For heaven's sake

Don't waltz. You heard what I said, stop that waltzing! We all know what round dancing will lead to. Now that I'm thinking about it, that kind of paints Cinderella in a whole new light for me. . .

I have to say Keepapitchinin has been tremendously helpful in writing this ol' novel o' mine. As well as tremendously enjoyable. What better research can a person ask for?

Ah, but I do like a bit of gorgonzola!

I'm not actually a big cheese fan, but I do love Wallace and Gromit. And what's that? Now I can make my own Wallace and Gromit characters? (And maybe I already made some. You know of myself. And my roommates. And my home teacher . . .) Oh, novel, are you sure you don't want to write yourself? Really? Really?

Everybody has their level

Now that I've typed that, I can't quite remember who said it. Mr. Elton? (Nor, actually does it have anything to do with anything I'm about to write about). As always, I'm writing about me. In general I do not consider myself an artsy person and certainly not an artsy craftsy person. I just don't have the confidence to do things imperfectly and I don't have the skill to do it perfectly. There is one thing, however, that I have learned to do. Remember the Olivia blanket I made for Maggie last year? I have since made two others, one for baby Nicholas, one for baby Ratelle. Unlike the one for Maggie, which was predicated on my whim, these blankets each had specific objectives. The blanket for baby Nicholas (the son of one of my mission companions in case you were wondering) was jungle themed to match his nursery. That was pretty easy to find/do. But the Ratelle's provided a whole new challenge level. First of all, they chose to wait and not find out their baby's gender. Okay, I thought, there are gender neutral colors. But then they upped the difficulty level: no yellow or green. Well, I'd like to think I rose above the challenge. (Hopefully you'll get that joke when you scroll down)

Anyway, here for your viewing pleasure is my one and only handicraft skill. My level if you will. I'm a little proud. Can you tell?

Maggie's
(Yes, again. I mean really, who doesn't like Olivia)

Nicholas's
(I forgot to take a picture with my camera and had to use Photobooth.)

(Incidentally, that's my office in the background if you've ever wondered what it looked like)

Baby Ratelle's
(I know I'm biased because I chose it and its my handiwork, but I think it's pretty adorable.)


So what this all really means is that when you have a baby you may well be receiving a blanket from me and it will most likely have pigs on it. Tell me you're not excited about that!

Halloweekend

I'm not usually a big one for Halloween. Call me a Halloween grinch, but the magic died for me in junior high. So most October 31sts (or 30ths or 29ths--we had Stake Conference on the 30 around here so the parties were on Friday) you'll find me at home, not doing anything particularly Halloween-y and certainly not dressed up. But this year I made an exception. The activities committee decided we as a ward could throw a little Halloween Carnival for the kids in the Stake so that all of the kids (including the Spanish and Portugese branch primaries and the kids who lived in smaller communities) could have fun Halloweens. Now that I can get behind.

I volunteered to run a "booth" and was assigned the coloring station. How can you beat that? It was simple to put together, I got to spend two hours demonstrating my excellent coloring skillz, and I came away with a fridge decoration to boot. My mom even had the brilliant idea to buy some construction paper and mount the kids pictures so they looked a little more legit. Anyway, that was everything sorted. And then it happened. Two of my roommates, who were running booths as well, announced they were going in costume. You know because that's festive. Pssh. But what's a girl going to do? Show her grinchy roots and ruin kids' Halloweens? Certainly not.

So I did some thinking and pulled together a famous Children's Lit heroine from my closet--and my crayon box and voila!

Ramona Quimby
(Can't tell who I am just because I'm wearing pajamas under my clothes? That's why I added a name tag. But I did it festively, ie childishly, ie in crayon. Eh? Eh?)

To complete the outfit, I wore velcro shoes, jeans rolled to show a little ankle, and fun, mismatched socks. True, I don't really have the right hairstyle, but I wasn't going to go that far. I'm pretty sure only parents and my peers recognized me, and not all of them at that, but that's okay. It was the thought, right?

But wait, the fun didn't stop there. Sunday night one of our friends from the ward had a little birthday celebration. But seeing as it was Halloween she thought we all needed to dress up. Now the actual directions were to dress as things she liked or which payed homage to her. Naturally a good handful of us decided we should dress as various things/people she hates. For instance to counter Laura's own costume as Lilly Potter (Harry's daughter--Laura has red hair and Harry Potter glasses), one of my roommates dressed up as a Draco Malfoy's daughter. We also had the evil smoke monster from LOST (Laura loves LOST and therefore hates the evil smoke monster), Geordi LeForge from Star Trek (Laura loves Star Wars and apparently therefore hates Star Trek), a suitor, her twin sister, and me. What did I dress as? A squirrel. I know, I know, we sound mean, don't we? Luckily she loved it.

I'd have to say, all in all it was an impressively festive Halloweekend for a grinch like me.