little stitches

in conjunction with my new camera lens, i also got two new craft books. i can spend hours perusing the craft section at the bookstore. which we ending up doing sunday. yep, i keep feeding my minds eye. sooner or later i'll actually put it to use.

the first book i got: amy butler's little stitches. it's got a bunch of cute patterns i can't wait to try out. i absolutely love her fabric and thought this would be a great way to put some of my fabric stash to use. although looking at most of the projects it looks like i'll be purchasing more of said fabric. (one of the main reasons i adore her fabric is that she puts together collections. so you have a wide variety of fabrics to choose from that coordinate and have the same color palette.)

the other book i got was free-style handmade bags and skirts. this book has got a lot of cute, simple bags and skirts and also comes with a few patterns. i know i got a book a few months ago that is somewhat similar. but you can never have too many books with great ideas. at least in my opinion. so the craft book library grows.

with all the meds and the constant driving back and forth to the doctor, i haven't had any desire to do anything let alone sew. i'm on day 12 of the stimulating drugs and i'm so ready to get the show started. by the looks of my appointment this morning, the retrieval is probably going to be saturday. i have another appointment tomorrow and will definitely find out the date then. (there is a slight possibility it could be friday.) i thought for sure this cycle would be faster than the last since my meds were doubled. for some reason i've been a little bit slower responding. who knows why. i'll update tomorrow when i know more.

telephoto

one of my birthday gifts was a new camera lens. it's a 75-300mm telephoto lens. below (left) is the maximum zoom on my 55mm lens and on the right is the extreme zoom on my new lens. awesome.

and, of course, no photo post is complete without a dog shot.

holy crap!

yeah, that's me. another year older.

poladroid

found a really fun website that converts your jpg photos and turns them into old-school polaroid-like photos. it's called poladroid and it's super fun. the software is free, but they do ask for a small donation, which i was happy to oblige. basically you drag and drop your photo onto the camera and it spits out, what at first looks like a black photo, but then the image slowly starts to appear. just like the real thing. even has the sound effects. you can also play around with the preferences and add dust and finger smudges.

i just messed with a few photos from my desktop. but i can see myself definitely spending a lot of time messing with this program. you can even take the photo into an editing program and add text, which i've done. what fun! i told myself that i'd be working with my sewing machine today. how quickly i got sidetracked when i found this site. a shop update is long overdue. hopefully in the upcoming weeks, between medical stuff, i can get a few new items added. i do have a small stack of new pouches and clay items that just need photos taken. that'll be my first goal. add what i have done.

birthday is right around the corner too. what's on the list? a new lens for the camera. pretty soon i'll be able to see the pores on your face from 10ft away!! lucky you!

green subway

i ordered a few samples of glass tiles off ebay yesterday. not sure if it's gonna be too much green for my taste, so i did a quick mock-up of what my backsplash looks without and what it would look like with the tiles. i'm sure it'll look better in person, but right now...not really loving it. i'll continue the search.

it's bottomless

my stomach has become a bottomless pit. ugh. i think the meds are messing with my system this time around. this phrase actually left my mouth the other day: "i should have ordered a 12" sub." me, the person who's always satisfied with a kids meal, ate a whole 10 nugget meal on our way back from san francisco. me, who's not a big fan of sweets, has eaten two boxes of oreo cakesters in the last week. omg! you'd think with all this eating i'd be pregnant already. tomorrow i start my stimulating meds. i'm guessing my ER to be next weekend or early the following week. i can't believe it's approaching so fast.

took the leap

yesterday i finished the dining room/kitchen accent wall paint job. i always seem to make things harder on myself than they have to be. case in point. after doing all the remodeling work on the basement, i thought for sure we'd have a 12" roller handy. we, in fact, had three. three caked with drylock gunk, that were pretty much useless for anything. instead of heading out to buy a new one, i decided to use the 6" roller i had instead. (sorta reminded me of the time i used a 12" level to make striped lines on the walls with vaulted ceilings) so what i probably could have done in half the time is finally done. i am proud that i stretched the paint and only used a gallon for everything!

i am extremely happy with the end result. i can't believe how much cleaner the walls look and how bland they looked beforehand. all the walls in our house are currently painted with flat paint. after a couple of years of living here, there seems to be more smudges, scratches, marks than there is clean wall. this is the first "big" room i've done in the house.

next on the list. tile backsplash in the kitchen and paint the kitchen/den. below are the before pics. what an improvement.

give me a minute

dining room possibilities

i'm about 90% positive this will be the future color of our dining room. both picture and color chips have been sitting on our wall the past few weeks. the dilemma: one wall continues into the kitchen and i'm not sure i want a green wall in there because we were thinking of a blue and stone backsplash. but the more i look at it the more i like it. hmmmmmm. i'll have to keep pondering or perhaps reconsider the color of the backsplash.

reality check

upon returning home from our san francisco trip life has really hurled one curve ball after another at us. one of the biggest was the loss of my future nephew on wednesday.

last tuesday irina, my sister-in-law, went into the hospital with some heavy spotting, she was about 2.5/3 cm dialated. basically she was in premature labor. luckily they were able to stop the progression and ordered her on strict bed rest for 10 weeks. she was supposed to return home from costa rica on wednesday but that trip was quickly revised with her returning in may.

this tuesday, brian headed down to costa rica to give her a little moral support. he called me on wednesday afternoon and told me that irina's water broke and she lost the baby. she was about 19 weeks which is way too early for the baby to survive. brian said that irina had prayed he would be there if this should happen and he was.

they believe that irina has a weak cervix and the weight of the baby may have caused it to open prematurely. hopefully a cervical cerclage will prevent this from happening in the future. although this has been quite a devastating blow for them, both brian and irina are anxious to get started again. they are very strong-willed people and this doesn't surprise me. sending much love and prayers their way.

while i was in san francisco i did have a scare myself. i felt a huge lump in one of my breasts. aaron was pretty sure it was a cyst but wanted me to get it checked out when we returned. so yesterday i went in for an ultrasound and it indeed was a cyst. it looked like two separate cysts, both measuring about 2 cm each. the doctor suggested we drain it right then and there. turns out it was one huge cyst. so technically i had a 4 cm cyst that practically popped up overnight. they are pretty sure it might be from all the hormones i've been taking for my IVF cycles. some people are prone to getting cysts and i just happen to be one of those people. so i have to keep monitoring myself, hopefully this was a one time occurrence.

luckily this has not interfered with our current IVF cycle. i received all my meds on wednesday and started lupron injections that night. i thought i'd be a pro since we've done this all before. but i did get a little adrenaline rush when i gave myself that first shot. it'll take some getting used to again. so we are officially underway.

the rest of the story

i was able to get the rest of my san fran photos uploaded this morning. between two cameras and two computers i think i was able to get them all loaded. i did have to do some editing. i let adrian play with my slr and he thought it was neat that he could take sequence shots. so any shot of me you see, just know there's about 10 more of that same shot! he's too funny. it was so great seeing everyone and this year was perhaps one of my favorite academy meetings to attend. now we're back home and back to reality.

sight-seeing in san fran

today was a loooooooong day of sight-seeing in san fran. after we were able to figure out the public transportation system, we headed to golden gate park. i had downloaded about 12 caches in the park and we were able to find 6 before our feet told us it was time for to head home. here are some photos from our first day here. tomorrow we hit up fisherman's wharf, golden gate and the presidio. i'll try and update photos daily. i'm a little giddy that i can actually walk about and take pics with my new camera. now to figure out how to look a little less touristy. doesn't help that we're hitting all the popular spots. right now, i'm ready to hit the hay.