Evolutions

To say I'm a little bit overwhelmed right now is a bit of an understatement. EVERY year I feel this way right about now and EVERY year I wish I could just fast forward through the holidays and just start the new year...un-harried, un-pressured and calm. 3 weeks of illness certainly didn't help my cause and I'm feeling even more stressed than usual. Surely a surly and grinchy attitude. I do it to myself. I know this. I am somehow hard wired with the inability to say "no". I thought I was doing pretty well earlier in the year and really good this summer...but somehow one person sneaks in and then another until my snowball is an avalanche. Therefore, all my best intentions of a hand made Christmas are basically out the window. I'm looking at three unfinished quilts, numerous unfinished knitted gifts and load of work just a mouse click to the next window. Bah! Enough whining, someone pass me a Xanax, quick!! LOL

Let's talk about something nicer than my bad attitude about work.
So...have you seen Home Front?

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 Is it sneaky to say that I might just have it in my hands and I might just be pushing it around my craft desk right now? Is it a terrible tease to say that the images don't even explain what it's like to hold it, sniff it and loooove it? I'm really being mean today, aren't I? I love that I can be a tiny part of this new venture for Studio Calico--their own product line, available soon in a local scrapbook store near you!!

 
Let's talk about something else nice. Even though I was cheering for the Phillies (not necessarily a steadfast fan...just NOT a fan of the Yanks)...my son is all about the Yankees. I think this condition was fostered by Eric's dad who has been a Yankee fan his entire life. Anyhow...after the final game, Seth called his grandpa and the conversation sounded a bit like this:
S: "Hi Grampa! Congratulations!!! Your Hankees won!!!!"
G: "Well thanks, Seth...did you watch the game?"
S: "Yes, but my mom got sad and turned it off"
G: says something I don't catch
S: "I just kept telling her Hankees, Hankees, Hankees"
G: "That's good work, Seth"

That made me laugh and that's nice, right? Here's another laugh--this time for you. Since typepad came out with their 'new' design (which I think is not super user friendly yet, btw) I've only been getting comments emailed to me sporadically. I always try and reply back if a comment warrants it...but nobody ever emails me back. I was getting a little depressed and then somehow as I was replying to someone it dawned on me that when the 'new' typepad emails you comments you can't just hit "reply" and send a message back, you're just replying to yourself. Uhhhhm....blonde much? So...to anyone who has commented and expected to see some sort of reply--I'm VERY sorry...I wasn't purposely ignoring you. ♥♥♥

QOTD: Thanksgiving plans...have you made them?

 

The World Series is breaking my heart...that's all I'm going to say about that.

Halloween was SO windy!! It wasn't all that cold here...just blowing like crazy. I stepped out the back door and snapped a couple of quickies for the fam to be able to see the kids' costumes--this was my favorite.

I think the progression of costume choice as kids get older is hilarious. I remember when this girl just wanted to be a butterfly or a cute witch. Now it's a blood sucking vampire. (Thank you, Twilight). Her older sister went as a murderous prom queen and the manster went as Indiana Jones--"Just call me Dr. Jones". They collected enough candy to last until Christmas and spent the rest of the weekend sorting and counting it.

Daylight Savings Time kind of kicked my butt this weekend...and then I was up at 6 am this morning--rarin' to go...not my favorite time of day, but I did garner a hot cup of coffee out of it.

Now that I'm feeling back up to speed it's serious house cleaning week around here. I've got LOTS of intensive projects...so I should probably get off here and get going.
I do want to know, though: What's your deep cleaning routine? 

The colors are changing...the air is crisp...the leaves are scattering. I ♥ this time of year!

Thank you everyone for the well wishes after my last post. I am feeling much better, thankfully. Knock on some wood, but I'm hoping this was the one big 'sick' of the winter and it will be smooth sailing from here.

Studio Calico's November Kit Reveal was last night.

Looking at the design team gallery made me itch to create more with the left overs. They amaze me every single time. Here were my offerings this time around. I actually even pulled out some old photos (see Seth at about three) which I thought just had the right story for the page I wanted to make.

The last page "Twirly" is so much cooler in person--I printed the photo on matte photo paper and then spritzed it with Pearl (sparkly) Maya Mist. It really looks amazing, but I couldn't quite capture the effect for the layout photo.

I need to come up with a Tutorial for the Studio Blog in a few weeks...if you have anything in particular you'd like me tutorialize or talk about--feel free to tell me now. :D 

Recovery? I guess that's as good of road as any, right? I can't even believe how sick I was...and for how long. Thank all that's heavenly for my dear husband, my dear friend Kellee and my kids who are almost self-sufficient. There were literally days where it was too hard to even lift my head off of the pillow. No joke.

I'm finding out that the crazy thing about pneumonia is that you don't bounce right back. I'm still pretty easily tired, still have a bit of a cough...but I'm just so happy that I can breathe, I'll take any forward momentum at this point. Every day I'm getting a bit of my old self back.

One of the hardest things for me is always feeling like I'm behind--I hate being late, behind on a deadline or overwhelmed. Fortunately for me, April gave me a deadline extension and I was able to meet the minimum requirement for my Studio Calico pages this month. I'm a bit sad...because there is so much more I want to do with November's kit...but literally don't have any photos and am still working on building up my stamina. With no further babble...and barely before reveal, here are my sneakies.

Back to real life and Halloween costumes and fall cleaning and maybe even some baking. Whew! I need a nap. :)

Why is it so hard to come up with a title for a blog post? I'm considering just turning the title feature off. Did you know you can do that with the 'new' typepad? Pretty awesome. I also love the tab/button feature and as you can see made my own little buttons, which was kind of fun. Maybe that's a statement on the calmness (knock on wood) of my life that making said buttons would be considered fun. *sigh* Gift horse and all that, right?

I need to talk about TV for minute...I'm watching SO many shows right now, Thursday night is a particular killer. We watch Bones, The Office and Mentalist and when Eric goes to bed, I watch Fringe, Supernatural and Vampire Diaries. I have got to kick the habit...waking up at 6am after falling asleep at 3am is not quite working out. At the same time, it's pretty sick that I can't sleep unless I follow that ritual. Seriously, I lay in bed tossing and turning and wondering what's happening on whatever I didn't watch. OCD much? I'm going to slowly start cutting out shows...I'm guessing they don't make a patch for that. If I quit watching Grey's Anatomy two seasons ago, I can quit anything, right?

In the daytime, I don't have any desire to watch tv, which allows me to do fun things like this:

I loved this little baby pinwheel quilt so much (with the exception of the little prairie points as you may have caught from my Tweets) that I decided to make another for my impending baby nephew. As of yesterday it looked something like this:

Then...I made the mistake of going down to the local quilt store to buy some batting for it...and fell in love with something else:

Armed with a few yard and a few fat quarters I came home and pieced together something much different than I'd intended for him. Uhhhmmm. Now, it's huge and I originally intended crib size. I feel like I'm back to square one. Do I spend today quilting the pinwheels or the new animal print? ARRGGH! Decisions! Did I  mention that I'll be seeing my sister-in-law this weekend for my mom's birthday and wanted to give it to her then?

Speaking of my mom's birthday, here's her gift all tied up and ready to go. The lavendar is courtesy of the wild plant that came back in full force after we got rid of all of last year. LOL Obviously, mother nature knew better than me.

Thanks for listening to me ramble. I guess I'd better go make some decisions about that quilt, right?

Speaking of birthdays, Aug/Sept/Oct is a pretty crazy time of year for us. We've got birthdays scattered through all three months. Seth thanks you for the birthday wishes. I think he had a pretty great weekend.

QOTD: What decisions are you making right now?