I Caught Santa on icaughtsanta.com! Review and freebie code

I got a chance to try out icaughtsanta.com for free! And I also have a code for you to use to get you some free pictures from the site as well. First read my review, and check out my awesome pictures, then you can have the code. Deal? Alright!

sample picture courtesy of icaughtsanta.com

GenZ Read Together Review and Promo Code

Bundle Up With Restaurant.com's Holiday Gift Guide

BUNDLE UP WITH RESTAURANT.COM'S HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE

DELICIOUS IDEAS FOR EVERY BUDGET!

Gift of Lights & Snow at the Texas Motor Speedway savings

The Gift of Lights & Snow at TMS is one of the most visited holiday parks in North Texas, featuring a drive-thru holiday spectacular light show with over two million LED lights and 600 unique holiday displays across 1.7 miles at Texas Motor Speedway. Your family will love the lights AND the newest addition -SNOW! The Snow Village at TMS features a tubing hill, snow ball gallery, and a snow play area. Kids can also visit Santa and make s'mores. Visit giftoflightstms.com for event hours, Santa's schedule, and pricing.

Do you need gift ideas? This might help!

http://christmasstockimages.com/

Are you trying to plan out your holiday shopping list? Are you having trouble coming up with gift ideas? Maybe some of these will help you. All are affiliate links. You do not have to click through if you don't want to :) You can go to their site in a new window. You will not hurt my feelings. 

I am just trying to help everyone out by doing this post. I am having trouble coming up with a gift list, so this subject was on my mind today. Here is a list of some of the places I am looking at to shop for my family this year. There are sites for clothes, toys, makeup, audiobooks, phones, and much more below! I will put a description or my thoughts on the place above each banner. Enjoy!

Special Freebie for all of You!

Since my birthday was yesterday, I am offering you all a special gift. Yes, that is right! You read it correctly. YOU get a gift from me for my birthday!

Just click the link below and you will get My Memories Suite Version 4 for free. That is a $40 dollar value. It is a wonderful digital scrapbooking software that I have used before and absolutely love. I really need to get around to using it again soon.

Marriage: Is it overrated or is it important?

This topic seems to keep coming up everywhere I turn these days. I see it on facebook, on television, on other blogs, and I decided I would address the topic also. The opinions in this post are all mine. I am not saying anyone else's opinions are wrong or not valid. I would like to hear other people opinions and arguments for and against marriage. I am embedding a poll. This is a compensated activity. I am getting compensated a small amount for trying out the poll but not for this post. I just wanted to make sure everyone knew that before I went ahead with my thoughts.

So my thoughts on marriage. I have changed my thoughts several times on this subject. I got married young. It was a horrible experience that I won't go into detail about. Suffice it to say, I swore I would never marry again. That it wasn't worth it. I went a little wild, had several relationships that went nowhere. A lot of you know how it goes. Either you've been there, or you've seen it with a friend. 

Then I met my true love. Yes, I just said that. True Love. I completely believe in it. I have no doubt in my mind that he is who I was meant to be with. Still, I hesitated on the marriage topic. I didn't want to think about it. I was scared of it. I thought that maybe we should just be together forever without the legal bindings. 

We got married last year. I just felt that we would be more connected if we were married. I am still unsure why I feel that way. We had a wonderful, caring, monogamous relationship and getting married didn't chance that. Still, I feel closer to him. 

Also there are the legal bonuses of being married. If something happens to him and he ends up in the hospital or something, then as his wife I have some say in how things go, or at the least I have the right to know how he is. As 'just a girlfriend', I didn't even have the legal right to know how he was or anything when he ended up in the hospital a while back. It was so frustrating. I had been with him for almost six years at the time and here they were not letting me see him or anything. 

That was probably the biggest push towards marriage that happened during the whole time we were together. It got me to look at what was keeping me from really wanting to marry again. I learned it was just a mixture of fear and habit. I had gotten set in my attitude against marriage for no other reason than I had had a bad experience and nothing had occurred to change it before then.

My marriage was one of the happiest occasions of my life. Was I terrified that it would change things? Yes! Did it? Yes, but only in a good way. My family is more secure legally, closer emotionally, and more happier than ever. It was the right step for us. 

So what do I think? Is marriage overrated? I do think some people set too high of expectations for marriage. I think that some people think that marriage is the only answer. That it is the one thing that will keep them safe, secure, and happy. That is wrong. We make our own happiness. We help others create happiness. Marriage is just the foundation for a great relationship that needs constant work, but is totally worth it in the end. Marriage is the the foundation; love and laughter, caring and friendship, is all the rest of it. 

So what do you think? Is marriage overrated? Do you think marriage is important at all in this day and age? Take the poll, answer in the comments, or go to my facebook page and leave a comment. I would love to hear what you have to say. 

Is marriage overrated poll:

https://poutsch.com/question/1028452

So excited over my affiliate link for Craftsy!

I just joined up with ShareASale to be a Craftsy affiliate. I absolutely love Craftsy and have enrolled in several of their classes. So it is an honor for me to have affiliate links on my site for them. There are three on my blog page right now. One to the right, one to the left, and one above my posts. Click any of them to take you to the Craftsy site and you can browse their classes and patterns.

Sloppy Turkey Sandwiches, or is it Turkey Joes?

I am probably the last person to have tried using ground turkey in sloppy joes! I have seen other people blog about it and have run across many recipes for it, but had never gotten around to trying it myself. So today, while trying to figure out what to cook and not in the mood to do anything complex, I decided to go for it. I chose the simplest route of course!

The best thing about uphills is when they turn into downhills!

Isn't this a pretty whatever it is!

I went for a walk today. Sounds exciting, huh! Well it was pretty nice. It was below 90 degrees when we decided to head out. After a bunch of days over 100 it felt really nice at around 88!

I am back finally

Yes it has been around five months or so since my last post. I do apologize for that. I have no computer or laptop that works right anymore. I do have an iPhone now though! So I am going to try it this way. Please ignore any typos or capitalization errors that you come across. I have horrible fumbley fat fingers and always seem to hit the wrong letters.

OK so I am going to try to be more organized with my blog from now on. I am going to separate it into sections. Knitting, cross stitching, any other crafty thing, reviews, gardening, cooking, and family life will probably be the normal segments. I will try to keep the same order so anyone can easily find the section they want to read.

I won't talk a lot today about much of anything. I just wanted to let everyone know that I am back. I plan to update weekly. I will try to blog every Sunday night but some nights will be later than others. I am working on a few projects right now but most of them are super secret surprises for my oh so pregnant best friend so I can't really talk about them as she tends to follow my blog when I remember to post. I am knitting a baby blanket and can only show the color to you because that is all she knows about it. I am also going to learn how to use a sewing machine tomorrow so I can make a cute quilt kit that I have had for a year or so and never learned to make. There are a couple of other things I am making for her, but she has no clue what they could be so I will have to wait until after her baby shower in May to share them with everyone. I think I might put everything in my que and post pics on ravelry as she is not on ravelry, but that will have to wait until tomorrow.

As for my gardening and cooking.... I am still trying out new recipes often and tweaking some to suit myself and my family. I will try to share recipes I find and pictures of what we like. My gardening bug has bitten so I have started a few seeds indoors and am looking forward to getting my garden tilled and prepared for the transplants. Also Bobby has agreed to help me build a cold frame, which I have been wanting since I took up gardening last year. I would love some raised beds and a greenhouse but that will have to wait until we are living somewhere more permanent. We don't plan to continue renting this tiny, falling apart house for very many more years!

Oh! I have a new addiction! Podcasts! Need I say more? I just started listening last week and have came across some good ones. The The Fat Squirrel Speaks is a great video podcast, as is studentknits. I also really enjoy Mommy Needs Yarn, Laugh Love Knit, and knitpurlgurl. Please recommend any that you like. The iTunes search pretty much sucks and I am mostly finding them by hearing about them from other podcasts. As for audio podcasts there are so many good ones I have run across! Just to name a few favorites so far: Knit 1 Geek 2 is awesome, knit.spin.cake is great, knitting rose podcast, the pagan knitter, tvknittingpodcast, with pointed sticks, Yknit, commuter knitter, craftlit, high fiber diet, and The Knit Wits are all great. I think The Knit Wits podcast stopped, but I just started from the first episode so have a lot to listen to before I get to the last one. Again, if you have recommendations let me know. I can't get enough of them while I sit and knit. I also am so totally addicted to one called We're Alive. It is a zombie survival story which is beautifully voice acted and mesmerizing. I find myself knitting furiously while sitting on the edge of my seat waiting to hear what is going to happen. The sound of the creepy zombie calling the others to attack raises the hair on my arms! I am also really into a few more various audio podcasts like Talkin Walkin, Rooster Teeth Podcast, Ronna and Beverly, and The Horror. I like humor, horror, and crafty stuff. Wish I could find one that mixes all three.

The other new thing I am into as of yesterday is plurk.com. I joined so I could follow The Fat Squirrel and studentknits on it, but am already liking it a lot. I am ahume08 on there if you are on there as well.

I am going to end this for now. I need to learn how to add pictures and captions with this app. I will try to upload many pictures that I have taken over the last six months. I have some good ones of food and family. I also want to start reviewing some knitting books and magazines and maybe websites. Also I might talk about shows, movies, and it books that I am into. Who knows where this will go!

For now I leave you with a Happy Crafting and a Thank You for sticking with me!

My first Giveaway and Review, and my awesome yard sale finds

I am hosting my very first giveaway! The product is called My Memories Suite v2. It is scrapbooking software that is as easy to use as it is fun! I had never even tried scrapbooking before and never thought to do it on my laptop, but now that I have I think that I am hooked! I downloaded and installed it tonight and immediately made an album featuring my daughter. It is her Princess Diva album! Here are some of the pages from it I made using this ==> software.

Getting back into the groove

I have been knitting on my socks and now I remember why I put them away for a little while. I enjoy knitting, I really do, but it gets boring! It seems to be the same thing over and over. I love learning new things, but once I learn them they aren't new anymore. So then they start to get boring. That is why I put away the sweater I was working on, because the row after row of stockinette stitch got very tedious. Then I started on my first pair of socks and had to have a challenge along with the learning to make a new thing, and decided to make them two at a time, toe up, on one circular needle. Then it got boring. Then I decided to make a cute swirl skirt for my daughter. Fun, fun, not so fun, boring, repetitive, tedious. Then it was springtime and I wanted to try for a garden and I put away my knitting stuff and my cross stitch stuff (oh, did I forget to mention the eight cross stitch projects I started and then forgot about?) to try my hand at gardening. You are starting to get the picture, right?

Well, I have been working on the skirt again now that the socks are starting to get boring to work on more than a row or two at a time. I have dug out my cross stitch WIPs and have them ready to work on. My garden is starting to produce less, so I have more time to work on my crafty things. I am still out in my garden a few times a week. My tomatoes are getting bigger and I still have hope for a few red ones before frost hits. I started some more herbs to try to grow indoors, since all the ones outside died before they really got to grow (the poor dears). I haven't been experimenting as much in the kitchen lately. I could only do so many new squash recipes before Bobby finally got burned out on that veggie. He was the only one to like squash until I began to grow it and find all kinds of recipes using it. Now I, and the kiddos, enjoy it as well.  Below are some pics of our kitchen adventures this summer!

Serenity making porcupine balls

Salmon and Garlic Roasted Squash Spears

Salmon and squash again

Chicken, squash, zucchini, roasted red peppers, and tomatoes over bowtie pasta

Tilapia Montreal with garlic roasted squash spears and mashed squash

Check out my mutant cucumbers in the bottom of the pic

My cucumbers never did do well. They all turned out to be pear shaped and we called them cucumber grenades half the time. They tasted fine, just looked funny. You can't tell how big my squash usually were by these pics, but they were usually really good sized and so tender. Loved them. Have some in the freezer for this winter. The okra never really produced enough for us to use. I ended up giving it to my grandma. In the pic above, the okra was almost as long as a banana. i forgot to pick that one for a few days! The beans produced OK after the bugs stopped killing them. I only got about a cupful from each plant. I left the Anasazi beans on the vines to dry. I have quite a few out there right now. They took a lot longer than the garden beans or the kidney beans to start producing. But wow, they really took off.

Anyway... back to my crafting. I finally have my HAED pattern kitted up and ready to go. There were around 89 colors to gather, so it took me a long, long time. Thanks again to everyone who sent me floss! It was such a huge help to me. I am going to wait until January to start on it. I am doing a challenge with some other people that I am in groups with. We are together in a group on facebook called CrossStitchCrazy2012. We are doing a challenge that I have seen some others do this year, which is start fifteen projects on the first fifteen days of the year, and then work on the all year long and try to get them all finished. I am looking forward to it. Not only do I get to work on my HAED chart, but also a few of the kits the kids got me for Christmas. YAY

The many beautiful colors for my HAED chart, the QS Emerald Dragon

The HAED design I am going to work on soon called the Emerald Dragon

OK I am going to end this for now. I hope to have more to show you/tell you soon. I haven't been taking many pics lately, but will try to get some good ones soon. Wish I had a good, digital camera instead of my crappy phone camera!

Well, until we meet again, my craftiest of crafters.........Happy Crafting!

Squash bugs, pickles, and boredom

There still hasn't been anything new to report on my crafting. I am just too lazy to start up again, I guess. I am mostly sitting around on facebook or reading all day. I am doing pretty good on my reading challenge. I have read 93 books so far this year. I think that count includes a few short stories I found online by my fave authors. I am still experimenting with new recipes. I have been cooking different kinds of fish. Who would have guessed I would end up enjoying fish! It still isn't my favorite food, but at least I no longer hate it.

My garden is still doing all right. Most of my cucumber vines have died. As soon as they started growing some cucumbers, the vines dried right up. So did the cucumbers. None made it to more than a few inches long. I brought one in before it yellowed and Bobby picked it up and said "hey, I didn't know you could grow pickles!" Then he laughed his rear off. It really did look like a pickle. I really need to get some pictures transferred to my computer so that I may share them on here!

The biggest problem I have had with my garden are the squash bugs. I know that most people would just pick them off the plants and kill them, but I cannot bring myself to touch them. I have made a soap spray and I go out and spray the plants every time I see some, and I scrape off the egg clusters when I find them. I had to cut off and pull up half of the only zucchini plant that was producing because of these bugs. I am wondering if I had some of those vine borer bugs in there too. The plant was half dead and kind of gross looking. It is doing a lot better now. I thought it would die after I cut so much off of it, but it is looking pretty healthy.

I think that is probably about it. Not much else to talk about. My kids are doing pretty good in school. Serenity is in second grade and reading on a fifth grade level. She has already surpassed the reading goal they have set for the end of the year. They test on words per minute by having the kids read a short excerpt from a story for a minute. The goal at the beginning of second grade is fifty some odd wpm and for the end of second grade is eighty some odd wpm. Serenity is already reading at 128 wpm. Yay Serenity! Of course her retelling score isn't up to goal yet. She is retelling the story at around 33 percent and the goal for the year is 50. I think she needs to slow down on the reading and concentrate more on the story itself. I am still proud of her. She read her little tushie off all summer at the library and started getting into the juvenile sections to pick books instead of the little kids section.

Joey has started to navigate away from manga and YA books a little and has been reading a lot of Stephen King books. He, too, is doing pretty good in school. So far he has a C in French, a B in Biology, a C in English, a D in Algebra, an A in interactive media, and I think a B in intro to 2 dimensional art. If he had actually did all of his homework and turned it in, his grades would be a little higher in a couple of classes. I told him that with it only being the first few weeks of school, he really can't be slacking off on that stuff. I was angry at first, but when I looked at the grades he has received so far, I realized it is the zeros he has received on an assignment here and there that has made his grade so low. If he works harder, then he will have all A's and B's in his classes. So instead of being mad at him, I am just going to ride him a little harder about actually doing his homework and showing me proof that he did it.

All in all, my kids are doing good in school so far. I am going to push Serenity a little more on math and science to try to get her more equal in her education. I would like to see her get the opportunity to skip grades like I had when I was around her age, but that is not going to be my goal. I just feel like she is unbalanced and I want her to be able to do math as easily as she can pick up a book and read it. I have a program on the computer to help Joey with his French and I guess I should find one to help him with his Algebra as well. I feel that he is able to do better, and I want him to have the tools with which to succeed at his classes.

OK. I think I have rambled on enough. I will end it with a thought.......

(I didn't say I was going to share the thought with you though!)

As always, Happy Crafting!

How I wish for sun and a good planting day

Well, I haven't been keeping up with my blog lately. I haven't been doing a whole lot of anything these last few rainy weeks. I have read several books, came across a couple of new authors and got reacquainted with a few I had read before, and started a new series. I have been slowly knitting on a baby cocoon. I have not been doing any stitching. Me and my cycles LOL. I have been cooking a lot of new dishes. I think I will post a few pics of my cooking. :)

I am finally learning how to make omelets! Here is one with bell peppers and onions, cheese, black olives, and mushrooms. Bobby likes his like this :)

My first attempt at making chicken enchiladas. We all loved them. I ended up with enough filling for 24 enchiladas. We ate on them for three days and were sad when we ate the last one!

This tasted better than it looked :) It is chicken leg quarters baked with potatoes, carrots, and mushrooms covered in a cream of mushroom soup mixed with chicken broth. Even the kids liked it!

Bobby and I loved it. Joey liked it. Serenity doesn't seem to like anything like this. It is Chicken, tomatoes, spinach, garlic, and orzo. Tasty and colorful!

My first lasagna. It looks weird on the one end because Bobby wanted some black olives and mushrooms on his and not as much cheese. It ended up feeding us for two days, plus I have half of it stored in the freezer for a lazy day :) Once again, everyone but Serenity liked it.

Other than the new recipes, I have mostly been cooking my normal foods. BBQ pork steaks, garlic and herb mashed potatoes, and mac and cheese went over really good last week. I made some of what I was raised calling Italian Spaghetti or Goulash night before last. Still eating left overs :) Of course, Serenity doesn't like it. It is just some pasta with ground beef, onion, garlic, italian seasoning mix, and tomatoes. I used canned whole tomatoes with sea salt and cut them into chunks. Good ole comfort food.I didn't cook anything special for Easter. The kids spent the night away from home so Bobby and I just ate leftover red beans and rice with sausage that I had decided to try to make the night before. It turned out okay. I prefer the stuff out of the box. I just need to get the seasonings right, I guess.  Tonight it is just beans n burger for supper. Couple cans of pork n beans cooked with hamburger and onions. Of course I salt and pepper everything I cook :) Usually add garlic powder to at least half of everything I cook as well. I have been trying to experiment with different seasonings, but we usually come back to the same stuff I always use LOL

Enough about food before I have to go cook something! Kids are doing good. I can't believe they both have glasses now. Joey got his a couple of weeks after Serenity got hers. She needs hers for school and for near activities and Joey needs his for school and for far activities. How are my kids always opposites in everything? It boggles the mind!

Joey had to go have an ingrown toe nail cut out last week. That was fun to watch. I had seen it done on Dr. Oz, but not in person before. Today is a check up to make sure it is healing ok. The podiatrist put some kind of chemical on it to keep that part of the nail from growing back. Let's hope this works so he doesn't have to go through it all over again! Want pics of that too? LOL Joey took a couple, but I think I will spare you all from that image!

I have been waiting for this rain to stop and for the ground to dry out enough to till it. I am going to try to have a garden this year. I started some seeds about two and/or three weeks ago. I also bought a tomato plant and had one given to me as well. I have already had to transfer the tomato plants to much bigger containers. A few of my bean bush seedlings are getting too big for their containers that I had to move them into. I hope I can get everything into the ground before they give up on me! I also have some chives starting to grow, some baby carrots, a few bell pepper plants and a couple of banana pepper seedlings that have poked their heads up. About five watermelon seedlings are looking all happy in their container so far. I can't wait to see if this stuff actually grows for me this year! I wanted to do the tomatoes upside down and had some buckets ready for them, but I think they are getting to big to easily transplant them into the upside down buckets. They might be too big to go through the holes now. I don't know yet.

My tomato plants have taken over my kitchen table :)

Some of my seedlings

another view of my seedlings :) See my happy watermelon seedlings in the green container!

I got an awesome box of yarn from a lady this week. It was a Pay if Forward. Basically like a RAK (random act of kindness). How a pay it forward works, for you that don't already know, is someone sends something to someone that needs it or could use it, or just really wants it, then in return that receiver, when they are able to, will do the same for someone else someday. Hopefully I will be in the position to sooner rather than later. I have been looking for a job recently, as Bobby is out of work right now. I might stay in the workforce once he has a job again. It would be nice to have some extra money occasionally. Also, if I don't work, then we will never save any money towards getting married and eventually moving out of this crooked leaky house with the irritating drain problems :)

Lots of little bits and pieces along with the full skeins. I love it!

Some of it was sent for a specific pattern I have for a skirt for Serenity. She loves purple!

 I have written a children's story that Bobby is urging me to send out to see if I can get published. He also suggested making it into an ebook and selling it online. I am not sure where to go with it. His brother would like to illustrate it. If I go that route, I may do the ebook thing. If not, then I guess I need to have it looked at, edited, proofread, and all that and get it sent off to a lot of places that will say either no, or give me no response at all. Yep! I am a pessimist LOL Any suggestions on what I should do, and how are greatly appreciated :)

Until next time, my happily tangled tanglers...... Happy crafting!

If I only had a brain!

So this is just a quick note to anyone interested. I am an idiot! LOL I get an email message every time someone comments on my blog. I always reply to that message thanking the person, answering questions, or just rambling as I tend to do. Today, I noticed that the address that my response went to is that persons name at no reply something or other. That means no one has gotten the messages I sent them! Right? Dang that was a lot of wasted typing, plus everyone must think I am so rude, not even bothering to thank them. Well here is a super mega THANK YOU to everyone that reads my blog, follows my blog, or comments on my blog. I apologize for being so... well .... me! I do appreciate everyone's comments.

Thanks again and Happy Crafting!

Been sick, but still knitting :)

Just a quick update here. I have been sick for several days now, but have been knitting on my first attempt at a sweater, plus decided to just jump in with both feet (so to speak LOL) and try sock knitting. I decided to try two at a time from the toe up on one circular needle after reading all the different ways to knit socks. It is going pretty good so far. I did manage a little cross stitching last week as well. Here are some pics. Also my little girl had an eye exam Monday and had to get glasses. She got them Tuesday. Wow that was quick. I am including a pic of her wearing them as well :) I love pictures! Here we go:

Isn't she adorable!

My pooh bear and tigger stitching is getting along pretty good!

This is what I got accomplished on my socks on my first day (Friday)

Here they are again after working on them Saturday.

As you can tell, they are not going to be identical. I don't mind. Just my crazy socks. I had to skeins of the same yarn, but the pattern didn't line up no matter what end of the yarns I started with. I have seen some pics from where people did this deliberately, so I decided that it wasn't a bad thing :)

I don't have a pic of the sweater yet. It still just looks like a nothing. Just a rectangle of white stockinette stitch. It is so boring doing the same thing over and over. That is why it is taking me so long. I can only do a few rows before I am bored out of my mind. I can't wait until I get to the more complicated part of the pattern!

So that is about it on this update. I am going to Indianapolis on Monday for Lobby Day on Tuesday. I am a Community Cancer Advocate for American Cancer Society's Cancer Action Network (or CCA for ACS CAN for short) and volunteered to go to speak to our state representatives and such about passing the statewide smoking law that is up for discussion. I hope they pass so that people will be a little safer from second hand smoke in our state. It will mostly just make restaurants smoke free, but we would like to make every public place smoke free. Other states have managed to do it with no problems, so why can't we?

So anyway, there you have it. My update on my knitting, stitching, and life in general :) I apologize to whomever it was that said it was a Tigger's tale about a pic of my Pooh and Tigger stitching WIP in a previous post. I agreed that it was. LOL I am silly. It was Tigger's arm. I guess I was not thinking straight that day. I haven't gotten to his tail yet. It is a fun stitchy project and I have not been working on the others. I only worked on this one on a day earlier when my soon to be brother in law was visiting. He decided he wanted to learn, so I gave him a little beginner's kit and while he learned, I stitched on my Pooh bear one so I could show him what he was supposed to be doing. I can't explain stuff very well, but he watched while I explained and he picked it up pretty quickly. It was fun. Who would of thought a 23 year old guy would even want to learn to cross stitch around here. Most guys around these parts think stuff like that is sissy stuff and better left to the womenfolk LOL. Yep we are a bunch of rednecks here.

Ok. So I will try to get some more good pictures for the next update. I hope to have more done on my socks and maybe go ahead and take some pics of my sweater. I will try to get around to some more stitching as well. My cross stitch projects just kind of fall to the side when I am knitting and reading. I think it is because they take so much attention from me, and I have adult ADD or something.

Until next time my faithful tanglers...... Happy Crafty! (I hadn't said that in a good while LOL)

A Great Day (too bad the weather is gonna change again)

I am going to start off by telling everyone about the photo shoot! :) The photographer that wanted me to knit some props for her offered to take photos of the kids since she needed some photos to flesh out her portfolio and because I made her a couple of the baby hammocks. I think she also probably felt bad for us because she knew we couldn't afford the school pictures this year. :) She is nice like that.  Anyway today was the day we picked to shoot the pics. I think they turned out great! Here is a link to go view them on her business' facebook page: Serenity and Joey on Reta-Li Images so please feel free to go 'like' the pics and the business! I think she did an awesome job. I also think I have adorable kiddos :) Here is a pic I took of her taking a picture of Serenity:

 We had a lot of fun today. 

I haven't been doing a whole lot of knitting or cross stitching. I do have some progress pics to show of my cross stitching WIPs and a couple of pics of my newest knitting finish. I have been spending most of my time reading still. If you notice my goodreads widget on the side of my posts I have a goal of 125 books I want to read this year. I have already read over twenty so I don't think I will have a problem meeting that goal LOL. I read about a book a day when I am in the mood. I have reread some of my favorites and am reading some by an author I hadn't previously heard of. I am also listening to the audio book of Under The Dome by Stephen King. It is great! I listen to it while I knit or cross stitch and also as I lay down to go to sleep. Anyway, here are some pics for ya!

I liked how this second baby hammock turned out. It is twice as thick and soft as the first one. She liked both, so she got both. :-) I think I will make some more and see about selling them on eBay or etsy. I am not sure how much to charge for them though. I have seen them going for around 45 dollars and higher on etsy. 

I am also working on my first sweater. I started it a little over a week ago. It was a vintage kit I got really cheap on eBay. It isn't for me, as the largest size it had on the pattern was a Large and I haven't fit into one of those for about three years now (or longer) LOL. I was afraid I wouldn't have enough yarn to finish it if I tried to make it any bigger, since it was from a kit that came with the yarn. I don't even know if they make that kind of yarn anymore. Anyway, figure it will be excellent practice to get used to knitting sweaters. I eventually want to try making myself one. 

The kids are home this week from school and the weather is going to be nasty the rest of the week, so they will probably drive me insane! So if there are no more updates for awhile, you know I am in a padded room somewhere, rocking and crying for my knitting or something to read LOL. We did have a good weekend this last weekend. Took the kids to a nearby park to feed the ducks and geese on Saturday. Then we grilled out Sunday. It was fun. Monday wasn't too bad either. We got to see Bobby's brother, whom we hadn't seen for over a year. He lives in Texas and works out of the country for long periods of time, so doesn't have a chance to visit often. We only got to see him for a couple of hours, but it was a treat. He looked too thin, but he has been working long hours so I am sure that it is taking a toll on him. Serenity was especially delighted to see him. She thinks he is just the ultimate in uncles. She misses him always and asks when he will come see us again. I know she is seven now, but it is still hard for her to understand how far away he usually is and that he can't just pop over to visit like he did when he lived and worked closer.

Well, I think that is it on the update this week. I wish I could update a couple of times a week like I originally wanted to, but my life just isn't that exciting. :) I don't want to bore everyone after all! I hope to settle back into my stitching, as I really like seeing progress on my pieces. I am still trying to get my stash built up, so have been looking on listia and on eBay for cheap floss, yarn, patterns, and books. I joined a RAK group on Ravelry and a nice lady is sending me some things. I am eager to see what I get! I am like a kid on Christmas whenever a package comes for me in the mail. I hope that someday I will be in the position to RAK people too. I know how much it means to me to receive something off of my wish list, and I want to be able to make someone else happy in the same way. I feel selfish sometimes if I join a group like that. My kids need new summer clothes and here I am asking for crafting supplies. I know, though, that the kids will get all that they need and at least some of what they want from Bobby. He makes sure that they are well taken care of. It might not be the name brand items that a lot of the kids have, but that is fine with them. Serenity is young enough not to worry about that stuff, and Joey is old enough to understand how much stuff costs. 

I have put clothes for them on several wish lists also though, so we will see what happens with that. There is a great website called Gail's List a Wish and it is a community of mom's that help each other out with this type of stuff. Here is a link: List a wish if you are interested in joining. We received a box for winter that had clothes and other necessities in it from a nice lady on there. I haven't been able to ship clothes or anything, but have had some coupons for baby formula that I sent to someone that needed them. Also if you haven't heard of it already, there are groups called freecycle all over the country that you can join to give and receive items. If you have stuff that is still in decent shape, like clothes, furniture, appliances, then you can go list them to give to people that are in need of them. If you are looking for anything, you can post a want on there and if anyone has what you are looking for, they will let you know. I have given and received many kinds of things on there. That is where I got a lot of my yarn at first. One lady had a large tote of yarn odds and ends and gave me all of them, another lady needed some so I shared them with her and she in turn gave me some rug yarn that she would never use, along with some almost brand new jeans for Joey that didn't fit her husband. See how it works? It is great. 

OK. I will stop rambling on now! I hope to have another update soon. I will also take some pics of my progress on my sweater soon to post. Until next time my tangled bunch of tanglers..... Happy crafting!

Not much going on!

Haven't been keeping up to date on my blog lately. Haven't been doing much though. I go through cycles. Sometimes I am all about knitting, sometimes cross stitching, but I have always been and will always be a reading freak! That is what I have been doing since my last blog update. Reading. I have read seven or eight books since my last update. I usually read a book a day when I am in my reading cycle. I tend to reread a series I have or find a new one when I know I am in the reading constantly for a week or two phase. This time I chose the Rachel Morgan series. It is by Kim Harrison for anyone that doesn't know. I love this series and can reread it and love it as much or more every time I do.

I have managed a little knitting even though I am mostly sitting around with my nose in a book. I tried my hand at knitting a shawl. I chose a really simple pattern and ran with it. It doesn't look like the pattern I chose, since I tend to change things as I knit stuff for fun. Here is a picture of what my family is calling my Fairy Net Shawl. It is a white cotton yarn paired with a sparkley purple, gold, and white yarn. The pictures do not do it justice. Serenity likes it so much that I think I will let her keep it.

I am also working on another baby hammock. I wanted to try it in brighter colors. I will upload a pic of it when I am finished with it. I am only doing a few rows a day, whenever I get an urge to knit.

I did start another cross stitch kit for my daily stitching. It was scheduled to be my Tuesday wip, but I haven't been working on them since last Wednesday. I haven't stitched for a week. Wow, I am being lazy LOL. Just in that reading phase of my cycle. I have a pic of my latest start and a pic of my Cat progress.

I am almost done with the cross stitches on the cat. Just on small area left and then it is on to the satin stitches. Isn't it so cute. It is the only indoor cat I am allowed to have. Bobby doesn't like indoor animals. The things we put up with for love. :)

I have a lot of new cross stitching and other crafty books that I have been getting off of listia and eBay. Here is a picture of some of them. I am really getting a collection going!

I think I got all of these off of listia. The complete guide to sewing book in the upper left was a gift from a lady that really wants me to be able to learn sewing and quilting. She knows I want to, but don't have anyone I know that can teach me. I had won a thinner book from her and she threw this one in for free, even though it tripled the shipping. Isn't she a sweetheart!

I made a huge meatloaf for dinner Sunday using a new recipe I ran across and we ate on it for days! It turned out really good. I took some to Mother (my grandmother that raised me) and still we had a lot left over. So I looked up recipes for leftover meatloaf and ran across a recipe using it in Shepard's Pie. Now I had tried to make a Shepard's Pie before without great success. But I thought I would try it this way. So last night I made the leftover meatloaf Shepard's Pie. It turned out better than my first attempt from last year. I thought it looked really good so I took a picture to share it :)

The problem with it was this. It tasted like what it was. Leftover meatloaf with mixed vegetables and mashed potatoes. I loved how the mashed potatoes get all crispy crusty from the baking though. I think the main issue was that the meatloaf recipe I used made a really strong flavored meatloaf, so that flavor kind of took over the flavor in the pie. I could barely taste the other ingredients. Don't get me wrong, I liked it just fine. So did the rest of the family. But I think that if I ever make another Shepard's Pie, I will just used ground beef or whatever, instead of leftover meatloaf. It is a good way to use up leftover meat though. I also saw recipes using leftover meatloaf in spaghetti sauces and in various pasta dishes. Now I know a few ways to use up leftover meatloaf once we get burned out on meatloaf sandwiches!

So that catches everyone up on my crafting and my life in general. Just haven't been doing much. Bobby's car is still broke down, so he is using mine to go to work and back, so I am stuck at home all day, every day. I spend all that time reading, instead of crafting. I am not sure why. I did get to go to the flea market in Princeton this weekend and buy some yarn that I really love. I have no idea what it is. It looks and feels a lot the Bernat boucle stuff I already had. It is a pretty blue and pink mix. I am using some of it in the baby hammock I am making. So, yep, that is it on the update. I feel kind of bad for not sticking to my stitching rotation, but it is a hobby, so I am not going to beat myself up over it. I know I will get back into it soon. I just needed to read for awhile.

Until next time, my faithful tanglers..... Happy Crafting!