8 Random Things

Two of my fab friend - Fiona and Lauren both tagged me to post 8 Random Things about myself...they tagged me LONG ago and I am just now getting slightly caught up.
So here goes:

1. I am slightly addicted to lip gloss and chapstick...really anything cool for your lips other than lipstick. I currently have 55 different lip glosses and chap sticks. Of those, I keep 22 at work alone!! Yes - when in doubt, you can always buy me cool lip gloss and chapstick. Hubby refuses to kiss me when I have it on so he gets a lot of pecks on the cheek.

2. I am a notary public. If you ever need anything notarized, just give me a call! Heck, I'll even do it for free for my blogger buddies:)

3. Our three dogs are named Gammy, Yuki and Bree. Gammy is short for Gamara from that old Godzilla vs. Gamara movie. We usually call her gamma-goos or gammers or old lady. Yuki (pronounced You-key) is generally called yuk-a-boo-key, yukers or baby girl (she was the runt). Bree has always been just Bree. No cute nicknames for her, but then again she is a big boxer and not quite prone to nicknames like the goofball pugs.

4. I once wrote a check for 3 million dollars. Sadly, it was for one of my old bosses and none of it was for me.

5. Along the lines of #4 - in addition to being a paralegal, I am also the bookkeeper for my law office. However, I have not balanced my own checkbook in probably two years.

6. I have an autographed picture of me and Bob Dole hanging in my office.

7. I love to fly. I even love little tiny planes that rock you to and fro. I once flew from Miami to Key West in a little 10 seater painted to look like a sea turtle. We flew just under a raging thunderstorm and it was one of the most surreal experiences of my life. I was 7 months pregnant with Miss S on that flight and she loves to fly too. By the time she was 2 she had already earned a frequent flyer freebie ticket.

8. I love Jimmy Buffett. I've belonged to my local Parrothead club for about 12 years and I've had the chance to go to Key West three times with my dad and sister for the annual convention. I've only been able to see him in concert once so far but I hope to go again before he eventually stops touring. My claims to fame are having every single Beatles and solo album and every single Jimmy Buffett album. I take that back - I think he just came out with a new greatest hits that I haven't bought yet. I'm slowly buying them again so that I have them all on CD. I still have several that are just on vinyl or tape.

Since I was so slow in playing along I know that most of you have already done this little meme. So play along if you haven't, and leave a comment if you do so I can read all about your randomness too: )

At Last

He's home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My awesome brother is home from Iraq and arrived back at his base in Hawaii last night. I wanted to call him ALL morning but since Hawaii is 4 hours ahead of New Mexico I had to wait until at least 11:30 am (7:30 his time) to call him. As soon as he said "hello", I cried:) Please join me in breathing a huge sigh of relief and a quick prayer to thank Heavenly Father for keeping him safe while he was gone.

Just a Quickie

Remember the Halloween bunting I posted not too long ago? Here it is hanging in our front window. I love it!!! It was hard to photograph and this was the best I could do. It fits the window perfectly - cool since I completely guessed at the length. I can see myself making more of these for every holiday and birthdays.

Miss S was sick yesterday so I stayed home from work with her. I crafted and sewed pretty much all day while she laid on the couch and watched the Disney Channel non-stop for about 9 hours. I made several of each of these for Christmas - I'm playing along with Scrap Happy's countdown to Christmas projects. Click on the picture for a larger view - the journal on the left is a gratitude journal and the book on the right is coupon keeper made from one of those little vinyl scrapbooks. Thanks for the awesome projects Lain!!!

Houston, We have Pictures (and a Winner:))

I have failed to post a proper thank you to my sweet friend, Vallen, for the FABULOUS birthday package she sent me:) My very first crown:):) I'm going to take it to work so I can look at it all the time! Man my face looks pudgy. I need to do something about that. Anyone know any weight loss secrets that don't involve dieting, exercise or pills?

And a Beatles CD that she made for me of Beatles covers - this cd has hardly left my car since I got it - most of the covers I had never heard before!! I love it, Vallen - thank you so much!


I think I mentioned that Miss S and I went to the NM State Fair this week - this lovely shot was taken a second before she stuck her arm ALL the way into the zebra enclosure and got a nice little nip from the zebra:) It scared the crap out of her!!


Here we are on the ferris wheel. Taking a shot of ourselves is so hard! I think it took 4 shots to just get this half decent one.


Moki had her baby ! Check out her blog for all the fun details. I was able to visit them in the hospital and hold her sweet little angel for about an hour. I have baby fever SO bad!

I have been bitten by the Vera bug....after lamenting that I have never found any of her stuff, in the last month I have found 4 scarves at the little thrift store that I love. The most expensive one was $2.00 and the cheapest was $.25. I love the colors and the patterns.



Stephanie inspired me to get out this book and crochet this scarf...last night while Miss S and I watched Holes (I love that movie - I could watch it over and over again) I whipped up this little beauty. It will most likely be a Christmas present. My granny would be proud:)

And Congratulations to KAMI!! She won the CRAFT magazine...Kami can you please email me your address at raeshadrz at yahoo dot com

I'm so looking forward to fall...the weather here is finally starting to change and I already need a sweater in the morning. I can't wait to catch up with everyone (I have over 500 posts in my bloglines to read) and get into some serious crafting for Christmas and upcoming birthdays.

A Questionnaire

I'm participating in the latest Sweet Goodness Swap and we have been requested to fill out this fun little survey to help our Swap Sister get to know us better.

1. Favorite Color: Green, then Purple
2. Chocolate Lover? Milk, Dark, White, or none of the above? Milk and White - I don't like dark chocolate.
3. What is your favorite craft hobby? Sewing
4. What is a craft/art hobby that you would like to start? I'm just learning to knit and I would love to learn jewelry making
5. What craft do you NOT have an interest in or just not great in ( so your partner doesn’t send something you wouldn’t use)? Macrame:):) Other than that, I pretty much love it all!
6. Do you have any allergies? (we don’t want to send anything with peanuts if it’ll make you blow up like a balloon!) Nope.
7.What’s your favorite part of Halloween? Decorating, candy eating, costumes, or something else? The decorating, costumes and the candy:)
8. Do you decorate for Thanksgiving/Fall? Yes
9. December Holidays--what holiday do you celebrate? What type of decorations do you like to put up in your house for that holiday? We celebrate Christmas and my decorations are mostly traditional and hand made goodies.
10. Do you have any children, if so what are their ages, boys/girls? We have a daughter who will be 7 on December 23.
11. Do you have any pets, if so what kind? We have three dogs - Gammy and Yuki the pugs and Bree the boxer.
12. Are you a reader? If so, what type of books do you like? I love to read - I love historical fiction, murder mysteries, and anything by John Steinbeck.
13. Are you celebrating a birthday or anniversary in October, November, or December? If so, what day and what is the occasion? My daughter's birthday is 12/23
14. Do you collect anything? If so what type of things do you collect? I collect too much!! I am a collector of collections:):) I love vintage aprons, anything Beatles, vintage sewing notions.
15. What type of things do you like to cook? Are you an appetizer person, cookie maker, dessert freak or a take out type of person?? I love to cook but rarely have time to do much of anything. I love quick and easy recipes. I love to make cookies and desserts.
16. What is your favorite scent? Is there one that you can’t stand? I love patchouli, but my partner doesn't:):) TOO funny!! I love lavendar, cucumber melon, light floral scents. There are not many scents I don't like. Maybe overpowering rose scent is a little too much.
17. What’s your favorite song? Just one?? Right now today it is In My Life by the Beatles.
18. What’s the last movie you went to see at the movie theater? The new Harry Potter. We don't go out to movies too often but we have a great dollar theater by the house that we try to get to as often as we can.
19. What’s your favorite Candy? Swedish fish. A close second is Twix and Reese's (the cups, not so much the pieces)
20. Tea or Coffee or other? Herbal tea...I don't drink coffee. But my favorites in the winter are hot cider and hot chocolate.

Seven Days

I recently participated in my first swap with my SISters at SISTV...we sent another scrapper a few pictures and then they created a layout for us.
Here's the layout I made with one of the pictures that I received - man I had a hard time with this one! I am so accustomed to scrapping for a girl that doing a boy page made me think!

And here's the page that was made for me...I love it SO much!! You'll recognize those photos from our family shoot by Moki...I think I'm going to frame this and hang it up in the living room.


Have you heard of the Sampler? This is the last box of a three month subscription I ordered...basically it's an awesome box full of product samples for all sorts of indie crafters, some magazines and some promotional goodies. Here's a "sample" of my sampler...buttons. card sets, bookmarks, lip balm, crocheted face scrubbie, earrings, a cool red ring, CD...and that's just the beginning. Check it all out here
Also included in my Sampler was a copy of CRAFT which I already have...so what am I supposed to do?? Have a giveaway, of course:) This is a heavy mag so I'm going to limit it to US and Canadian friends...just leave a comment and on Friday or so I'll pick a winner and mail it off to you!
Remember the tea cup plaque (is that how you spell that?? It makes me think of plaque on my teeth) I made? Miss S painted a tea cup too that day. I drew the outline of the tea cup for her and the rest she did herself. She even custom blended the paint for the background:)


Kitten update: The sweet little kitty is doing better! She made it through the night okay:):) YEAH!!!

8 Days

The countdown continues:) 8 more days til Ian boards a plane to head home to Hawaii from Iraq:):)

I've been busy crafting this week. We celebrated my niece, nephew and my sister-in-law's mom's (Lori) birthdays yesterday. I'll share the good stuff first...

I made my niece and Lori each a little painted plaque...here's a pic of Lori's. (the roses are a stamp I had)


And then I made a plaque for my ar-TEA swap partner too... (I free handed the tea cup...can you tell:)?) I hope it's not too cheesy.

Then I made my nephew a fabric covered composition book and a matching pencil case.
Isn't this skull fabric awesome! It's by Alexander Henry and I bought three yards as I have no real "boy" fabric in my stash. I plan on making a few more of these sets as I think they make great birthday presents.

And the not so good stuff...my brother and SIL's cat had kittens on Friday and the kids begged all day yesterday to go see them...we took them in once to let them just LOOK at them, but NO touching cause they are off limits until they are about a week old. While the adults were all downstairs the kids snuck upstairs to see the kittens again. My 4 year old nephew got REALLY excited and picked the kittens up and started tossing them up in the air. One hit the ceiling and probably has severe internal and head injuries and seemed to just barely be clinging to life yesterday when we left. I have been sick with worry over this little kitten and cried myself to sleep last night thinking about her. I prayed too that if she was in pain for Heavenly Father to take her. I am sick at how upset my little nephew is...he's only 4 and just got really excited and didn't know that he was hurting the kittens. Luckily the other four babies seem to be okay. I left a message for my brother to call me this morning but I have not heard from them yet to get an update. I am so sad over this....

10 Days

My camera is in the car and I'm too lazy to walk out there and get it, so no pictures for today:)

BUT I couldn't wait to share that were are now 10 days away from my little brother getting home from Iraq!!! (well, he leaves Iraq in 10 days, but I think it will take him probably two days to get home)...I am SO excited.

Would you like to send him a welcome home card?? If so, please email me at raeshadrz at yahoo dot com and I will send you his address.

Thank you, Maurine Hall..

that was her name...the sweet woman who's estate sale yielded a bounty of goodies. I went Thursday at lunch and then again on Friday at lunch.
As promised - here are pictures of the treasures that I came home with:

Three aprons (more below too)

Pre-made quilt squares, cigar box full of buttons, stack of beautiful old greeting cards, short and long black gloves. The long ones will most likely become part of Miss S's Halloween costume - she wants to be a witch. Crocheted____somethings???? I originally thought they were baby doll hats but they are a little too tall to be that. I have no idea what they are, but there was a bag of 8 of them for $.75 so I just had to have them.

The bottom of my Target bag FULL of notions, trims, more buttons and thread.

More pre-made quilt squares and fabric

More fabric...these appear to be upholstery samples but are really good sized - at least 3/4 yard of each. I love the little blue and green floral ones..heck...I love them all:)

3 more aprons...there were at least 10 more...but I had to show some restraint and picked my absolute favorite ones.
Not a bad haul for $30 total! ($23.00 on Thurs and $7.00 on Friday)

Me Again...

I love this! Thanks Mary Ann for the awesome link- click HERE to try it yourself.

Glorius Repairman...

I should have taken a picture of him when he got here to fix the internet cause I was so happy to see him:):) Turns out the splitter outside was bad so he installed a new one and 10 minutes later we are happily cruising blogland!!

This morning Miss S and I went to my ATC group's monthly trade. Our theme this month was fairies. Miss S even made a whole set to trade (those are hers on the right) - she was so excited to trade with everyone and came home with a nice batch of atcs for herself:)

Sorry the photos are so dark...I took them at about midnight last night:)

My embroidered buttons arrived from Jess's swap - aren't they so pretty!! Thanks for hosting such a great swap, Jess!


And Miss Kerry Lynn tagged me with an awesome name game...

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car)

Freddy Subaru

2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fav ice cream flavor, favorite cookie)

Vanilla Chocolate Chip

3. YOUR "FLY Guy/Girl" NAME: (first initial of first name, first three letters of your last name)

r.der

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (favorite color, favorite animal)

purple puppy

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)

Diane Provo

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first)

der.ra

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (2nd favorite color, favorite drink put "The")

Green the ice cold water

8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers)

Francis Ferdin

9. STRIPPER NAME: ( the name of your favorite perfume/cologne, favorite candy)

Happy Twix

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother's & father's middle names )

Diane Charles

How fun!!! I tag anyone that wants to play along. Leave a comment if you do so we can check out your sweet new names:)

Crazy Day

I actually got off work early today! A transformer in our building blew this morning so we were without computers all day. As if I wasn't already swamped with work...tomorrow is going to be crazy. The power company finally got there at 2 and is going to have to dig up and re-lay a bunch of cables. So at 3 they shut down power to the whole block to make the repairs. I left the office at about 3:30 and I was able to make a quick stop at Goodwill on the way home and a stop at Target and got home at about 4:30....normal days I don't get home until almost 6. AND while I was on lunch today I stopped at the most fantastic estate sale....the woman was a quilter!! Oh my gosh I can't wait to show you what I scored. A huge bag of goodies for $23.00! I'll take pics of it all while Hubby is at work on Saturday:) and a few of the items may even show up in my etsy shop.

I found this cute quiz while I tried to catch up on a few blogs today with my extra free time:)

You Belong in 1963

You are a free spirit with a huge heart. Love, peace, and happiness rule - oh, and drugs too.

What Year Do You Belong In?

Love it!!! I'm such a 60's girl at heart...though I promise, Mom, I never did any drugs. I think I got a contact high once at a Ringo Starr concert but that's it:)

Behind...

as in I need to get mine in gear...I have over 400 posts to catch up on in Bloglines, over 200 emails in my inbin...super tardy thank yous to send out.....and I'm getting none of it done due to (P*(PE*Y_P(*Y#_**@&*&@$*&@* (my string of profanities) internet problems!! The service tech is coming out on Saturday to see what's up. Never mind that hubby has online classes this semester!! I told him to take his laptop down to Starbucks if it gets any worse.

So I'll make this post short and sweet and leave you with a few pics.

I've been meaning to post about my favorite quilt forever and I FINALLY took pics of it (actually Miss S's bed was finally made and a I could take a decent picture of it:)) I started this quilt before I even got pregnant with Miss S. It's the broken dishes pattern and I used all vintage feedsack reproduction prints. I love it:):) It keeps my angel warm every night.




And here are two atcs that I made for the ATC beginner swap on flickr - our theme this month was Cupcakes and cakes:) I love how these turned out too:):) Is it conceited to love stuff that I make??



I' ve been slammed at work. One paralegal was fired last week and another is out on vacation this week. And another just got back from sabbatical yesterday. That has left me and one other paralegal trying our best to get everything done for 7 attorneys for the last several days. I kid you not - I barely had time to go to the bathroom today and ate my lunch at my desk to get more work done.

My internet access will be intermittent I'm sure for the next few days....so if I'm quiet, don't worry!! I'll be back shortly.

Scandalous!

A Secret Society of Scivy-less Sisters has set up residency in the front room. The "No more stuff in the front room" ultimatem lasted a grand total of 13 seconds. Don't ask me why Miss S decided that her barbies needed to watch tv with her while they were nekkid. We spent some of this evening putting clothes back on all of them:)

I found this little guy yesterday when I went out to check the mail. He was TINY!! Literally his body was probably only an inch long...what a sweet little baby. I love lizards. He's hanging out on one of our front walls here and a little while later he was on the ceiling of our front porch.


I received this sweet package from Christy about two weeks ago...yes I'm incredibly behind these days. I won a giveaway she had and she sent made me these two awesome morsbags (she even made one for Miss S which she has already taken off with)(I love the polka dots!), some cool vintage craft booklets and a very cool postcard. Thanks so much Christy!

And now I need to make myself go to bed...I'm playing the organ at church tomorrow which means Miss S and I have to be out to door at 8:40..I wanted to stay up late and do some crafting tonight, but I guess that will just have to wait until tomorrow.