JCS Ornie Preview

It's time for the annual ornament sneak peek from JCS! Have you got your copy yet? We were up in the 'big city' (Kalamazoo) yesterday so I popped into Barnes & Noble and after minimal pestering managed to find an employee willing to dig through the magazines they hadn't yet put out for display. Hooray! The squeaky wheel got it's grease!


I couldn't resist picking up a few new cooking magazines, too. Those slick, shiny covers with their colorful foody photos are too much of a temptation! And Paula Deen always makes me smile!


We went out for broasted chicken dinners last night so lunch time saw me in the kitchen pulling apart our leftovers for chicken salad.


It's all sooooo good!

Killing Me Softly...

...with gravy!
This time it's chicken pot pie. Very yummy, and look! There's veggies! So it can't be all bad!

Finally!

Woohoo! I put the last white stitch in the house this afternoon! I'm so ready to move on to something that actually requires some counting! Luckily, I have plenty more little bits and pieces to finish on this one.

This weekend was the local Water Festival in Three Rivers. I was hoping they'd have a Tilt-a-Whirl which was my favorite ride growing up, but no such luck. I don't know if I would have paid $4 for a ride anyway. We visited the farmer's market and got some bread and home brewed root beer but that's about all that piqued my interest. I swear, I'm turning into such an old fart! A cheap one at that!

I hope everyone had a nice Father's Day weekend! We smoked a pork roast and made pulled pork sandwiches which we ate with cabbage, corn on the cob, and a most excellent orzo salad. Yum! (I'd post a picture if I had one, but y'all would just hate me, haha!)

Calling All Janeites!

I saw on Mary Kathryn's blog that there is a group read of Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice starting today. Check out Pride & Prejudice Without Zombies if you're interested in reading along. All of my books are still in storage so I dashed over to the library this afternoon and picked up both the audiobook and the LARGE PRINT edition. (Squinting causes wrinkles!) I'm planning to listen while I stitch, but I thought it might be fun to follow along with the book, too. I can even make a "beep" sound when it's time to turn the page!

Chapters 1-7 tonight! I have a busy night ahead! :-)

(P.S. Did anyone else have those read-a-long books that came with the records? I had The Jungle Book and practically wore out the grooves on the record, listening to it over and over and over. It was the only thing that got me to stop playing Yellow Submarine over and over and over.)

The Ugly, The Bad, & The Good

The Ugly: One beautiful Saturday morning in northern Indiana my daughter did this...

The Bad: I've been helping her shop for another car which means dealing with these guys...

The Good: We are very thankful that she was able to walk away from the accident with nothing more serious than some cuts and bruises. My pretty girl...
"Can I borrow your car, Mom?"

A Better White

The consensus here was that the Shaker White looked better on the house than the Oatmeal. (Although if you ask me, the Shaker White looks far more oatmealier than the Oatmeal does. Go figure.)

Here's a quick pic of my progress:

I hope everyone had a chance to relax with some stitching this weekend! We've been having quite a bit of rain here but managed to sneak in some grillin' out at the lake Saturday evening. Poor little me who doesn't like brats had to make do with a steak... darn!

Someone in Kalamazoo won a $36 million lottery jackpot on Saturday. I had a momentary glimmer of hope because I'd given my daughter a dollar we'd found while shopping and told her to blow it on a lotto ticket. Alas, she hadn't bought one so there went my early retirement. And new car. And beach bungalow with a cozy stitching room. And stash. Lots of stash. It was mine in my head for about 30 seconds, though!

Thanks for visiting! I'll be back soon with another Winter Wonderland progress pic!

A Moment on the Lips

Tonight's wonderfully unhealthy dinner was biscuits with sausage gravy, courtesy of my son. His gravy is well worth the fat and calories. Mine, on the other hand, is better suited for patching drywall. The gravy gene must be one of those things that skips a generation because my mom could make gravy blindfolded with her hands tied behind her back. (Believe me, it was fascinating to watch!)

Thanks for your comments on my Winter Wonderland snafu! I'm gonna give myself a three day grace period before I make the decision whether or not to frog it. If I don't I know I'll just pick it up and start rippin' rippin' rippin'!

Bedfordshire is calling so goodnight everyone!

Awww Fuuuuuuudge!!!

I decided I needed some easy peasy mindless stitching to do tonight while I watched Bridget Jones's Diary. One needs to give a movie such as BJD one's full attention. Obviously. So I pulled a skein of thread out of my bag and commenced to filling in the white part of the house. Two hours later I had this:


Ten seconds after that I realized there were two different colors of white thread in my bag and I'd pulled out the wrong one. I can't decide whether to frog it or just continue using the wrong color. What do you think?

It's chilly here in my little candlelit hovel and I need my warm blankie so, as Bridget Jones would say, I'm off to Bedfordshire!

Lookie Lookie!

I have some stitching to show!

This is Winter Wonderland by Blackbird Designs. I love all the animals, although those big black birds perched on the roof make me think of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Maybe Melanie Daniels is inside the house right this very minute leaving the lovebirds for Cathy!

Stitchy progress has been slow but thanks to a 40% off Hobby Lobby coupon, I am now the proud owner of a Mighty Brite floor lamp with magnifier! The ole reading glasses and desk lamp just weren't cutting it anymore. It's not as bright as my old Ott light but I like that the magnifier and light are all one piece. Very easy to position it just where I want it and the whole thing just swings away when I need to get up. With my Ott light I would always try to limbo in and out from under it so I wouldn't have to re-adjust everything when I sat back down.

The high here tomorrow in Southwestern MI is supposed to be 65 degrees. I was finally able to break out the t-shirts and shorts and now it looks like I'll be back in a sweater and jeans. This Southerner does not do well in temperatures below 80!

Time to shake out the covers and get some sleep! Thanks for visiting!

Blog Reboot

Figured it was about time I picked myself up, brushed myself off, and got back to blogging.

To celebrate my return I've spruced the place up a bit and slapped on a new blog title. I'm not 100% sold on it, but when you have a daughter who luuurrves alliteration and you text her with "Hey daughter, can you think of something to go with Rocky River for my new blog title?", it's almost a given she'll text you back with "Ramblings!" We'll consider this a test drive for now.

As to my whereabouts this last year, I'll leave it to your imaginations. Was I a contestant on a reality TV show? Did I spend a year among the Amish? Was I abducted by aliens? Or maybe I've been working on the screenplay adaptation of my Great American (unpublished) Novel?

I promise more to follow! Right now I have to deal with the spider that just crawled down my arm, jumped into my bed covers, and disappeared. There's been a proliferation of flies and ants in this house and now it seems spiders have joined their ranks. This is what happens when you refuse to have a fly swatter in the house! (I can't be the only person who thinks they're disgusting!)(I'll never own an electric can opener either, so yeah, I have issues.)