My turn

Getting to the computer is getting hard with everybody being off for the holiday break and having one computer to share. But it’s my turn and here I am.

I always have to rethink what I’m going to post about because one of the first things I want to say is, there isn’t much going on. There is always something going on it’s just that I’m not sure how bored you want to be with oh what we are doing right now, which is cleaning up. We must have made 8 or more trips to the dump in the last two weeks. Maybe I should take pictures of us cleaning out the shed, us tearing down the shed, us filling up trash bags, uh no I don’t think so. However, I am determined to take the camera to the trash place. It is actually a really neat place to visit. They are very organized with recycling wood, metals etc.

Well let’s move on it’s getting close to the New Year and that time to get that feeling of a new beginning. I figure the two top resolutions on most peoples list are to get organized and to get healthier. If you noticed on the right I have a list of blogs I like to visit. There are actually a lot more that I like to visit then what’s here. I started to use a blog reader to keep up with them. I use google reader. I know there are others out there, like bloglines but I chose to use google. You basically put in the webpage/blog you like to visit and then when you come back to the google reader it will tell you which web pages have been updated. This way it allows me to see who has updated their blogs without having to visit each blog to see if they have updated, saves time. I figure most of you who read several blogs already use something like this but for those who don’t I recommend it.

Speaking of blogs have you seen this one? Lets Knit2gether it’s a video podcast about knitting. I get tickled every time I go to it. It’s just seems like the media/information world has came along way from oh say the first broadcast on the radio.

Another blog that might interest people that are trying to meet that second resolution of a healthier lifestyle is CalorieLab Calorie Counter News. It has a lot of information on health news and highlights blogs of people who are trying to lose weight.

Hmm, something is missing here, oh yeah the pictures. I really like pictures on blogs. What do they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Here’s a picture taken later on Christmas day.


Here’s one I just took. My knitting gifts from family.

Hurry hurry hurry

Well I haven’t written in awhile so thought I should give a quick update. It seems like it has been hurry hurry hurry lately and I'm really looking forward to slowing down. Let’s see Dax had another performance at school (good), Rudy dropped a refrigerator on my tomato plant killing it (bad), I smashed my right index finger in the truck (bad), and Dax celebrated her 12th birthday (good). Hmm, two bads two goods, let’s say Dax’s birthday counts as a double good that way the goods out way the bads :).

We’ve decided to start on the landscaping on the yard. The first part of this is to clean everything out of the yard. Rudy wanted to clean out the barn to use as storage area. So we took the old refrigerator and freezer to the dump along with a good bit of other stuff. We had to throw out more than I would have liked because we found out we have a rat issue in the barn. It’s amazing the things they can chew through and the smell they leave behind is wonderful, not. Now that we disturbed their nest, I am wondering where they are moving to. Rohan did manage to catch one, which was amazing because well he is slow and not really a hunter. I kept taking the rat away from him and Rudy kept giving it back to him. Rudy thought the dog earned his catch and to let him have it. I kept thinking it might have some kind of disease that will infect the dog. I won out in the end and the rat was disposed of.
This is what's left of the tomato plant. It was looking like it was going to have a nice batch of tomatos. Maybe Santa will bring me a new one ;).

Yep, my finger got caught in the door of the bat (big ass truck). I don’t know what I was thinking and I noticed Rudy had to bite his tongue when he found out who shut the door on my finger. It was me. When I told him what had happened he had to ask twice “who shut the door on your finger.” It swelled up and turned black and blue (expected) but the weirdest part is that it got a nasty cut on it. I looked at the door, there really isn’t anything in there to slice, oh well. It makes for awkward typing and knitting but on the up side I can type and I can still knit.

I was still rushing to get prepared for Christmas festivities on Dax’s birthday. She kept looking at me as I was packing boxes that needed to be shipped out. I finally said enough, we put Christmas stuff aside and started baking her cake. She wanted to decorate it herself using a cool whip icing. The whipped icing doesn’t hold it’s shape very well but she insisted that she liked the taste of the cool whip icing better and she would rather have it taste good then look good. So I stood back and prepared the icing and let her do the decorating. Here are the results.

Basically the icing is cool whip with powder sugar added. Afterwards we went to see the movie Eragon and went out to the restaurant of her choice, which was Outback. The next day I took her to the water park Typhon lagoon. It was a great day, cloudy and slightly breezy but warm enough to not feel chilled while sitting in a wet bathing suit and best of all, no crowds. The Christmas packages are still in the truck. We are just going to start calling them New Year packages. I’ll get them out as soon as the post office opens back up.


I put a few of these in one of the Christmas, I mean New Year packages.



They are wash cloths from this flower power pattern done in cotton. The only thing I didn’t like about the pattern is that it had a lot of ends to tuck in. Each petal has two ends to tuck. I also used cotton which I found was not as easy to tuck in as wool or animal fiber. I hope everybody has a Merry Christmas or at least a nice sloooow holiday break.

It's late

It's late but I wanted to do a quick update. I finally finished something. The peace fleece sweater is done. I do need to block it.


We walked to the beach to watch the shuttle take off. I didn't get a good picture of it. There wasn't much light at the beach and I couldn't see the settings on the camera but this is what I got. The building was blocking the view but it was obviously behind it. Once it got past the building we could see it just fine. Dax kept saying it looked like a shooting star, a very bright shooting star.

It’s not cold anymore.

The last week has been in the 80’s. Rudy and I finished putting the pavers down. We still have to do the borders and fill in the gaps with sand. This is what it looks like so far. We put sand in half so that’s why it looks different.


When we had the cooler weather I was thinking about how nice it would have been to wear that sweater I didn’t get to finish because I ran out of yarn, so I went ahead and made an order. Since I was paying the shipping anyway I ordered a pattern to. I made the order from kpixie.com. They did a good job and I would use them again. I was a little worried the yarn I ordered might be a little off of the original yarn because of a different dye lot but it looks fine. Maybe when we get 40 degree weather again I’ll have the sweater done. The pattern I got is called simple knitted bodice by stitch diva. I saw on the internet that there is a blog called the sexyknitters club that used this pattern in a KAL. It looks interesting. Maybe one day I'll actually knit it.


The leaf sock is moving along.



We also got our Christmas tree this week. Tyde, Dax and I are making some ornaments to help decorate it. I’ll post more about that later.

Dax had a violin recital at the place she takes lessons from. They did a good job and she sounded wonderful. She played Little April Showers from Disney’s Bambi movie, now everybody in the house hmmms the tune, even Tyde.



On a humorous side Dax and I saw something kind of funny yesterday. We went to Publix and you know how at this time of year they have somebody from the Salvation Army outside ringing a bell for donations. They are usually sitting in a chair or just standing there. Well we saw the dancing bell ringer. She was bouncing around kicking up her heels dancing crazy with that bell. I thought wow, she’s got a lot of energy. When I mentioned it to Rudy he said yeah, she was there when he went to the store and she was dancing around. You just can’t resist donating money to somebody that is working so hard. Dax decided the dancing bell ringer would give that energizer bunny some heavy competition.