Trying to Recoup

I know. Nothing interesting here lately. Sorry. I've been in training at JetBlue all last week from 7:30 pm to 1:30 am. This means I've been running on 4 hours of sleep a night 5 days in a row. Ick. Napping during the day has been useless; it's just not the same as getting a full night's sleep. I feel slightly more normal today, but start up again tomorrow. I have one week left. Bear with me. I do have a list of projects that keeps growing; gifts, tags, notebooks, baby blankets, cards ... there will be fun things here soon. I'm working on a shop update as well. Stay tuned.

Ten for Tenn

More great music just for you. Ten songs by ten different artists.

As posted on the Ten our of Tenn website, "Nashville. Music City USA. Most people think cowboy hats and honky tonks. However, those who really know Nashville know it's one of the best emerging artist scenes in the country. A community of artists making their own unique brands of diverse, organic pop music in the shadows of today's slick commercial country music industry. At the forefront of this community are ten artists who have banded together to form Ten Out Of Tenn, a collective of incredibly talented friends who, as individual artists, have released over thirty albums, had song placements in countless television programs & films and shared the stage with musicians such as REM, Sarah McLachlan and John Mayer."

Something's Not Right

OK, what's wrong with this picture? Honey??? I'm gonna need some help here. Sweetie? Dearest?
Yesterday my washing machine went on strike and completely pooped out on me. Now, if there's an appliance that's allowed to go on strike in my home ... it certainly doesn't reside in the laundry room. We have seven bodies here. SEVEN! That means that even if I spent the entire day doing laundry, every single piece of it ... washed and dried, folded and put away ... at that very same moment there would be at least another 42 pieces getting soiled. Believe me, I've done the calculation several times to try and figure out how it is that, no matter what, I always have 3 loads of clothes to be washed downstairs.

Luckily, the dryer's still got my back. So, I packed up the car this morning and spent some time at the Swishy Washy. See these first three machines? The Maxi's? They're all full of our dirties. I had a double load running in the next row too.

Once everything was done, I loaded it all back up in the car ... wet and HEAVY to be dried at home. Then I made a quick run to the bread store to restock the cupboards; we go through bread really fast too. I stopped at Harmon's to ship a night light to Fargo, North Dakota, and then went to the bank to file an affidavit of forgery for the whole debit card mess. Joy of joys.

On a side note, today I learned that if you keep loads of wet laundry and bags of bread in a warm car for more than ten minutes it starts to smell an awful lot like beer. Weird.

Operation Nice and Toasty

Nothing gives me 'warm fuzzies' like seeing people be truly generous. This Sunday I had the privilege of participating in what I called 'Operation Nice and Toasty'; it was an opportunity to donate warm clothing items to several families in our neighborhood who were in need of winter wear. They are beautiful and humble people and it was a treat to see how happy they were to receive these things. Lots of the items were gently used or outgrown, but many were brand new with tags still on them. We donated everything we could find in our home and then I destashed my fleece supply by cutting it up into scarves for them. We got about 20 from extra fabric I had tucked away in a box downstairs. It was fun to watch my kids' faces as our items were chosen by the families ... just like Christmas in reverse and much more fulfilling.

Monster Mash was the Bee's Knees

All dolled up and ready to PAR-TAY!

After cleaning up the baby shower and sewing until 3 am Saturday morning, we actually pulled this shindig off. The gals looked great ... and I LOVE that my girl helped design the most modest-glitzy-fun flapper dress ever. She even made the headpiece herself. We played a mix of Big Band songs in the background all night and they toasted each other with Baby Bellini mocktails. It was a riot. The guys were great about going all out with their costumes too.

Go Daddy-O!

The kids made their own pizzas for dinner that hubby grilled while I baked garlic bread in the oven. They ate and answered the door for trick-or-treaters at the same time, then ran through the neighborhood for their own candy booty. It took two cars to get them to the dance where they were given specific safety instructions courtesy of hubby dearest. We had 3 hours to wash dishes, clean up and take a breather before picking them up. They were all present and accounted for, thank goodness, and we brought them home to finish up the night. They were served Shirley Temples with ice cream and brownies and then went downstairs to watch a movie ... with bowls and bowls of popcorn and movie candy.

Oy! The night wrapped up around 2 am with me passed out in bed and hubby driving the last guests home. It was a blast, but I'm sure glad it's over.