asu vs. lsu

aaron left this morning to hopefully watch the greatest upset in college football history tomorrow. i'm not much of a football fan but i did get a little knot in my throat when watching the video. he just called and said the game was moved up to 10 a.m. instead of 2 because of tropical storm gustav, which is not expected to hit the gulf coast til monday/tuesday. while it might not effect the game, it may interfere with his travel plans. we'll just have to watch and see.

do as the romans

i finally got the roman shade finished for the master bath. made completely from scratch. i installed all the hardware, including a stop pull and corded it all myself. yes, i am patting myself on the back. and - double bonus - it's fully functional. i did buy a pattern to make it, but in the end i didn't use it. the only thing i needed were measurements. which i'm sure i could have found somewhere on the web. the room is pretty close to done. i was thinking about taking the pattern on the shade and making some type of stencil with it to place around the room. not sure it'd be too much in the way of matchy-matchy. i'll ponder that a little while longer. i did buy a couple of shelves to install and plan on stocking them up with white pottery. i've been eyeing this vase. and these would also be a perfect addition. the possibilities are endless.

under construction

progress! most of the framing is done. the only walls left are the bathroom's. the shower has to be installed before the walls can be finished and hopefully that day will be today. here's week two of basement construction.

so screwed

corkscrewed! dana asked me to make a few hair accessories for her girls. mainly to go with their cowboy cheerleader outfits. although i found out shayna's decided cheerleading is no longer her thang, it's still a great fan accessory. here's shayna's bow. i'm pretty happy with my attempt at a corker bow. (funny name) and the poly star accent turned out great. it's the first time i've actually baked ribbon. luckily nothing was scorched or burned in the process.

i also made a few felt clips for alyssa using the star motif and cowboy colors. now to make one for mom and the whole family should be done. although i think adrian could use something to hold his mane out of his eyes while he plays. or he could just get a haircut!!

bumps in fun

saturday we headed up to tazwell, virginia to visit with jill and jerome's family. it wasn't too bad a drive, well, except for the extreme windiness of the last half hour of the two hour trip. i wasn't driving so it didn't really effect me. thank goodness.

i got to ride on the back of jill's harley for the first time. i was a little nervous but that soon subsided once we hit the road. i only rode for half an hour. jill didn't think i'd like riding all the switchbacks on the rest of the trip and she was probably right. we pulled off to get gas and i hopped in the car with aaron for the remainder of the trip. we had a little caravan going. jill and todd w/michelle on their harleys, jerome in his car with jigsaw and aaron and i in our car with bosco and marley.

we first stopped at jill's parents farm. there were four dogs running around so i let bosco and marley roam free. big mistake. marley decided to be a big dog and started barking at hannah (a german shepard puppy) through a screen door. hannah then jumped through the screen and pretty much attacked marley. jill was able to pull hannah off and i grabbed marley and took her to the car. looked her over and saw she had a gash above her tail and a few puncture wounds on her legs. thank goodness that was all. she was definitely shaken up. that cut our trip short at jill's parents. we decided to go ahead and head over to jerome's grandma's cabin, where we were staying for the evening. marley was acting a little gimpy so we wanted her to rest and we needed to get her some meds to prevent any further damage. poor pooch.

we settled into the old, rustic cabin set on jerome's grandma's property. i wish i would have taken photos of the interior. just about any animal you could think of was stuffed and mounted. seriously creepy. there were even cobwebs to add to the ambiance. luckily it was only in the main living area and not in any of the bedrooms. i don't think i could have slept if i knew there was a squirrel or possum staring down on me with their beady little eyes. we got the pups set up and headed over to cuz's for dinner. it's a local hotspot in tazwell. it had the weirdest assortment of food. it was a combination of chinese and barbeque. i saw an an article on the wall that pretty much summed it up, "oriental redneck." it was good, just odd. afterwards, we headed to the cabin. we were able to catch the fireworks from the county fair on our drive back. once at the cabin we had a few drinks, watched some olympics and pretty much turned in.

sunday we headed back over to jill's parents farm. we decided to leave the dogs at the cabin, didn't want to be nursing two dogs in two days. we closed the dogs in our room and opened up the back door so they had access to the deck. most of the pics are from sunday. so you can pretty much see how we spent the day. we returned to pick up the dogs on our way out. we opened the cabin door and bosco was right there. we can't figure out how he got out of the room. jerome's grandma tells us she saw him running around the orchard and heard marley barking away at him from the second story deck. she thought we had come home and let him out. when she didn't see the car, she decided to round him up just in case. apparently bosco had jumped or fallen or something from the deck. luckily he wasn't injured. he must have nine lives. so that's pretty much our weekend in a nutshell. we all had a good time and just had a few bumps in the fun. at least the dogs did. i wouldn't be surprised if we headed back again.

17 gallons

in case you were wondering what 17 gallons of drylock looks like when applied. ta-da! i'll try and take progression shots as the basement comes along. i finally got all the materials i need to start/finish making the roman shade for the bathroom. our house is just full of construction these days. here are some more pics of the "before" for the basement.

carowinds and then some

photos from our hike to glen burnie falls in blowing rock, nc. and our carowinds adventure. i would have taken more on the rides but water and holding on for dear life took precedence. we did manage to ride every coaster that we could. including one where you stand, one where you lay, one where your feet dangle and one where you spray innocent bystanders with gallons of water. it was a fun day for us both and my hair was a curly mess by the end.

a little cuteness on a monday afternoon

from time to time i'll try and post some of my favorite etsy sellers. today it's lou and lee. they make the cutest things for baby. mostly of the girl persuasion or for the little boy who wants some flair! diego?!? ;)

things are starting to get busy around here. we've decided to finish our basement. the walls need to be drylocked, which we've decided to do ourselves. once aaron started i think he quickly changed his mind. the stuff is super thick and we've already gone through a five gallons of it and only finished one coat on half the basement. he knocked out a quarter of it saturday and i chipped in last night and we got halfway done before running out. it definitely went faster with two of us working. i'll probably be spending most of wednesday finishing up so they can start construction. at least my blisters will get one day of rest before they multiple and enlarge!

tonight we're heading down to charlotte again. we've got reservations at the melting pot tonight. i think the last time we went was when i first got my braces on, about three years ago. so the westphals do do fondue. tomorrow we're hitting up carowinds. hopefully we'll have less of a crowd with kids back in school and the weather will be a little cooler. 88 degrees. which sounds tolerable. i can't wait.

i'll be posting pics from last week (went to a johnson city cardinals game and visited another waterfall in blowing rock.) and pics from tomorrow hopefully on wednesday. i've been bit of slacker when it comes to blogging. need to get back into the swing of things soon.

here's my card

just updated the shop with 12 new card wallets. i think i'm kaput on these little buggers, at least for now. i'll have a few new, different items to add hopefully by the end of the weekend.

almost...but not quite

i added a few more items to my shop last week. almost made it to 50 but fell a little short. finally busted out the alexander henry pear fabric and added a few items using it. card wallets seem to be a popular item so i'm off to make more. instead of five i'll probably make ten.

i'm still in the process of painting the bathroom. got all the green up and a coat of the blue. i'm not really digging the shade of blue i chose so i might have them exactly match the fabric for the window treatment. i did for the green and i don't know why i didn't go ahead with the blue too. live and learn.

remember this? i didn't name any names back then but i just got an email about it yesterday. read more here.