life...on a smaller scale

along with sewing i've started working with polymer clay. a little here, a little there. creating charms of little food items. here's the spoils from the past few evenings.

it's funny, in college i took a 3D design class and i absolutely hated it. i had a hard time visualizing things in the next dimension. look at me now, things have certainly changed. an evolution of the mind has taken place sometime between now and then. i'm amazed at how life-like they appear, good enough to eat. the picture doesn't do them justice. my favorites: the hostess cupcake, the moonpie and the blueberry slice.

i'm still learning techniques, perfecting the craft. i'll be selling them online soon. yes, the shop is still in the works. it's gonna be hard to part with them. they're like tiny works of art.

here's another picture with a dime to demonstrate the scale of the charms. suggestions on what'd you like to see?

today is a good day

although the weather is a bit dreary, today is a good day. as of 11:15 a.m. i am brace free. since, there has been a constant running the tongue over the teeth, huge smiles when i walk by a mirror, and the chopping and chewing of an ewwwy, gooey rice krispy treat. my orthodontist asked me what i was excited about eating when i got them off. i honestly couldn't think of anything. why? cause i've pretty much eaten everything i shouldn't. popcorn, caramel, ice chips. if it was on the list of don'ts, i did. then last night, i had a craving for rice krispy treats. i realized i hadn't had one in over 2 years.

after my appointment, i headed over to the grocery store bought a tray of sushi, a large bottled frappacino and a box of rice krispy treats. (i found out last week our grocery store started selling freshly made sushi.) weird combo, but it was oh so good.

and to top of the morning, i heard they're gonna build a target in boone.

this indeed has been a good day!

if you blog about it...it will come

my constant griping about my lack of a good camera has not gone unheard. my dad just got a new digital camera and asked if i'd be interested in his old one. my answer: of course i'll take it!

every so often

every so often my camera phone takes a crisp, clear photo. a very rare occasion.

three days and i'll be released from wire hell.

orbs and gnomes and truffles, oh my

saturday i headed down to asheville with jill and two of the nurses from aaron's office, kendall and michelle. first off, i got about an hour of sleep the night before. (yes, insomnia still plagues me) i did manage to function without being too cranky most of the day. we hit the downtown area for a little shopping. mostly window shopped and then grabbed a quick bite to eat.

we then headed to ox-ford (there's a hyphen, which was quickly pointed out to me) farm, where we would be residing that night. met dr. hapke...or i should say frau hapke. a former pulmonary doctor who now owns and operates the bed and breakfast. she sat waiting in her little golf cart by the entrance gate.

"did you tell her when we'd be arriving?"

"no!" we all glanced at each other, eyebrows lifted.

we followed her up the drive. past cows, sheep, peacocks and various other animals. including four large, white sheep dogs. we reached a tattered-looking little house nestled among some trees. how quaint. roosters crowed, sheep baaed. it was like stepping back to the old country. the house itself reminded me of anyones grandma's. outdated and packed full of knick-knacks. cranberry bread and tea sat waiting for us. quick tour of the rooms and history lesson on the house and farm. four rooms. we had two and four other women had the remaining two.

we had a few hours to kill before the concert. we sat out on the porch. sipped wine, relaxed and took in our surroundings. yes, i'm a little overdressed for the weather. it wasn't as cold as i make it look to be.

we headed downtown after a while. grabbed some drinks and appetizers then made our way to nickel creek show. by this time, sleep was calling. i sat most of the concert with my eyes closed. not sleeping, resting. bela fleck played first. mind you, i went to this concert not knowing any of the music. bela plays nothing but banjo i soon found out. wasn't too bad, but i'm not a fan of jammy type music, no matter what the genre. at least for me, bluegrass is a bit more tolerable then most. nickel creek, by far, the better of the two. found myself enjoying it more than i expected. already downloaded an album. stand-up bass, fiddle, mandolin and guitar. it's surprisingly good...i'm slowly becoming a mountain girl.

i was ready to crash when we got back to the farm. tea, coffee, cobbler and cranberry bread awaited us on our return. breakfast at 9:30 we were told. headed off to bed, no difficulty falling asleep. although jill and i chatted for about another hour before i dozed off.

9:07 i was up. didn't want to upset the frau by being late for breakfast. walked into the sitting room and met one of the four women also staying there. everyone else was out and about, checking out the farm. kendall and i sat and chatted with jane. the frau announces breakfast will be later than usual. we met up with the rest of our party and decide to take a hike up to the top of the property/hill.

it was a trek. dodging cow pies and avoiding electric fences. after documenting our accomplishment, we headed down. i went on a picture taking frenzy. mostly capturing my surroundings. orbs and gnomes...both deserve their own posts later.

got back to find a hearty breakfast waiting for us. we had worked up an appetite. bacon, eggs, applesauce, potatos, homemade bread/toast, grits. my first time eating grits. pretty good, not something to write home about. the frau told us stories while we ate. mostly of how medicine and nursing has changed over the last 50 years. three of the other four ladies were also nurses. new fact i learned: early nurses weren't allowed to be married if they wanted to make medicine a career. they had to be at the beackon call of doctors. my how things have changed.

after breakfast, we headed downtown again before leaving. we all decided we wanted to hit up the chocolate fetish before heading home. i splurged and bought 15 truffles. mostly for aaron, cause i know he loves chocolate. i did find i'm a bit of a dark chocolate fan. tried one made with cayenne pepper. sounds gross...but it was so yummy. mmmmm. i'm getting hungry smelling them.

shopped a little more. stopped at a pottery show on the way home. got home a few minutes after aaron got home from chicago. all and all, it was a good weekend. and i had to head back the following evening. this time to see family. what a busy week.

tomorrow aaron and jerome are going to the app. state game and then we're all headed to see big bad voodoo daddy on campus. another great weekend ahead of us.

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Now playing: Nickel Creek - When In Rome

she shrugged

here's the photo of the shrug i completed for carrie last night. once again, shitty camera-phone photo. it's supposed to have a twisted knot on the front but after coming down to model it for aaron, the knot was soon history. hence the seam right down the middle. i would have made it into a jacket but she really wanted it to be a pullover. maybe she can add some flair to cover it up. hopefully she likes it and will be able to wear it. it's really hard to size for people sight unseen. but i think i managed. i even added a zipper along the side, yeah me!

it's a modified shirt pattern that's made for knit fabrics. next i'll have to make one with the appropriate fabric to see how it turns out. my mom will be happy about that. she's been begging me to make her some empire-waisted shirts. another project to add to the list.

i'll post about the weekend tomorrow. now back to sewing.

thrift store score

i hit up a few more thrift stores and consignment shops yesterday and spent a grand total of $5.81. $4 of that going towards a matching pair of elephant vases. it's funny cause i felt like i was spending entirely too much on them. are prices at thrift stores a little outrageous? or is it just me? i am buying used, very well worn objects so i feel i shouldn't have to pay $3.50 for a blouse or $5 for a pair of pants. i guess i'm grumbling over the trivial. maybe i'm spoiled by garage sales. paying a dime or quarter sounds more reasonable in my mind.

what did i spend the other $1.81 on? i went back to the salvation army and there's a rubbermaid tub full of upholstery samples. it was restocked recently and i found 5 different patterns for a quarter a piece. they're fairly small but i'm sure i can find something to make with them. 2 unused zippers and a terra cotta pot later, i was done. pretty satisfied with my finds. i may have to hit up garage sales next spring. i was going to say this weekend, but the temps have dropped and we're leaving early tomorrow to head down to asheville. so it'll have to wait til next year.

i did get my hair did today. i'm quite happy with the results. i'm glad i found someone here who can style my hair. i was a bit worried i'd have to travel far and wide to get a decent cut. he's literally just 2 minutes away. he even gave me a hug when i left, which caught me off guard. after three cuts...it's become that kind of relationship. ;)

cache nab

"not leaving the house" isn't an entirely true statement. sunday aaron and i spent 3 hours searching for caches in the area. six finds including two micros. a few park and grabs including one at the mall. we went searching for the mall one last week and didn't have any luck. i checked with the cache log online and noticed someone found it after we searched. so i went back on my own and looked again. the coordinates took me to a light pole in the middle of the parking lot. completely baffled, i got out and looked all around the pole. i finally lifted up the base and voila...an altoid tin. clever hide.

aaron and a micro find. this one was hanging from the cap on a chain link fence.

barrel of monkeys? one of the things you can do is leave a little calling card in the cache if it's big enough. this is ours. i was hoping to use them on our next hunt.

unfortunately our next expedition yielded nothing. yesterday we went out and searched for a few more. we weren't having much luck and neither one of us could figure out why. it was frustrating. we returned home and i got online and all the caches we were looking for had been removed. apparently the guy was one step ahead of us and decided yesterday he was gonna leave the game and remove all his hides. what a relief, we thought we were going crazy and suddenly got really bad at playing. good to know it's neither.

aaron leaves for chicago this evening. i'll be flying solo til sunday. i am heading down to asheville saturday with jill and a few of the nurses from the clinic for a concert. bela fleck and nickel creek. i have no idea if i'm gonna like it, but it should be fun to go out. we're staying the night and doing a little sight seeing. i'll report back with pics later.

strawberry in the abstract

lately this has become more of a crafting blog than anything else. i might as well add a few more items to the mix. this will be an image obese post. you'll be able to see what occupies a majority of my time and why i haven't left the house in 4 days.

above is my latest project. the strawberry wristlet. the main accomplishment: ZIPPER installation. i've been avoiding them after a mishap i had early in my sewing career. i recycled the zipper from the previous post pillow sham, found a tutorial online on making zippered pouches and presto...cute bag! it's even lined. the zipper is a bit wavy, probably due to old age and i haven't figured out how to prevent the top edges from puckering. but other than that, i'm pretty happy with the results. i can't believe i've been avoiding zippers this long.

in may i made irina a cute reversible tote from a thrift store skirt and matching fabric from my stash. one of the ladies at her church asked where she got it, i got a call a few days later asking if i'd make one for the "church lady." we were in the process of moving and getting settled that i hadn't gotten around to making it til last week. she wanted the exact same purse i made irina. of course, that was impossible. i only had enough of the skirt for one bag. i found some retro flower fabric and used the same striped fabric i used on irina's. hopefully the lady will like it. i'm actually getting paid for this one.

since i was already sending irina the purse, she asked if i could make a few pouches to hold mp3 players. apparently at her dental office they allow patients to listen to mp3 players while getting treated. they have them sitting on the patients chest and on more than one occasion the player has crashed to the floor. she wasn't sure about size, so i tried to make them big enough to accomodate most players. again recycled fabric.

i'm currently trying to master a cell phone cozy. stupid me. last time i was home, my mom was going to buy one and i told her i could make one easy. come to find out, it's more difficult than i thought. i've trashed two already. but since i'm sending a package home with all these other projects, i have to include the one i promised her. i spent most of last night trying to decipher how to make it work. i think i may have it now. we'll see if i have anything to post tomorrow.

fold-over clutch

last week i hit up a few thrift stores in the neighborhood, mainly looking for animal print fabric for carrie. she asked if i could make her a leopard print shrug for her halloween costume. i was hoping to find something already made that i could just reconstruct. i'm not too comfortable sewing wearable clothing. unfortunately, everything i found she didn't like and now i'm going to have to construct something from scratch. i'll post photos of my success or failure next week.

on my quest, i did find a big bin of fabric scraps. and stuffed in said bin was a set of vintage pillow shams. i used one last night and made this fold-over clutch. i'm quite happy with how it turned out. it'll be added to the shop when i get it started. still in the process of making inventory. i still can't decide if i want to concentrate on one type of item. handbags, baby wear or just have a hodgepodge of everything and anything.

i'm a 7.25

reposting from got shoo. too funny. sad to say, i can definitely relate.

i may have to revise this...yes, i did some more thinking. if this guy is only an 8.5 then i'm clearly closer to a 3 maybe 4. although i did just spend the morning watching the first cd of season 3.

new addiction

just as i suspected, we are geocache hooked. on our 17 mile bike ride sunday, we stopped three times to treasure hunt. here's aaron and his dad stopping to look for the "mossy rock" cache. much to aaron's frustration, i found all three. after the second one he asked if i'd let him find at least one. unfortunately, i got a little excited when i saw it and let out a little squeal.

yes, we're addicted. since, we've each done one on our own. apparently there's a little subculture that goes along with caching. we're trying to learn the lingo and etiquette now. we'll be pros before too long. funny thought.

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Now playing: DETERMINATIONS - Housewife's Choice

in confidence

saturday i went out on watauga lake with vivian and the crew. we weren't sure when mark would be arriving so aaron stayed back and planned to meet up with us later. i got a text from aaron: we're going to do our own thing, call me later. i just assume they're gonna do some father/son bonding and get the whole "jane" situation sorted out from the get-go. when i arrived home i asked aaron if he said anything. "no, he mentioned something about karma when we were talking about getting him a digital camera for his birthday. he didn't elaborate and said he'd tell me more about it on the bike ride."

okay.

"should i bring it up?"

"sounds like he will soon."

backstory: apparently mark and jane are no longer a couple. we've heard this from both danny and nate. but he hasn't said a single word to aaron and it's been 2 months. he's talking and acting like they are still an item. do we keep pretending we don't know?

yesterday we went on the 17 mile virginia creeper bike ride. (i'll have pictures to post later) afterwards i decided to take a hot bath. when i got out and went downstairs the conversation aaron and his dad were having went down to a whisper. it's THE talk. a little awkward, so i grabbed a water and headed back upstairs. i could barely hear what was being said...something about fake sprained ankle, parade, funeral homes. it's so out of context that i decided not to listen plus i know aaron will tell me later. so i thought. he comes up an hour later.

"so?"

"he asked me to keep it in confidence and i want to respect that."

WHAT? hello?!? wife here!

nothing more was said. it was late and i knew it'd be useless to argue, especially with mark in the next room. i'll be saying a lot tonight. mark went down to asheville til tomorrow. do you think aaron should tell me or not? i was just wondering if i'm in the wrong here or at least get other opinions.