Giant Skeleton King

This is a giant skeleton king. The little guy on the right is a drunk guy. The little guy on the left is a guy with long hair. Up at the top is clouds. At the bottom is the ground. The yellow triangle shapes and the black and white shapes and the shape on the skeleton king's crown (blue with black and red squares) are all pieces of a whirligig ball pattern that Joseph colored and cut up and glued on the picture to look cool.

Upcoming Elections

Paul sent me an email yesterday which basically consisted of the text you will find at this link: http://blogs.christianpost.com/the-connecting-link/dems-welcome-muslims-prohibit-christian-hospitalty-in-charlotte-11861/

It isn't just that one link. You can find it at many different ones which leads me to believe there may be some truth to it. Not only that, but it just seems to follow what has been trickling down through the news.

Quite frankly, I will be very glad when this election is over. I hate election years to begin with because there is so much mudslinging and, quite frankly, noone is ever as good as they try to portrey themselves. This one is particularly bad because people seem to be so polarized over the issues. It does not have to be one way or the other. There can be some compromise. In fact, there should be some compromise.

I will admit that I am not an Obama supporter. I do not agree with the whole Obama care issue. I do not agree that we needed out national debt to be added to or that we needed to stimulus package. That said, do I think Romeny would be better? Well, I don't know. I know people who know him and say he's a really nice guy. I'm sure there are people who know people who know Obama and say he's a really nice guy.

I wish that we could just lay out the qualifications and the track records of those who are running and let people decide. Campaignes are just a load of crap being flung out at the public for us to wade through. They are meant to target groups of people and that, I believe, is a form of racism.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

A Well Spent Friday Afternoon

I made one of these (the tan one) out of the black sequin fabric. I like it, but I like the front of another one I'd made better.

The one I liked better I made using this pattern.

I thought it wouldn't be too hard to combine the above two patterns to get one that I really like. I like the fact that there is a sleeveless option for the first pattern, and I like the way the front drapes better for the second pattern. Too hard to combine? No. Of course, I encountered difficulty immediately when I could not locate the second pattern. Hmmmm. Would this stop me? Never. I got the one I'd made using it, and went to work.

The beginnings.

 I found three pieces of tissue paper upstairs. Actually, I knew they were there so saying I found them isn't quite accurate. What I did find (but didn't really because, again, I knew it was there) was a cd/dvd case which is the subject of another post another day.

 Once I had the three pieces of tissue paper glued together, I copied some pertinent information from the pattern I had.

 Over that, I pinned the article of clothing I had and began copying more pertinent information. Always fun when working with this type of fabric--one of the 'silkies' from Joann's.

 It always amazes me how not straight a seemingly straight cut can be. Good grief.

 Here, I need to make the pattern for the arm hole work. The penciled in marks are about where the two corners of the pattern you see need to be. Food for thought. I played with it a bit and decided not to take a picture of every single thing I did otherwise there would be way too many. In the end, this is what I came up with:

 Pretty cool, eh?

 Another bit of amazement: the fact that the tissue paper that you just traded many minutes of your time for, just got folded up and looks like that much of nothing. Definitely not indicative of the time spent.

I just love scraps.

Filling the bobbin.

 Yet another bent needle. I seem to be exceptionally good at making these. I wonder if there's a market for them?

And the finished product. Not the greatest picture (which is why it's small) but you get an idea of what it's like, anyway. One of these days perhaps I'll get one of me wearing it.

Amid the tragedy of loss, the embers of hope shine bright. . .

Wedding Day

October 8, 2011

 

After waiting close to thirty years to meet the man of my dreams, it was then another two and more than a half years before he asked the question.

 

Paul asked the question on September 11 and let the specific date be up to me. It needed to be a Saturday because during the week, I thought just wouldn't work. I suppose it really would have, but since Paul had been working at his current job for less than a year at that point, I thought it best to not ask for time off during the week. It was already September. My thought process went something like this: November already had Thanksgiving and generally isn't a very pretty month unless we have an early enough snow. Besides, I'd been married in November once. December is nice because there is usually snow but there is already Christmas and lots of birthdays (Cedric, Amena, Grandma) and an anniversary (Becky and Jay). January is a good month but has lots of birthdays (Paul, me, Seth). February has Valentine's Day and everybody gets married then because of it so that wasn't for me. March is the beginning of spring, often not a pretty month and often a muddy one. It's one redeeming feature is Daniel's birthday (and my dad's), so, no. April--Easter and still the mud factor. Ick. May isn't a bad month but has a couple birthday's (Papa and Alisha). June was the other month I'd been married in so even though it also has Grandma and Papa's anniversary, I didn't want to go there. July and August are probably my least favorite months and were just too darn far away. That left, are you ready for this, October. Month picked out. Now for the day. Paul said the 22nd would be good because it's his aunts birthday but that was a Tuesday so it really wouldn't work. I thought maybe the 15th because I was born on the 15th (of January). Paul said the 8th would be good because he was born on the 8th (of January) and would be less likely to forget it. So, there we had it, October 8th.

 

What a crazy couple of weeks. Nice culmination, I think.

 

Amena with Imani followed by Joanna. Ruth Britt sitting on the side.

Amena with Imani again, followed by Joanna and Laura.
I really like Amen's dress.

Laura followed by Alisha.

Alisha.

Me!

And again.

And again. Love that peeking Cedric. The other boys were playing in a room and didn't even know what was going on.

No, I don't overly love myself. I'm just putting in all the pictures I happen to have.

Alisha and Imani behind me and Paul.



Me and Paul. And Bishop Nally's head.
Other people: Chad (behind me to the left), Bethany Price and her girls (behind me to the right). Diana Chunn way in the back on the side. John and Kitty Rolfe although you can't see much of her. I'm not quite sure who is behind them but I think one of them is Jana Arbon. On the other side of Paul is Ryan. You can see Karen Dusty's head Behind her is the Hobby family of whom you can see Susan's head, her fiance, and Wayne. He was in Daniel's class. On the very side is David Alexander between Ryan and Wayne. Behind the Hobby's are the Ameliomeh's and Carmack's. I'm not sure who is in the very back.



Us again.
I can't go through the  naming again. Sorry.

 

And us again.



And again. This time you can see both Karen and Jim Dusty with Ryan. Behind them are the Alexander's and next to them, the Mayer's. On the side is Margaret Armstrong with a couple of children and in front of her a few seats in Fred. The guy in the very back I wasn't sure about appears to be one of the missionaries.

And again.

And yet again. With a bit of Imani.



I'm not sure what to say here.

 

Hmmm.

The girls. And now you can see Laurie and Jared Orzel next to Ruth.

Us.

And again.



Peeking at the cake.

This is just kind of cute.

I do like the cake.

 

Mi familia.

 

And again. Love Joseph covering his face!

 

No! Don't see me!

It's fun to click through these really fast because you can see how people are moving.

He's such a nut!

Now we have Adam too.

 

And one more.

 

Cake again.

I don't remember the conversation at all but Karen and her daughter Katie made the cake. Karen usually dyes her hair but here she'd just finished chemo and/or radiation treatment for cancer and wasn't able to dye yet.

 

Cutting the cake.

The rolled fondant was actually kind of tough to cut.

See what I mean?

 

Done at last.

Chow time.

Oh yeah.

Amena, Alisha, Laura, Joanna in the back with Joseph, Cedric, Imani and Seth in the front.
Nice looking bunch of kids.
(OOOppps, did I say that? I meant children, of course!)

 

Aren't they cute?

Beware. . .

the silliness is about . . .

to EXPLODE!

 

The girls look so thrilled.

And that's all she wrote for that day. At least at that location. Paul changed and went to get the car which he'd parked nearby so as to avoid anyone wanting to do any 'cute' decorating of it. I changed and met him outside. We left and got our stuff to leave on our short but sweet honeymoon to New Hampshire. While we were at the house, everyone else showed up so they obviously didn't stick around at the church for long. The only thing I would like to do differently is get more pictures.