Farewell Dead Weight!

So now that the crafting frenzie of Halloween feels over, I can cruise into the Hallow and sail into that wonderful time of year to which I'm not a huge fan of.  Relatives come and go - though usually the same old suspects (no pun intended!) It has gotten to the point that I do the bare minimum of cleaning before they arrive - that is to say make it look neat, but don't go out of my kind of thing.  But now I have this urge to FALL clean - ya know I have to be different!  Most people Spring Clean, right.... but no, no, dear old me has FALL clean!  Maybe its a birth time of year thing or something.  Since I was born in the fall my time of renew is fall... (well that's my story! LOL!)

So, those of you that know me know that I have knit since I was 6, those of you that don't know me so well, know that I've knit as long as you've known me! LOL!  Without giving away my age, that's more than 30 yrs now.  A girl can collect a whole lotta yarn in that amount of time and a whole lotta ends of projects too!  A girl born of an 'affectionately named' packrat, could store a whole lotta leftover projects in (and out of!) various bins around the house and still never have enough yarn to knit with (we won't go into the fabric stash and toy collections, just yet, but their time is comin!!)  

Well I'm proud to say that I freecycled 3 boxes of only acrylic yarns just this morning!  YAY!  I'm so proud of me!  (<-favourite line from my favourite potty training book!)  Sadly though, it isn't enough the drawer that I'm deputizing to be my yarn stash (yes a SINGLE DRAWER!) is still not as threadbare as I'd like to see it! LOL!  Gads, did I really just say that?  I have at least 1/2 a drawer more of stuff that needs to go but I must first get over the fear of letting it go, that I won't miss it, the project it was intended for won't miss it either because it has been lost in the abyss of my mind! LOL!  It must depart my mortal hands and occupy someone elses!!

The key here is lightening the bulge around the house!  And one tiny project at a time is being accomplished!

Halloween and Crafting

It definitely has been a busy couple of days.

We started out with a planned walk that fell through on Saturday.  Bright, beautiful, cool autumn day, we started heading to the mountains 2 hours away, and ended up changing to one only about an hour away in the opposite direction.  Arrived in the town in time for lunch, only to find all the places packed... so we drove back 10 minutes and ended up at a Ruby Tuesdays.  Well, let me tell ya.  The wait staff was pleasant, but seriously it took more than 40 minutes to get our food.  A burger and fries - seriously it usually doesn't take that long.  Then it took another 30 to ring up the bill.  Apparently the computer went down and well, ya they never took credit cards before the internet was widely used!  *sigh*  So all in all an hour and a half to get food, which then put us at 3:30.  We turned around and came home.

The girls had energy to burn so they stayed out playing.  I wanted to sew, but the 2 yr old needs to be supervised.  So I hung out outside with them.  1 hour turned into 2, as I decided to decapitate prune my arch-nemesis - the Holly Bushes which decorate our entry.  Have I asked recently what the hell the builder was thinking when the put them in? and why after 3 owners - and us here 10 yrs this week - why they are still here?  Well if they don't die of some over pruning disease, they will remain for the next owners.  I only managed to seriously prune back 1 bush - the other would wait another day.

At 6 we headed in, the sun was going down, it was getting chilly and my tiny children were getting chilly.  I sewed for 4 hours.  I managed to mostly finish 1 blue angry bird costume - which was modified from a costume my oldest wore years ago!  I have yet to get the face right!

Roll on to today.  We walked.  We lunched.  He mowed, I decapitated pruned the 2nd bush.  I sewed and completed an Abird Piggy for a very thrilled 2 yr old! :)

 

Yes, the bird needs a face make-over... but they both turned out kinda cute.  I'm pleased! :)

Are there Bad Days on the Beach?

When the family takes a trip to the beach you don't imagine bad days. And I'm not talking rainy thunderstormy days, or days when the kids take to screaming and fighting instead of remembering they have to face each later in the day when they share a room, unsupervised!

I mean days that look beautiful from the shelter of the room, beautiful blue sky, blazing sun unhampered by clouds, beautiful foamy whitecapped waves.

The brain has neglected to recognize that the foamy white waves are crashing viciously on the shore, not a soul is in the water and the obnoxious red flag that is attempting to escape it's tilting flag pole! Perhaps the flag is the only wise one unhappily launched from it's quite storage 2 days ago!

So everyone happily don's their bathing suits and scrubs in the sunscreen. 30 minutes on the beach receiving a sandblasting spa treatment from mother nature, and it's time to call it a day and find something else to do!

Looking down from the balcony now you see a totally different scene. The beautiful white capped waves are really an angry sea, churning, crashing and destroying all it touches. The blue sky is hazy, from sea spray and sand flowing freely. Now you note the lack of footprints in the sand leading to the occupied deck chairs and umbrellas which have not been unfurled or maybe they have, and quickly bundled again in fear of a beach chase, or worse impaling an innocent victim!

The water which is usually grey-blue is now brown as far as the eye can see, from the churned up sand.

It is our last full day near the beach this trip! The winds at 1pm are near 21 mph (33.8 kph.). They are expected to get worse as a trough just southeast of us brings in a variety of weather! Today I am happy we are leaving tomorrow and grateful for the last 28 days here with only two rainy days!

Long Time No See!

Like so many other facebookers at the moment, I'm disgruntled by the recent changes to the UI at FB, and figure I should be having way more fun typing here on my blog! My status updates have gone from multiple times a day to only a couple times a day and as such they are more worthy of blogging than fb'ing.

So here I am rounding on the end of our surprise one month vacation at the beach! It has been a great time. Mostly just the girls and I, but dh has joined us a couple times during the month!

We have seen 28/30 days of sunshine, complete with awesome sunrises and sunsets! We had 2 days of cool thunderstorms.

The girls got a month worth of school work done in 3 weeks! And both of them relearned to knit! I managed to finish 3 projects and am working on my 4th!

We spent a small fortune at the bookstore and discovered my oldest doesn't read books, she devours them! We are currently listening to "Throne of Fire" (the Kane chronicles) by Rick Riordan. We like the narrators!

My middlest is getting hooked on reading! We have just finished her 100 easy lessons and started our first book!

So in a nut shell that is what we've been up to!