Celebrating crafts, kids and the everyday through photographs.
Discombobulated
I like this idea of having someone from the week before choose the word, I don’t think I would have come up with that! Thanks Lauren 🙂 So this is a free association. You just comment with the first thing that pops into your head, a story, a word, a phrase, anything. If you need help see the first Free Association Wednesday.
Discombobulated
From my husband’s latest conference call:
"…it climbs the dong until it finds the parent node."
That’s why when people ask me what he does I say, "something with computers."
This weekend saw me at a retreat of sorts. My mom turns 50 tomorrow (Monday) and so this weekend we had a girls weekend at a ranch of a friend of hers. Sciarrino came with me in case the older ladies got too crazy and I needed a knitting buddy :). The weather was much warmer than I thought it would be. Ranging from beautiful to moody (and still beautiful) to very sunny. The very sunny was today, and the drive home lead to the much feared "truckers burn." One arm only, straight red mark at the end of a cap sleeve. So bad I think I’ll wear long sleeved shirts until it tones down a little. But back to the weekend.
My mom has the greatest friends, and a group of them met up when all of their children were small (including me!). We all went to pre-school at the same place, and lived nearby each other. I got held back (go double kindergarten!) and didn’t stay as close as friends with the other daughters, but my mom has remained close with their mothers. I love them all, so I couldn’t (why does the new Firefox not have contractions in its dictionary?) say no to a fun weekend away with them. I found out what they do together all the time: talk. And talk, and talk and talk. But the good kind of talking where you don’t realize hours have gone by. So We did that on Friday night after Sciarrino and I arrived in Sisters. We also caught the view:
I know! Hey this is for my east coast buddies who call Katahdin a mountain! Heheh. I used to have my mom send me pictures of Oregon from her hikes to show my young campers when I was a counselor in Maine. I digress. The next day we went out for a walk to the neighbors. Since these are ranches it was a long walk:
My mom and her friend. I just emailed Sciarrino to say we forgot to take pictures together… again! No one would ever believe we’re such good friends by our picture stash thats for sure. We got to see a new riding arena going in:
I love being around construction, having grown up around it. I can appreciate wonderful wood and little details. I loved the big beams. And the yummy smell of all the wood. 
Pretty rock. 
I love this shot with the moody sky. But I had to get it by putting my camera on complete manual. I really do want to get the camera figured out better. I have the D50 down, I mean I can pick up that camera and I feel like I can take a picture of anything. But I do leave it on manual 95% of the time. With this new camera I wanted to program in some settings but I just have not sat down and played with it enough. I think that is going to be one of my huge goals for the summer. I’m going to have to start over again, with out people. That’s what I did with my D50, and my N65. Just took pictures of bricks, and rocks, changing the settings a million times and figuring everything out. Goal = set (plus Erin did mention that my picture of the day site is woefully out of date). The rest of the weekend was more talking, eating and knitting, wonderful! I hope you all had an equally fantastic weekend. There’s one thing I know, girls only weekends rule!
Okay now I remember why I love Free Association, you guys are funny! I’m picking Lauren as my favorite for last week. Her comment was just "sandwich… haha" For some reason that just cracked me up. Love the randomness. So Lauren you’re in charge of picking the word for next week! I’ll email you and you can email me back with it, so people don’t get a heads up.
I have been doing other things. Like cleaning the house. I like to keep the house tidy, but actually cleaning can get away from me sometimes. I just spent the last day reorganizing my craft room, vacuuming, dusting, getting spiderwebs out of high corners. With the addition of doors to our space the side of my desk I sat on was crammed behind one. Annoying. So I had to flip that to the other side of my desk, and took some things off of it at the same time so the space had a little breathing room:
Watch the wall for changes as I have plans. Oh I don’t think I ever shared my awesome new Design Within Reach stool. So nice to have a stool with a back in here. I am missing one thing. Check out this picture. I can’t figure out what happened to the birthday banner I made. The last time I used it was for Grandpa’s birthday. I asked Bj about it and he said, "Oh I think you threw that out." Readers does that sound likely? I didn’t think so either. So I’m thinking maybe Bj threw it out.
Back to the space, I was a bit creative in it and made a couple of layouts including this one:
I had those new (old) Bingo cards burning a hole in my pocket you might say. Oh how being organized makes me want to work on more projects, it’s always that way.
In other news let’s talk about this old guy:
I know, camera phone picture, I never bring my camera to grandpa’s, but I need to. We’ve had ongoing pain issues with grandpa since we’ve moved him up here. We finally found out that it is not something that can be operated on. Much to grandpa’s dismay, he often asks for his "butt to be cut off." Turns out it’s arthritis on his spine, yuck. That means the focus is on pain management. We’ve done physical therapy, which grandpa called new-age-quack-torture. That’s really funny, and you would think so too if you saw his oh so sweet therapist. Then it was on to a long lasting pain pill. It worked great… until his falling woke up an old lady downstairs and the nurses found grandpa passed out in the bathroom. So finally we found something super low dose. So low dose we had to go to three pharmacies to find someone who had that exact pill. And it was great. He slept through the night (heaven!). Then one night we get a phone call half past nine. It’s grandpa. He didn’t want to talk to me, only Bj. As soon as Bj took the phone his hand went to his head and he started rubbing, never a good sign.
Turns out he was having severe constipation. He wanted us to call 911! I’m chuckling writing this because grandpa says he hates calling 911 and his fear is always after he falls that someone will call them on him, like they are going to show up out of the blue. Anyway we headed out to find something that would help him out. I told Bj on the way over there that an enema would be the fastest thing. He said, "okay." But didn’t really get the concept until we got to the store and he saw the box:
And then his reaction was priceless. This box states that it will produce a bowel movement in 3-5 minutes (!!!). So Bj starts flipping over every other product on the shelf looking for anything with a similar claim. Of course of all the pills even the strongest will only say 30-40 minutes. I pointed to the print on the box and looked at him and he knew we had to get it. I could not stop laughing. I know that’s inappropriate and immature of me, but damn it was funny. In the car I started reading the directions and realized we’d have to get grandpa into one of those positions, then back to the toilet when the "urge to evacuate was strong." Something there was no way he could do on his own. I think all the color went out of Bj’s face. When we got to the home I went looking for a night nurse to get some gloves for him. Bj and I are always afraid that grandpa will be kicked out of his home because he is a bit ornery, so he was determined to do it himself. When I got up to the room all I could hear was Bj laughing. I opened the door and the smell pushed me back out to the hall. Bj came out hardly being able to speak for laughing. Finally he got out that grandpa had, "gone in after it" and pulled out a turd as hard as a rock. He said he knew we were coming but couldn’t wait. Now I don’t know what type of pain you have to be in to take this approach to relief, but it’s got to be bad.
Since the incident we’ve research the wide world of stool softeners (and disinfected the room). His doctor said it’s a really common problem with the medicine. Oh, oh, and after Bj helped him get cleaned up and everything he said, "wait get me my little calender." Out of his millions of calenders turns out that the tiny one with red circles is his bowel movement calender. He hadn’t gone in five days. Yikes. So grandpa’s keeping us on our toes, as always. His pain is getting managed better and our goal is to be able to get him comfortable enough to take him to the coast (an hour away) for the day. He’d been to the Oregon Coast as a younger man and had friends there. He remembers it fondly, quite amazing since he doesn’t have much good things to say about our beautiful state:
Me: "Grandpa look how lovely it’s getting outside. Look at the trees, they are so green!"
Grandpa: "It’s too much; everything is green. I guess if you like that kind of thing…"
Me (who happened to be wearing mostly green that day): "Well I do!"
One more funny thing. We’re always trying to get him to say considerate, appropriate responses when he doesn’t like something. Remember his list of dislikes to likes is about 10 to 1 so this can be difficult. I have had to walk out on him before because my patience goes out the window after about a dozen mean/derogatory comments. Well Emilie (my 16 year old sister) and I go over one day to visit. He is doing fine with her. He gets a serious kick out of short people (and calls me "the little one" often). My whole family is short, Emilie is about five feet tall and tiny. So he was just telling her how cute she was. I went to go check the mail and when I got back we said goodbye. Emilie doesn’t visit that often so he asked her name because he had forgotten. She told him and this was his his reaction:
Grandpa: "What’s your name again?"
Emilie: "It’s Emilie" (pronounced like Emily)
Grandpa: "That’s terrible. A terrible name!"
Emilie (without pause): "Actually it’s been one of the top names in America for the last ten years"
Grandpa: "Who would name their kid that, terrible. That’s horrible."
Me: "Okay Love ya grandpa we’ll see you later."
Emilie took in stride and we just laughed all the way home. That reaction is SO grandpa. So now in addition to watching out for dress styles, hair styles, country of origin, school attendance, branch/rank of military service, we must also look out for "strange" names that might not suit him on a given day. Ah the joys of "raising" an 88 year old.
scab
Okay it’s Free Association Wednesday, the return. I loved these, not quite sure why I stopped. Basically you comment with the first thing that pops into your head. For help you can see the first Free Association Wednesday. Oh and I’m going to do things a little differently. The person whose answer/story/quote/etc. I like best will pick the next week’s word. And I’m going to add a little story of my own when I think of something. This week I used one of my new dictionaries and just picked a page. I’m going to comment on my own entry so I don’t mess up your "first thing popping into your head."
scab
P.S. Thanks go Katie for thinking I should bring these back!
Today I had to go to an estate sale. I say I had to because it was blocks from my house, and run by some good, honest, not over-charging people. But Sciarrino was at work so I had to fly solo. I just do not find it as fun at all. Half the fun is going with someone and then showing each other things. At least I can show all of you guys what I got:
To add to my dictionary collection. I think it’s one of my more eccentric collections.
Are whales really that big? That seems ridiculous compared to the elephant. I love all the drawings:
I love the big old research dictionaries, but I think children’s are my favorite. I’m trying to get Bj to go with me to a 6 family barn sale out in the country tomorrow, we’ll see. I’m already kind of in his debt because he’s working on my Ribbon Jar computer (hard drive issues, ahhhhhhh). The one thing we’ve decided? No major home repairs this weekend. We’ve earned a break I think.
Edited: I just realized putting away these books that I had the fifth one already (Po-St). So I get to cut that one apart, yeah!
On Saturday Sciarrino and I got out our garage sale purses, baskets, and treats to keep us going through the morning and grabbed the local paper. We headed out into the big bad world of estate, garage, and yard sales. In case you haven’t heard this is the coldest spring in the last thirty years, and I think as a result the sales have been HORRIBLE. I swear, there were weeks and weeks with no estate sales even listed in the paper. Crazyville, last year I couldn’t keep up. So it didn’t make me want to get up early and out there. But we decided there were a few neighborhood sales and it was worth it to get out. We didn’t get a lot, I got jars and these goodies:
A never used watercolor tablet, a bingo game with awesome pieces, and a fun painting book. I have a collection of those learn to paint at home type books going and am planning to group them all together somewhere in the house. The shoes are the best though. This woman had hundreds of pairs, and they were 5 cents a pair. Sciarrino helped me track down the mate because there were just mounds of shoes. They are a little big, but check out how loved they were:
She had them repaired at some point, which is something I would do too.
In other news I’m cleaning out the craft room and I came across this:
It’s a ring of Bazzill papers, with labels on the back that tell the color. I got it a few years ago off eBay, it’s very handy if you’re like me and have a ton of this stuff. Instead of bring your project to the cardstock stash, you just bring the ring to your project. I just go the official swatch box though, so I don’t need it any more. I know it’s not quite up to date, but if anyone wants to pay shipping ($5 priority), I’ll happily package it up and send it to you, just comment below.
I can’t remember if I blogged about this before, but they had a great deal on these awesome Denyse Schmidt Quilt-It Kit before Christmas. 
Before you get all mad that I’m just telling you about it now, I keep seeing them there, for five bucks (regularly $22.95)! I own the book that these come from, and this has a lot of my favorite projects from there (including that quilt with the triangles that I have had cut out for about two years – oops). You also get enough fabric to make the pillow on the front, and general sewing directions. It’s so handy! I got a couple of these with the thought that I would bundle up a card and some fabric as a gift, haven’t gotten to that yet.
What made me think of that was this:
I picked up the Lion Brand Crochet Box at Border’s Tuesday. You get FIFTY cards (they open up like the others to show directions), two skeins of wool-ease (not my favorite, but good practice and enough to make that little baby kimono on the front left card), a how to crochet booklet and crochet hooks. There seems to be one problem with this set. The fact that it’s crochet. I have been meaning to pick up this skill to add borders and things to knitwear, but haven’t ever taken the time to learn. So last night I sat down with my new kit to try my hand at it. Um, I can’t crochet. I think I have to have someone show me in real life because learning this kind of thing out of a book? Close to impossible. I think I have regular chain stitching down, but I don’t want to teach myself bad hook holding habits, and I’m pretty sure I will. But none the less, tons of cute patterns, and all of that was only eight bucks, I don’t know what it was normally, I couldn’t figure it out. So get crafty. I’m off to update my neglected Ravelry page.
Oh and the ants are either dead or hiding. Bj sprayed something around the house last night. I’m going to look into all those natural methods though, thanks for the advice. And no one came forward with a good ant trait, so I don’t feel so bad.
The room really is too tiny to be a master bedroom, but we make it work. The bookshelf (where I keep most of my folded clothes and things) is out in the bedroom instead of the closet because you can’t get to the attic with it in front of the ladder. So ignore it please. If we were going to put on the door than I had to get my act together and finish the windows in here. The only ones in the house with vestiges of the nasty cream that the whole house used to be. Plus I had broken the window pane on one of the windows last fall. The sash broke and the window slammed shut unexpectedly shattering a piece. We’ve had duct tape on it for months, oh so classy. Even classier still, the new glass I had cut for it was leaning against the wall in here for a month or more. Next to a box of glazing points and little container of glaze. 
The process of working on these were the same as the living room and craft room that I did… when did I do those.
Unfortunate placement of closet door. Mmm my wedding shoes. I want to wear those again.
Meanwhile Bj was perfecting things in the garage.
It’s all done! He has the project going out there of cleaning door hardware. See how there is actually room to have a project going? 
We got all the rest of our camping/backpacking/sporting/Christmas stuff up here. And there are still empty bins. Heaven. 🙂
Now those two leaded glass cabinet doors are the only things I have left to paint! I might paint the inside of that door too, just because it’s so dirty it can’t be cleaned and I have extra exterior paint. We got a tool holder for the corner which is so nice. And Bj built this:
A workbench. It’s extra tall for his extra tall self. We managed to fit all our firewood under it.
Bj said he is going to spend all next weekend playing Xbox. We are so sick of working around the house. In addition to all this he conquered our backyard, which was thick with grass over three feet tall. We really let it go. Once you stop mowing it’s impossible to start back up with our push mower if it gets above a certain height. That happened sometime last summer and it had been wild kingdom back there ever since. Bj has some allergy issues with grass (I think because he wasn’t born here. Is that how it works?). The whole time he was weed whacking the thing no problem. And I was all, hmmm maybe it’s a mental thing. Then he stopped. And sneezed, and sneezed, and sneezed. Yuck poor guy. So we’ll see if we get anything done on the house or if we do take a break. One things for certain. We have to take care of these visitors:
The sugar ants finally found the kitchen (took them long enough). Quick someone tell me six good things ants do because I’m not seeing their value right now. Also they seem really stupid. One side of kitchen dirty dishes in the sink. Other side super tidy and clean cupboard of food all packaged, no crumbs, nothing open. They are in the cupboard, just dancing around canned food. Idiots.
Does anyone remember these?
Minidiscs baby!!! I was so into my minidisc player. I got this kick ass stereo for my high school graduation (gasp) nine years ago from my grandparents.
Ohhh also back from the brink, the attic!!! Did you remember I have an attic? I made up this drawing yesterday after walking around and measuring up there with Sciarrino.
Bj caught us up there when he got home from work. It’s pretty big, with the option of being bigger by doing a shed dormer (facing the back yard). It would make the total space about 750 square feet. That includes this beauty:
The dormer that is shown predominantly on the front of the house.
Oh ya baby rain fed lawn, oh so pretty (before it goes dormant for summer). Our house is really not an acre off the road, it just looks that way with the wide angle.
So we decided to bite the bullet and have plans made up. Of course that is a tiny little percentage of what it will cost to do the actual work, but with out plans it will be nearly impossible to get any kind of real estimate of the cost of the job. So plans it is. The CADMAN (awesome name, no?) is going to come back Wednesday to do full measurements of the house, the whole house. He was here today and loved our place. He said the upstairs has tons of potential, and that the house is so much bigger than it looks from the street (we get that a lot).
I don’t think I can properly describe how much I love this cottage. So many new house are so blah. No offense if you live in one, even Bj likes how new house have plugs everywhere, and big bathrooms and all of that. But to me that’s not nearly as important as beautiful old wood floors, intricate built-ins and funny shaped brick dormers. I’ve been told there are four of these houses in the neighborhood. One is directly behind us. We think they did the upstairs without adding a dormer, so it’s just one big room probably or maybe a room and a bathroom. The people behind us also turned there garage into a room, and added a kind of carport for their car. They have no awning. We found another one of the houses tonight. They have done the shed dormer, and their front door is recessed so we don’t think they have a coat closet. That house is a block away and I plan on stocking them tomorrow so that I can ask to go in and see where they put there staircase. It’s the only thing Bj and I don’t agree on right now. I think our current bedroom should become a walk through den/man room for Bj and he thinks the stairway should go in through our dining room:
That makes me want to weep at the thought of loosing one of those awesome corner units. WEEP!!! I think down the road when we sell (hopefully when I’m eighty because I am so totally attached to this house) that saying three bedrooms, two baths, a den, dining, living, kitchen, and 900 square foot basement will be enough. He thinks it needs to be four bedrooms. Come on I say, someones always going to turn one of those bedrooms into a den/craft room so who care is you have to walk through it? Plus I like the idea of all the rooms/bathrooms being on one side of the house, so that if entertaining you don’t have to mix it up. I just can’t see sitting in the dinning room at Thanksgiving with a stairway jutting out one side. Sigh it’s so hard when you know you’re right, ladies out there you hear me?
