Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Photo heavy post

Well a lot of photos in today's post.  I went up North for Brooke's birthday, so I have pictures, some may even include crochet!
Actually the first one is a snap update of the striped blanket, I am further then this now but this was a quick shot from last Wednesday when I brought it to the office to show my Sister.  
Stripes 6.11
So I have a cat, a cat that loves chewing on cords.  We have now put all cords in our rooms for charging and Katlyn has even banned him from her room forever!   He hasn't bothered with my Kindle cord before, but when I attached my Kindle for charging before sleep it wouldn't show as charging.  I got up and checked the socket to make sure all was good and changing outlets thinking that must be the problem.  Fairly frustrated at this point, I finally see the issue....gah!  Damn you Stein!
they must taste good!
On with the road trip portion of our blog adventure.  Wait, the road trip was the adventure, not the blog.  I hit the road at 5:54 am on Thursday morning with the dogs.  All was good until the Grapevine.  2 hours stuck on the Grapevine with no where to go, can't get off, can't turn around, you just have to sit and wait!  Thank goodness that it was so early still that it was nice and cool, because sitting 2 hours in traffic is a bad thing, but add heat to that and it becomes a very bad thing!

unexpected happenings await ahead!
SO...anyway road trip had a few unexpected glitches.  3 times beyond the Grapevine the road was being worked on so they dropped us down to one lane and when I got to the Bay Area there was another nasty accident.  So 2 hours behind schedule, I finally get to Windsor!  

The dogs weren't bothered
Balloon Classic was going on Saturday and Sunday with the launch site at the park behind Alysha's so we have a wonderful view.  This picture was Friday morning at about 7:30 and while it's nice for me because I'm awake that early, Katlyn and Alysha were far from amused!

early morning fliers
Brooke's birthday was on Friday with her party set for Saturday.  So Friday was cupcake baking and jello making and getting things ready.  Movie day as well, though I had a headache and I didn't think sitting through a 2 hour movie in 3D was a good idea, so I stayed behind.

Kid hung with me while everyone was gone
We went to dinner that evening and then came back to the house and had ice cream cake, yummy!  We had a very happy birthday girl!

happiness on a plate
Saturday morning was prep time for all things party related.  Brook helped me by removing the jello "ice" from the pan.
she's a great helper!
Party was a success, and the kids all enjoyed a bit of science along with their beverage!

man, dry ice is fun!
Now for the pictures of kids!  The boys let me take pictures and of course Brooke mostly cooperated.

Birthday girl in her tutu
Brandon in his new sunglasses
Christopher, mid conversation
Steven with a smile for Mom
Eligh with cheeto fingers
Brooke and Grandma
Trip home was a bit trafficky...that's what happens when we leave on a Sunday though.  Katlyn drove for the first part and I did some hookin'.  It's coming along nicely, should have it done fairly soon.  



road trip hookin'
Now if I would stop getting ideas and starting them while in the middle of another project, which I did yesterday!  I decided I needed potholders and so does Alysha and Brandon just moved into his own apartment with his girlfriend, so potholders all around!  Didn't actually mean to get started on them last night, but I went digging through my cotton yarn just to see what colors I had and sat down and started working on panel up and then another and before I know it, both panels are done and I stitching them together! 

1 panel down and started the 2nd
Grabbed up some bits of red and green cotton for the cherry addition and got crackin' 
why yes, I am at work!
all done
Ok I shall get back to the stripes tonight and get it done soon because my new yarn came in for the next blanket!  This will be for a baby boy as well.  I also saw a family friend on Saturday who is expecting a baby in November so I have another blanket to work on just as soon as they let me know what they are having!  My Sister and I are going to open an Etsy shop pretty soon, so we need to work on stock for that as well.  

new baby blanket yarn
I believe that's all she wrote at the moment.  I have an idea book that is brimming with ideas and requests so I really must get working!  

Listening to: Hard To See by Five Finger Death Punch

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Tuesday

So here we are again with more things going on.  I will start with hooking things since well it is a crochet blog....mostly.  Went on Friday and picked up yarn for 1 of the baby blankets I am making for my Niece.  This one is 3 colors, turquoise, gray and white.  Can I just say that I love this color combo!  The first picture doesn't really show the color well, since it was taken Friday night while watching Ghostbusters, so the lighting was not great.  Just wanted to get it started, so after doing the maths to figure it all out, I got started!
the start of a new project
Got working again Saturday afternoon, was excited to get all 3 colors worked up and I was not disappointed.  Not a huge mount of progress because I was cleaning carpets and doing Saturday chores and reading, but it's coming along.
starting again on Saturday
2 down
and all 3 together.
Very happy working this up.  I am using the blanket stitch for this which is seriously easy with no need to think hard as you go along, so makes for perfect tv viewing work.  Which is a good thing when watching wrestling because I tend to get overly animated while watching.  So anyway...the blanket, I started with 111 chains which works to about 32 inches across and mathed out a 3 color repeat 6 times.  So should be about 36 inches in length when done, without the border.  

stopping point when my Daughter called me to discuss wrestling
Got a bit more done before bed and hope to make good progress on it this evening as well.  
Monday night's progress
There we have it, all my crochet content for now.  I have 6 skeins of yarn on order for the second baby blanket I am going to do.  Joann's didn't have all of the colors I wanted in store so they had a shipping deal online and I actually saved money, because the yarn was on sale as well.  I'm sure it will arrive while I am out of town.  Leaving to go North on Thursday morning for Brooke's 6th birthday on Friday.  6, my little granddaughter is going to be 6, wow!  I'll be back to work on Monday so I'm sure the yarn package will be sitting on my desk when I come in.  
Now on to other bits of life.  I got a new phone when Verizon finally dropped the price to something that I could kind of squeeze into my budget.  Just so you know "free" is never free, but whatever, I needed one and got it while I could.  I chose the green one because it was available when I placed my order (so was pink, but no way did I want a pink phone for at least 2 years!)  turns out it ended up being an backorder anyway.  Oh well, I got it a week later and other then the fact that I have discovered my laptop will not read any USB ports so I can't have all of my music on it yet, it's great. (not my laptop, my phone)  I've named it Kermit, because that was the first thing that popped into my head.  I tend to name my electronics, my Kindle's name is Zsadist.  Makes thing easier when sharing accounts with my Daughter, especially the Kindles, she does not want my books on her Kindle!  Her Kindle is named Sherlock.  

yeah it's green...
My oldest popped down last weekend for a quick visit, he was actually dropping his Grandmother off at her Mother's house and picking up Katlyn to go up until Brooke's birthday.  I will be taking their Grandmother up with me and Katlyn will be coming home with me.  Always nice to send time with my boy!

Out at dinner
He was less to amused that he couldn't leave until after the wrestling PPV on Sunday though, but Katlyn told her Dad (who wanted her to visit) that she had plans on Sunday so he agreed to wait until the evening, how Christopher ended up doing the roadtrip is beyond me, but like I said I am always happy to spend time with my boy! 

Wrestling has begun!
My Brother and his girlfriend came over for wrestling.  We had a great time and Christopher survived the evening.  I made a huge batch of chili and served up hotdogs and fries with it, along with snacks and we spent a fun evening together. 

Kid less then impressed over the matches.
So now I have this gripe, it's about book prices in general.  I read 95% on my books on my Kindle.  It's easier storage wise and cheaper as well.  I also read a lot of self published authors that I wouldn't be able to find at the local bookstore, that is really not local at all anymore since they keep shutting them down and I have to drive further and further to get to one.  I read a lot, I'm not even kidding when I say a lot so I have a book budget, which I am very strict about staying on, because it's really easy peasy to one-click away and spend a stupid amount of money very quickly!  I keep track of my budget and if for some reason (books on my wishlist drop in price) I go over budget for the month, I take the overage off of the next months budget.  I had a bad run in March where the Black Dagger Brotherhood's first 7 books dropped to $1.99 each (normally $7) right at the end of the month when I was already over, so much so that I had no budget in April and May and restricted myself to only ones that dropped in price on my wishlist.  Ok so enough rambling about that and my insane book addiction.  What I started this paragraph for is about the books being priced too high for a Kindle book.  Now maybe it's just me, but $4 for a book that is less then 200 pages, in an e-file (is that the right terminology?) is so not cool to me.  Hell I didn't spend $7 for a 500 page ebook that I REALLY wanted to read!  Still won't, I will buy a print book first.  Ranting, yes a bit, but damn I get a bit disappointed at times.  Now of course it's my choice to buy or not buy just as it's the authors to set the price.  This is of course only my opinion which is not necessarily going to match with anyone else's, heck I've seen that enough in the books I've read where it gotten TONS of 5 star ratings and everyone is raving about only to read it and scratch my head wondering if I read the same book as everyone else did!  Lessons learned the hard way I suppose...don't buy the entire series of a book just because other people LOVED it.  Luckily I didn't have to learn that lesson over my Black Dagger Brotherhood purchases!  I loved those, so whew!   I could start my own book review blog, but there are just so many of them out there I'm sure it's not worth my typing.   Rant over now, and really you came away with nothing from that other then I'm crazy!

Stein, he is so weird!
Ending with a cat picture just solidify's my crazy level!  So there you go! 

Listening to: Don't Phunk With My Heart by The Black-Eyed Peas