fantastical whimsies

well, unlike last weekend when we spent saturday morning on the river and i took a bike ride to a co-workers open house and enjoyed all the nice weather, we hibernated inside most of this snowy, blowy, rainy weekend.
last weekend i also got some supplies for my hat and worked on some of the embelishments.

hat supplies

hat embelishments

so to avoid the cold we stayed in most of saturday and rented a movie saturday night. since most of the day was spent snuggling with penny we pretty much didn't get anything done on saturday. today we got up and went to a yoga class at the gym. it was overall a good class except for the instructor turned the heat up to about 90 degrees and all the weird yoga-spiritual flabber-jabber is kinda out there. it's a good workout though; i can really feel it in my back tonight. we went to the grocery store after the gym so that we wouldn't have to make another trip out into the snow.

i ate an early lunch of perogies and then worked on laundry and these cute little fantastical whimsies (at least that's what the book calls them) all day. i didn't really feel like sewing so these paper doll, puppet like creatures created from a book my mom gave me seemed like a good activity. i liked the idea of using found objects around the house for the bodies and it seemed to work out well. not only did i get to use some keepsakes that i just had sitting in drawers but i was fairly irritated that the book came with more head-arm-leg combos than main body images.

some of the things i used were brett's tri-athalon number from his collegiate nationals in arizona, a loewenbrau coaster that my sister and brother-in-law stole for us from a german pub, part of an akc hunt test ribbon that penny won (and chewed apart), and a cute comic my mom had cut from the newspaper for me a couple years ago.

fantastical whimsies

loewenbrau pirate

after i finished up all my crafting i took a trip to the store to look for some frames. i found some memory frames (shadow box type) and even lucked out they were 50% off. for the backing i used some left over fabrics i had; brown flannel, red vinyl, and gray fleece.

i took penny on a walk because she's being a little snot today (and still is). i think it's because she is hungry and is refusing to eat her food that no longer contains puppy chow, wet food, and anything else we could put in to get her to eat when we were expecting puppies.

framed whimsies

so i think they look pretty neat in the frames and i will probably hang them in the loft to enjoy. i will need to move the calendar and the clock around a little so i won't be able to get to it until next weekend. now it's bed time and i have a busy work week ahead of me... and laundry still needing to be finished....

sad news :(

sad news today, we went to the vet to check up on penny because she was not progressing through pregnancy as we would have expected. we had an xray taken of her abdomen and there are no puppies. we talked to our breeder who has 35 years experience and he said that he has only seen this happen a handfull of times. something probably was off in the timing of the breeding sessions. we expect her to go into heat again in early fall and can try again. but for now we have a fat dog who needs to go on a diet and a full weekend ahead of us to mope around the house finishing up chores....

puppies....

well, today is day 63 and penny is not even close to being ready to deliver puppies. she has a small belly and no mammary production yet. we were really hoping that we would have a litter of pups by the end of the weekend and are now concerned enough that we have taken photos of her current state and are sending them to the breeder for advise. it's begining to stress me out some because there is really no clear way to tell if a dog is pregnant until a week before she delivers. potentially penny could deliver as late as 72 days after last breeding; that would be april 10. i am very ready now and am just making myself worry even more by trying to research this until i figure out what is up with my little girl.

a really bad picture of penny and her belly

this is me

ok, my mom did one of these on this (very frusterating) website and looked just like her, so here is mine.

save the fox!

swift fox - endangered

no, no, not that fox....

fox river

.....this fox. current legislature is threatening to close the fox river to paddlers. help the cause to educate paddlers about the dangers and locations of the dams so we can keep the river open for all to enjoy.

also, i found out that the hat i love was created by a fellow blogger sabii wabii - running with scissors. so i can now go to the fabric store and get some buckram to begin crafting up my hat.

in other news, penny is due in 1 week. i'm so ready for these puppies to arrive.

kentucky derby!

well, it's that time of year again! i know, it's still a month and a half until the actual derby but that is the best part. it's time to start creating my hat! yay! last year i made a fascinator hat for the local derby day hat contest. it was fabulous. and i won first prize! i know i should probably let somebody else win but this is the only ounce of competitive in me... and i have to defend my title right?

2008 champion hat

i have always been interested in felt hats but i don't think i will be able to pull off learning that new skill in a month. i found this hat that i am very attracted to. i love the use of flowers, the asymmetry, the feathers, and the fabrics.

i looks like it is made of fabric, not felt. now i just have to figure out how i can pull this off.... maybe make a cardboard mold under the fabric??? maybe just lots of interfacing and starch??? how do people make hats like this?

how do people make hats this cool???

sew weekend

had a good weekend. it seemed to be fairly productive. although when there is time for hobbies then there is no time for chores so there's still much to do at home on the chore front.

friday night we went out for pizza in the local downtown area and then distributed some puppy fliers. a task we both hate because we were putting them on windshields in a parking garage. we have not come up with any other creative way to market since niether one of us are super talkative to people we don't know. we wouldn't be called networkers, that's for sure. we did have some good news, our breeder has elected to sell our pick-of-the-liter male pup and they are expecting more deposits than pups for the two liters they will have going home in may so we should get some referals from that. we came home and crashed on the couch until bedtime.

saturday morning i spent most of my time at the fabric store. i recently got a book on fleece dolls and have been inspired to create my own. i also picked up some fabric for another quilt. brett took penny on a walk and brushed her hair. i got home in time for lunch and we had grilled cheese and honeydew melon. after lunch we took penny to the park to run. she is moving at what seems to be snail's pace, i think the pregnancy has taken some umph out of her.

i had already cut squares for a quilt in the fall that i hadn't got around to sewing yet so i spent some time at the sewing machine in the afternoon and worked on that. a friend stopped by for a short visit with her one year old daughter and after they left i finished up my quilt top. brett put the leftover pizza in the oven for supper. after we ate we went on a "date night" to REI. we do consider it a date because we can get lost in that store for hours and usually end up spending some money (this time it was dividends!) so we call it a date.

quilt

quilt detail

sunday morning we slept in a little and watched Sunday Morning on tv. after i got ready for the day i worked on some dust covers for my purse collection. since i've become slightly addicted to purse shopping i am rotating the use of my purses and i need to keep them looking new and not dusty. we ate grilled cheese (again) for lunch and then i made some salsa. 3 tomatoes, 3 jalopenos, 1/2 orange pepper, 1/2 yellow pepper, 1/4 yellow onion, and some spices and cilantro. it tastes pretty good. i think it will improve as it melds together in the fridge.

my purse collection

in their new dust covers

laundry bag

we went to the grocery store in the afternoon and then came home and i finished up the purse bags. i also made a laundry bag to send to the dry cleaners. we have pick-up and drop-off at my office so it's too convenient to pass on. i started to finish up my quilt and took a break for an early supper because brett got hungry and had a craving for cereal. i made myself some hashbrowns and scrambeled eggs. penny slept most of the day in the sun, she was very tired because she was awake most of saturday. after supper i finished my quilt. a pretty productive day; and brett is making cookies right now! (he mostly moped around all day today anyway).

the sisterhood of the traveling pants

ok, not traveling but i couldn't resist the title.

it has probably been about 15 years since i have received hand-me-down clothing of any sort. once my sister and i reached our full height, although both of us are 5'4", we could no longer do the hand-me-down thing. we were always slightly different sizes. we also were never really into the sharing clothes thing but i do remember occasions when i wore a sweater or two that were hers. i never lucked out in college to have a roommate or friend who was the same size as me. it probably wouldn't have made a difference anyway as i learned how to "share" early in life when i proptly labled each of my new coloring books "NO ANNE, YES LAURA" even when those were the only four words i knew how to write.
yesterday i went shopping. in my livingroom. my sister-in-law, who happens to be of similar size, had a some articles that were just a bit too big on her and handed them down (or up as size may be) to me. although they are not all perfect because i am sort of awkwardly between sizes right now, they were all on the larger number side of the size which is what i would have to buy from the store. regretably i can almost no longer purchase my coveted size 2 pants at most stores.

but for now i have a new wardrobe of bottom-halves. this is fabulous because i feel like i wear the same pants every week. and i a few months if all goes as planned at the gym i will indeed be required to hand them up to somebody else.

my new pants consist of dark gray slacks with a tuxedo type detail on the outer seam (another pair in black of the same style), brown small tweedy type woven - lightweight enough for all year, light khaki dressy pants with cuffs, and 2 pairs of jeans (one pair too cute to resist that may be slightly tighter than i would ever purchase for myself but in a few months they WILL fit).

made in america

as i was driving home from work today amongst a sea of foreign vehicles my thoughts turned to the current state of the economy. toyota, lexus, nissan, honda, and volks wagon. although i am intriged by das auto commercials and the sleek, beyond shiny paint, aerodynamic designs, and fancy windshield wipers i have made the decision that we should all try to consume a little closer to home. and i don't claim to know much about politics and wouldn't want the job of fixing the economy; i do know that we need to help our own economy for awhile. if that means driving my not quite as shiny chevy with pride then so be it.
it reminds me of a television commercial from my childhood in which a mother is packing up boxes when her son comes in and asks why they have to move. her response is the his daddy lost his job because people do not buy things made in the usa. she is holding a plain white undershirt stating 'made in the usa.' i think this commercial may be worth re-airing on television these days to bring some focus to our troubled economy.

the first post

so, after just discovering that not only my sister is blogging but my mom is too i have decided to start a blog. not that i have anything to say but facebook no longer lets you write on your own wall so i need a place to put down my comments.
i will have plenty of typos, misspellings, and grammatically incorrectly written things here. hopefully i can use this blog as a place to write down my comments on movies and recount my new adventures in the kitchen, efforts at the gym, hobbies, and habbits.
i have of course selected the black screen & white text because as a fault of my job i am more comfortable viewing white text on black background than any other way computers format their displays. a casualty of autocad i guess. and as for my birdnest, an elclectic collection of all things me. just as a bird would gather up everything comfortable and homey; here is mine in words.
enjoy!