Busy busy busy

Today was supposed to be a day to recover after a long week, but I'm still exhausted. LOL!

Gillian started soccer on Tuesday and I think it's going to be fun for her. That meant that on Monday we went out and got her new soccer shoes and shin guards. Now we just need new socks (the old ones don't cover the pads all the way up her shins) and a new ball since her old one is too small. Ryan also got a new bike since his old one is waaay too small for him. His new bike is the same size as Gillian's current bike, although the lowest seat height on his bike is the same as the highest on Gillian's bike. I suspect she'll be getting a new, bigger bike for her birthday in May.

Wednesday was bowling (I didn't do well, but that's all right), with knitting that evening.

Thursday was supposed to be soccer again but it rained so the field was too muddy. The task of the afternoon was making the entries for the Twinkie Decorating Contest for the school carnival. The kids quickly decided that they'd rather eat the frosting than really work on their entries, and I did my damndest to be a good Mom and not do their entries for them. ;-)

Friday was the school carnival, and once again I'd drafted Greg into helping me run the Twinkie Contest room. It's the best job of the whole carnival because it means I set up the tables with the Twinkies on them, help judge, then sit in the room during the carnival and make sure no one touches the entries. Very cushy job! We didn't have as many entries this year as last year, but then we only got the notices out a week before since we had two weeks out of school due to weather.

The kids totally wore themselves out at the carnival and were asleep within minutes of their heads hitting their pillows. (Yay!)

Today I did a few things around the house, and Greg continued working on the awesome shelves in the garage:


He's going to make cabinet doors to go on those and it's going to be *fabulous.* The main purpose of the shelves is to get the luscious wood up off the garage floor, and I think Greg was a little surprised that the storage area at the top is already full of wood.


While he was working on that I ran the Bag A Nut (yep, that's its actual name) and picked up the old, bad pecans in the front. I picked up about 50 pounds of them, I think, and I'm tired now. I found three (yes, THREE) good nuts. I hate pecan weevils. There are still a whole bunch of bad nuts on the trees, unfortunately. It's been a strange year weather wise and I think it's bothered the pecan trees.

I hope you all are having a great weekend!

No more snow!

Last week we were snowed in, and this week it's—literally—in the 70s. Yee haw for Oklahoma weather!

I didn't get a whole lot done during Snowmageddon 2011, unfortunately. You'd think being home for two weeks that I would've, but I got almost nothing accomplished. The kids got recharged, which is a good thing.

The one project I managed to do start-to-finish was a pair of chokers. I've been wanting to make this pattern for a while, and finally I just sat down and did it:

The top one is my handspun and the bottom one is some Koigu. I love that I used all stuff from my stash on these. The pattern is from a semi-local fiber friend, Dawn, and can be found here.


I finally managed to finish a pair of socks that I started back in September:


I got smart and measured the socks before I wore them so that I won't have to constantly try them on when I get close to the toe shaping. Yay for me! (You'd think I'd have figured that out a long time ago, but I've always been so stoked to wear them that I've never taken the time to do that.)

They're my standard 64-stitch sock with a Catherine Misegade's heel. I love that method!

Speaking of feet...
My MIL sent me some fun shoes! (She sent shoes for the whole family, actually, but this is MY blog so I'm showing MY shoes. LOL!)



It was actually warm enough to wear them on Thursday to pick up the kids. :-)
Isn't that a gorgeous color on my toes? That's Isla from Zoya, and I'm in LOVE with their nail polish. Not only does it *not* stink, but the colors are fabulous! It's probably a good thing that they don't sell it within a five-mile radius of my house. LOL! (Please ignore the pasty-white legs and bathrobe.)


My awesome hubby bought me some rings for a belated Christmas present, and they arrived today!!!

(I'm modeling them on my left hand since I'm right handed and I have a HORRIBLE time taking pictures using my left hand—the camera is definitely made to be held with the right hand and NOT the left.)


That top one has a lot of neat sparkle. It's definitely more flashy that the next one:

I think they're so cool! They came from this Etsy shop, and he was very patient with me when I asked him a really stupid question. (I was so excited about getting these rings that I forgot how to read. ROFL!)


Greg has been trying some new things in bowling and they're really helping his game. My game continues to plod along in the 130s-140s, but I'm pretty happy about that. One of these days I'll get a 500 series and they'll be able to hear me squee-ing from the moon. :-)

Greg's project for the weekend is building some cabinets in the garage to replace the plastic cabinet we've been storing paint in, as well as creating some lumber storage. He's got a pile of gorgeous wood from his Dad and we need to have a better way to store lumber so that it's usable! Here's the start of the project:


He's going to get a planer and then look out, because I'm expecting some beautiful wooden things. :-)

Snowmageddon 2011

We have a lot of snow.

A LOT. (Not alot, that's a whole different thing.)

How much snow do we have? Well, 14" + at this point.

Here's looking out across the cul-de-sac to the neighbors' house, with the kids helping Richard shovel the driveway:

I took this picture to show the impressive drift at the corner of the roof:

The one along the fence is cool, too.

Here's Gillian's snow fort that she made using the snow from the driveway:

So that was February 2nd.

Today we got MORE snow:

I figure we got about 2" more, judging from the arms of the chairs.


The kids have been out of school Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and today. I suspect there won't be any school on Monday and possibly later since they're predicting more snow, and none of the neighborhoods around here have been plowed. This is a record-setting amount of snow and this area just isn't equipped to deal with it.

The grocery stores are pretty impressive--I've *never* seen the entire egg, bread, meat, and milk sections decimated, but there is NOTHING left on the shelves. Greg managed to time it just right this afternoon and got four dozen eggs at Braum's, thank goodness! I hadn't realized how many of my favorite recipes use eggs until we were down to five eggs.

Thank goodness we've not lost power so far! The 30-something hours we were without power a few years ago was sufficiently traumatic that we've stocked up on mini-propane tanks for our indoor-safe heater, but I'm hoping we keep power through the next wave of ice/snow.


Despite the kids being home I've managed to get a little bit of quilting done. This one, actually, was finished a few weeks ago but I'm just now getting to posting about it. This is Carolyn Lamp's quilt. She bought the blocks (minus centers) at a garage sale and put them together. I think it's a gorgeous quilt!



Aaand now Ryan wants my help with taking a bath so I'm off to do that and get back to quilting.

I hope everyone is staying safe and warm!