Lots of roses

Today I picked roses from OUR rose bushes. There were lots to chose from. They even smell pretty nice.

Quilt

Here are the promised pictures.

The third picture shows the detail of one of the Hardanger squares. It is stitched with ivory thread and has a light beige behind it.

I have the middle part of the quilt quilted. All I have left to do is finish quilting, tie the threads on the back, and do the binding (which I'm scared to do - I don't quite understand the instructions I've read about it yet). Tomorrow I'm going with my Mom to her chemo treatment that lasts all day, so I'm taking the quilt to hand tie the threads on the back. It will help to get all those hidden as it looks like a mess right now!

I plan to have it all finished by the end of the month.

Finally! I get to share with you...

A year and a half ago I started a quilt with 5 Hardanger squares for my parents' 30th anniversary that was this week. I couldn't post any progress pictures because it was a secret! But tonight I presented an almost finished quilt to them, so I can now post about it. Yeah!

However, it will have to wait one more day because I'm very tired. Time for bed!

Lots of veggies

Today I picked 14 pounds of vegetables, 11 of which were tomatoes! I couldn't believe it! The other vegetables are cucumber, zucchini, some of our first corn, onions, and anaheim peppers. We're making a huge batch of salsa tomorrow. Weee!

Our fish

Here's a picture of our fish in our pond out front. We have two black goldfish, two red/orange goldfish, and three koi. I'd like to name them, but I'm having trouble picking names. I thought it'd be cool to name the four goldfish with G names, and the three koi with K names. From the personalities, the two darker koi are male, and the yellow one is female, at least that's what I think. The goldfish could be either sex; they don't have much personality to determine it; maybe they're really high-tech plastic android fish?

Can anyone give me some ideas for names?

Thirty years

Today is my parents' 30th year anniversary. Hooray for them!

My Brother-In-Law

Meet Tim, John's younger brother. This picture is a little older, but I wanted to post it because it was taken from the bridge over the river that's really close to our house. This was after we made the offer on the house, but before we got the keys. Tim came to town for a short visit and to see the house. Then we took a walk to the river.

This was also before his trip to Brasil where he met a special friend of the female persuasion. Take a look at his blog for some pictures of Edneia (pronounced Esh-ney-a; sorry, Tim, if I didn't get that quite right) and Brasil. He was very excited to talk about her, and we're very excited to hear about her. He also talked about looking at house prices down there. Sounds like I need to get my passport ready for a Brasil trip!

Less than two weeks left of school

This summer I'm taking an online accounting class at the community college. It's almost over! Yeah! John said he's looking forward to the class being finished because than I can start unpacking boxes. While I have gone through a few boxes, it is true I haven't made much progress because I've tried to focus on school. And it's paid off because so far I'm getting an A. Yeah!

Macy loves her sun spots!

Isn't she cute?

See how our corn has grown!

You can see how much our corn grew in first few weeks we were in our new house. It was so nice to have a garden started! We've already enjoyed several zucchini, cucumbers, and John made a yummy salsa from the cilantro, onions, tomatoes, and anaheim and jalapeno peppers, all from our garden!

Cuddling picture

Okay, okay, here are some pictures.

First, meet John and Macy. Macy is very picky about her cuddle time. When she decides to cuddle, you just can't say no.

Lots of work to do

We've been in our house almost a week now. There's lots of work to be done! It's so exciting, so overwhelming, and so tiring all at the same time. We're getting everything moved this weekend, then we can start to settle in. I can't wait to organize and decorate my craft room. I'm also excited to pick out paint colors, although that is one of the most overwhelming things on the list.

We are so grateful to our family that has helped us move all our stuff. With my husband not being able to lift more than ten pounds after his back surgery, we really appreciate all the hours and sore muscles they have sacrificed. Thanks guys!

It's finally here!

Today's the day we get the keys to the house. Last week we were counting down the days, and Friday we started counting the hours. The deadline is 5 pm tonight, but if the owner's get done moving out their stuff, then it might be earlier.

The homeowner has agreed to do a walk-through with us to show us operating procedures, like for the sprinkler system and hot tub.

We get to spend a week cleaning and doing any kind of fixing, painting, or personalizing before we have our movers come help us. And by movers, I mean family. :)

We're so excited!

Fun animal quiz

You're a Donkey!

Loyal and helpful, you are capable of carrying heavy loads for
others. At the same time, you're a bit ornery about being asked to do things and can
sometimes be a real, well, you know. Regardless, many see you only for what they can
get you to do rather than actual personality attributes you might have. Some media
influences make you seem very funny, while others have made people think it would be
a horrible punishment to end up like you. When you were young, you always seemed to
end up getting hurt at birthday parties.


Take the Animal Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Fun Sesame Street quiz

You Are Bert

Extremely serious and a little eccentric, people find you loveable - even if you don't love them! You are usually feeling: Logical - you rarely let your emotions rule you You are famous for: Being smart, a total neat freak, and maybe just a little evil How you life your life: With passion, even if your odd passions (like bottle caps and pigeons) are baffling to others

The Sesame Street Personality Quiz

We're getting a house!

Yeah! We finally found a house we love, and we're in the middle of the process of buying it! In less than a month, we'll be in our very own home.

As the date comes closer, I get more excited! Yesterday I went to The Home Depot and bought our first new appliances: refrigerator, washer, and dryer. Although it was a little disapopinting to go home with only a receipt and a delivery date. As soon as we get them delivered, I'll take pictures to post. That's assuming I can find my computer underneath all the packing boxes, of course. :)

Oh, by the way, this house is not the house from the previous post. We found it while we were still on the back-up list of the other one. While we were frustrated and disappointed with not getting the first house, we were really excited about finding "our" house, so we decided to go for it. It has a bunch of features the other house didn't: a better layout, more square footage, a master bathroom, a two-car garage (the other house only had a one-car garage), a hot tub, a separate family room, and a fourth bedroom. It's such a great house, I even get excited just typing about it!

Now my evenings and weekends are spent packing and cleaning. I usually dread packing, but I keep telling myself how much I'm going to enjoy our new home. That get's me going. Hopefully moving day will be a breeze.

House hunting

I haven't posted in awhile. Part of the reason is we've been very busy looking for our first house. I have some exciting news, and some not exciting news. The exciting news - we made an offer on a house we really love Saturday morning. The not exciting news - the sellers didn't accept our offer first, but instead put us in a backup position. If we accept the backup position (we will because we love the house), then if something happens with the first position buyer then we get a shot at it. It might take up to two weeks to know if the first position buyer isn't going to be able to buy the house for whatever reason.

I will update when we know more.

Cool marble machine video

This is such a cool video! I love things like this. It's going around the blogging world quickly, so I apologize if you've already seen it. Wait, no I don't. It's so good it's worth seeing more than once!

Click on the watch button in the Incredible Machines box. Enjoy!

Favorite anytime movies

One of my friend's talked about her favorite anytime movies on her blog, so I thought I'd make a list of mine too. These are movies I will watch when I just want to veg (is that spelled right?), stitch, or curl up with my husband and kitty (or all three at the same time!). They are in no particular order.

1. Matrix (The first one is my favorite, of course.)
2. The Princess Bride
3. Lord of the Rings (I'm just getting into the commentaries - great for stitching.)
4. Double Jeopardy
5. Star Wars IV - VI
6. The Mummy 1 & 2
7. Pirates of the Caribbean, The Curse of the Black Pearl
8. The Day After Tomorrow
9. Flight of the Navigator (I need to buy this one still)
10. Ever After
11. Independence Day
12. Indiana Jones (Last Crusade & Raiders of the Lost Ark are my two favorites)
13. Finding Nemo (I need to buy this one too)
14. Aladdin
15. The Shawshank Redemption (Okay, so there's a few I need to buy :) )
16. Men in Black
17. Sabrina (1995)
18. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
19. X-Men
20. Back to the Future (all 3!)
21. The Fugitive (This is one of my Dad's favorites. Dr. (said with a strong newscaster voice) Richard Kimble.)
22. Sahara (I don't have it yet)
23. Speed
24. The Thomas Crown Affair
25. Any Pierce Brosnan Bond film

Okay, I think I'll stop at 25. It turned into more of a favorite movie list in general because I don't own all of them. The first eight listed are the ones I reach for on a regular basis.

P.S. Thank you to those that encouraged me to write an update. It means a lot to me that you check my blog to see how things are going. Thanks! *hugs*

Lazy weekend

We have had a very lazy weekend. I started another jigsaw puzzle in the living room. It really works great to put up the card table. I have an Ott-Lite I use on the table to see the pieces; it shines light on the table but stays out of other people's eyes. This puzzle is a multi-picture of a wolf. It's a bunch of little pictures of animals made up so the shading in the big picture looks like a wolf. I started putting it together sometime last year, and about 3/4 of the way done, I put it away in a puzzle storing thingy. You put the puzzle on the flat piece of fabric, fill the tube with air then roll the tube down the fabric to create a roll of puzzle. But it's not designed for long-term storage as we found out. The air leaks out slowly and the tube shrinks letting the roll relax and lose pieces. We finally put the puzzle away a few weeks ago because it was almost all the way deflated. So now I'm starting it over. There were three good-sized sections still together, but I'm nowhere near where I was before. It was a fun puzzle before, and I'm looking forward to doing it again. I'm planning on watching a movie or two this afternoon and working on it. Fun!

We had fun weather yesterday. There was a short thunderstorm, but I've never been in one so close before! The thunder was not more than 2 seconds after the lightning, and it was so loud! The first thunder clap disturbed me out of a nap on the couch; I woke up very surprised and confused. John and I laughed at how startled I was. We saw a little hail, too.