My current distractions.....

Writer's Block: Fearsome

Sun, 08 Feb 2009 15:07:24 GMT

The boogeyman, global thermonuclear war, being forced to eat broccoli—there's a lot to be afraid of when you're a kid. What was your biggest childhood fear?

View 501 Answers

ET. Yup ET. There was a branch outside my window that looked strangely like ET's finger. It would tap, tap, tap all night and I thought he wanted to use my phone to "phone home" . Also I was afraid of clowns, I still kind of am....

I'm baaaccckkkkk.

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 14:40:15 GMT

I know I have been MIA for a while. Sorry.... I have been working on our new website and have had little time for sewing. I now have a serious urge to make something!

I need to make a new venetian dress

I bought the green patterned fabric and the copper and olive silk that is below it. When I came home, I started rummaging through my stash and found the gold silk, the lighter olive silk and the other coppery silk (it doesn't show up well in the photo. It really does match.)

So here is where I need help. I want to use these fabrics to make a dress in one of the styles below, but I only have a little over 1 yd of the patterned fabric 3 yards of the copper and 4 yards of the olive silk. the others are even smaller amounts of fabric, left-overs if you will. Any ideas?

Twilight Movie!

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 14:04:08 GMT

Got my pre-ordered Twilight tickets in hand.... All the girls from our bookclub are going to the movie opening day, Team Edward shirts and all! I can't wait for girls night at the movies!

*checkout our new website at robotsandvamps.com/

Happy Halloween, Scariest book?

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 11:39:36 GMT

Hey Friends, Happy Halloween!!!!

What's the scariest book you ever read?

Check out our new blog Robots and Vamps where we discuss that very question.

Hope you all have a save and chocolate-y Halloween!

Some stuff

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 13:22:31 GMT

Can I just say that I love the "undead journal". too cool.

What I have been reading...

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:55:51 GMT

So when I finished reading the twilight books, I immediately delved into the Southern Vampire mysteries by Charlaine Harris. I LOVE LOVE LOVE these books. I read all 8 in about 1 week. They are short (about 300 pages each), fun and full of supernatural creatures, including Vampires. YAY. The HBO show True blood coming on Sept 7 is based on these books. skyeeblu- I know you don't want to watch the show for other reasons, but you may like the books. Anyway, just wanted to pass on this series to my vampire lovin' friends. :) Enjoy.

HOLY CRAP! I actually Sewed this weekend!!!!!

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 13:43:13 GMT

I know, hard to believe. I actually finished my Pirate bodice version 1.0 this weekend.

Now all I need to do is finish french seaming the skirt, sew the shirt and sew the pants. I may have something to wear to Faire this year after all. WOO HOO.

What I am doing on my day off....

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:19:11 GMT

House cleaning sucks!

Breaking dawn...

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:43:18 GMT

I went to my local borders midnight release of Breaking Dawn. Let me just say.... that was interesting! I am not sure if my hearing has fully recovered from the seriously high pitched preteen girl screams. Man can they scream! My poor husband went with me. That many screaming girls can be frightening to a grown man. He said it was like looking 10 years into the future. But we figured if that is the worst thing our daughter does, then we will be pretty lucky!

Mostly everyone was ok, with a few exceptions. There were some serioulsy freaky looking people there, and some serioulsy rude people, but they were in the minority. I was so glad to have my book and I stayed up until 3am reading. I really liked it. I don't want to elaborate because I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't read it.

All in all it was a good experience, but next time, I think I will just show up at 11:30, get my book and avoid all the hoopla.

grrrrrrrrrrr

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:33:11 GMT

I was backing out of my driveway this morning only to find that 1/4 of the tree in our front yard was blocking my way out. NICE. Aparently it rotted and fell off. I hate Bradford pears. Now, tonight we have to chop up a tree. FUN.

Plans for today....Let's see if I actually follow through with them, shall we?

Sun, 27 Jul 2008 13:53:52 GMT

I mean it this time... Today I plan to be productive. Clean a little around the house, clean up my sewing room to make it easier for me to get to work on the pirate outfits, do laundry, etc.etc. I still hope to make time to read. I am trying to finish reading The Host before Breaking Dawn comes out next weekend. Only 6 more days! I can't wait!!!

If I had unlimited funds.....

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:42:43 GMT

I would be at comicon right now. How fun would that be?!?

But alas, I am not. (big sigh)

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 20:18:24 GMT

That is all.

No Belle, but plenty of Bella & Edward too.

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:07:47 GMT

So after making Belle dresses, and the stress of finding hoop skirts, The whole Beauty & the Beast thing got rained out. Poor girls. They were so disappointed. Mine cried all the way home from the McDonalds where we were waiting. Good thing it was a short drive.

So what else is there to do on a rainy Saturday? Read of course! I finished Eclipse last night. Loved it. Now I just have to wait 3 weeks before Breaking Dawn comes out. I picked up The Host last night and I can't decide if I should read that now or re-read Twilight. hmmmm. So much to read and do, so little time.

I think I will clean up around here today and try to get started on some pirate sewing. We shall see.

Belle & Bella....

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 14:07:42 GMT

Ok here’s the deal….

I am utterly absorbed in the Twilight series books by Stephenie Meyer, and now I am dragging my friends into the abyss with me. I read Twilight in 2 days, New Moon in 3 days and now I am running to the bookstore at lunch to get Eclipse. I actually think I could have read them much faster if I wasn’t working a full time job and sewing Belle costumes for the girls.

I had LOTS of help with the sewing from my MIL but it is still time consuming and cutting into my obsessive reading time. The dresses are going to be soo cute! The girls are going to get to sing and dance on stage with Belle, Chip & Mrs. Pott’s from Beauty & the Beast on Saturday morning, so it is crunch time! I will post pics from the event. (of course) LOL.

It's late in the afternoon, I'm bored....

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:41:02 GMT

Who's Your Inner Rock Chick?

You Are Ani Difranco!

Honest, real, and well liked.
You're not limited by any boundaries.
"And you can call me crazy
But I think you're as lazy as white paint on the wall"

http://www.blogthings.com/whosyourinnerrockchickquiz/

Your result for The Who Would You Be in 1400 AD Test ...

The Prioress

You scored 26% Cardinal, 56% Monk, 53% Lady, and 46% Knight!

You are a moral person and are also highly intellectual. You like your solitude but are also kind and helpful to those around you. Guided by a belief in the goodness of mankind you will likely be christened a saint after your life is over.

You scored high as both the Lady and the Monk. You can try again to get a more precise description of either the Monk or the lady, or you can be happy that you're an individual.

Now what? I am still bored. SIGH.

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:42:54 GMT

The following is from sweete ladye's blog -

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

Look at the list and bold those you have read.

~Italicise those you intend to read

~Underline the books you LOVE.

~Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've only read 6 and force books upon them

[ I think this meme should also have included a method by which to note those books we started to read, but didn't want to finish, so I’m adding an * for that purpose.
Also, a ** will indicate series/books you only have read part of, like a chapter or two for school]

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (I am still working on it. I know, I’m slow.)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible – (long, long ago.)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare ** (read several plays and poems, but not the complete thing) me too.
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy*
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (I bought this book for my Daughter, wonder why?:)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens **
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold – still reading
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce **
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Wow - I need to read more!

CURSES!

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:54:55 GMT

My sewing machine is having serious problems with the bobbin assembly! I took it to get serviced and fixed a few months ago, and now it is doing it again! Can’t sew a stitch until I get over to my MIL’s house to get the machine she is so graciously letting me use. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Pirate Madness

Thu, 01 May 2008 16:41:50 GMT

So I am working on the little pirate garb and let me tell you…. It is interesting.

I drafted the bodice pattern a few months ago.

When I cut it out I added a ½” seam allowance. Odd, it seems huge now. I held it up to my little one and it was way too big… Wait….. didn’t I already add the seam allowance when I drafted the pattern? OH! What an idiot I can be. So I trimmed the pieces down and now it seems to be just the right size.

In my brilliance, I decided to make this little bodice with tabs. Oh I can just see the cuteness now. Little did I know what a PAIN they would be. It is easy enough to cut the tabs and sew them together, but when it comes time to turn them, it is a whole different story. On about 1/3 of them, the seams would rip and I would have to repair them by hand. BUT THEY SURE ARE CUTE….. RIGHT!?!

Anyway here are some pics of my bodice concept. The trim and pieces are pinned on just so you can get an idea of what it will look like if I ever get it finished.

I decided to go ahead and put the eyelets in the trim for stability. We will see if this works, it is an experiment. I planned to hand bind all of the eyelets, when all is said and done there will be 60 eyelets per bodice. YIKES. Luckily, coxie13 came up with a good idea of how I can semi-bind them and let the silver show through. Very Piratical!

Pirate garb update. Some progress over the weekend.

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:02:07 GMT

I spent most of the weekend in my sewing room. I am in a crunch to get partial pirate gear for myself and my wee one done by the middle of May.

So far I have –

Sewn my daughters pirate pants, minus the elastic for the legs and waist. (I ran out)

Sewn my daughter’s short sleeved chemise, minus the elastic for the neck and sleeves

Sewn my daughters skirt, minus the elastic for the waist. (seriously, I need to get to the store and get some elastic)

Sewn the body of my short sleeved chemise (I had to stop, why? You guessed it, no elastic.)

Parially sewn my linen skirt (I really want a cotton one, but this will do for now and what girl couldn’t use a black linen skirt in her wardrobe?)

What I have left….

My daughters bodice

My bodice

Buy some darn elastic and finish everything listed above.

My pirate pants

So guess what I will be doing this week?.... In addition to the 2 cakes I have to make for this weekend. Busy, busy.

It is all so snappy...

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:23:05 GMT

I have been busy altering the sleeves for my daughter’s Venetian dress. We are going to the Great Plains Renaissance Festival next weekend and she hasn’t worn this since last October. Those kids grow so darn fast, her sleeves are now too short. It’s ok, because I wasn’t happy with them anyway and they kept falling off. So, I let out my tacks that were in place only for aesthetic purposes and made the sleeves longer. Now I am sewing on snaps so the sleeves will be more secure and easier to remove when she gets hot.

It’s gonna be a busy week. I still have to…

Go to Parent Teacher conference tomorrow

Go to Girls night out tomorrow night

Make a camicia for my friends niece

Finish my daughters sleeves

Make minor adjustments to my dress and possibly alter the sleeves (time permitting)

Clean my house and catch up on laundry

Pack for myself and the little one

Figure out a hairstyle for my Venetian ensemble. I haven’t been all that happy with any of them yet!!!!
OH- and mail my taxes!!!!!

OI – If only I didn’t have to work, it would be a lot easier to get all of this done. :/

AHHHHHHHHHHHHH Starbucks!

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 13:30:20 GMT

I love my Friday morning starbucks.......................................

I wish it was still the weekend.

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 18:41:50 GMT

So the birthday party went pretty well on Saturday. Bean had a grand time. She skated until she couldn't skate no more!!!! Only a few minor injuries! Hubby fell and hurt his knee while trying to save the camera. A few little ones left the rink crying, only to return later for more! All in all, it was a good time and I got some good exercise. I must go skating more often!

Sunday, coxie13 and I made a trip to the fabric store and got the rest of the fabric we need for the little ones pirate outfits. We will have a purple pirate and an orange pirate. You can’t get more creative than that. They are going to look so cute if it all turns out the way I see it in my head! Then I went home and watched Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium. It was a cute movie. Followed by chores, chores and more chores. Cleaning, cooking, washing laundry etc… I got a strange idea that I needed to move all of my daughters art supplies out of my dining room and into the basement. But where to put it all? So I went into my sewing room and dumped my large 3 drawer organizer that was FULL of fabric and took it downstairs. It really does work better as an art supply organizer, but now I have left my sewing room in a shambles. Why must I act on every crazy little idea that pops into my head? If I have enough energy tonight, I hope to finish cleaning and organizing the basement followed by some sewing room organizing and who knows, I might even get to stitch a seam or two, but I doubt it.

I wish weekends were longer. There never seems to be enough time to get everything done... I vote for 3 day weekends EVERY weekend!

A birthday party and a pitty party! :)

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 12:26:54 GMT

OH the fates! My machine is out of commission. I took it to the shop yesterday and they said it would take 3 weeks. EEK! Luckily my MIL came to my rescue and loaned me her spare machine. Thank goodness! I have promised people garb! I must remember to keep my old machine the next time I get a new one so I can have a back up!

On a happier note, today the wee one turns 5. She is having a Peter Pan party at the skating rink. The cake is almost done, the treats are put together, the gifts are wrapped. Heck, I even have time to play on the internet this morning. Usually, I am bustling around until right up until the party, trying to get everything done. I must be forgetting something. LOL

I know I have been MIA lately. I plan to journal more often after this party thing is over. Hopefully, I will be doing alot more sewing. WOO HOO. I can't wait.

Until then - have a lovely day friends!

Friday

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 18:20:42 GMT

Is it Friday yet???? I so want a day off and since my office is closed on Friday, that means a day off for me. WOO HOO!
I want to do some spring cleaning on Friday. ALL DAY!!!!! The wee one is home too, so maybe I can get her to pitch in a bit. It will be so nice to have a sparkling clean house, then I can devote the rest of my time to fun stuff, like sewing and hanging out with the family without feeling guilty that I didn't vaccuum today. You know what I mean?

Here's to 3 day weekends!