Happy Halloween!

Thank you, everyone, for the wonderful birthday wishes!

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I'm slowly becoming human again after a bit more illness. Blah blah blah, I'm tired of being sick and I might be human again by the end of the weekend!

I did manage to make a costume for Ryan out of this:


We got an ear-and-tail set for each kid at Walgreens a few weeks ago, and Gillian had black clothes to be a black cat but Ryan didn't have anything tiger-ish, so this is what I came up with:

The pants are way short because I ran out of fabric and had to piece the bottoms, but I think it came out all right.

Here they are in cat mode:




For Halloween at school Ryan got a goody bag, and it had some vampire teeth:


He'd never seen them before so he had a great time. He'd put them in and giggle. Four-year-olds are fun!

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Greg has done a tremendous amount of work on the fence:

There will be a big gate in that space. I think it looks great! It changes that space so much, and I love it already. I didn't like weeding that back flower bed because I always felt like I was on display--especially with my rump in the air pulling weeds! It's going to be so nice to have it more private. That section of yard was in very public view from five different houses so it's really going to be nice to have it fenced!

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Birthday gifts have been arriving, including this wonderful magnet from Aunt Louise:

She always finds the neatest things!


These beautiful earrings are from my wonderful Mother-in-Law, Vickey:

I tried to get a better picture but that was the best I could do at the moment. I'll have to try again later (when the kids are at school!).

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I hope that everyone had a good, safe Halloween!

Happy Birthday To ME!

Today was my birthday, and life is wonderful!

Last night I had a knitting/pot luck party and we had SUCH a good time.

DJ made an absolutely incredible cake:

(Be sure to click to embiggen!)

I love this skull and bones sticking out:


This was perhaps my most favorite part of the cake, although the house was pretty incredible!!


Here's a view from the back:


Here's DJ cutting the cake. I made her do it because I couldn't cut into that amazing creation!

Note the audience--Ryan and Gillian were about to pop!

Gillian was pretty thrilled to get a pumpkin, although she didn't end up eating all of it. I think it didn't taste the way she thought it would. LOL!


This is the card that the kids made for me. Isn't it fabulous? Gillian did the flowe, bat, and cake, and Ryan did the faces (complete with nose taped on for a 3D effect for the one inside the card).


Calista made me this neat card:


I love handmade cards!

Greg and the kids got me this AMAZING camera bag. I haven't put my stuff into it yet because I've had a lot of "help" from the boy who was enjoying investigating every nook and cranny.


Tomorrow morning when the kids are at school I'm going to play with it and get all my camera stuff organized.

And Sara brought a chocolate cricket that I got talked into eating. *I* don't have any pics or anything of that event but I know there are about 8 women at the party who do. Here's the button that came with the piece of candy:

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I'm really behind posting about when my parents were here, but I'll try to get caught up over the next week or so.

Have a great week, everyone!

I have a quilt featured on http://www.quiltersshowandtell.com/ so go check it out!

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In knitting news, Sivia's Dué Amori fingerless glove and scarf pattern is now available. Here's mine, although I'm finished with the first one and done with the fan on the second one:

You can get it here.

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In house project news, the rock was delivered this morning and we're a little more than halfway done putting it where it goes. Here's how it looked before rock:


And hopefully tomorrow I'll take a picture of it mostly done. I'm not going to do any more shoveling tomorrow (probably) because I managed to give myself an almost-blister in two places on my hands. It never occurs to me to use gloves until it's too late. DOH!

We also have a huge pile of soon-t0-be-a-fence-and-deck in kit form (hahahaha, that would be a big pile of wood and concrete bags). We're planning to put a deck platform on top of the cracked concrete slab, which will both beautify the back yard area and make it easier to keep mud/dirt/leaves/etc out of the house. I applied for a permit to build the deck this morning so hopefully we can get started on that soon.

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I brought home my stuff from the fair and my quilts have an interesting smell. If you put your face down close to them, you can definitely get a whif of fair food. It cracks me up! I'm sure it'll be gone in a week or so, even sooner if I air the quilts outside.

I hope everyone is having a great week!

House Projects and A New Grill

We've been really busy around here. Actually, Greg has been really busy--I've pretty much not helped at all.

Here's what he's been doing:

He formed and poured a curb, emptied out the area between the house and the curb, and now it's ready for stone! The plan is to put down weed cloth (leaning up against the house), then the stone will be delivered on Tuesday. We ordered Oklahoma River Rock to go in that space and it should be gorgeous!

The big pile of dirt is going to get redistributed around the yard.

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Greg needed a new grill and I talked him into getting a new one.

Here's the old one:

Those are the second set of grills and once again they're totally rusted.

Here's the new grill:

And the very happy hubby:

Today was his 37th birthday so he cooked sweet potatoes and incredibly yummy steaks. We got him a chocolate truffle cake and everyone was very happy!

He says he had a really good birthday, although he's exhausted. He did a ton of work around the house so that's not surprising. He also pulled out the 10' of chain link on the side of the house as well as the concrete slab that was behind it (we can't figure out why it was there, although Greg thought maybe it was to prevent dogs from digging under the fence). It already looks better, and it's going to be even nicer with a 6' privacy fence across it.

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I hope everyone had a great weekend, and have a great week ahead!

I've had a lot of people asking about the pattern for the black and tan quilt that I posted about in the last few posts. The pattern comes from New Cuts for New Quilts, and is called Trident Crossing. It's an awesome book!

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I finished a doily and finally got it blocked.

The pattern is Coronet from Marianne Kinzels' First Book of Modern Lace Knitting.


I used size 30 cotton Cebelia, and some awesome needles from Bridgette's Fiber Source. They come in small sizes, down to 000!! I love how ephemeral the doily is. It went pretty quickly and I definitely want to make another one. I might use slightly larger thread though, since I don't like how uneven my knitting is with that thread.

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Thanks everyone for all the very kind comments (here on the blog, on Ravelry, and in person!) on my fair winnings!