Only 35 days left...

I know all of my ten blog readers have been dying for me to finally get around to writing my annual Christmas list post so I will ask you to wait no longer...

I love this bird ornament from the CB2 ~it is just so chubby and silver and it would look great on a red tinsel tree (you know the one I have.)

I also am requesting quite a few pieces to add to my jewelry collection. I really want a 1mm ball chain 24" long they are just so darn tooten cute. Then to hang on said chain I need things like this little number from dogeared ~I am a huge fan of their stuff in general and this little world specifically.

Also I need this ~I was always told that you can never have too many friends and well diamonds are a girls best friend so I will need a ring that looks just like this.

Oh and I really think this is a good idea too if you are also looking to fill my high end needs. I have my mothers original kitchenaid that I love love love love love. It is avocado green ~it went perfectly in her kitchen 30 years ago when it was purchased. ~Now that I have seen this I can't help but want it all for my very own. I know that glass bowl will be ridiculous to work with heavy beyond belief and having two kitchenaids is just silly ~it isn't like having two stove burners ~but i can't help it

I also want a book on making bread called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. A giant maglite that I could use as a weapon and as a tool to light up a dark night. The OPI I'm wishing for Red mini nail color set from the holiday line.
Oh yeah and world peace too.

10,000 Hours

My Mom is extremely helpful ~she can't help herself and it is appreciated. So I am grateful when she passes along talents or words of wisdom. This week she e-mailed me an essay she had come across in the Fall '09 Humanities at BYU it's called "The Entitlement of Easiness" by John R. Rosenberg. The really interesting part is this, described by neurologist Daniel Levitan:
In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals . . . this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years. . . . No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.
I can't help but wonder what I have spent that kind of time on, sleep, watching tv? I may be there with a couple of other things, sewing (although I am far from mastering it,) I think consistency must play some sort of roll.
It made me think of something else I have had rolling around in my head all month. How much I love my little brother ~which I know may seem odd but hear me out. The Rayger had a crummy month and it truly broke my heart to see him go through this. For the record it should be known that I hated him for so long ~he was a pest, he was a little brother. He didn't do anything extraordinarily awful outside of the realm of little brothers, he touched my stuff, I had to share a room, treats, tv time, the bench seat in the van, and my parents attention with him ~major annoyances like that. The reasons for hating him were nothing special and I have racked my brain and the reasons I love him are much the same, he shares my eclectic taste in music, food, driving, doing things our way (the right way,) he loves home too (who couldn't,) and he lets me mess with his squishy ears even though it makes him crazy ~nothing earth shattering.
So when mom sent that article and it talked about those 10,000 hours I can't help but think time was what it was about. All those dinners we ate together, family nights we complained about, movies watched, the road trips we fought on, all of that time I resisted and thought was wasted made all of the difference and I am so grateful.
So thanks mom I am grateful for the article and more importantly I appreciate the time you sacrificed making me hang out with the family so I could love them so much more than I ever thought was possible.

My worst nightmare...

Okay when I was six years old I some how talked my way into my brother Jason Jon taking me along with him to the Idaho Statesman carriers movie. This was the easily one of the worst decisions of my entire life. I spent the next month having the worst nightmares imaginable I was getting eaten by sea monsters I was fighting off skeletons ~I panicked about snake creatures all the time. What could have done this to a six year old ...



So you can only imagine how I felt when I bumped into this yesterday...



Argonauts ~ Titans they are all the same scary Greek legends.

Nerdy Quilt Vacation...

Okay so this year for my birthday I tricked my mom into going on an adventure with me. I have total and utter quilting crush on Denyse Schmidt I love her fabric and her designs I have been slowly and surely working my way through her book of designs since I picked it up four years ago. I am currently working on my seventh project from her book and will try to post it when I finish it up this weekend.

For now here are the photos I took of the class.

The first thing we did was work on a block where we would just grab scraps of fabric from a bad and add them to the block it was all about moving quickly and not over thinking it. Mine is the block in the upper left hand corner.After that first run we talked about what we did and didn't like about the technique and then tried it again. My block is in the upper right hand corner.

~then we had lunch I had a lovely sandwich with cheese, pesto and roasted peppers, an apple and very crispy potato chips.After lunch we worked with a piece of fabric we brought cutting it up into strips to see what adding a continuous theme to the squares could bring the project together.
These are mine. I like things in a small scale and I decided to finish on time so I could chat up Denyse, she signed my book and we talked about her patterns and the book.These are moms. I like the way the stripe works with this technique.
Here is what the felt wall looked like with every ones up there to be discussed.

I loved this trip I love hanging out with Denyse working with her assistant Richard seeing her studio and understanding her design process a little more. Also there were 11 of us in the class and everyone was really great really smart and talented there were a couple of teacher, a running coach, a girl who works for etsy, a child psychologist and some professional moms ~one of my favorite careers. I really like the idea of more free form quilting and can't wait to use it a little more.

The trip had more to it than just the quilting class Mom and I hit the summer cottages in New Port ~in the freezing cold. Then we met up with dad and visited West Point ~easily one of the prettiest places on earth they filmed the wedding scene from Hello Dolly there ~I love that movie. Then I made a quick trip into the city before heading home ~mom & dad drove home hitting their last two states ~congratulations on visiting all 50!

I have to admit ~I am thinking of the advanced improve for next year...

Halloween '09

Okay so I am posting this a little early here is the costume I made to wear to work this year. I took the pictures myself so you really can't see the costume but that's fine, you get the general idea.

I got the idea from this blog and well I love the book too~

I don't work on 34th Street...

I know better that to talk about work on my blog but I am just going to say this one little thing...
I wish more than anything my job was more like the movie Miracle on 34th Street (i love both versions.) You know that scene were Kris Kringle tells the mom where she can find the gift at the best price. That's what I wish I could do with my job... "We aren't the right fit for you but if you go to this employer they will give you a job and you will love it."
~This is just one of the many ways I wish real life was movie life.

Ride the Wind

Okay so for book club this month we are reading Ride the Wind by Lucia St. Clair Robson. On Lucia St. Clair Robson website it is described as This is the story of Cynthia Ann Parker's life after she was captured during the Comanche raid on her family's fort. It earned The Western Writers' Golden Spur Award for best historical western in 1982. It also made the NY Times and Washington Post best seller lists that year. In its 24th printing. it is still popular today. Ride the Wind has garnered more than 100 5-star reviews on Amazon!
On the blog the book group uses Hannah who picked this months book posted a the following picture of the book cover...
I have to admit I did coment on the blog how rediculous I thought the cover was ~but I didn't want to judge the book by the cover. Also at our last book club Hannah said the tittle and described the book a bit by saying that it took place in Texas and that there was a kidnapping and some Indians ~and I wasn't really paying attention beyond that I think was talking to someone about the food ~which is my favorite part of book club.

Okay this last weekend I decided I would go to the library and get the book because I didn't have a lot going on and I thought this would be a good opportunity to get started on the book. I typed in the tittle on the library search option and went right to where it was to be found in the romance section of the library ~odd I thought but I had never been over there and didn't really take note of what was there. I grabbed the book and the only thought that went through my head was that they had updated the ridiculous cover that Hannah had posted with an even more ridiculous cover. Here is what the book I grabbed at the library looked like...

Okay so as I said I didn't want to judge the book by the cover and clearly I didn't pay any attention to who the author of the book was suppose to be.
So this weekend I read the book with this synopsis found on the Leisure Historical Romance website that published this fine literature It is a race against time. In a desperate bid to rescue his best friend's bride-to-be, Reese Starrett thunders across the dusty plains, praying for a miracle. Because it will take a miracle to save the beautiful and pampered Saber Vincente from death, or worse, at the hands of her kidnappers. Dealing with a lowdown snake like Graham Felton, Reese expects hardship, expects bloodshed. The only thing he doesn't expect is to fall in love with the innocent girl entrusted to his care. But beneath the endless, starry Texas skies her sweet warmth beckons him, her soft lips smile an inescapable seduction, and he knows that no matter what the consequences, together they must...ride the wind.
It was a rather mild trashy novel and the whole time I am reading it two things kept crossing my mind ~odd that this is one of Hannah's favorite books and she admits it and ~this is going to be quite the discussion at book group. It never crossed my mind that it was the wrong book ~you see it takes place in Texas, the main girl gets kidnapped in the first chapter, they run into some Comanche Indians and it is historical ~hello it is published by a group with historical in the tittle.
Okay this book was a really quick read so I called Diana up from the book club and told her I would drop it by her house on Monday night so she could read it to without the hassle of having to run to the library to pick it up.
Luckly I went to dinner that night with Lori & Kelly and we talked about the book where I discovered I read the wrong book ~LoKell couldn't believe that I never once questioned the fact that we were reading a romance novel for book club. After a good laugh ~hell I am still laughing about it. I called Diana up and let her know I would not be dropping the book by.
I took it back to the library and then found out they don't have the Lucia St. Clair Robson version of Ride the Wind so when I got home I ordered it from half.com ~and this time did the search by author.

Mother's Day..

The summer I was six my older sister reduced me to tears by telling me the gypsies had left me on the doorstep and that mom & dad had only taken me in because they had to. I didn't belong in the family and no one loved me because I was just a gypsy.

When I was sixteen I desperately hoped that I had been left on the doorstep by gypsies and that I didn't belong to the family.About ten years ago my father showed me this picture of my mother and said that it might be hard to deny that I belonged to the family...

On a day like today when I think of how lucky I am to belong to my mother, how I wish I was more like her, how much I love her. I am so grateful the gypsies left me on her doorstep.