Fishing!

Busy sewing lately...

Caught my first fish last Sunday when I went out to Skronky's Uncle's farm pond to see some of his family (and there were donkeys!!). He and his cousins were fishing so, of course, I got brought into the fun. The first one I reeled in we had to keep because he swallowed the hook (we let the rest go)! Skronky cleaned him up and ate him later in the week!

Enjoyed playing with Marie all day Tuesday - She's getting so big, so fast!
Otherwise, just been sewing, reading, watching Dad & Dork play Bad Company on Xbox. 'Tis a charmed life.
Hope everyone is well and having a lovely weekend!

Malaysian cherry vs cookies

Thought about posting. Decided not to... Then changed my mind. Thus is the shambles of my decisiveness that I am left with after ten hours with Marie, the four year old child cookie-making-prodigy known-as-my-goddaughter.
I'm thinking about entering her cookies in our county free fair next month, by the way (if her mama approves). I think that would be neat even if she doesn't win (and honestly, she'll be up against eight year olds who can actually read the recipe for themselves so who, other than those biased by love, would call her the front-runner?) I might just enter one of my homemade dresses as well since there is a section for sewing as well. Fairly certain I won't be entering any livestock or woodcarvings so if anyone wants a sure-win category stick to one of those, huh?
Went camping with Skronky on Monday down at the Lake of the Arbuckles. Very pretty lake, nice on-the-water tent site, and a good time all-around. (Well, raccoons got two of our ears of corn that we carelessly left out but since that was the biggest loss we'll take it.)
My hair is currently "Malaysian cherry" which means slightly reddish. I like it. Only the month-long stuff so if you want to catch a peek you'll have to hurry!

Water barrel to compost barrel

Been busy with all the regular old stuff. Grocery shopping, laundry, studying, cleaning house, planning what to have for dinner, brainstorming on my next sewing project. The usual suspects.

I'd like to brag for a minute about how crafty Mr. Skronky is... My granddad gave him 2 old plastic barrels since they were in the way (and not in the newest condition) to try to convert into water storage containers to catch the rainwater off the roof of his house (Skronky's original idea that trickled down until it reached Grandpa who miraculously had such barrels available). Well, we hauled the barrels to Skronky's where his distracted girlfriend managed to bust the bottoms of the barrels even worse while unloading making them even less useful for water. That was several weeks ago. This last weekend (Saturday was his birthday!) he put into action the idea to make one of the barrels into a compost bin. Some drilling, cutting, adding of hardware and the compost barrel was done! Ta-da! Kudos to his craftiness as well as his thriftiness!

Instead of my normal sewing kick I've taken a forray into cooking again. And not just cookies my dear friends. Shrimp fettucini alfredo with a side of green beans followed by a dessert of bananas foster. That's the menu for tonight! Tomorrow is looking like baked herb chicken on a mixed greens salad with feta cheese and olives. Later in the week sometime lasagna will pop in to grace our table. Those are as far as I've gotten for this week...
Skronky and I even enjoyed some sushi again this last weekend. Did California rolls (avacado, cucumber, and imitation crab meat) and a mushroom variation (mushrooms sauted with olive oil and basil with the cucumber and avacado as before). Very yummy!

Marie (my goddaughter as those of you in the know... well, know.) stayed with me last Thursday and we had such a blast at the park, making cookies, visiting Grandmum, and watching cartoons that we're doing it again this week! Four and a half year olds are the best entertainment value-wise. Keep ya busy anyway...

Well, I do hope everyone is enjoying a lovely week with all this warm weather.

"Life is a festival only to the wise." - Emerson

Rainy day

In the search for the "next great thing" it can get difficult to always remember that *this*, here and now, is great too and worth the keeping, treasuring, and eventually remembering.

I attempted to update my blog with a nice, new template but didn't find any of theirs that I liked enough to modify for myself just yet so stuck with the same old look for now. Playing around with the html code just isn't as fun as it once was and has even turned into a bit of a burden so I'm hesitant to change around too much that I wouldn't want to have to fix a second or third time. Argh!

Cory and Jillian's wedding shower last weekend was great! Lovely, simple, and modest - it was everything a shower should be but often isn't (we even played xbox Rock Band -too much fun). Love & best wishes to the darling couple who will make their vows this next weekend!
Hope all are well and enjoying today! (Prayers for those in the flooded regions of the Midwest would be more than appropriate!)

Coping mechanisms are often pretty

Been terribly busy. Mostly with school.
I've started babysitting Marie on Monday nights while her mom is in evening classes. She's a hoot and at four years old she keeps me on my toes (which is very tiring after a day at school). We made cookies this last week. They were supposed to be like roll and stamp out with a cookie cutter but ended up wayyyy too soft for that so we threw the dough at the cookie sheet. So much fun.
On Wednesday I cut out a shirt pattern and sewed it up Friday night... I'm fairly pleased with my first try. It's from a scrap of red and black fabric my grandmum sent over in a box of rejects from her fabric collection so it was perfect for a first try. I am certain there will be more in the future...
Was studying up at my undergrad campus Saturday evening... I guess I had forgotten the Library closes at ten so when they kicked me out I headed to the Union. There was a wedding reception going on up on the third floor! I studied a few more hours and happened to be leaving just as the bride and groom descended the stairs to leave for the night as well. Wouldn't that be a funny place to hold a wedding and reception? I think the Great Reading Room would be pretty during the day for a wedding ceremony but for the reception? Eh... The ballroom at the Union probably wouldn't be among first picks, for me anyway. Too many other people around, and, hey, it's campus where stressful studying happens! Anyway... Congrats to the happy couple though and thank you for the music to study by (I studied in the lounge just below the ballroom).

Hope everyone has a beautiful week! Remember to breathe and smile!

Don't rush. There is a perfect moment for everything we do. ~Theognis

Yippy dog, bloody nose

That Sooners football game on Saturday was lovely... Almost as good as the week before...
Flag football started Sunday - We only have one Pharm girls team this year so we're extra good. (No, really. We are THAT good. Half of our current team were on the upperclassmen team last year which won the girls division of intermural flag football and the rest of us are fast learners.) We won our game against the Nursing girls ("Bedside Belles" is their team name, so the rumormill quotes) with a score of 26-0. Guess how many of those points I scored?!?
If you guessed none, you win! I managed to get headbutted in the nose on the first play of the game, spent the first half of the game waiting on my nose to quit bleeding (and convincing my teammates that I wasn't dying, also threatening my coach with bodily harm if he kept saying how much hottness all that blood and tissue wads up the nose added to my ' tough girl look'), the third quarter cleaning up all the blood, and the fourth quarter shakily cheering for my teammates, who of course were kicking butt! Great way to spend a Sunday! [I'm fine now with a slightly tender nose... It's swollen just enough for me to feel it and just KNOW that everyone is staring at it but for no one to actually notice it without first knowing what happened]
Mum found a little dog running in the street (Sunday morning??) that then followed her and our dogs home. She brought it in the yard since the last dog we found running in the street ended up getting hit by a car with a very negative outcome when we did not bring it home with us. Well, since it was Sunday the vet's office wasn't open so the animal that I will thus forth refer to as "Muttface" stayed with us until today. (I honestly did call it Muttface during its stay at mi casa. The rest of my human family were not as kind, in my opinion, as they refered to it as "Boner". The more furry faction of my family were either not on speaking terms with him (The Cat) or barely tolerated his yips (The Dogs) so I'm guessing they would have called him worse could I have understood their dialogue) Muttface's owner had apparently called Animal Control, the number for which was wrong in our telephone book, so when Dad took him by the vet, the vet quickly sorted the situation with Animal Control to get Muttface home safe and sound. Or as well as is to be expected for any furry, dirty, yippy creature. Fare thee well Muttface! I will not miss cleaning up after you!
Filmed the Rush video today... Fun but also frustrating. Glad that part's done - on to editing! Next week is our week so don't expect an update too soon after this one... I still have a slideshow to finish arranging, food to order, decorations to procure and hang, as well as nervous faculty to reassure, brothers to keep in line/humor, and a million other things I can't even remember right now! Yay! (This sounds like complaining. It's not. Ask Skronky; he gets most of my complaining about anything so he would be an expert on that...)
My goddaughter Marie may have the chicken pox. Let's hope not! I endured them around 17 years ago and don't remember it being a fun time... Woohoo for modern vaccines!