LEAP YEAR DAY!

Happy Birthday to those of you who only have one every 4 years!

A few weeks ago, I went out to Murrieta (1 1/2 hour drive) to visit my friend Tracy.  We decided to visit the Escondido Wine and Chocolate Festival.  It's only about a 30 min drive from her place.  We chose not to do the wine and chocolate tasting which cost 20 bucks since we found out that we both get hot flashes when we drink alcohol so we tasted the free samples of chocolate that were being given away.  YUM.  This was pre-Valentines day with small chocolatiers displaying their candy.  It was a fun day with perfect weather. 

Before arriving at the festival we stopped at a gift shop called Canterbury Gardens and Gifts.  We had thought there was an actual garden but mostly it was a gift shop.  They had so many pretty items.  Eye candy for sure. 

Then we stopped at a fabric shop called Yardage Town that reminded me of the fabric shops my mom and I went to when I was growing up.  It had that same smell and stairs that went to the "bargain" basement; the staff were nice and friendly. 

This was their Valentine window display.  I wanted to find some fabric with strawberries on it but it was out of stock. Tracy bought some ivory silk fabric to cover the buttons on the WEDDING DRESS that she is making for her daughter's wedding coming up this July!!!!!  It's gonna be gorgeous.  She is so talented.  I could kick myself for not taking photos while I was visiting of some ballet costumes that she's made.  Professional tutu making and boning, things I've never attempted in sewing. So darn pretty. 

We both ended up buying some hand made toffee by a small company in Carlsbad (north San Diego coast) called Toffee Box .  Yes, they do mail orders!  It is really delish.  I'm rationing it and having a little taste every day or two!

On our way back we stopped at none other than HOBBY LOBBY!  I've only heard about them but they were never out here in California.  So I finally got to see what they're all about.  I checked out the yarn section and just had to put my hands on the "I Love This Yarn"!  I didn't buy any since I have to finish what projects I've got and use up some of my stash like a good girl. WOW, it was a big store but we could only stay for a bit since Tracy's hubby was making us dinner and we didn't want to keep him waiting.  We have 3 stores here in So Cal now but none in Los Angeles County :(

 

YARN!

FLOWERS!

DECOR!

Hope you're having a relaxing evening!  Thanks for visiting.

Some things I've been doing...

What's been happening around here that I meant to post about sooner:
I got a new "Welcome" mat back in June for the front door after someone stole my neighbors and mine back in May.  It's big, heavy, stiff and super scratchy.  Hopefully it will be enough of a deterrent for any future stealing of my mat!!

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Back in Mid August, a lady drove up the curb and hit a chair that got knocked into the window of the Mexican Restaurant a couple doors down from my shop.  I heard a loud bang and then went out, hurried back in and grabbed the camera and took these photos for the restaurant owner since he's my friend.  The lady's guardian angel was with her since she managed to go between 2 parked cars, 2 trees and up onto the sidewalk and just hit the chair into the window which broke but she could have smashed into the place and best of all is NO ONE WAS HURT!!  We found out later that she had a mild stroke and doesn't even remember going up the curb.  Temple City is a sleepy little place and not much excitement happens here!

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Also in August, my eldest brother and his wife invited our mutual friend, Tracy, her husband and me to go on their boat for the day.  We piled in his Jeep and headed northeast a bit to Silverwood Lake.  I hadn't been there in ages and we had such a nice day.  Being on the lake was so relaxing that I wanted to go out and buy a boat so I could feel that way all the time but of course that is not realistic!!!  We all had a great time.  I didn't want it to end.  Tracy brought cup cakes for my b-day and the frosting had melted off but hey still tasted yummy. 

Getting the boat in the water

Magical glistening water

Floating outhouses were on the lake

Long may you wave!

Bye, Silverwood hope to see ya again next year!

The crew

I've picked up my hooks after a seemingly long hiatus!  I want to make some holiday gifts.  I still have tendonitis in my finger that happened from too much gardening and I've tried giving it a bit of a rest.  So I should have some projects to share pretty soon.

This year has just blown by so fast and I've made some changes in my life that I will write about soon.  Hope you all have a terrific weekend and are warm, safe and dry. 

OXOX

Tracy's Crochet Gift

Hi! Tracy's present was a prayer shawl I made from a Bernat pattern that I started working on last fall.  I finally finished it last week.  The yarn is called Dante and is made by Berroco. This yarn is thicker (nubby) and then gets thin in some places and I followed the pattern in which you work from the longest part to the end (bottom) of the triangle.  When I got done with it, when it came to the end point, it was really too small.  Changing the yarn is what did it, I'm sure.  Me and my darn yarn changes.  Since I have very little time to actually crochet and then along with the fact I had to come up with a plan to make it larger, is why it took me so long.  I added 5 rows of dc down each side and some sc and pique stitch around the longest side and then added an edging on each side to match the bobbles/clusters and chains from the main pattern.  I like how it turned out and so did Tracy!  With each stitch I prayed she would remain cancer free!

These pictures are before I washed and blocked it.  I liked how after it was washed, it had more drape, was softer and opened up the spaces and it actually became larger, yeah!  I wished I'd have taken good "after" shots.

Can you tell I'm super happy I finished it?

 

Enough pictures yet?

THE BIRTHDAY GIRL!

I love you!

Taken just before we headed out to the Faire!  More on that later.

I'll be back soon.

Happy Birthday Tracy!

Hi, thanks for stopping by....

Tracy's gift!  I'll reveal what's inside next week!!

The cutest chocolate lollipop, Tracy will like it!

We're headed to the local Renaissance Faire to celebrate her birthday today and have a much needed girl's day out.  It's supposed to be hot and it's outdoors at a huge regional park and I'm armed with my hat and sunscreen.  I'm even closing and hour early today just to have more "fun" time.  Hey, a girl's gotta have a life outside of working the shop and on that darn house! 

Hope you're having a fantastic weekend!

(Edited to add that Tracy and I have been friends since the 5th grade).

It's a New Year, Twenty-Eleven!!

2010 Gone, let it go...  WELCOME 2011!  Such possibilities a new year holds for us earthlings.  As far as resolutions go, I think I'll just keep the one I made last year.  I was to compliment others on something about them, their clothes what they were doing, etc. when I noticed it.  See, we all think things and rarely say it for whatever reason but I just decided that I was going to make an effort to SAY IT not just think it.  I know in a small way it brightened several people's day when I complimented them.  I also think that visiting other bloggers and when we leave comments, we are doing just that!  

How has blogging changed your life?  For me it has been wonderful new friendships, like a journey across the rainbow to find not a pot of gold, but something much better, the sharing of incredible talent, creativity, inspiration and ingenuity that is truly abundant in our world.  I've been awestruck at the beauty, laughed till I cried at the humor, been enlightened and changed my mind about things, all this I've found on blogs.  Maybe that is the gold we search for!  Thank you for that, thanks for contributing to my life and making it richer!

This reminds me of the song "Unwritten" by Natahsa Bedingfield:

Feel the rain on your skin
No one else can feel it for you
Only you can let it in
No one else, no one else
Can speak the words on your lips

Drench yourself in words unspoken
Live your life with arms wide open
Today is where your book begins
The rest is still unwritten

It's a new year, and it's YOUR life, go write it!

 

 HAVE A HEALTHY, JOYFUL, PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!

Going to the County Fair

Yes, I know, we couldn't have chosen a hotter day to go to the fair, and we've been having such nice days.  That's what happens when you're a working stiff like me!  It was a toss-up between tomorrow (hot) or next wknd (the last wknd of the fair, lotsa people).  We chose HOT over PEOPLE.  If you've never been to a metropolitan city you have no idea how many people there can be in one area at a time.  In LA everybody drives a car so it's people+cars!

I'm going to meet my friend Tracy there after work and we're gonna check out the needle-arts, crochet & knitting projects, see weaving, spinning and candlemaking demos and check out the quilt show.  I always like to quickly see the barnyard/4H club animals, too.  It just wouldn't be the county fair without smelling like it!

Yup fall is here, we can tell by the heat that burns the leaves off the trees instead of them changing colors.  I'm really hoping it doesn't get past 95f tomorrow.  I'm gonna have to find one of my "packed up because we're going to be moving, HATS" tonight so I don't burn my face off.  Since Tracy is still getting her energy back after her cancer surgery and treatments, we'll just rest and duck into the air-conditioned marketplace bldgs when we need to.  It'll be fun even if it'll be hot.  I even heard they have deep fried frozen lemonade this year.  What's up with that?

Here's a sneak peek at some of my new stash I got on ebay.  I hope I have enough for the project I want to do.  I'd better get back to work, the UPS, DHL and Fedex bills are calling out to be reconciled.

Hope you get to do something fun this weekend!  Take care!

Red Box Movies

Have you heard about Red Box?  I noticed one in the grocery store last week (yeah, I know I'm behind the times).  They have them all over in the USA.  You can rent movies for a dollar a day.  It's a large automated kiosk full of the latest movies including new releases.

This works for me since I don't have cable, dish network or anything with a million channels at home.  I  just have bunny ears, the antiquated way to watch TV and one of those dtv converters.  Believe me, if I had a bunch of channels I'd be watching TV in the small amount of time I have at home and NOTHING else would get done.  I'd watch all the "how to" shows and then I'd never have the time to actually put to use all the things I was learning about from those shows.  I may get it later if I ever get to retire!

This is the real Coco, left and Audrey Tautou

I watched the movie Coco Before Chanel.  It's French with subtitles but that was ok since I like the sound of the French language.  The movie was very good, a tad sad though.  Audrey Tautou was fabulous as Coco.  I've been sewing since I was about 7 and the story of Coco being a woman designer in her time is a wonderful thing.  Hardly a day goes by that I don't think of all the brave and talented women that came before me and paved the way for the women of today to be just about anything they want to be.  They don't have to be prostitutes, seamstresses, house cleaners, librarians, teachers or wives for that matter.  It's certainly ok for women to choose those professions but the door is wide open to do so much more.  Coco got rid of the corset.  Have you ever worn one?  Fun for about 20 minutes and then get me outta this thing.  She gave us the little black dress; a comfortable feminine suit; taught us to not over accessorize and always look and smell like a lady.  Her Chanel No. 5 perfume was the first ever designer fragrance way back in 1920.  She passed away the year I was in 6th grade, 1971.

My grade school cafeteria, what a cool 60's building!

This reminds me of when I was in 5th grade circa 1968-69 that 4 of my girlfriends and I decided to wear pants to school the next day.  I've always been a sort of rebel and growing up with 5 brothers made me toughen up but I was never a tomboy.  Well, the 5 of us did show up in our brother's pants and guess what?  We were treated as semi boys that day.  Our teacher was a woman and yet she made us stand in the boys line before and after recess and again when we walked to the cafeteria at lunchtime.  We were told not to wear pants anymore to school and as I recall we didn't.  GUESS WHAT??  About a handful of years later when my younger brother had her for his teacher and I needed to go get him and my little sister from school, guess what this same teacher was wearing?  Yup, you guessed it, PANTS.  It was a pantsuit but still what a hypocrite.  A few years later when I was in junior high we could wear nice pantsuits to school but most of us still wore dresses.  Because the mini dress was popular we wore shorts under our dresses.  By high school most of us gals wore pants all the time.  Bell bottom jeans were all the rage and that started all of us wearing jeans up to present time.

Hey I'm outta here.  Work's over for the day and I'm headed up to the mall to use my coupon for a free sampling of 4 shades of the new Chanel lipsticks.  You all have a nice weekend and thanks for stopping by.

Tracy's Lovely Tea Party

Hi, I'm back finally feeling more myself.  What a dreaded few weeks feeling like c**p has been and so glad that is behind me.

I wanted to share our lovely tea birthday party we had a couple Sunday's ago celebrating my bestest childhood friend who turned the big 5-0 on the 12th.  Her sis called me and said let's meet at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Laguna Niguel in the Dana Point Harbor to do a little surprise tea party for Tracy and I said, "I''ll be there"!  My buddy Tracy has been fighting breast cancer.
Here's a pic of her, isn't she cute?

Her family moved next door to us the summer that Tracy and I would be in 5th grade come the fall, and our moms were lifelong friends as well as our sisters, too.  We recently lost Tracy and Blythe's mom, Eileen, and we miss her but she was partying with us that day in spirit.  While growing up, Tracy and I were inseparable.  We had vivid imaginations and lived in our own world.  In the summers, she would go on vacation and I was lost without her.  I would take care of her cat, George and I'd go to feed him and when he would meow and cry, I completely understood. 


Here's the entrance.  If you've ever had the pleasure of attending an event or being a guest you are lucky as you well know because you are treated very well at the Ritz-Carlton hotels.  If you ever get a chance to go to one please do, as it's fun to dress up now and then.

Here's the lobby...

Here's the party girls from left to right:  Tracy's daughter, Alyssa who's 20 and is a beautiful ballet dancer; Blythe, Tracy's younger sister; my mom, Jeanne; Tracy, Me, and my sis, Yvonne.

Here are all the treats; little sandwiches, fruit, tea and several desserts, yum!

Everything was very delish and they kept coming to make sure that we had hot water for our tea and checking up on us.  They did however knock over one of the teapots full of hot water with a bit of tea in it and had to change one of the tablecloths, but it was okay since it gave us a little excitement for the day and nobody got burned!  Other than that, we had a terrific time catching up on all our lives and promising to get together and to keep in touch.

Tracy and me...

May I ask you a favor?  Could you put Tracy in your prayers?  I really want her to have many more b-days and to be able to see her grandchildren someday, thanks...from the bottom of my heart.  Have a great weekend!

Ladies' Day Out

Good Evening!  Last Saturday my bestest childhood friend and I met for an afternoon of talking, eating and shopping at the new Victoria Gardens in Rancho Cucamonga, CA.  It is about halfway between us so travel time is about the same since we live sorta far apart from each other.  If you've never been to this pretty outdoor shopping mall you should go for a visit.  It is 150 acres of stores, like a little town of just pretty facades of storefronts. Most major stores are there and you have fast food and good restaurants and a movie theater, too.

We mostly sat outside and talked, catching up with the goings-on of our lives.  It was such a pretty day, a bit warm for the 1st day of spring but I'm not complaining!  We ordered the peach/green tea drink from Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf and it was soooo good!  It's the one on the bottom right.  Wish I had one right now...

That particular drink is just there temporarily so you should go right now and try it, yum!

I got these from a shop called Francesca's .  I just couldn't resist.  I'm only using one right now for my house key since I'm always trying to find it in the dark on my front porch!

Our lovely day came to a close after eating at Paisano's Italian restaurant.  Sad to say good-bye since everyone's so busy all the time and getting together doesn't happen as often as it should.  Hope you get to meet up with a friend soon to chat and hang out!

O' Happy Day to Ya

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

This is a young Hummingbird after she had just left the nest last Spring.  Her mama was close by watching.  She kept trying her new wings leaving and then coming back to this bush.  What a treat this was to witness.

I am grateful for all creatures large and small, for you and me, my family and friends.  Hug those close to you today and tell them that you love them.  Then eat turkey and all the trimmings to your heart's content.
What are you thankful for? 
Have a wonderful day!

Still Workin' On It But It's Coming Along...

I ONLY LIKE THE BUBBLES SCREEN SAVER!

The new Vista computer didn't want to see the weight scale.  Because of this, we had to manually enter the weight into the program.  Below is my son and Danny talking about how to fix a few of the issues we are still having with it.  I haven't tried to install some of the older software I have yet.  Vista may not allow any of it.  Time will tell. 

 

Here is the mess with all the cords everywhere.  Right now it is a tad more organized than this but it is still a mess since we have to keep working with it.

 

Last Friday we seemed to get it to work and see the scale, YEAH!!  Working today as well, YEAH!  Now to get to know Vista.  A different animal than XP.  I'll get to tackling the cords this week.

I spent my Sunday, taking lotsa pics of stuff I'm gonna sell on ebay.  I have all the shipping capabilities anyone could want, so to take advantage of that, I sell stuff when I get inclined to do so now and then.  Check out my stuff on ebay (click here)

Hope your computer is having a good day and that you are having a great one!