The Material Girl

Snoooooow!

First measurable snowfall is coming tonight! Just a little, but just enough :)

Went shopping this morning again, of course. Up by 3:30, on my way to Meijer to pick up a toy box for the foster monster, and then on to Joanns for the thread cabinet. I was there by 6:20 and decided just to wait by the door rather than in the truck and it was a good thing! One of the employees came out for a break and asked what I was there for. I told her and she said they only had one, she would grab it and put it by the register for me. When the store opened, some lady ran past me to the back where the cabinets were supposed to be and hollered at one of the other workers "Where's that thread cabinet?!". Close call! (Yes, I brought it home...it's nicer than I thought)

Anyway, after that I went home and we decided to head out for breakfast and Benchmark auto. Picked up some new speakers for the little Jeep and will probably go back in January for the rest of the package :) Who needs trunk space when you don't have much to start with?

Really looking forward to sleeping in tomorrow morning. These 3:30am wakeup calls for shopping are getting old. The employees at Mejer are starting to recognize me.

All in all, I did get pretty much everything on my list and never once went to the mall. Everything I needed from there was ordered online, with free shipping. And we ordered the tv for Mama K from Crutchfield, got it for the same price that everyone else had it for (as a doorbuster) and got free shipping, and no sales tax. And we didn't have to camp outside Best Buy for 2 days (which frankly, wouldn't have made it worth it...AFAIC there was nothing worth actually camping out for this year).

Time to go play with my new stuff and check the weather report again :)

Blue Friday

It's that time of year again! Shoppers unite!

Well, sort of. I was at Meijer for the last 2 days, scoring deals on stuff like diapers, digital photo frames and cheap movies. I also hit Joanns today for some more fleece for a hat/scarf/blanket set for my mom and a bunch of rulers. I should be able to square almost any size block very quickly now!

We had a good thanksgiving with the Russian's parents and extended family. When we got home I started decorating outside. Decided to forego the lights on the house this year since we just had it painted and I didn't want to mess up the gutters already! We've also decided not to have an indoor Christmas tree this year, so I decorated one of the redbuds outside with my C7 lights and a bunch of giant ornaments courtesy of Sams and Meijer. You can definitely tell how high up I can reach! LOL

We had a new sign delivered yesterday from Missy's Country Woodcrafts. We now have a 40" high Joy sign and a matching Peace sign. They did an outstanding job on the new peace sign, I would highly recommend them (and I don't just say that because they deliver to my front yard, either!). I think the peace sign is going to be a one of a kind, however. It was a special order and I think they had trouble delivering it since it didn't fit in the truck!

So tomorrow morning I'll be hitting up Joanns for their Guttermann thread rack and who knows what else. I didn't exactly plan to buy those 3 bags of rawhides at Meijer this morning. ;)

You know you're tired when

You're rocking the baby to sleep, and you fall asleep instead.

Waiting for Wii updates to finish. Taking much too long. I just want to see what new VC games I might have missed!

I finally got some photos of Roscoe, I thought I was going to have to drug him in order for him to calm down long enough. I'm starting to think he's going to be a LOT bigger than Ralf was. At 6 months old he weighed over 70 pounds. He may end up outweighing Alice. In other news, Will finally outweighs Kenny! Yay Will! It's kinda sad when the cat is bigger than you, I would imagine.

Latest quilt blocks:
Colorado Arrow
Illinois Corn and Beans, NEVER AGAIN!
Georgia
Hoosier
Missouri Puzzle

Random junk

Almost done with the state quilt blocks. Finished Georgia, Colorado, Hoosier and Illinois over the weekend, working on Missouri's puzzle now. I think I just have the Virginia star left!

So I'm addicted to this Crosslogix game, which is a type of nanogram puzzle thing. Well, I found this site Griddlers, which has probably thousands of these stupid puzzles and now I can't stop doing them. I knew better!

We had a really good weekend, and did NOTHING. I figured out that for the last month, Will hadn't spent one day at home just hanging out with us, so we did that on Saturday. Yesterday we had to make the obligatory stop at Baba's, and church, of course. Last night I went to the grocery store by myself for the first time in I couldn't remember when. Amazing!

Of course this weekend we're headed to Grandma G's house for some shopping. I have the next week off, so at least we can travel during the week! Will's up to 14 pounds 11 ounces as of Friday the 14th. He still looks so small! I just can't believe he weighed less than 5 pounds when we brought him home. Another couple of pounds and he'll outweigh Kenny, which is really the goal after all. :)

XM Holly has started up, which is the only thing keeping me from starting a riot to bring back Ethel. I hate this merger (XM Sirius).

The State Quilt

So I've been working on this quilt that will eventually go to a kid in a family that lives here in town but hit some hard times. I thought of her when I was going through my stash one day and wanted to make quilts for her and her 6 siblings. It just seems like a good teenage girl quilt. So far I've got 8 out of 16 blocks done, and I'm a little over halfway done with the 9th. It's taking me about 1 night after work per block since they're all different, but I'm having a lot of fun with it! Let me know what you think!

Not sure which state this is, need to look it up

Same here...need to look it up

And again! You'd think I'd keep better notes!

Kansas

New Jersey

Ohio

California

Virginia

So, the sashing will be black and blue, and I haven't decided how to quilt it yet. I'm getting close to the wire on time to get this finished, so I might send it out of house for that.

So far, I like the look of the Jersey block the best, but it was a real pain! The blocks were parts of a kit that I picked up on the '05 Central Illinois Shop Hop. Of course, at the time my intentions were to go right home and make it up. LOL I didn't have anyone in mind for it then, though, and as much as I love Moda marbles, I don't want this in my house. Working on this after fleece season has reminded me just how much I do love quilting, and especially sampler type quilts.

I'm currently working on the Hoosier block, hope to get it finished tonight. They've got a nice little block over there in Indiana ;) Haven't gotten to the Illinois block yet, but I'm sure it will be boring and flat, right?

I'd really like to finish all of the blocks up this weekend and get started on the sashing, so I could have it done by the following weekend. I have the week of Thanksgiving off from work, but will have the baby all day and I'm not sure how much I can get done with him keeping me busy.

Somebody tell me what my next project should be!

And So It Begins

It seems that baby Will has discovered there's a difference between the Russian and myself. Unfortunately he figured it out while I was in the middle of a massage this evening, and he wasn't happy about it. I understand that he screamed for an hour and a half until I got home, and stopped when he was handed over to me. What I don't understand is why now, all of a sudden, this is a problem. It's not going to be good for him to be so attached to one person, so we're starting a new plan to help Carl soothe him when necessary. Hope this works!

Had a great weekend! My Mom came up again and we hit some holiday craft sales. I got a really cute hat and mitten set for the baby, and my Mom was buying those knitted dishcloths like they were going out of style! I think she bought at least 2 or 3 from every vendor that was selling them. And for some reason she can't walk past a kettle corn vendor without buying some. I don't get it.

I have my sewing room back! From fleece, that is. I got all of the hats for Chinese orphans turned in, and the blankets for the shelters here in town. I can see the carpet now! I even made a Rocky Road to California block the other night! I couldn't remember the last quilt block I'd worked on and was afraid I'd forgotten what to do, but I discovered that quilting is kind of like riding a bicycle. Without the wheels. And the handlebars. And the peddling. And the annoying seat.
Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed myself and look forward to completing this state quilt I'm working on. REALLY looking forward to it!

That said, one of our ex quilt shops is having a final liquidation sale this Friday.
I wonder how much damage I can do at 50% off? :)

Addict

Hi, my name is Tomi and I'm a Gymboree Addict. (Hi, Tomi!)

The Foster Monster is getting a new wardrobe courtesy of our friends at Gymbo and their 30% off coupon. Such cute stuff!

Other purchase of note this week: I finally bought a keyboard for my Palm. Should be here early next week, but now I'm noticing that the screen is acting kind of weird, so I'm wondering if I should send it off to Chris for the glass screen replacement now. I don't know what I'll do without it for a week while he has it. Maybe I should buy a backup? Wish Palm would come out with a newer model but I don't want a smart phone.

I've been playing with Phonezoo this week, creating all kinds of weird ring tones. Now Borat announces my text messages, and the Russian's new ring tone is the Mario theme. Whee!

Really disappointed with the lack of black friday ads thus far. I need to see that Meijers ad!

Grandma headed this way again for the weekend. The power of suggestion...y'know mom, there's a craft fair and I think I'll take the baby to it. Sure you don't want to come for that? :) As susceptible to marketing as I am, I come by it honestly.

Meeting with the girls tomorrow morning to make blankets for homeless kids. We need 19 total, I have all of the fabric and it's cut out, just have to get them together. I can't imagine that this will take very long, but what do I know? Made a really cute blanket for Will last Sunday, it's white on one side, blue moons and stars on the other. I also have the Clothworks Newton All Year set to make him a quilt.

He's just now starting to pay attention when we read to him, and he's finally getting a little grabby with his toys. Still not rolling over back to front, but we're practicing! He starts his RSV vaccines next Friday, wish us luck!

The Day After

I think I have an election hangover. Somebody let me know when it's ok to start watching Good Morning America again. I don't think I can stomach the Obama love fest for the next week or two.

Locally, I voted for more democrats than I ever have before, but none of them won, which I kind of expected. Sangamon County GOP machine at its finest.

Everything here is still going swimmingly. Will is 4 and a half months old now, he's smiling and laughing and squealing all the time. I'm trying to teach him to turn over but so far he's just frustrated with it. He's a little over 14 pounds, and 2' tall now. Such a cutie! If you want more details on our journey with DCFS shoot me an email.

Gearing up for Black Friday. I'm disappointed with the lack of ads so far, but have to keep reminding myself it's still a little early. I'm really anticipating the Meijer ad, that's probably where I'll be hanging out, but I'd like to see the rest for comparison shopping. And I'm sure I'll be at Joanns for their thread sale! Anyway, sign up at gottadeal.com to find out more on the ads!

The Fleece Project is done for the year, we ended up with a little over 200 hat and scarf sets. Shortly after that I was asked to make some hats for a couple of Chinese orphanages, and we'll have those finished by the end of the week. We're also making fleece blankets for every homeless kid in town, for Christmas. Those will also be done this Saturday. I'm really looking forward to being able to work on some of my own stuff for a month! I need to make some more pajamas, and I'd like to try my hand at a capsule wardrobe. I'm not convinced that it's exactly what I need to do, but I'm willing to do 4 or 5 pieces that all coordinate.

Work is still work. We have some new projects/customers coming on, and that keeps me busy and/or entertained.

I think that's about it, lots of sewing and taking care of Little Tot. Now it's off to work!