all smile and laugh at her dance moves. A lot of people came stag! I noticed a guy who teased me in junior high was eying me up all evening. Bri even noticed. Some things never change.! Nevertheless, it was a good birthday gift!

Nov22

Photos by Brian

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I was so glad he is finally using our camera! An array of maples:

Japanese Maple

Another Japanese maple

Yellow maple
Pretty nice, huh?

You know how things happen in threes? Well, yesterday my outlet next to the bed (or is it the wall switch) went. The house is going on 48 yrs old. So this is not good. Bri will try and replace the outlet, he’s done that before. Hope that’s it. He has my light plugged into another outlet by means of orange extension cord!
I also broke the stopper in my fairly new kitchen sink. The metal part that holds it in place so you can have water in the sink, broke off.
And finally, I went in my china cabinet to retrieve my crystal turkey that I use for cranberry sauce. I noticed that before I even opened the door, that a wooden egg in an egg cup had fallen over. Well, try as I may, I couldn’t open the door without the egg falling, and it nicked a Waterford crystal bowl that I’ve had for almost 24 years. Yikes! That’s it please!

Nov22

And on this day…

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Happy Turkey day!

I’m taking a little break here. Everything is ready except for the potatoes. I was going to make biscuits, but I have a ton of stuffing! We’ll see if I can push myself just a little more. We got a free 16 pound turkey so that’s been cooking since noon. I also have corn, candied sweet potatoes (mainly for me), the stuffing and green bean casserole. I didn’t bake this year, but we tried the apple pie with our lunch since we have no company coming this year. Mom stayed home and the guys (and maybe me) are taking Bri’s dad his dinner. I like cooking to get things out of my head and then we got a few phone calls and I told the ladies who called about next week.
I actually got to see some of the Macy’s parade because I wasn’t cleaning like a mad woman! LOL. I did clean thinking I was having company, so it’s not that bad.
Have a scrumptious dinner and I hope you get the long piece of the wish bone.

Nov21

Welcome to my seaside neighborhood!

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Sean took me to the post office and I picked up my gorgeous piece today. It was mailed in early March of 2006. I haven’t seen the houses by the different stitchers on the internet as I wanted to be surprised. I’m trying to guess who did what-I think I know. And thanks to Rachael for the gorgeous handmade socks she sent along. I’m taking them with me on Wednesday. : ) Thanks to everyone who stitched on this-Annemarie,Barbara, Carol, Rachael, Su and Veronica! You are my forever pals and so talented!

diannenrr.jpg

Mine is the first one in the top row.

Nov20

Some gifties

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Thanks for all your continued birthday wishes! I really appreciate them! I was gone all day today, so I finally got around to taking a few photos.
Gifts
Thanks first to the two Carol/Caroles I know! The fairy bird feeder/ornament, the Canadian BC awareness angel pin, snowman ornament and teapot night light are from Carole/ Pea from Canada (plus some maple chocolates). I love them all. Carol from NH made me the sweet ‘Stick it here’ pincushion-perfect stitching Carol. Angela from NY made me the little book that holds art trading cards-great idea-I’ll definitely use it!

Cards
I got about 18 birthday cards! Gift from Brian
Brian gave me this to help me draw on the computer.
Today I got a ‘on the house’ hair touch up and cut from my sister-n-law Colleen. I showed my niece Tori my big book of Art trading cards and gave her all of the Wizard of Oz ones I had made. She says she has 5 from me now. We dropped by to see my mom, but she was unable to go shopping with us. She gave me a cross stitch book, candy, a cute teddy bear, a heart pin and some other little things. I told her not to worry about going out in the damp cold, but she does anyway.
Sean and I did some power shopping at Value City and Old Navy. I got a little faux red alligator purse to use for my reunion on Friday. I got a few Liz Claiborne tops, gray and cream (I had birthday money), plus a pale teal color sweater at Old Navy.
Sean and I stopped for dinner at PF Chang’s, a Chinese Bistro. He had honey coated shrimp and I had lemon grass prawns on garlic noodles-really delicious.
When I got home, I found out I had forgotten to pay the mortgage (very unlike me, the bill lady-too much on my mind lately) and Bri and I ran it up to the post office and hit the less crowded grocery store. I so wanted to bake a pecan pie, but the pecans are about $10 a bag. I settled on some store bought pies as the store has a pretty good bakery.
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To my Neighborhood Round robin pals-my piece is sitting at the post office! No one was home (it figures) to sign for it, so I’ll run over to get it tomorrow. I thought for sure it would be here yesterday-darn. I’ll get a heap of photos to share. I can’t wait!

Nov19

Friends are the best gifts ever!

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I want to thank my friends and readers for stopping by and wishing me well today, through email, comments and snail mail. I have some goodies to share, but that may not be until later tonight or tomorrow night.

I did go to the dentist which ate into about 2 hours of my day. At least the tooth bonding was a freebie on Dr. B. as he knew it was my birthday. : ) I was in a way glad to get away from the house with the doctor’s offices calling me. Just to let you know-the pre admissions is on Tuesday and I don’t have to fast or anything. At first they were making it next Monday at 8:15-yikes, so I changed it to the next day at 8:45, somewhat better. Then the procedure will be the next day. The receptionist at the dentist’s office said she’s had the procedure done a few times herself and to keep an open mind.

So, we are off to Carrabbas Italian restaurant-most probably. We are waiting for Bri to get home and then we can go. I’ll fill you in later.

BIG HUGS!!!!

Dianne and Brian

Yeah, it’s my first martini-ever! Really! It’s a pomegranate one, though I didn’t taste much o.j. or sprite int it! ; ) Sean was having trouble with our little camera (had no space on it from my videos which I had to erase), so that’s why my eyes are funny.

Dianne’s dinner

This is one of the specials Carrabba’s is running-the owners Damien and Johnny’s favorite dishes. I picked Damien’s-lobster ravioli, salmon with basil and a shrimp/scallop breaded item. I had soup too. The guys had pasta.

Sean and his shrimp and garlic sauce pasta

We went to Border’s and I bought a bunch of holiday magazines (Victoria is back!) plus the new Josh Groban Christmas CD.

When we got home we had some Oreo cake-yum! Sean gave me a box of filled Russell Stover’s chocolates plus he ordered me something from Amazon which will arrive soon. Bri gave me a Giada DeLaurentis cookbook, an altered art book (wish he had used Amazon like Sean did!), a 6″ clear crystal Christmas tree, the new James Taylor DVD from the show we saw him in last year, a Sarah Brightman CD from her Vegas show (I want the DVD too-it’s an awesome show) and a pen, mouse and tablet to draw with on the computer! And I thought he ‘had ordered’ me a lens cap thingie that just hangs down from the camera. This looks like fun! I hope I can use it being a leftie and using the mouse with my right hand all these years.

 That martini made me happy!
I was giddy at the end of dinner. ; )
I have some gifties photos to take and will share them tomorrow.
Have a great night!

Nov18

Weary traveler and lost mother

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Sean slept in and wasn’t use to ‘the quiet’. He’s been eating up a storm and enjoyed relaxing on the big red sofa in front of both his laptop and the tv. It was a football day Saturday for him while Bri went out shopping for yours truly. I was tidying up the dining room area so we have some place to eat dinner on Thursday. I use that as my work area for my paper crafts. I had a lot of stuff spread all over the place and am not finished yet. I had the table almost all cleaned off when something in my ‘idea’ box caught my eye and I made a few more cards, a few for surprise gifts. I’ll show you when they are finished.

My mom and her friend and boarder Jim decided to go to the dog show in Philly. My mistake was not calling her like I usually do, around 10:45 as I thought she wasn’t home. She could have called me too. So around 4, I started ringing her house, nothing. At 8 I called my brother’s house and Colleen tried mom’s cell-nothing. She said she’d send my brother around at 9 if no one had heard anything. Mom did call me around 8:45 and I was short with her and made her call my brother’s house. When I called back, I asked why she didn’t call me once during the day. She had some waiting time (like an hour) in the parking lot of the train station as she had missed the 11:25 train into the city. They stayed downtown until 7 pm! That was a total surprise to me, her being out after dark in a crowded city. They went to the Reading Terminal Market and it was jammed packed. A lot of things were going through my head and my evening wasn’t that great. I’m glad she got her ‘doggie fix’ and all, but geez, call someone to let them know you are out after 5. She never did that before. She’s getting too old to go on excursions like that. She was with Jim, and today he turns 61!

I am almost ready to share at least one finish-that would be for the cross stitch lottery due 12/31. I am working on a very late gift too. Stitching has slowed down just to the evenings. I hope my mojo peps up soon! I have ornaments to stitch!

Update-Sometime soon, I have to go to the dentist as a filling close to the gum line on the bottom left of my mouth chipped off leaving a highly discolored (amber) tooth! I think some of it started last night while I was still awake at 3 am. I have ‘herbal gumdrops’ that are suppose to help you relax and left a crunchy thing in my mouth. It then all came out when I was trying to enjoy a lemon drop, having forgotten about the adventure at 3. Geez.

Mom feels bad that I was so upset. She said she has a down feeling about me, which doesn’t make me feel good. Sean says he has good vibes about me. We are both Scorpios and can read each other fairly well. He just doesn’t know what to get me for my birthday. I believe he just utilized my Amazon wishlist tonight! He had gone to Walmart and I heard Brian say, ‘that’s all’? HA.

Here’s a little gift for my friend who likes to belly dance.

Shimmy pup ATC

That is her dog Haylee. I don’t think she reads my blog. I made her about 3 dog ATCs- they are in Flickr too. I just feel like doing that more lately than stitching. I have three boxes of my paper stuff nicely pushed under the little sofa in there now. It looks neater too.