Then she says: "Aren't you glad that doesn't happen at our house, Monkey?"
Why, yes. Yes, I am.
Precious granddaughter, Leah, just announced there was a dead mouse in the Christmas ornaments box at her daddy's house this past weekend.
Then she says: "Aren't you glad that doesn't happen at our house, Monkey?" Why, yes. Yes, I am.
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We had a lovely Thanksgiving right here at home. My daughters made the meal, we had my mother-in-law and sister-in-law over and the kids were home this year, too! A terrific day all the way around.
I have started a new bible study method. It's art journalling as I study the bible. I have a multi-media sketch book I picked up from Micheals for $4.99 when they had their art supply sale a couple months ago. It's an 8 1/2 × 11 sized book, with thicker pages for the various mediums used in art journalling. My markers bleed through the pages, which annoys me, but if I use clear gesso on them first that should solve the problem. Scott and I started Christmas shopping this past Sunday. We finished Paige, found something for Erin and Katie. Bought my mother-in-laws gift and most of my moms. We found a small one for me, and I think I will ask Scott to finish our bathrooms as my Christmas gift. We have all the stuff, we just need to do the work. If we can finish our master bath, I could finish our bedroom too. That would make me feel great! I think that's my goal for his upcoming two weeks off. It's getting more and more difficult to find gifts for our kids. They are increasingly picky. I've decided gift cards are the way to go. The little ones have so many things written down, they are sure to be thrilled with anything they get. We have two dogs. Both rescues. And both weird.
The Chihuahua/MinPin mix is causing the current issue. I have been extremely busy this past year. So busy, I haven't been home much at all. Well, now that I am home more often, Chewy (Chewbarka) is really getting used to having me here with him. Now, when I do come home from being somewhere, he barks. A hideously loud, piercing bark. Almost like he's being squished. He hears my van drive in and if I'm not in the house in seconds, he starts this horrible bark. Apparently he has already been whining before he starts barking, but I can't hear that from outside. And this bark wakes everyone in the house. Once I'm inside he's often so excited to see me, he piddles right there on the kitchen floor. This is frustrating. I'm tired of cleaning up after him, and I'm really tired of the horrible bark...I'm not sure what we need to do about this, but it's becoming urgent. I was a judge for our local children's costume parade again this year. What a delightful experience! The children were precious again, with an abundance of creativity. While my personal favorite for most creative- butter- didn't win this year either, the baby doll was certainly worthy.
Next year I hope the weather cooperates and we have the parade. We were forced to cancel due to horrible winds and pelting rain. We had the contest inside the lodge, with a magic show and face painting, scary stories, apple cider and donuts. It was a hoot! I loved it! Our winners were: Baby doll-cutest (6 month old little girl dressed as dolly) Wizard of Oz family as best group One-eyed Zombie as most scary Bloody Mary as scariest witch Baby Clark Kent and Crazy Cat Lady as most creative Another splendid Halloween experience was enjoyed by all. We are tech week for our show, Crazy For You. What an amazing show this will be! One of our old time shows, with huge sets and extraordiary costumes. I love this!
The kids have worked unbelievably hard to learn all the dancing required for this production. Tap dancing for a bunch of farm kids with two left feet...It's quite an accomplishment, let me tell you. The costumes are amazing! Our incredibly tallented costumer, Laurie, has outdone herself this time. And that is really saying something, because she makes fantastic stuff every single time. But this show she's dipped into the vintage pattern vault and her results blow my mind. Truely delightful designs brought to life by her vision and inate ability to always build an impecable wardrobe for each character. I have, upon occasion, tried my hand at sewing. I have, very rarely, achieved what could loosely be described as a garment. And each and every second was a grueling, agonizing experience for me. The effort it takes me to read a pattern, try to decipher whatever it is telling me, then looking at a flat piece of fabric and trying to wrap my head around that becoming something a person could wear upon their body turns my mind into soggy spagetti noodles. It is a puzzle. I HATE puzzles. Laurie, on the other hand, loves the challenge. She is awe-inspiring. The sets turned out pretty well. It was one of our monster sets, which is a nice change from the minimal sets everybody does now. I was pleased with the end result. Laurie noticed I used a bit of the bright colors of the follie girls dresses in the set, as part of the shading and layering of colors I always do. I do this to make it pleasing to the eye, although the mind won't recognize why. In this case, I wanted the town to brighten visually when the gorgeous colors from the city (Laurie's costumes) arrived in Deadrock, the worn down desert town. This worked well, as the town did perk up visually the second the follie girls arrived in their vibrant purple, gold, teal, cobalt blue, red, coral, green and magenta. The props also came together pretty well. Even though some of the stuff was more difficult to pull together than I thought it would be. We had a sucessful run, but could have used some strong male voices-which we don't have. That was the really unfortunate part-lousy singing. Not great, when you're putting on a musical. The female voices were great. The guys- wretched. Still, they made up for it with some really good acting and exceptional dancing. The tapping was delightful. Paul C. worked his butt off with those kids, and it showed. The kids were great! I really enjoyed the show. Our next show is a Suesical production if some sort. A non-musical. Thank goodness. This weekend was Potlatch. The weekend I had been looking forward to for months.
And the weekend did NOT disappoint! Other than leaving much later than we had hoped, and having a mix up at the hotel, we had a perfect weekend. I finished the second Vogel late Friday night, Chloe priced all the puppet hands and we all went to bed. We woke early Saturday, cleared out all the unnecessary stuff we had needed the night before to finish Vogel, changed rooms from our Friday night room to our Saturday night room and then went to our 9:30 workshops. Mine was the country mouse and the city mouse, how to make them and to perform the show. Stephanie's was music and sound for your performances. Mine completed early, so I went over to Rod Puppets. Another interesting one. My next workshop was on hand puppet manipulation. It was excellent. I learned so much about the workings of hand puppets and the construction of them. Not just from this workshop but also from a young guy who creates hand puppets himself. He helped me to understand my problems with my own construction and ways to improve my puppets. Absolutely invaluable to me. The break between the workshops and the Store was for setting up, if you were selling. Which, of course, we were. We set up our table. Almost immediately a young boy, perhaps 10 or 11, came up to the display holding the two finished Vogels. I told him we weren't taking them down yet as the sale hasn't started yet. He said, "Oh. Okay." And stood there patiently, waiting. I couldn't stand that so I just took one Vogel down and began working her. I hadn't had a chance to play with her at all because I finished stringing her so late ...The young man didn't seem to mind. I asked him if he would like to try her and he was thrilled to get her! He worked Vogel like a pro! And he wanted to buy her. I knew he couldn't afford her. Steph was in charge of pricing so I sent him to her and played with the other Vogel. He came back to me and said he would like to buy 'em. I said they were pretty expensive and he said that was okay. I asked Stephanie how much they were and she said $100. The young man was cool with it. I asked him if he was there with his mom or dad and shouldn't he talk to them before he buys a puppet for 100 dollars...And his mom walks up. She asks him if he's sure this is what he wants, and he's adamant that Vogel is his puppet choice. So, with his moms approval I told him that would be a hundred dollars and which one did he want. He said he wanted both of them. And I went stupid. I gaped at him and couldn't form words...I looked at his mom and she nodded again. Stephanie told me I needed to sit down, so I did. I REALLY couldn't get any words out of my mouth. So he bought both of them and I was thrilled. The best part of was seeing him with a large crowd around him playing with Vogel. That was magical! Today is not only halloween, but also my beloved mom's birthday. She has the best holiday birthday ever! All that candy AND you get to dress up as anything you want! Fabulous day for a fabulous lady!!
Of course, today was also the annual children's costume parade. I was asked to judge the costumes again this year, and was delighted to do so. Last years costumes would be hard to beat, but there were some really wonderful showings this year as well. The group winners were the Wizard of Oz family. Three year old Sophia was Dorothy, baby sister was the Lion, mommy was the TinMan and dad was the Scarecrow. Just charming! Most creative was a tie: the crazy cat lady (p.j's, slippers and a robe with stuffed cats sewn all over her), and Clark Kent ( 6 month old looked just like the "real" Clark Kent). Best Witch went to an unconventional choice- a zombie-esq blood covered Bloody Mary. Funniest went to a baby girl dressed as a rag doll- absolutely precious! Following the judging and face painting, there was apple cider, donuts and hot chocolate to accompany the "scarry ghost stories" and the magic act. Since the downpour refused to let up, we skipped the parade and held the festivities in the legion hall. Warm and cosy for all. Another successful Halloween for our local kiddos! We've been working tirelessly on our puppets for selling at this years Potlatch puppetry convention held in Angola. I've been working on hand puppets, and my first marrionette, Vogel. He's bird, and adorable-if I do say so myself. I think he will be pretty popular. He's really expressive.
I am so excited to attend this convention! I'll meet all kinds of different puppeteers, different puppet makers, different contacts in the business. I can do market research on what puppeteers need and want, what we can offer them as a business. I should make up a survey and hand it out, asking what their needs are, what they want, what they are willing to pay, etc. So much to do, so little time. I signed up for a wonderful service called Stitch Fix. It is a shopping service, utilizing a personal styalist to help you add pieces to your wardrobe you might not otherwise have picked out. Whether that's because you lack the time to shop, have no interest in shopping, have no idea where to look for clothes, are relunctant to shop due to unpredictable weather or whatever your reason may be- this is a wonderful thing to take advantage of.
I received my first shipment Monday, and unfortunately due to the "flood of fifteen", I was unable to keep this one. All our funds are tied in repairs to our home right now. But this is what I got in the mail: a black and white knit skirt, a purple casual cotton top, an adorable jean jacket, dark wash denium jeans, and a sparkly pair of earrings. I was so excited to see what my stylist picked for me! She pretty much hit a home run, too. I had picked up a jean jacket and top very similar to the ones she sent me earlier this month. The skirt was a close-but-not-quite-right, and I didn't open the earrings, but they looked great. If you are interested in having a personal stylist, I highly recommend Stitch Fix. Our basement flooded three times this week. Each one worse than the one before it.
The good news is we have been getting rid of tons of stuff. And we moved tons of my totes into the back room. This created a nook-type area for me to have my miniature woodworking stuff as well as my painting work space. My workroom is much less crowded, the family room has lots more room too. Now that the totes are out of there. So this is a nice change for me. I feel so much better with some space to breathe. I need a few more totes or storage units to store the remaining stuff in the workroom, but there isn't that much left to pack up. Most of the totes were filled with fabric I bought quite awhile ago. I still haven't found my patterns yet, but they can't be that far away. I am determined to make the clothes I bought the fabric for, since I am in desperate need of them. And I'll have totes galore with all that fabric used up. Another win/win. Tomorrow I go to my arm doctor, hopefully they will decide to fix the torn tendons and messed up shoulder. It is rapidly becoming unusable. Not that they work worth a crap at the best of times, but they are getting worse. |
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