Getting there is half the fun

DSCN1223
Originally uploaded by Pearliepie.

We're almost finished with LisaLove's bedroom floor. We just need to put up the trim and throw on a coat of paint and she'll be able to move back in!

next up- the downstairs bathroom.

Oh ,YEAH!

I am wiped out. People tell you how much work a house is, but you don't believe it until you're neck deep in crap like the above. We had to get the basement floor mudjacked because it had sunk almost four inches in some places. Now that the slabs are raised the upstairs drains are acting up. Fab. And the floor is bare dusty concrete in the basement, but that will be another post.

This post is about something AWESOME.
That's right- a Kool Aid Man lamp. Try to control your jealousy. I got the pitcher when I was just a tiny thing. I collected Kool points for ages so I could get the pitcher and four matching cups. I was SO EXCITED when it finally arrived. But then disappointment set in. Don't get me wrong- this pitcher has served many a frosty glass of flavored sugar water, but every time you'd pour out of it your delicious beverage would spill onto the counter. The spout on this thing is terrible. There's a lip on the top that makes pouring a real bear. So I had a dilemma. Should I toss it? NEVER. Cut out a better pour spout? No way (to much work) . No- the solution was found in the holiday decoration isle at the local hobby store.


One pack of red mini light later, a star is born. Seriously- this is like the coolest thing in the house right now. I just plopped the lights into the pitcher, added an extension cord, and viola! Fancy (& high class!) mood lighting in the kitchen!

Our house, in the middle of our street

We're buying a house! We'll occupy in two weeks.
It's in an actual city with access to parks and shopping and high speed internet!

To be honest, I'm not sure what that means for the future of this lil blog. On the one hand, a faster internet connection would encourage me to write more, but on the other hand, is that really the reason I never update? Sometimes this blank E-box is so intimidating. Often I sit down to write something but blank out when I open a new post. Will that go away when I'm happier in my living situation?

My sister and I have discussed creating some podcasts as we've always wanted to do a wacky sister radio show, and the house needs loads of work that Rocketboy and I are going to do ourselves so I'll have lots to write about, but I don't know if I'll really do it.

We'll see, I guess. For now I'm putting this blog to sleep (as if it weren't already sleeping, right?) so I can focus on packing and moving.

See you from the new digs!

Hooray for crochet!

I haven't left my ugly yellow chair for days now. Crochet is the only thing on my brain. I even dreamed about crocheting last night.


So far I've done four dishcloths (I'm sending away three of them for a swap), countless learning swatches, a tiny flower that I've somehow lost, and four practice circles for a really cool blanket from the Craftivity book.


These are my two favorite circles. I'm going to try starting all three colors in the middle of the spiral next time, I think. And the other one has three colors in it, not two. It's a shame I couldn't get the camera to pick up the true colors because they look so nice next to each other. For now I'm going to throw these ones into the wash next time I do laundry to felt them. I think they might become coasters, but we'll see what they do in the wash. I'd like to lightly felt the blanket I make, so I want to see what happens to the yarn in one wash cycle.

Oh, wait- I did get out my sewing machine to make a little needle roll for my hooks. It's pretty small, but I only have seven hooks so far and I don't need anything bigger.


I love crochet! I hope everyone will be happy with scarves or hats this holiday- I don't see myself losing interest in making things with hooks and yarn anytime soon!

I think I'll call him Fiver

Yet another good reason to put covers on your basement windows. Every summer we get at least one sad little bunny who has fallen or jumped down into the window well and can't get out. I'd put covers on them myself but our landlord in a little funny about things like that.

It worked out just fine this time- I was using the computer and heard the skritch-skritch THUMP of something trying to hop out of the window. I looked over and there was a little fuzz face sniffing around the window screen trying to find a way out. He darted to the other side of the window well when I opened the window, so I snapped a quick picture through the screen. Then I ran out to the garage to grab some gloves and popped the screen out from the inside because the window well is nearly six feet deep and I hate climbing down the little escape ladder.

Of course that terrified the little guy so he hid from me in the weeds. He did a pretty good job too. I scooped him up all gently, but he got even more scared and hopped out of my hands. I had a moment of total panic because I hadn't closed the window behind me when I came out of it and he was sitting on the window ledge sniffing inside the house. Having a wild rabbit, no matter how cute, loose in my house is not something I want to deal with, thankyouverymuch.


So I grabbed him up and put him over the edge of the window well and then watched him hop away as if nothing strange or exciting had happened at all. I hope it makes for a good story in the warren tonight when all the bunners are getting ready to sleep.

Summer crafty

So far this summer break I've met my goal of working on a project everyday. I have not yet reached my goals of a blog post or a finished project everyday, but I'm getting there.

I needed to send out a thank you card for a beautiful capelet that one of the glitter girls sent me, so I went a little crazy and made a whole stack of cards.




The mermaids are my favorite. I used parts of the illustrations from The Water Babies and some random lady illios I had laying around for inspiration.

On Friday my friend Laura and I sat around for hours teaching ourselves to crochet. Well, teaching ourselves the "real" way to crochet using patterns and all that. I should have something crocheted to show soon!

Yesterday Rocket Boy and I drove around with my sister looking at houses. We've got a realtor lined up to start showing us some and hopefully we'll be in a house of our very own by the end of the summer! It's a little overwhelming, to be honest. I had a little bit of a freak out this morning because I act like a spoiled three year old when I'm faced with any sort of long term change.

I'm off to do some more crafty things- Maybe I'll finish another project today!

We'll fill our mouths with cinnamon

This photo is from a month ago while we were visiting my family in Oregon. I love when my accessories match my delicious frosty beverages.

Today is the first day of my summer vacation! Hooray for school jobs! I'm planning lots of craft projects and day trips with my sister (house hunting, WHOO!!), but today I'm just going to be lazy and enjoy the freedom of summer time and no work/school responsibilities.

so fresh and so clean

, originally uploaded by Pearliepie.

Sorry I've been gone so long.
Things are...mm. I don't know. Things just are I guess.

I'll be updating more often with photos for awhile. I feel quiet but creative- I like this feeling.

Still hibernating

Of course I did not do what I said I was going to do in my last post. Oh well.

I have been crafting though! One of my students gave me a beautiful blank book for the holidays. I wanted to turn it into a photo album or something because the pages are a beautiful shiny black. Then I decided that it's perfect for my sister and I to send back and forth to each other while she lives out of state. We're filling the pages with letters and art and scrapbook type things. Here's the inside front cover. I used a library pocket from a used book I bought years ago and some of my favorite stamps from my collection.



Then I wrote her a letter and made a little letter pocket to put it in. I was making a stamp for the corner too, but I sliced my hand open with the exacto knife and abandoned that project for awhile.

Hibernation, day 45

We've had snow on the ground for 45 straight days now. This is the first weekend in almost 2 months that it hasn't snowed. This sort of thing does not happen in Colorado. The sun always comes back out and melts any snow we get within days.


No updates because I've been stressed out at work and hiding under a pile of blankets while at home.


But I'm sick of hibernating! I'm finishing up projects 1 and 2 for the 50 projects in 07 challenge I joined (some of the other participants are on projects 6 or 7 eek!), and next week I'll be following SouleMama's lead and posting at least a picture every day.


Wanna take some bets on my progress? Seven updates in a row- Will I do it? We'll see!

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Sigh. Have you ever wished and wished for something new and shiny to replace something old and worn, but when you finally got your wish you almost couldn't bear to part with the tattered item it is replacing? That is exactly how I feel about the present that Rocket Boy got me.

This is my old wallet. I've carried it since I lost my Hello Kitty wallet during my sophomore year of high school. That was many years ago. I bought it at the Contempo in the now demolished mall in Boulder, back when edgy, punk rock girls shopped at Contempo. It served me well all those years.

Once in college it was stolen out of my purse right behind my back. Oh, how I mourned the loss of it then. Whoever took it used my credit card, took the cold medicine and cash out of it and then dropped the empty wallet into one of those blue post boxes. When the post office sent me a notice weeks later I cried with happiness. I had to pay the post office $8.15 to get it back, but I didn't care. It was my perfect wallet. Satiny soft on the outside, (that's all worn off now. It's as slick as deer guts on a glass doorknob, as my dad would say) roomy inside with lots of room for discount cards (I'm a sucker for a coupon) but still cute and ever so slightly punk rock.

Cash never really fit into it all that well, so I developed a way of folding my bills that drove everyone crazy. I always had to unfold the cash before I paid for something and then carefully fold the change back into my wallet. If I wasn't ever so careful, the bills would catch in the zipper and it'd get stuck. I ripped the corners off of more bills than I care to remember. Sometimes I'll get a ripped bill now and wonder if somehow it has been in my wallet before.

I started tucking a twenty into the middle change pocket after one horrible trip to the gas station. It was before I had a credit card and one morning before work I filled up my tank with gas, grabbed my wallet, and noticed there was NOTHING inside. "No big deal," I thought, "I'll just use a check." Except I didn't have any checks either. I panicked. I stood there next to my car crying. What was I going to do? Nothing like this had ever happened to me! Thank the Maker, a very nice stranger saw my distress and paid for my gas for me. I don't think I even thanked him properly. Sir, if you are out there, you made a huge impact on the seventeen year old me. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

A few years ago the front pocket started to rip after I pulled my ID out of it a little forcefully. I was in a hurry to a doctors appointment and got pulled over for doing 40 in a school zone, only I wasn't actually in the school zone while I was speeding. I know I wasn't because I worked at the school in question, and the school zone didn't start for another 2 blocks, and it was 2:20 on a Saturday, so (I thought) it didn't matter anyway. Got a double fine for that one, but I haven't gotten a speeding ticket since. The anger I felt at getting the ticket wasn't worth the few minutes I would have saved if I hadn't been pulled over.

Just now when I cleaned it out I found Rocket Boy's fortune from one of our first dates. Actually, it wasn't a date. We were just hanging out at his place before we "officially" started dating and decided to get something to eat. He took me to a little Chinese buffet where we pigged out on fried rice, sesame chicken, and veggies. We got our fortune cookies at the counter when we paid and opened them in the car. I knew as soon as I saw his fortune that things were going to work out for us. I tucked the little promise into my wallet and promptly forgot all about it. I am tucking it into the change pocket on my new wallet to serve as a reminder of all the wonderful, magical things in this life.

Here is the shiny new one. I sent Rocket Boy to the Queen Bee site and told him which color combos and styles I liked and he picked this one out for me. Isn't it sweet? Look at the tag- the bee just makes me melt.

Oh, I will miss my old wallet. But I'm sure my new wallet will carry just as many memories for me. And look at how nicely it goes with my new purse from ten thousand villages!

SNOW DAY!!

Woo woo!Here's the view from my bedroom window. This looks like nothing, right? There are places where you can still see the grass and then drifts that are taller than I am!

Today is actually day two of the snow day. Yesterday I was SO grumpy when I got up and got ready for work. I was mean to everyone. When I left the house it was snowing a little and really windy, but I didn't think it would really be a blizzard. I had gotten all the way to the highway before I heard that my school district was closed on the radio. To be honest, I didn't believe it when I heard it. My district almost NEVER closes. So I just pulled over to think about what to do. A few minutes later the secretary from one of my schools called me to make sure I wasn't driving to work. So I turned around- it's a good thing I did, because it had taken me 20 min. to drive from my house to the highway, but it took me 40 to get back to the house!

Around 11:30 Whit called us from school and asked if Rocket Boy and I could come pick her up. Instead of taking the truck we took the car which was a bad plan. There were places where the snow drifts were taller than the car's clearance. We spun out pretty badly on the way over to the school, and we didn't dare stop anywhere for fear that we couldn't get going again. The ride back was pretty uneventful, except that there were high school students who had tried to drive home in the ditches everywhere. We all felt awful about not being able to stop and help them, but since we took the car there was nothing we could have done anyway. Highway patrol is really good about rescuing people out here though, so I'm sure they all got home safely.

I am so lucky to be one of the people who made it home before the storm really hit- some people on the highway had to sleep in their cars all night! I'm praying that everyone is okay.

Rocket Boy and Poppa J discussing the best way to try to clear the driveway.

See? Huge drift right next to nothing on the ground! Crazy. Also, I'm noticing that we look like we have a ton of crap parked in the yard, which is true, but most of it isn't ours. The tanks are water and propane, but I have no idea what's leaned on the table there. The boat, truck, and camper are all Poppa J's- I don't think any of them run right (I KNOW that the truck doesn't, but that's Rocket Boy's fault for driving it and gassing it with the wrong gas when he was 16. Don't tell him I told you!) Good lord, we really are country folk now. At least nothing is in the front yard up on blocks.

Rocket Boy churning up snow and mud at the edge of the drive.

We left a trailer piled full of uncut firewood on the driveway. Under the trailer there is almost no snow at all. I think some bunnies took shelter under there for a little while last night.
I love the edge of this drift. Doesn't the wind do cool things?

This is the view from my studio window. It's like a tunnel!

Alright ya'll- I STILL haven't wrapped any giftmas presents, or finished sewing my sister's present, so I have to get off the internets and get to work!

Before and after

So, I'm ready to get started on making some holiday gifts but uh, this is what my crafty space looks like.

So, my first project of the day is going to be cleaning. Whoo! Hopefully I'll be back in an hour or two with an updated picture.

Ahh. SO much better. Although, I didn't really clean up all my beads. I just moved them off the table and onto the hutch. That's okay, because organizing my beads is on my list of things to do. I just haven't done it yet because it will be a whole weekend task. (Excuses, excuses)
Okay- I'm off to make a pattern (that's why the open notebooks are on the table. I don't plan on leaving them there!) and a holiday monster.

One year

Rocket Boy took me to a cabin in Allens Park for our one year anniversary (December 13). I cannot believe that I've been married for a whole year! I am so blessed to have him in my life- he is the kindest, most imaginative, sensitive man I've ever met. He's my bestest friend, and I've learned so much about myself just by hanging out with him.

I snapped these photos of the ancient first aid kit I found in the kitchen right before my camera decided that it didn't like working there. I was really sad that it was broken, but as soon as we got home it started working again. Stupid technology. There were a ton of cool things in the cabin, old leaflets about the mountains, cool books, and knick-knacks. I wanted to get pics of everything, but oh well. Maybe we'll go back in a few years.

The cabin was lovely. It was built in 1914, and it was pretty drafty, but there was a fireplace to snuggle in front of. My only complaint is that I forgot my pillow, and since I'm such a tender, fragile flower I woke up with a sore neck each morning. We drove into Estes Park twice to wander around and got another blown glass ornament for the collection (which I'll take a picture of some day...) we also picked up a few presents while we were there.

Okay- I'm off to wrap some presents and make a final list of things to do before Christmas.