I just finished Ronan's costume

Connor is modeling it because Ronan was being difficult, but I think it will work out just fine.

comes complete with tail

what do you think? just a pig or has swine flu?

don't be alarmed ~addition~

that music is from my playlist located at the bottom of the page.

this month's theme is The Nightmare Before Christmas. My kids LOVE that movie. I have to admit that I have loved this movie ever since I went to it in the theater so many years ago.

I think that I will play around with having music on my blog for a while and see if I like it.
so far there is one down side with the player. I wish that I could upload some of my music from my computer. but I'll make due with what I can get with playlist.com but then again, maybe I just haven't poked around enough on the site to see if I can put my own music on
we'll see


addition: I guess you wouldn't be alarmed if you didn't scroll down to the player first... it doesn't load the player until you are at that section of the page. So either i will need to move it or I'll scrap it altogether.

surprise! two more hats...

I'd better be careful or I won't be able to make anything else.
while taking a break from the Christmas present for Emma, I decided to whip up a quick little hat.
for the last month I haven't done too much work on anything but the blanket for Emma for her Christmas present. well, that's not entirely true. I did make a couple of water bottle insulators/coffee cup cozies. oh and a small rug. but mostly Emma's blanket.
anyway, yesterday I got really tired of squares and sewing the squares together so I thought I should do something else for a bit just to give my brain and hands a break from that monotony.
at last month's sale, Lynn's minister and his wife and daughter came by and asked if I could make a strawberry hat. of course I can, but since I didn't get an actual order I didn't do anything about it until now (because a strawberry really would be cute and fun to do)
so I started one.I need to put seeds on the hat, but I'm still trying to figure out how I want to do it without having a lot of excess yarn tangling up the inside of the hat. Here it is so far. Red yarn does not photograph real well. but you get the idea.
once it's done I'll be posting it in my shop, I think.



I also made this cute hat. it's been a couple of weeks since I've worked on it. I guess I'm waiting for a little inspiration on just how I want to finish it. It is a new born size hat.
Timothy had been watching me work on this hat (click on links to see) and he asked me if I ever make boy hats.
well, I can, but I just haven't really done much by way of boyish hats - apart from the pumpkin hat and a couple of plain colored hats. I'll have to do a few of those and then I really should move on to some other things besides hats.

I promised and so here you go

I promised Charity that I would post pictures of my hair tonight. I'm not at all happy with anything but my hair... (except for the nerdy kind of part in my hair in this picture, but this is the best I'm going to get. It isn't easy taking a quick self portrait and my hair fell out of place before the picture took. oh well....
Here you go, Charity. I'll probably remove the embarassing pictures of giant, round me soon. please, just look at the hair :P

it has been about 6 years or something like that

I went to my sister today and had her cut my hair off.

I decided to go really short. I like it and so far no regrets. I just might allow someone to take my picture (which I hate really a lot since I've gotten old and scary looking) and I'll post one here to show off my new hair.

I tried to sleep in

but this morning Connor woke up and kept trying to get Ronan (who had crawled in next to me about 5 or 6 this morning) to wake up and play with him.

It wasn't working too well until Connor came in and announced that now he gets to have his birthday soon. that could only mean one thing. Snow.


the last of my lovely vibrant snap dragons are a bit chilly.
I guess it really is time to collect the seeds from all my flowers.

I just might have brought this on us. Yesterday I made a very spur of the moment decision to stop by the apple orchard and buy some squash. I've had a hankering for the last couple of weeks. now that I've fully accepted that cold weather is upon us and it's time for cooking in the oven all the time, it snows.

granted it won't last for very long, so I will enjoy this time of Connor being thrilled to look out the window and have his birthday to look forward to - in January.

more on the party

Emma had a very exciting day. she took the cookies to school and everyone loved them. she shared them with all the kids in her classroom and several of the teachers and the ladies in the office.
when she got home she showed me that a boy from school had given her a ring. it was a gigantic plastic diamond. he says he found it on the playground and just gave it to her.
her class signed a card for her and she got a card in the mail from aunt Shirley. Shirley always sends cards for birthdays and anniversaries. She's so wonderful.


Emma had a tricky time blowing out those candles. she started out with 4 boyfriends! then 2 then one. :)


can you tell what we had to drink at supper?


the cake and icecream was a flavor sensation. I got Emma a strawberry cake with strawberry frosting. she's very girly and decided that pinky pinkness was the way to go there.
She went with Daddy yesterday to pick out the ice cream and get a few other items for the party and she picked mint chocolate chip ice cream. it was an interesting combination of sugar. it kind of worked though.

everyone had such a very excited time. Connor and Ronan, but Ronan especially, had a very hard time sitting down and letting Emma open her presents by herself. I had a tough time getting good pictures with them in the way of the camera or getting them to sit down for a while.
birthday's are thrilling for all.

today is a GREAT BIG day

Emma turns 7 today, the 7th!

this year is a big one for Golden Birthdays. first Ronan, now Emma, and in a couple of months Timothy will have his.


this is our birthday girl this morning.
to make today a big deal for her - at school the kids usually take a treat to share on their birthday. I usually get Little Debbie's for them to pass around but I did the insane and made a double batch of sugar cookies and we frosted them and put sprinkles on them.
I usually don't undertake such a big project until Christmas when I make treats and stock pile them for Christmas day. but today is extra special and hopefully she will remember this for a long long time.

Happy Golden Birthday, Emma!
More pictures to come.

now that's a lot of rain

I don't know how much we've gotten today, but it isn't over and it's been raining ALL day. by all day I mean I woke up to earth shaking thunder a little before 1:00am. it really shook the house.
I wonder where that lighting struck for the ground and air to be so disturbed that we could feel it.
It was kind of fun, though, I really like thunder.
I don't like wind. I feel really vulnerable when the wind starts blowing hard. ugh. but thunder is kind of calming to me.
weird, I know