Oh, yeah! I'm moving again.

There ya have it.

This year was the first year I was without my own family.
So I borrowed this one:

Definitely some of the best turkey dinner I've had in the last few years.

Dave and I (how'd ya like me new hair color??)

Look at this lil gem!! He spent about 10 mins trying to get at some dessert.

Late night monopoly with Dave and Clay.

If you look closely you'll see Dave has mortgaged ALL his properties, I've done a couple of mine and only have about $33 to my name. Even after Dave and I cheated we still didn't win.

Well... there ya have it.

Two Quickies...

Here are a two projects I did in the last week.

Numero Uno:
Zina mentioned that she wanted a autumn garland table runner. I thought I'd get her one as a thank you for the last 7 months of living in her house but had little luck. THEN. Joann's had all their "Autumn Inspirations" 70% off and I was like "I'm in." Here's what Zina has on her table now....

All that was only $20, even the vase.

Numero dos:
A few days ago I came upon this blog which lead me to this post and ultimately to this tutorial. I fell in love with the little pouch and knew it was just what I needed to make to replace my sorry, too full bag with all my nail stuff in it.
Behold the glorious results....

The linen on the outside is printed with silver metallic (a sample from me old work), and the lining is the leftovers from my flower pillow.

I went from this:

To this:

It was really easy to make. I've never put a zipper on anything but I did today. The whole thing took about 2 hrs. but it'll be quicker next time.

Turkaaaay Bowl!!

Last Saturday was the annual Turkey Bowl. I must say, I don't think I remember every competing in a turkey bowl and especially not in one of this magnitude.
There were 32 teams from the region (all the stakes and wards were eligible to play) and these people take it very serious. I mean... I'm athletic and very competitive but when I met my team Saturday and we started running plays and drills and I was told "no breaks till you get it right..." even I started to doubt my ability to live up to the TB hype.

But I mean c'mon... who we kiddin' here? Of course I dazzled everyone with my speed, agility and amazingness.

Somehow the church secures Husky Stadium for the evening and from 4pm on this place is crawling with Turkey Bowl-ers. 3 Fields, double elimination and a trophy. This is serious.

Here is our team "4th Reload" Not sure what the significance of that name is, like I said, I met all these people about 15mins before this picture was taken. We have Kyle, Art, Jenny, Morgan, Danny, Eric, Sam, Heather, The Shelb-A-Tron, and Coralee.

My Seattle friend Stacey and her Washington "mom" Laurie. They cheered for us after Stacey's Tutu team was out in the second round.

Action shots...

The team we're playing in these shots was a team from my ward. One of their players was talkin' a lotta smack so it gave me great pleasure to catch a pass and run it in for a touchdown which aided in our win over them!!!

Ward friends/the team from my ward. See the tall lurpy guy? That's who was big talking... so glad we beat them!

It was a BLAST!!! I'm fully recovered from my "almost concussion" and feel pretty good that I caught two passes that ended in two TDs and one 3 point conversion (girls get extra points). We ended up taking 3rd place overall. Not too shabby.

A Christmas Gem.

Alright ya'll. Prepare yourselves.
Today at the Everett Mall (if you're from around here you know that any sentence that begins with "Today at the Everett Mall..." can only mean you're in for a real treat. It's like saying "Today while I was in Riverdale" or "I was at the Valley Fair Mall and...")
Ok, anyway...
Today at the Everett Mall I was picking up some presents for Christmas and there was something special that caught my eye.
I don't even know what to call these... things. It was hard to pick just one or two to photograph. I really wish my phone had video so you could see the real beauty. And there were SO MANY to choose from.

While I was taking the pic of the horse one the lady came over to me and I had to pretend like I was interested in them- I felt dirty afterward. She did her best to sell me on one, "this one is only $22.50"

They're lighted from behind and have that starburst pattern in the background. Behind the starburst is a spinning thing with multi-colored spirals so it looks like the starburst is radiating. It's just a true gem...

Take a closer look at the horse one. Regular horses at the top then BAM! Zebras in the bottom with that convenient clock. Oh, and a bald eagle. Do bald eagles and zebras live in the same places?

My New Addition.

Last week I woke up with the need to make a pillow to go with my new bedding. (Oh, did I mention that I got my new bedding? I blah blah blahed about it awhile back and started saving the moola and now my new bedding and I are loving life). It just needed something else so I started this lil guy....

White felt petals, an iridescent button in the middle and some satin ribbon around the belly. It was SUPER easy to make- I didn't have a pattern or anything. I traced circles on teal fabric to make sure the petals stayed in line, very lightly glued them down with Tacky Glue to make it easier to sew, sewed them down and POOF. Done.

Cept now, I think I wanna make this pillow.... it's even shown in the perfect color.

Shelby Street

I suppose if Seattle had anything remotely close to a logical address system/street organization I'd have never found this charming little street overlooking Lake Washington.

(the fact this single street post has 3 street names and none of them at right angles to each other is exactly what I'm talking about)

November 1

This area is- so I'm told- is usually a bit more... moody as weather is concerned. More so than Seattle proper. Sunday morning I looked out my window and this is what I saw. I'm lucky to have such a view.

Waiting tables in a leotard.

I got to work on Halloween which turned out to be pretty fun. Nothing starts getting crazy on Oct. 31st till later anyway.
I thought I'd resurrect my 80's work out alter ego from my high school MORP outfit this year. It was perfect, better than before! People just looked at me and smiled like "oh. my. is she wearing that in public? while she's working?" it was AWESOME! I L-O-V-E wearing costumes that are borderline humiliating, so much more entertaining.
Yes, I waited tables for 5 hours in this get up...

Me, Trish and Rainee

Me and Kyle. Ugliest big woman I ever saw.

Nate and I. Definitely my fave outfit for the night.

Chris and I. He trained me (and I trained Nate so...)

Me, Kacey the T-I double guh-errr, and Olive the Chicken (the sicky ear ache chicken)

Jen the "mile high captain" and I. Ya know, I don't think she really even has her pilots licence.

Me and Blake the PIMP

After work I headed down to Seattle for a house party.

On my way I ran into Little Red Ridinghood who'd had a run in with the wolf.

Oh. whup, wait.. no one was ready... take another one.

There we go. These are some wardies.

My Everett friend Elaina.

And just for old time's sake...

the original 80's work out outfit. I wore that to a school dance, oh, yes I did.

Glad they had 8 kids.

R & Z have been married for like 38 years. That's a long time. I'm not sure how Zina did it but she successfully raised 8 children. And she still comes home after teaching everyday with a plan for dinner- very June Cleaver-like. I'm sure her ability to figure out these dinners has stemmed from her 38 years of feeding 8 kids.

Sometime in Sept. I was sitting at stake conference admiring the quilt that some young mother had for her lil' kid and I thought it was time for me to try my hand at making something like that. I've never made anything too far beyond a pillow case... a few make-shift Halloween outfits, a bag once and a skirt that's yet to be finished. So for a week or so I casually looked for patterns for a quilt that I'd like. Nothing country please. Then I found one on the blog of my college friend- MODERNTHREAD (PS The treasures here are unbeatable!! Make sure you look at her newer posts to see the finished quilt). I followed the link for the tutorial and headed to the fabric store.

My only problem was that I didn't know how much fabric to buy because the tutorial only used 3 colors for the quilt. So I ended up buying 2/3 of a yard of each just to be safe. What I ended up with was enough fabric to make a queen sized quilt rather than the crib sized quilt the tutorial called for. Uh, SAFE? Yah, I think so.

This thing became monstrous! I spent several hours at the sewing machine putting this sucker together. I realized that if I lived anywhere else but here there wouldn't be space on the dining table to lay it all out and pin and snip and cut and blah... Had R & Z not had 8 children they wouldn't have had such a huge table and this quilt may very well have never been finished.

So yeah, I'm glad they had 8 kids. Plus their #7 is a dear dear friend.

Pretty bomb huh?! Just need to get it quilted and finished now...