Artsy Fartsy

This weekend was all about arts and crafts. And for those of you you have complimented my abilities, the reality of this weekend will put at end to that. I'm not going to go into detail about Friday night when a few pictures will say it all. Amy G and I went to Sips-n-Strokes for my first FREE painting.

Our painting was called Funky Dogs and was supposed to look like this
https://www.sipsnstrokes.com/calendar.aspx?FacilityUID=al001

Mine, however, turned out like this












Enough said about that.

So Saturday I found myself really missing my Girlieques. I have four of them. These two belong to my nephew and live in Greenwood, MS. I miss them desperately, and they are growing up so fast! But Greenwood is a little far for a one day trip.

But luckily, I have two more beautiful Girlieques who live an hour and a half up the road. Beautiful and flamboyant.

When I arrived, the main activity was ... you guessed it ... painting.  Does that look fun, or what? The blonde on the right. painting the heart and doing her very best Marilyn Monroe impersonation, is the fabulous Lizzy Grace. The fairy cat on the left is the magical CarOliiiiine.

Armed with paper, paint and brushes, I set out to try to paint special requests. A few flower, puppies and kitties later, we had accumulated quite a collection and it was time for bed.

Sunday morning, after a few intense games of Mario Kart, and some serious dog petting, we settled in for round two, which involved My Little Pony coloring books and colors - or crayons - whatever you grew up calling them.

 I think I could learn to enjoy this arts and crafts stuff.


Jeannie

One Man's Trash

For the last few weeks I have periodically gone to help my dear friend Amy G. to clear out her in-laws home. The house was hit pretty hard by the tornado that came through Birmingham in April, and with both of her in-laws sick, it was time for them to move to a new location. The house was full of the amount of "stuff" that takes a lifetime to accumulate. They had lived in the same home for over fifty years, and were clearly not fond of throwing things away. To describe the amount of "stuff" would be impossible, but after months of sorting and separating and claiming by all of the siblings, it was time to call 1-800-JUNK to clear out what was left.

Now, I'm not your garage sale kind of girl. I tend to believe that one man's junk is junk and have no interest in digging for the treasures. But I could not resist one last trip over to see if there was anything that I needed. Honestly, I went to see if there were any bowls left. It seems that when I start to cook, which is not that often, I never have enough or the right sized bowls. I happily found a few, so my trip was successful. I probably should have stopped there but ....

Yeah .... But I can justify it all .... really! I mean who doesn't always need picture frames? Next time I need one ... I have one! One even cost $.72 at Kmart! I know! It is still tagged.

And that doll high chair ... I have little girls who come here and would love to have a doll high chair to play with. I don't have any dolls, but let's not get picky.

See that stick? It's hard to tell, but that is a wooden shaft putter. I brought the whole bag of golf clubs home, but I really just wanted that putter. I mean, I know I haven't played golf in three years, but I'm going to go any day now.

And see that wash basin and pitcher? Wait ... this angle is better.

Now you just know that will be useful in my guest bedroom ..... for my guests .... who don't want to use the guest bathroom.

And those cute framed pieces.... two are even actual water colors and not just prints that came with the frames! It's those two little bitty ones in the front.

And the sleigh ...  Wait you can see it a little better here, holding the pictures and behind the Auburn Tiger plush glass coaster with matching glass with tiger tail painted on. (Oh yeah, somebody's gonna love that for Christmas!)  Can't you just see my Christmas card photo with Roscoe sitting in that sleigh in his Santa suit  and Sam in his reindeer suit in front of it? (It may take me till Christmas to get them to do it, but it will be ADORABLE!)

And how about this ..

Yep, that would be a gen-u-ine, never been opened Auburn bird feeder. I'm gonna be somebody's favorite Secret Santa!

There was more, but I don't want to make you jealous. Now I must go to bed. I heard there was a hot garage sale going on down the road tomorrow, and you know, you gotta get there no later than 5:00 to get the good stuff.

Jeannie

It's Math

Just a quick calculation before calling it a night.

These

plus these

subtotals to this

which equals this.

It's math!!

Jeannie

Baby Blue

I was ecstatic when I found out that my beautiful friend, Laura, was pregnant for the second time.  Watching her parent the Amazing Stella, it was obvious that she was a wonderful mother and would love to have another child.

In February, after dinner at PF Chang's with a table full of my Birmingham friends, we all got our cookies and opened them  to play the silly game of reading the fortune and adding "in bed" to make it funny. (Yeah, we are easily amused, especially after a few bottles of wine.) As we each read our fortunes, we realized that they all said the same thing. I will probably be in trouble that I can't remember the exact words, but basically the fortunes all said that something special was happening in October. True confession time ... I was the last one to figure it out. I blame the wine. The something special was a sibling for Stella.

A few months later we all gathered at Los Arcos, my neighborhood Mexican restaurant, for the big unveiling. (Gathering in restaurants is a common theme for us.)  Laura made it fun by bringing eggs that she had hollowed out and decorated. We each received one and on the count of three, cracked them over our heads. I'm sure the restaurant staff loved all of the blue "It's a Boy" confetti they had to clean up.

Bless his heart, this little boy will be surrounded by estrogen. Cruz is entering a world of sisters. There is the aforementioned Stella, and the beautiful Anna, Marisa and Tavi.  They are all not only beaurtiful, but smart and funny and creative and fascinating. Martin has brought some wonderful girls into my life. I love them all dearly.

Once we knew the gender, Laura was able to decide on the theme for a room.  Martin had been in the USAF, so they decided on an airplane theme. This was going to be the first baby in my life since I had started knitting, and I really wanted to make him something special. I poured over website after website looking for a pattern that had an airplane.  I didn't find a lot.
Finally I came across a free pattern for this from the Knit A Little Store.  http://knitalittlestore.blogspot.com

But somehow just doing one dish cloth for a baby didn't seem that great, so I decided to do a few of them, add a "C", and sew them together to make a little cuddle blanket. I found patterns for all the letters of the alphabet on the same site, but had to modify the pattern to make the border and reverse the stitch to duplicate the stitch on the airplanes.

I am a firm believer that more is always better. So the "C" became "CMJ" and the few airplanes became 22 airplanes. (Can you say crazy?)
I had several skeins of Paton's Organic Cotton blue yarn. http://www.patonsyarns.com/ , but I knew I would need more and ran to my local Michael's http://www.michaels.com/ to pick up more. I guess you can bet where this is going. After an exhaustive search through all the local arts and crafts stores, fabric stores, yarn stores, and finally the Paton's site, I realized that I had started a project with yarn that had been discontinued.
Thanks goodness for Google search and online shopping. I finally found a site called Do It Yarns http://doityarns.com/. They had enough of the yarn left in stock to see me through to the end of the project. They were incredibly nice and helpful, even crediting me back for some of my shipping costs because they were able to ship if for less than they thought.  How often does that happen?

I could do a square in about a day, if I didn't have anything else to do. Those days don't come around often, so this took me a couple of months to finish. It was tempting to just leave it stacked up and take the squares out to lay them out every once in awhile. But babies can't wrap up in a stack of dish cloths, so I had to face my fear that I was going to ruin it when I started stitching the squares together.

Once again it was You Tube to the rescue. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3rvJx3-9Xs  This woman gave me lots of options. I made a disaster of most of them, but finally was able to do a decent backstitch.

Now my dish cloth blanket is just waiting for cool weather to keep Baby Cruz all cuddly and warm. See, he is smiling just thinking about it.


Jeannie

Let's Hear It For the Boys!

So this weekend Cruz finally arrived. Yeah, I know I already posted about this, but I really just wanted to show you his picture again. Isn't that just the most beautiful face?

Mom was gonna be in the hospital for a few days after delivery, so Dad and Cruz camped out in the room with her. I'm sure you notice a theme in these two pictures. Let the brainwashing begin.

So Tia Katie stepped in to take care of Stella while Mom and Dad and Cruz were on vacation. Those are Dad's words, not mine and certainly not Mom's. (Aren't these two pretty girls?)

And I took care of Jake.  I borrowed this picture from his mom. Check out that smile! You just gotta love a pit.

Jake spent the weekend with me and the boys. They were overjoyed to know he was coming. The black poodle is Sam. That is his overjoyed face,

Sam came to live with Roscoe and I almost four years ago. It's hard to believe that it has been that long. It's also hard to believe that there was ever a time when he wasn't part of the family.

When Sam was five, his first family decided that he wasn't a good fit anymore. He had bitten a few folks and was generally a little on the ornery side. His story on coming here is a pretty good one, but for another time. Suffice it to say that he is here and happy and pretty much the best behaved dog I have ever had.

The little white one ... that is Roscoe. (Also know as Scooter by Jake's mom. I have no idea why.) Roscoe has been with me since he was eight weeks old. Roscoe is three years younger than Sam, only has two teeth left, and is trouble from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail.

This weekend at Creekstone was all about me and boys. The days were pretty, so there was a lot of barking at ... I'm not sure what. But there was a lot of it! We walked and visited neighbors.

We took lots of great naps.

And played dress up!

I'm pretty sure they are never going to forgive me for this. But seriously, how cute are they??

I wish that folks who are afraid of pit bulls could spend time with Jake. He is a sweet, submissive loving dog who is afraid of anything unexpected. He is a goofball who will submit to a little white dog with no teeth. He is gentle and loving and happy and everything you would want in a dog. And after a long weekend with me ... he is a little fatter. Sorry Katie!

Miss you, Jake....





Jeannie

Chillaxin'

Today was a lazy kind of day.

I spent a long time rocking this one.

I counted these.

I kissed these.

And I had lunch with this one.

Everyone was chillaxin'.

I'm sure I will do more tomorrow.

Jeannie

Sippin' and Strokin'

As I said, I am not an artistic person. Can't sing, can't dance, can't draw. But like so many of "my kind" I'm obsessed with all of those things. American Idol, The Voice, X-Factor .... yep, I watch them all. So You Think You Can Dance... I even went to see them on tour. Art museums ... some of my favorite places. Musical theater ... I will go anytime.  So when a business called Sips-n-Strokes     https://www.sipsnstrokes.com/home.aspx advertised that I could combine my love of drinking wine with my desire to be artistic, and bring home something that I had created, I was skeptical yet hopeful.

The concept is great. You BYOB and pay $25-$30. They provide the canvas, the paint, the brushes and a fun teacher who takes the whole class, step-by-step, through the process of painting. Each month they put out a new calendar with a different painting every day.

Over the last few years, I've been several times.

Yeah, those are in my garage.














Believe it or not, some people actually wanted a few of them. And a few even made it into my house.

And honestly, there are a couple that I just can't find. Crazy, huh?

Anyway, last night my friend Amy arranged to take several of us to paint an angel. (Cool friend, huh?)  So six of us descended on the studio for a night with Wendy LoVoy. The class was packed, as is often the case when Wendy is the teacher. Amy brought wine in all colors and lots of cheeses and crackers. By the time the class started, we were well into our first glass (I might have been on my second) and were raring to go.

I did that! I think it will make it into the house along with the angel I painted last month.

Can you tell we had fun?

  

Don't you love the image of the nekkid lady behind us?

As an added perk, Wendy had a surprise give-away for the evening. Now, I have won things before. I won two free burgers and a baseball cap from Hamburger Heaven once. I think that's it. So, I kind of never get my hopes up too much when it comes to winning things. But last night was really my night. I won unlimited free classes for a year!!! A YEAR!!!! 

So ... be prepared. There are sure to be more paintings to come. Sorry.

Jeannie