State Fair results!

Well after all the panic of trying to get the doll finished and ready for delivery ... all the stress paid off because she one second place! That's so much better than I had any expectation of her doing! Next year, the doll will be done by March and packed away in a padded box somewhere safe. lol

I did even better with the scrap booking layouts. The flower framed one about Lizze the flower girl at Lesley and Bryce's wedding won first place and judge's choice! So I get some sort of gift basket that the class sponsors donated. Not sure what's in it but it sounds like a bunch of goodies.

The other two layouts (I'll post pictures after the fair) won 3rd place and honorable mention.

Can't wait to see them in person at the fair. Going to try to drag Howard with me to go at least see the Country Living buildings at the fair after we get home from Oregon.

Tale of two dolls ...

So, earlier in my blog I posted a picture of a doll I had finally finished. I was so happy with her, and how the dress fit and the "picture" she made, that I planned to enter her in the State Fair.

A few years ago, I made a deal with Howard ... a very reluctant deal, but a deal none the less. The deal was, that I wouldn't enter the fair unless I had the doll already finished. I guess he's tired of the crisis panic mode I go into when it's the day/week/etc before the doll is due to be delivered.

This year, I was so proud of the fact that I was on top of things so completely that there would be no last minute melt down because the doll wasn't finished. That was before Howard and Willow (our 120 pound great dane/retriever) were playing catch ... in the livingroom. Not a good idea you say?? Perish the thought ... it's their favorite pastime. lol I was sitting here at my computer and 15 feet away, Howard is squeaking Willow's ball in an attempt to get the already jazzed up beastie into full blown fetch mode and then he tosses the ball.

Sadly ... horrifyingly ... the ball bounces off the table the 'finished, ready for the fair' doll is standing on. What catches my attention is hearing Howard's whispered litany of "oh no ... oh no ... oh no". I look over, because until this point I hadn't even heard the thunk ... and see him cradling the doll with a look of panic on his face. Low and behold, her head had made contact with the corner of the bookcase and she had what I now refer to as Excedrin headache #47. Poor thing, her noggin was totally shattered, no possible way to fix her.

So, now my "pat myself on the back" smugness of having my fair entry finished before I entered has been tossed out the window. Now I can either give up and wait a year ... or make plans to replace the head. I opt for the replace and continue on plan.

At this point in my tale, I could go into detail of how quickly this little girl became the creature from Hell ... suffice it to say if it could go wrong it did and I was still putting on the finishing touches Saturday morning before I left to get her delivered by 1pm.

Anyway, I haven't heard yet whether she's won a ribbon, I'll update this as soon as I hear anything ... but here's her finished pictures. She's sure a happy looking little girl!

Picnic memories

Jaiden and I were at the park on Friday and I got to thinking about picnics and what sort of memories she'll have when she's an adult ... what sort of memories my kids might have ... and the one I have.

I remember as a child, going on picnics quite often with my parents. The one, clearly defined memory is about the red plaid bag that was our "picnic bag". I think it was vinyl, I know it was red and maybe black plaid. And inside were red plastic boxes that got filled with all the goodies. I'm pretty sure there was a red thermos also ... but that's a bit fuzzy.

My mom would always pack those boxes (and they were sort of the size of shoe boxes, if my memory is accurate) with sandwiches or fried chicken ... celery with peanut butter or cheese ... bananas ... almost anything easy to eat with your fingers. :)

I try to think about my kids and what sort of "traditions" we might have had or that they remember ... guess I'll have to ask them some day soon!

ARGH !!!

So I spent about two hours last night trying to figure out why the heck the font changes in the posts and why I can't seem to get it to be the same throughout the blog ... and I give up! It makes no sense so I'm releasing the need to have it be orderly and allowing it to have the mind of it's own it seems to be demanding! lol

Rain has finally managed to stop for at least a while. Yesterday and today were relatively nice days. Tomorrow I'm taking my mom and our 3 yr old grand daughter Jaiden to see the movie How to Train Your Dragon. From what I hear it's supposed to be an awesome movie so I can't wait. I'll let you know how we liked it soon!

Rain rain go away!

That's a song "the girls" and I used to sing all the time. Only we'd insert their names ... rain rain go away, Jaiden wants to go out and play! Lately it seems as if the rain is never really going to end. I know that in a few weeks, probably we'll be wishing it would cool off and rain again ... but for now??

Not so much. lol

We missed our last trip to Winnemucca because of the weather. Somehow, driving up over Donner Summit and the thought of having to chain up not only the truck ... but the trailer ... made wimps out of us all. Not to mention the possibility of actually spending the whole weekend in the trailer because it was either snowing or raining the whole time. Now we're going to try for the end of this month and see what happens.

All this rain has sure made our grass grow ... and grow ... and grow! I don't think it's ever been this green this late in the season. Our irrigation water is due to start in the next week and Lord only knows we don't need it at the moment. :D The horses are really enjoying the benefit of the weather. Lots of grass in the unused pasture(s) for them to chow down on. It's nice to feel like our "pasture ornaments" are serving at least some purpose other than decorative.

Trying something new!

I've been tinkering around with things on this blog and I think I've managed to make a slide show of family pictures. lol

Family slide show (Okay so you actually have to click on the button upper left to start a slide show. lol So much for thinking I'd figured out something cool. )

Today Howard's home on a furlough Friday and we have Jaiden and Charlie here. He's entertaining them with songs from Mama Mia. For some reason the little kids LOVE dancing and hopping around to the music from that awesome movie. That's left me with some time to play around with this blog thing. lol

After all the learning I did with html years ago, this seems far to easy and yet almost as perplexing to learn as the html was in the beginning. I remember Howard taking me to a book store to find a book on html. He handed me HTML for Dummies and told me to just open it and read a page. If it made sense and I thought I could understand it, that would be the book for me. I did as instructed ... looked up and my darling hubby and said, "Find me the book HTML for Morons, because I don't understand any of this!"

We eventually found me a book full of pictures. Pictures are good when they show you what you "should" be seeing. I realize now everything I know about computers I've learned on my own basically. Trial and error seem to be my mode of learning. My very first experiences with a computer were on a laptop that had no hard drive and everything had to be saved onto floppy disks. There were many many phone calls to Howard "Honey, I was trying to do this ... and here's what happened ... how do I fix it?" lol Poor Howard!

Anyway, kids are clambering to go to the park now so my time here is done for now. It's a beautiful sunny day so we're going to enjoy it completely!

Time flies, eh?

So, it's official and I apparently suck at keeping this updated. Perhaps now that it's the new year I'll work harder and making it a fun place to be.

Right now my heart is just to heavy to succeed at that and since it's late I'm headed to bed. Suffice it to say, sometimes you're the bug and sometimes you're the windshield ... and lately it seems I'm a bit buggy.