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White Baby Blanket

I really enjoy crocheting.  Especially when I’m making something for one of my friends that is having a baby!  This is a blanket I recently made for one of my best friends since childhood and I cannot wait to meet her baby girl!

Has anyone else noticed how many women are pregnant right now, or is it just me?  It seems like every week I find out about someone else who is either expecting, just had a baby, or in one case, is now having TWINS!!!  Sigh….my day will come soon, hopefully, and when it does, you can be rest assured that you’ll be hearing all about it whether you like it or not!  (evil laugh) 😀

Until then, I guess I’ll just have to enjoy making things for all my friends’ precious little ones.  If you, or someone you know would like to order a blanket or other item from me, you can check out my facebook page here.

From Nursery to Sewing Room (Part 1)

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When we bought our house in June 2010, we had so many ideas of what we wanted to do with it.  But time went on, and we went to work, hung out with friends, and watched movies, but somehow we never really changed anything in the house.  Granted, there was the painting failure in the dining room, where we changed the color from lime green (yuck) to charcoal gray.  Now, I know you’re thinking, “Charcoal gray in a dining room?” but keep in mind that we don’t use our dining room for eating.  My white baby grand piano sits in there, and we thought the dark walls would contrast nicely with it.  And don’t get me wrong, they do….it’s just we used the wrong type of paint.  See, we have really slobbery dogs!  Pretty much all of our house is painted with matte finish paint, and it is a beast to keep clean.  You can’t just wipe drool off a matte finished wall without it leaving a huge streak, so when we went to Home Depot to buy paint, we asked the (seemingly) knowledgeable employee what we could use that would look good, but still be easy to clean.  Do you know what she recommended?  SEMI-GLOSS!!!!  Now, I’m no paint expert, but after taking her advice and painting our dining room in a semi-gloss finish, I can tell you with great certainty that semi-gloss is never the way to go on an interior wall!!!  Not only is it oddly shiny among walls that are completely dull, but you can see every single little imperfection in the wall as well as all your brush (roller) strokes.  Moral of the story….don’t paint walls with a semi-gloss finish.  I’m glad I’ve hit that home for ya.  Now that I’ve completely gotten off track, lets get back to the subject of this post, shall we?

My wonderful honey, Steve, got me exactly what I asked for last Christmas….a sewing machine that also embroiders (among many other things….including my 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee.  Did I mention that he was wonderful?)  Now, I have no idea how to sew.  Crochet, yes….sew, no.  So I wanted to learn how, and what better way than to learn by doing?  That’s always the best way in my opinion.  The only problem was, I didn’t have a room to set up my sewing supplies in.  (Yes I realized I just ended my sentence with a preposition, but I like to live on the wild side, so you’ll just have to grin and bear it.)  When we adopted Lazarus (kitty) in August, our other 2 female cats did not get along with him, so we would always lock him up in the room you see in the above picture when we were gone, or at night so he wouldn’t get attacked without us being able to break it up.  So up until now I’ve kept my sewing machine on the computer table all covered up and lonesome.  I couldn’t use it to learn on the computer table because #1 it is too small, and #2 the kitties would destroy anything I was working on and would annoy the crap out of me as I tried to work.  So there it sat, waiting for the day when it would get to fulfill it’s purpose in life.

Well the kitties are getting along much better now, and we’ve been able to leave Lazarus out all day and night, so now it’s time to put my sewing room into use!  That is after I de-nurseryize it.  I know you like my made up word.  Stick around, you might just learn some more new words.  The people who lived in this house before us had a baby boy, and this was his room.  Now, I’m not saying that I don’t like to look at little bears playing sports, but I wanted a different sort of look for my sewing room.  Maybe not so “baby boy.”  So here is my project to change the nursery into a sewing room!

As you can see, there is a boarder of sporty bears that lines the entire room….so first things first, that had to come down.

Unfortunately, once removed, it left a lovely darker shade of blue behind.  Fortunately I was already wanting to paint this room a different color.  Any suggestions would be appreciated!  I was thinking a light gray with an accent wall of some color where the window is.

At least my sewing/embroidery machine has a home now. 🙂  Don’t mind the sheet I converted into a table cloth.  You do not want to see the ugly table underneath, so this will have to do for now.

Lazarus

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I have never met a kitty like Lazarus.  For those of you who don’t know the story of how we adopted him, here it is.  We were looking to add a new kitty to the family.  Since we already had 2 female cats (litter mates) we knew we wanted to get a male.  We also knew we wanted a lazy cat, so a kitten was out of the question.  So, where could we find an adult male cat?  Petfinder.com of course!  I highly recommend adopting an animal from a shelter or rescue as opposed to buying from a breeder.  Not that we haven’t done both.  However, there are SO many homeless animals out there that would make such wonderful, loving pets if they were just given the chance.  I will say that there are some good breeders out there, though, but finding them by weeding out the Backyard Breeders or Puppy Mills is a hard task.  Don’t EVER buy a puppy from a pet store.  Those are pretty much entirely puppy mill dogs, as any reputable breeder would NEVER sell their puppy to a pet store.  They would want to know where their puppy was going and that the home would be the best possible.  Ok, rant over.

Anyway, we searched on Petfinder for a day or so, and we kept coming back to Lazarus.  I have wanted an orange tabby cat ever since I saw the movie Milo and Otis, so we were trying to find one to adopt, but we just couldn’t find any that we really liked.  Lazarus’s story really captured our hearts.  He had been hit by a car and left in the road for dead.  Another car, thinking he was already dead, straddled him so that they basically drove straight over him with their tires on either side of him.  When they looked back, he lifted his head as if to say, “Hey I’m still alive!  Help me!”  They immediately stopped and brought him to the vet, where they worked diligently to save his life.  Amazingly he didn’t really have any scratches on him, but they think that he was mainly hit in the head, because he has some brain damage.  He was very wobbly when he walked, almost like he was drunk, and he still has very slow reflexes.  When we called about him, our first question was if he could still jump over things, because we have several baby gates up around the house for the dogs and we needed Lazarus to be able to jump over them like our other kitties do.  The vet assured us that he could, so we came to see him and immediately fell in love.  The first words out of my mouth when I saw him were “He’s so beautiful!”  We knew we had to adopt him.

When we brought him home, he was skin and bones.  You could prominently feel his ribs and his hips.  Now he is a healthy weight and definitely a character.  While he is still not as fast as the other cats, he has improved in so many areas.  His first couple months at our house he had to literally climb over the baby gates, and now he can jump over with ease.  He no longer walks with a wobble and he is able to hold his own when it comes to wrestling with the other cats.

Lazarus is our friendly cat.  Our other kitties will run and hide when we have company over, but not Lazarus.  The more attention he can get the better.  But watch your hands….he gives love bites when you’re not expecting it, but then licks afterward.  He is definitely the most vocal when it comes to food time and will be IN the food container as soon as I open it.  He gives the best snuggles.  Unlike our other cats who stiff arm you when you try to cuddle them when it’s not on their terms, Lazarus just melts into your arms like a baby doll.  Our life would not be the same without him.