Friday Fave Five - The Allergy Edition

No explanations this week, I'll just jump right in:

1. Sweet sweet irony. Did anyone ever see "The Happening" by M. Knight Shamalayan?  I know I probably butchered that name, but bear with me.  First of all, I'm going to spoil it for you.  It was the trees.  They somehow rapidly evolve so that, when humans are grouped together (in decreasing numbers until the end, when Marky Mark displays how very little he actually reads before signing a contract for a movie), they emit a chemical that causes spontaneous, and often so over the top it's comical, suicide.  Seriously, one guy throws himself in front of his lawn mower.  A hand mower.  Just silly.

Well, the irony here is, given how much we mocked that movie when we saw it, both MOTU and I are suffering in ways that could only be described as "the trees are trying to kill us".  Our cars are yellow.  Our clothes are yellow.  I literally can't swallow today because my throat is so swollen.  And all I can do is shake a fist (thereby stirring up the pollen even more) at the trees.  Stupid trees.

2. Vantage points. (And as I typed that, FFF #3 occured...remind me.) There's one corner in our house where  two baby gates meet, to keep Shelby "safe" in her room (see FFF#3 for why that's in quotes), Grisgris safe in his space, and Kini from eating everything in half the house.  It's been happening more and more frequently that the three critters meet at this junction...what's great is that I'm the only one tall enough to see that all three are present...usually Kini and Grisgris are fussing at each other while Shelby just sorta howls at anybody blocking her from getting outside.

3. A living house. I lived by myself for a long time...3 or 4 years I think, all said and done.  It got to the point where I would go out just to avoid coming home to an empty, silent house.  I didn't want roommates, but it really gets lonely being, well, alone all the time.  I'm not alone anymore.  Now, even if MOTU isn't around, the house is ALIVE.  Just this morning, during a meeting I called in to from home, I had to put the call on mute and sprint across the house to grab Grisgris as he was leaping over the baby gate that protects Shelby from his big, fat presence.  Stupid cat.  He literally just went in to drink her water.  Kini will poke her nose in to eat Shelby's food, given the chance.  It's pure chaos, I tell ya, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.  I love our little zoo and how much it makes our house feel like our home.

4. Good, long runs.  Tuesday was the season finale of The Biggest Loser.  I ran for 1:15 of the show, covering just shy of 8 miles.  Seriously, if I'd known I was that close to 8 miles I would've just stayed on the extra minute.  But.  That's the furthest intentional, consecutive distance I've covered since high school, maybe ever.  Best part is, I'm not even sore from it!  Though I will say, the best way to sabotage a long run is by wearing short shorts...yikes.

5. Flexible work geographies. Yesterday, I had meetings pretty much straight from 8:30 am to 3 or so pm.  I called in from home to the first one and ended up just working from home the whole day. Over the course of the day, all three critters came to visit me:

Grisgris just purred away next to me on the couch when Kini was in her kennel: 

 Shelby tried to remind me that the dining room/kitchen/laundry area table isn't mine, it's hers:

 And eventually, Kini settled down enough to take Grisgris' place on the couch:

 At some point, MOTU came home and took over.  I love my life.  I love OUR life.  :-)

have i ever mentioned...

...how much I LOATHE nick's oven? hate. it. the damn thing runs 50 degrees off, but not consistently in one direction...it depends entirely on how it feels that day. today it felt hot. I'm looking forward to replacing this the most.

Quick Picture Update

Just a quick pic fix for now.  Trust me, I'll have words later...hopefully today, but no promises.  It's barely 10:30 and today's already been an emotional rollercoaster.  Yikes.

First, the cakes we tried for the wedding:

 They were so good...sorry ladies, y'all just gained 3 lbs from looking at them.  My bad.

Kini making friends:

And enemies: 

She was barking at the waves

Not a fan:

I love my life:

 She climbed in the front seat with me, but wouldn't sit on my lap.  She drives, I steer.  Totally kidding.

Yeah yeah, pathetic, I know...

 Hey, um, can I come sit with you guys?

 Mai's quilt:

 It's sort of a loose interpretation of a quilt I saw a few weeks ago in another blog...I can't for the life of me find that picture though.  If this is your idea, please claim it.  Sorry about that.

We have a door!  And it closes!

Chewing on a frozen squeaky toy:

I love this man:

Bouquets!

Kini as of 3 hours ago: 

 She's so huge now:

K, more later I promise.  For now, gotta focus!

Design Coverup Monday

GASP!!!!

I've resurfaced!  Sorry for the long delay, all 3 of you who so kindly kept checking back (from multiple computers, even, to make me think there were more!).  It's been a couple of crazy crazy weeks.

Anyways, enough about that.  This weekend I got a LOT done.  Sadly, all the pictures I took are on my camera, which is at home.  For now, you'll have to deal with phone pictures:

Here are the first couple of strips of Mai's quilt sewn together.

And here are all of them.  I sewed the whole thing into a loop, then cut them into 3.5 inch strips, perpendicularly.  I'm now undoing the stitching and not having to resew onto the other end to make this thing work.  I'll show pictures later of what I'm actually trying to do with it, rather than attempting to explain it now.

I also got Alishia's quilt basted, finally.  Now I can start quilting that, quilting the QFK that's been collecting dust for a month, and hopefully quilting Mai's soon...she graduates in 2 weeks, so I've got a bit of a time crunch there.  Wish me luck.

And of course, the obligatory cute puppy pic:

"What's that stupid Netbook got that I don't have, huh?"

Kat's Draggin' In...

Lordy lordy what a week.  We started training this week for the new company, which has been unrelentingly fast paced and difficult to absorb.  It's also a pilot training course, which means the materials are in far from perfect shape, which adds to the difficulty.  So with bleary eyes and barely functioning brain cells, here's this week's fave five:

1. My number 1 cheerleader.  On top of all this training stuff, I'm trying desperately not to stress eat (fail) and to get to the gym more often (sort of fail).  Yesterday, I got my ever-expanding booty out of bed at (groan) 5 am.  MOTU, of course, kept right on sleeping.  However, as I was about to head out the door, from the bedroom I hear him sleepily yell, "You rock and I love you!" to keep my spirits up (which were also half asleep at that point).  He's too cute.  Every day this week I've come home mentally exhausted, physically drained, and nearly unable to function enough to even make dinner.  Every day he's told me how smart and beautiful and awesome I am.  He's my number 1 cheerleader, and I'm so glad I get to spend the rest of my life cheering him on too.  :-)

2. Getting it. This training is rough.   Everyone is struggling with it in a major way. I'm not going to claim that I'm not struggling, but I'm definitely getting it.  Wednesday I even felt *good* when I walked out of here.

3. Future families. Last weekend, MOTU and I went up to VT to book vendors and figure out wedding details. We had dinner with his extended family, and I realized at some point during that meal what I'm walking into...his family, while quirky like any other family, is amazing.  They are so supportive and happy and eager to help.  They make some sarcastic comments to each other, but overall they're never mean or snippy to each other.  They respect each other and care for each other...the amount of effort that goes into taking care of MOTU's grandmother, for example, is humbling.  Every one of her children (4) were there on Mother's Day, and they went out of their way to take lots of pictures with her and her sister (Aunt Margaret, who helped raise MOTU).  It was very sweet...even sweeter that they pulled me into the pictures like I was already family.  They're good people, and I'm really happy to be joining their ranks.  Having family like them so close (but just far enough that visiting is still special) makes MOTU leaving not so lonely.  It also makes me less stressed about the idea of someday having kids...there is so much support and love that I'm not afraid. 

4. Wedding stuff coming together like woah. Here's the latest, as of last night:

• We have the following vendors booked, with deposits either cashed or in their hands: 
• Reception - Snow Farm Winery
• Ceremony - Immaculate Conception Cathedral
• Photographer - Margaret Michael
• DJ - Digital DJ
• Photo Booth Rental - VT Photo booth company
• Paper for the invitations is on my doorstep, from paperandmore.com
• We have the following vendors tentatively lined up, with contracts/deposits pending: 
• Pie people - Allenholm Farm
• Cake maker - Cosmic Bakery, St. Albans (no website yet)
• Caterer - Chow Bella

I've decided not to get a florist, since the flowers I've made have worked out pretty well: 

It's slightly more filled out than yesterday, and the pieces are actually glued together.

I think I've also decided that, in addition to the bouquets that the bridesmaids will obviously get to keep, I'm going to make them all some kind of carrying case that can double as a purse. I'll need to figure something out for Jimmy. 

5. Training is almost over.  For this week. Honestly folks, my brain is completely fried.  I haven't absorbed anything since about 2 pm. We have another week of this next week (keep in mind that by "a week of this" I mean "start the day by driving in to Cambridge from Nashua".  Google maps that.  It ain't pretty.) but you know what?  I'm getting it.  For the most part, I'm actually understanding this stuff at least to a point.  After next week, I'll have ANOTHER week of training in June, which will be really interesting...because that training (actually it's only 3 days, not 5) is the stuff that I'm going to be in charge of rewriting.  It feels really good to have a solid direction, and even better to know how much responsibility I'm going to have.  I am the sole writer for this product, and it's the second biggest product the company has.  Yowzah. 

Anyways, that's my week.  Tonight, I'm going to hole up with my honey in our favorite local beer joint, have some yummy food and beer, go for a run (not in that order), and rock my jammies until I fall asleep.  Tomorrow, hopefully I'll get some work done on Mai's quilt...maybe even Alishia's if I can commandeer some floor space someplace.

work in progress

but there is progress! sorry it's sideways, I'll fix that in the morning. for now, it's a bouquet. ish.

Floral Beginnings

Thanks, everyone who left supportive comments yesterday.  I really appreciate it.  The more I put the binding on, the more I got to feel the weight of the quilt, the more it felt like a comfort blanket, the more I liked it.  I don't love it, but I feel like it might be acceptable to send to a 6 year old now.  I hope she likes it.  She requested princesses (I guess her dad writes her letters with stories about "Princess Emily" from prison so they can keep connected...how cute is that??) so she got princesses.  I even got some cheesy little tiaras for her and her mom. I hope they like them. 

Anyways. 

Moving on. 

Last night was way more productive than it had any right to be.  I mean, it was a Monday after all.  We went to talk to the priest about getting married, took the FOCCUS, and came out laughing.  We are SO ready for this.  Got home, neither of us was hungry so I just had a sandwich for dinner.  The Save the Dates came yesterday, so I started on addressing the envelopes...I got EVERY SINGLE ONE DONE!  Addressed, return addressed, stamped, and STD in the envelope.  Now I need to print out the "please book your room now" sheets, put those in, and ship them off.  Hopefully I can get those out the door tonight.

After that, I put the binding on Princess Emily's Epic Disaster and got about halfway through before calling it quits for the night.  I also took Kini on a good long walk. 

I didn't make any of this last night, I just finally remembered to snag a picture this morning:

 Here's a first glimpse of what could be a bouquet.  The one on the bottom is about the size of my hand, for reference.  That one might be a little big, I dunno.  I have a ton of ribbon and beads and such to add some extra oomph on these as well.

This!  I did this! By myself!  No tutorial!  I am quite proud of this one, actually.  It looks like a passable boutonniere, right? It needs some green on the bottom and some wire and green tape, but I think it looks pretty cute! 

Oh, and of course...

It turned out *ok*.  It's in the wash now, hopefully to be dried by tonight so I can put that in the mail with everything else.

Phew!

Can't wait to see what tonight will bring...

Design POS Monday

Dear Princess Emily of the Wrapped in Hope project (through Margaret's Hope Chest),

I sincerely apologize for the piece of crap quilt you are going to receive for your 6th birthday.  You deserve better.  Hopefully by the time I ship it tomorrow (pending successful binding completion tonight) I can remove a few of the curse words and violent screams that have thus far poisoned its existence in this world.  No 6 year old should be privy to that amount of swearing and screaming, especially from a stranger.

Signed,

Your quilt donor.

Remember this?

 It turned into this disaster:

 I swear, every possible thing that can go wrong with a quilt, did.  Nothing lined up right.  I sewed stupid stuff together. The back is horrific and puckered and..ARGH. 

 I kept screaming at the stupid thing all night.  MOTU kept laughing and telling me he was sure it was fine, but at the end of the night I just balled it up and threw it across the room. Stupid quilt.

 Here's what it looks like, more or less. I don't need to point out the awfulness of the center, or all the places that the corners don't even come close to each other...ARGH.

 But hey.  At the end of the day, there's still cuteness to be found:

That's right, Zucchini loves zucchini, especially when it's frozen.

Also on my design table are loads and loads of little squares waiting to be made into little flowers hopefully for my wedding. I made what has potential to be a corsage yesterday but forgot to take a picture this morning.  I'll post it later. 

Man that quilt pisses me off. For better design walls go here.

my own little sweatshop...

the current livingroom setup. wrapped in hope and wedding flowers, alternating based on who's asleep and who's not

The lighter fabrics right in front here are from the Wrapped in Hope quilt I'm making.  The graph paper was me trying to optimize the fabrics I have for that one.  The orange/yellow/red/green fabrics are for flowers for my wedding bouquets.  Hopefully I'll have a real bouquet to show off soonish.