Getting ready for Christmas

I have to say, I really enjoy Christmas time for the giving of gifts and trying my hardest not to let anyone know what I am getting them. This year it is a lot different than last. I am making nearly all of my gifts that I am giving to family members! I wish I had started earlier. I have 23 more coasters to make, and they all take about an hour or two to crochet. Then I have around 6 or 7 pillows I am making with my sewing machine. *sigh* This is not going to be easy. And then yesterday Nathan asked me to make two more coasters for two of his online buddies. We have never met them before, but I am agreeing to make them. I have started on of them just to get it out of the way, but even after spending two hours on it, it is still only a little bigger in size than a half dollar!!!!!!! I hope to be able to get it done tonight. I don't know if I really want to make another one of that kind. It is a pattern I am making up as I go to fit the description of what Nathan wants. He wants me to make a blue round coaster with a gold boarder and a gold W embroidered in the center. "Sure, that will be easy!" I said to him last night as we were on our way to Wal-mart at 11:00 only to find out that they close at 10 and are not a 24 hour Wal-mart. Yesterday was not my best day, but it ended well enough. So today I am taking it easy, sitting back, relaxing, and crocheting while listening to albums of U2 that a friend gave to me on an MP3 formatted cd.

I have already bought a few gifts for those whom I don't know what I could make for them. I have a few family members whom are hard to come up with gift ideas to give to them. I am kinda glad Nathan has a small family compared to my side. On my side I have 14 people I getting gifts for. That's right, 14! And then add Nathan's side, and that is a total of 24. Getting ready for Christmas will never be the same. But then, I am going to enjoy seeing the looks on the faces of the gift receivers.

Well, enough of that, I need to get back to working on the coasters and then dinner around 7:00.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from our wedding May 12th, 2007.

I believe Nathan was asking me a question and I just happened to make a face as I was talking

This kiss was posed for the camera, and yes we were really kissing more than posing! lots of fun! : )

The get away! Our favorite part...

My kitten

For my birthday all I wanted from Nathan was a kitten or cat. So yesterday, Nathan took a day off to take me to an animal shelter called Forever Farm. We had an appointment to go to the cat house. Nathan and I truly believe that you must let the pet choose you and not the other way around. SO, I went into the house and walked around repeating to myself "he/she must choose me." There seemed to be millions of cats walking around the trailer. This was not easy. All of the friendly cats came up to us anyway and rubbed themselves against our legs. There seemed to be four adult cats that I really liked and that liked me. But I had already told myself I wanted one that was young, frisky and also one that would pick me.
So Nathan and I were escourted to the kitten room by one of the workers. Upon opening the door, the lady knew immediately to put her feet in first and make the kittens back up and stay in the room. One started to get away, but I scooped her up and cuddled her as I entered into the kitten room (aka the bathroom). Upon putting the kitten down, she tried to climb up my jeans to get back into my arms so Nathan and I sat down so none of the kittens would think they had to climb up us to get our attention. There were 7 other kittens in the room and quite a few of them loved playing with my smock shirt that I was wearing. So it became a hard decision. But the one that I caught trying to escape, kept coming back to my lap me even when Nathan tried to pick her up and spend time with her. She would squirm out of his grasp, leap to the floor and scurry back to be in my care. Even though she seemed a little rough with me and had scratched me several times climbing up my back, I knew it had to be her. Upon making this decision the lady said that the owner (Kathy, Nathan and his family know her well) was giving my cat/kitten to me a wedding and birthday gift. Well, so much for Nathan giving me a kitten as a birthday present!!!

Upon, signing papers, Nathan got out Copper's carrying case and we took the kitten to his parents house, where we had spent the night on Sunday. On the way there, I was still wondering what I would name my kitten. I had wanted to get a male kitten and name it Scrabble. I ended up with a female Tortiseshell Domestic Short Hair and well, she just looked like a Scrabble to me and Nathan agreed. So Scrabble it was and still is.

She is very hyper nearly all the time and on our first night of owning her, she woke us up at 2:11am by biting on Nathan's and my ears and scratching at our faces. No matter what I tried, she still came back up to attack at our faces, so we found that the best way to get Scrabble to leave us alone is to pull the covers over our heads. She slept at the end of the bed when that happened but came back two other times until it really was time for us to get up and eat breakfast.

Pins and Needles

Currently, my favorite thing to do when I am not cleaning, cooking, spending time with my husband or reading outloud with him, is sewing.
Yes, that's right! I have another hobby to take up space and time in our little "home." But, I am loving it. Sharon Forrester is my teacher and is really good at it too.
I have found that one of favorite things to sew is pillows. Well...that is about one of the only things that I have sewn. My first project was a tablecloth for our two person, round table. It is red checked and round. Then I went on to coming up with ideas of pillows. My favorite pillows I have done is the heart shaped one and the patchwork pillow. I really enjoy doing the lacework on the pillows and hope to learn new techniques for edging.
Soon I will be sewing squares together for a quilt project I have been working on for a couple of weeks. I have all the squares completely cut out and stacked in the proper order that I want them on the quilt. All I have to do is iron and sew. That is the easy part.
I am of course doing this all on a sewing machine and not by hand. The pinning that has to take place before the sewing is the tedious part, but I find it relaxing and enjoyable especially if Nathan is home and we are talking together or listening to an audio book together.
As I am typing this I have two heart shaped pillows that are all pinned and ready to be sewn together and then stuffed with Poly-Fil. He he. Actually, on one of them, I got to the very end of pinning the lace on one side and had taken nearly 30 minutes of frustration around the curves, when upon placing the last pin in place, I found that I had totally pinned the lace on the wrong side of the material instead of the right side. This, of course, makes all the difference in the world. When sewing two pieces of material together to make a pillow, you must place the right sides together and if there is lace it must be pinned upside down and in between right sides so that when it is turned inside out, the lace is on the outside of the pillow and not the inside!!! Quite funny, byt also stupid on my part to do so. I have done several pillows thus far, and know better than this!! So I unpinned it and instead of fretting for 30 minutes, I merely pinned it on the right side of the material and in nearly 10 minutes. Now I have already pinned the other side to it and am ready to sew it up and stuff it. Then comes the hand sewing that I am getting better at by now. I have to hand sew the gap that I purposefully leave in the pillow when I am sewing by machine.
I'll leave pictures up of the finished product if I am pleased with it instead of embarrased, as I have been in the past by my tragic blunders of pillow sewing. Well...to sewing I must go...errrr after lunch, I mean. I know it says I wrote this at 9:50am but it is really 12:50, I can't correct it, sorry.

Here in NC.

  Well, people keep asking me, "how are things going for you in NC.?" To those who are curious, life is going great. Nathan and I are getting along swell and enjoying sharing life together.  Some of you know that Nathan has a sleep walking problem. Yes that is right, he walks in his sleep on unpredictable times. They are quite funny and sometimes scary as it happens. But so far only Nathan has gotten hurt. He also likes to talk in his sleep too! That can be quite fun. I have been able to talk back to him and hear the most hysterically funny answers from him. I have woken him up just from laughing at his sleep talking. A couple of nights ago he pulled me close to him and said he needed a kiss.  So I kissed him and he said he wanted another kiss. Well, after I kissed him lightly again, he sighed and told me I was the most beautiful woman in the world. I knew he was totally asleep, and so I chuckled to myself and rolled over to fall asleep. The next morning I told him what he had done, and he said he didn't remember that at all. One of the funniest sleepwalks was when he woke me up by shouting "Dorry, turn on the light!"  I asked him if he was okay and all he said was "turn on the light and get out of bed I know it is in the bed,  but I can't find it." So I turned on the light and got half out of bed when I saw he was under the covers at the foot of the bed. I asked him what was the matter and he said he lost his comb! He thought he had brought his comb into the bed and he declared that he knows it was in the bed!!! I laughed and said, "Nathan, your comb is in the bathroom where you always keep it." he didn't believe me and still kept feeling in the bed until I told him that he can go back to bed now because it was not there. Finally he came to his senses and understood it was just a dream. We had a wonderful laugh over that the next morning.  Another night I coughed only once and apparantly woke him up by the cough. He yelled "I'll get it! I'll kill it!" He began smacking his bedside table really hard with his hand (not sure which one, it was too dark). I asked him, " what are you doing?" and his response was "there's a bug" "No , Nathan there is not a bug." "are you sure?" "Yes, Dear, I am sure." and with that I turned on the light and let him see that it didn't exist. Poor Nathan! He has a hard time comprehending reality from dreams when he first wakes up! But God has kept us safe and thankfully there is no window he can jump out of in his sleep!

A new kitchen experiment of mine-- "Fried Oreos"

Well as some of you all know, there is such thing as a fried oreo! Tonight for dessert, that is what Nathan wanted me to make. Fry some oreos or just attempt to it.

Every Monday night Nathan and I plan on having his best friend Jake over for dinner. Monday's used to be the night that Jake and Nathan would go to this small but popular restaurant called Bogart's. Well one time I had the privilege of witnessing Jake and Nathan (on very full bellies) eat fried oreos and ice cream. They kept making appropriate noises saying how much they loved it. It was the first time Jake ever had a fried oreo. This platter only had like half a dozen fried oreos. That is six for those of you who can't count. Anyway, I have never had one, but Nathan kept telling me I should try them sometime, or even fry them myself one day. So I had all these left over oreos from when I made an oreo pudding for dessert on Thursday. Nathan's suggestion was that I make some fried oreos for dessert tonight with the leftover oreos. I had no idea what kind of batter I was supposed to use when he told me "oh it is made with pancake batter!" Of course! I will use pancake batter! I thought to myself in a slightly amused manner.

I didn't think I would really do it. But after I talked it over with Nathan and then with myself, I decided "OKAY Dorothy, now is the time to do something different that you will always remember." Well I made them, just dip a frozen oreo in pancake batter put in a frying pan with heated vegetable or canola oil and once it is brown put it on a plate. Simple. Now I have a kitchen mess with pancake batter all over my clothes, my floor, my stove, and my counter top.
But other than that, I think fried oreos are delicious and I can't wait to see the looks on the boys faces when they eat them. Cooking is my pleasure, cleaning, well cleaning is just part of having fun in the kitchen!

So for dinner we are having a pasta I have called "It's not Wednesday" pasta with corn on the cob as a side and since the pasta is very filling that is all that will go with the dinner. And then fried oreos for dessert! I hope all goes well tonight.