Happy Dancing on a Pumpkin

Perched on a Pumpkin
Blue Ribbon Designs
Stitched with DMC on 36-count Summer Khaki linen
I finished the border the other night while watching The Shawshank Redemption (which is easily one of my top ten favorite movies), so this guy now resides in the Fuppie Box. I'll have my sewing machine back in my possession in a couple of weeks so I'm hoping to get a couple of projects finished finished before Halloween.

I've had the Halloween stocking booklet from Blackbird Designs in my stash for a while so I think it's about time to pick one to stitch. I've looked through it a few times already and out of the 13 designs there's probably 12 I want to do. Suffice to say, it's going to be a hard choice!


House projects continue. We got the shelves cut and installed in the bathroom. At last! That was one of those projects which kept getting put off so it feels really good to finally have it done. All it lacks now is some trim work and that room will be complete. Oh, and a toilet paper holder that I like and is what I would call 'reasonably priced'. It's really hard to justify spending $21 for this particular item.

Here they are in all their glory:


And this is what lurks behind the wall:


We built this little cubby so we could conveniently pull electric lines and duct work to the second floor. The only heat up there was from it rising through grates in the floor which apparently was how it was done back in the day. I'm sure it kept it acceptably warm for most people but I can just imagine how hard it would be to crawl out from under the covers on cold mornings. This Southerner likes it warm and cozy so when we replaced the furnace we went ahead and installed duct work and vents upstairs. (And that, dear readers, is a horror story for another day!)

Thanks for stopping by! Have a happy Monday!

Bordering on a Finish

Been plugging away on Perched on a Pumpkin whenever I have a spare minute or two. I waffled back and forth with the one thread/two threads dilemna before finally deciding to go with two. It got a little crowded in places but I think it works well on this particular piece. Anyhoosie, all I have left is the border and this one can go in the win column! Woohoo!

Pinch Me!

I must be dreaming!

http://www.cathkidstonusa.com/

Cath Kidston! USA!

I'm positively giddy!

Quick Question

I'm starting an ornament on 36-count linen, stitching over two threads, and was wondering if I should be using two strands of floss or only one? Any suggestions?

Worth A Thousand Words

Is this not the most cheerful looking group of children you've ever seen? We found this photo in one of the walls when we did our bathroom demolition. I intended to run over to the library with it to see if I couldn't find out more about when and where it may have been taken but it got shoved in a drawer and forgotten. I wish it was in better shape as I'd love to have it framed so I could display it as part of the house's history. Of course, if I did that I'd find out later that the photo had absolutely nothing to do with the house.

(Like my roommate in college who had the framed poster of New York City hanging above her bed because she looooved NYC. And she looooved her poster of NYC. Then I pointed out that the Space Needle was in the picture. The Seattle Space Needle. Yeah.)

Anyhoosie, still no stitching here, although we're this >< close to having the living room back together. Or as back together as it can get when 99% of your furniture is in storage.

Never fear! Come hell or high water, next month is Moving Month! Or my name isn't Nathan Arizona!

Safety First

Let's see...
Gloves? Check!
Goggles? Check!
Face shield? Check!
Mask? Check!
Apron? Check!

This is on the back of a sheet of sandpaper! I'm risking certain injury because all I ever do is wear gloves, and that's only because I don't want to ruin my nails!

Better make sure we have 9-1-1 in the speed dial!

I Proudly Present...

My dining room floor!
Newly refinished, and once I get the closet door and the window trim painted, the trim installed around the light fixture, and a new grate for the cold air return, this room will be FINISHED! Or at least almost finished. The window will eventually need to be replaced and the inside of the closet needs a lot of attention but, hey, close enough!

In the meantime, look at this floor!


You might notice (or probably not, haha!) it's not your typical tongue and groove floor. These are locally milled slats nailed down to the plank subfloor below. Having nail heads every four inches ain't too purdy but I've been told it's "period specific to the home". Which is just a nice way of saying "yeah, it looks like crap but that's the way they did it back then."

You'll be happy to learn we did not have to sleep in the kitchen while the polyurethane was drying! We discovered if you held onto the top of the front door, you could swing yourself over to the steps to go upstairs. We had to have a step ladder set up at the backdoor so we could get into the kitchen and bathroom because we tore down the back steps several months ago. (The steps were extremely unsafe and an accident waiting to happen, and as an added bonus there was something dead under them. It was a bit 'Barnum & Bailey' with all the swinging and climbing but it sure beat camping on a cold tile floor. (We do have fun, don't we?)


In stitchy news, I picked up a copy of the JCS Christmas ornament issue last week while we were doing our best not to be home. My first reaction was sorta 'meh' but each time I go through it I find more I'd like to stitch. My favorite is probably the Christmas Robin from The Victoria Sampler. I do have a thing for birds. (And bunnies, but I don't think there are any in this issue.)

Sadly, there hasn't been much stitching done here in the last week. We're still working in the living room, trying to get it finished, so alas, my stitchy spot is no longer. I've set up my lamp and a chair in my bedroom but it just isn't the same. The chair is too hard and the lamp is on the wrong side and whine! whine! whine! I can't stitch here! Anyone else have that problem? You get used to a certain spot and nothing else seems to work? More incentive to finish the living room, I guess.

That's it for me! Thanks for stopping by, and have a Terrific Tuesday!

Avast!

Buckle your swashes, ye scurvy dogs! It's International Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Boo Bunny Finish

Boo Bunny
by The Victoria Sampler
from the 2010 JCS Halloween Ornament Issue
This one was quick and cute! I finished it up Saturday night but couldn't get a decent picture of it to post yesterday due to all the dust in the air. (Heaven knows I don't need anything mucking up my mad photog skillz.)

And the dust! It's incredible! There's a layer of it on every possible surface, even upstairs! No sense in trying to clean it up yet because they're coming back today for the final sanding. Then it's on to the polyurethane and camping in the kitchen because we won't be able to walk on the floors to go upstairs. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to sleeping between the stove and refrigerator. On the bright side, I won't even have to get out of bed for a midnight snack!

So what's next on my stitchy agenda? Most likely another Halloween ornament. I'm leaning towards the one from Blue Ribbon Designs called Perched On a Pumpkin. Boo Bunny needs some company!

Hope everyone's week is off to a good start!

Me So Happy!

The Rangers swept the Yankees and......


The hardwoods have been sanded!

(I'm so easy to please!)

Too Pooped to Pucker

We're having carpet installed in the morning (hooray!) so today was spent cleaning up all the messes that we've let fall by the wayside. I didn't realize what a slob I was with the drywall mud until I had to clean all the dried on drips and globs off the floor. There was also a lot of overspray from when we textured the walls. The attitude at that time was hey, who cares if some gets on the floor? We'll be covering all that up! I should have known I'd get all AR and have to make sure every single speck was cleaned off.

I'm way too tired to pick up a needle tonight but I thought I'd pop in and show you my progress on Boo Bunny. It's not much but here ya go:


(Is it just me, or does that shade of orange make you want to run out and buy stuff like plywood and duct tape?)

Hopefully next time I post a progress picture it'll show some actual progress! I've already announced that I'm taking Saturday off and I plan to work on a nice case of Stitchass. I hear Michigan is playing Notre Dame so I think I'll do a little 'when in Rome'-ing and watch the game. I've been needing an excuse to make my jalapeno popper dip!

Fingers crossed that the install goes well tomorrow! And toes crossed that we start sanding the hardwoods on Sunday!

A Sorta Finish

I have A Wish For You finished except for the personalization. Our family doesn't have a single birthday or anniversary in March. There's been no significant events unless you count my gall bladder surgery in 1986 and I don't think that's very sampler worthy. I'll set this one on the back burner for now until I have a Eureka! moment.

You may notice I made a couple of changes. I decided to make the bunny white(ish) instead of brown because our little bunster, Alice, is white(ish). I also left the letter off the door because a) I didn't like it or b) I had the darn thing stitched before I noticed I'd made a mistake and didn't want to re-do it. Take your pick!

My son pointed out to me that I forgot to give the bunny an eye. I can't tell you how many times I've done that with eyes. You'd think I'd learn!

Last night I started one of the Halloween ornaments from Just Cross Stitch. There were several I wanted to stitch so I did a 'random drawing' and here's our winner:This is Boo Bunny from The Victoria Sampler. I do love me some bunnies! I don't think I'll be stitching many bats this Halloween after our recent close encounter with the beasties! (Although, the next time I'm being chased around the house by a bat I hope to have enough sense to just run outside.)

I hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day weekend! I'm a summer person so I hate to say goodbye to long, warm days. Of course, we have fall stitching to look forward to so I can take comfort in that.

Thanks for stopping by!

We can't stop here! This is Bat Country!

Or: Why I Only Got 35 Minutes of Sleep

Late last night I was sitting in my living room, engrossed in Pillars of the Earth, when out of the corner of my eye I catch the fluttering of some winged thing above one of the windows. As it disappears behind the crown moulding I'm thinking, "that's one hell of a big moth!"

So I call my son into the room and ask him to get rid of it. His vision being quite a bit better than mine, he informs me "that's not a moth, Mom!"

As my 8-bit brain begins to process this information, Not-a-Moth comes lunging out from behind the moulding and swoops down directly at me. I hit the deck shrieking "How did a bird get in the house???" as the thing starts flying in circles above me. Around and around and around it goes, and as it dips down in front of me I realize Not-A-Moth is Not-A-Bird either! It's a BAT!

My son and I commando crawl out of the living room and into the kitchen where we try to decide on a plan of action to get the bat out of the house. The best approach we can come up with is also the simplest: open the front door and hope it'll fly out. In the meantime, the fluttering from the living room has stopped and we learn a Valuable Lesson: don't lose sight of the bat. They can crawl into small spaces and hide. Duh.

Luckily, we spot it dangling from above the doorway. The very doorway we'll have to pass under to get to the front door. Great.

To keep things fair, we do rocks, paper, scissors to see who gets the honor of trying to ninja past a critter with an extremely sensitive sense of hearing. I knew I shouldn't have gone with paper.

With a bath towel over my head (I do not want this thing flying into my hair!), and armed with a dust pan and spatula, I slowly edge my way through the dining room towards the front door. Talk about your longest walk! Inch by inch I make my way to the front door and the only thing that's going through my pea-brain is how badly I will hurt my son if he does anything to startle the bat. Said son is maintaining a safe distance behind me with the broom and a pot lid, his job being to flush the bat towards the door once I have it open.

I manage to make it to the door without disturbing the bat, and slooooowly open it. The bat immediately feels a change in air flow, drops from it's perch and begins making loop-de-loops over my head again. I duck and cover while my son waves the broom around and, lo and behold, the bat flies out! We did it! We are bat removal geniuses!

After things have settled down, I decide to learn more about these critters. I do a little Wiki Wandering and learn that... uh oh... bats are social creatures. Where there's one there's more than likely others.

They like to roost in attics and I know we have some missing soffits on the house. How they could enter the house from the attic is also a no-brainer. We cut a big access hole in the ceiling of one bedroom so we could crawl into the attic while installing things such as light fixtures and heating ducts/vents (none of which this house had when I bought it) and we left it open because I still need to get up there to add some insulation. So right. This means we need to don our protective gear once again and head upstairs to check for more bats.

We go through the rooms one by one and sure enough, there's another bat dangling from the wall above the window in my room. Peachy. It's almost 2 AM at that point and probably 90 degrees in the house so we decide we'll just close the door and wait until morning to deal with it.

So I slept in the living room last night with all the lights on, waking up at every little noise. Even after two cups of coffee this morning I'm still feeling a bit grumpy cakes. My son called Animal Control to see if they could be of assistance but had to leave a message on their voice mail. Like every other public services department in this city, Animal Control must only work the second Thursday after the full moon from 7:45 to 10:15 AM. (But just try to burn a shovel full of disgustingly smelly leaves and twigs that you dug up after removing and burying the decaying carcass of a woodchuck and you'll have a cop on your front step within five minutes of lighting the match. It's true.)

I would dearly love to get some sleep tonight, so unfortunately this means we're going to have to take care of the bat (or bats) ourselves. I've put it off as long as I could, but I think it's time to suit up and head upstairs. Hopefully the bat is as exhausted as I am.

Wish me luck!

Vase and Vine

I'm zipping right along on A Wish For You! The vase has been re-stitched in it's proper place, and it's viney vegetation is almost complete. I'll get the leaves (or are they flowers?) stitched next and then it might be time to tackle the over one verse. Better double up on the ginkgo biloba and get my frog swatter out before I do!

We've had a couple of days in the 70s here with the temps dipping into the 40s at night. Time to rediscover the oven! I made a cozy chicken and wild rice casserole for dinner the other night, and this morning we had blueberry muffins. (If I ever wrote a book it's title would have to be "Eat Eat Eat", although I don't expect Julia Roberts to be too enthusiastic about playing the role of the main character after I sell the movie rights!) (Have you ever wondered who would play you in a movie??)

Quite pleased with the Rangers performance the past few days. They played a four game series against the Twins and won three out of the four. I was able to watch two of the games on TV which was doubly nice since they were home games and I got to see my beloved Ballpark at Arlington! Triply nice if you consider I spent the duration of both games working on my stitching! My version of bliss!

Have a great weekend and thanks for stopping by to visit!

Two Steps Forward

This is all I have to show for a weekend of stitching. Two steps. The rest of what I did falls under the heading of "Three Steps Back". Yep. The dreaded Frog came to visit me Saturday. He quietly hopped in and hid until I had finished the entire vase on the right hand side and had started on the green vine. I could tell something wasn't quite right when I picked it up again on Sunday. I looked at the chart, looked at my stitching, looked at the chart, looked at my stitching, back and forth for a good ten minutes before... Oh %@#$! Everything was four stitches too high because I hadn't finished the very bottom part of the house before working my way over to the vase. (Because, hey, I wanted some brainless stitching to do while I watched The Gladiator. Russell Crowe... what can I say?)

I had intended to finish the windows on the house but the two threads I have for the frame and panes (Onion Skin and Harvest Basket) are so close together in color that instead of a window it just looked like a beige rectangle. So along with the vase and vine, the one window I filled in was de-stitched last night. I managed to keep my grumbling to a minimum and hopefully I'll be back to making some progress on this piece tonight.

I must warn you, however: the where-abouts of the Frog are unknown (cue foreboding music).

Housework

The walls are complete!

Cloudy day today with rain threatening. I really should get those windows done!

Brick and Brittle

It's been slow but steady stitching on A Wish For You. I'm loving this checkerboard house! The red is Old Brick, so perfectly varigated and bricky looking. And who wouldn't want to fill the gaps in between with Peanut Brittle?!

I'm off to get my hair cut! I made it a point to tell them I only needed an appointment for a trim. It reduces the chance that I'll come home with cute bangs and pink highlights.

Have a great day, y'all!

Make-a the pizza! Make-a the pie!

Tonight's dinner:


Homemade pizza!
I'm having mine with red pepper flakes and about an inch of Parmesan cheese! Yum!

The Weekend Report

I had such a pleasant weekend!

It started Saturday morning with a trip to LaPorte, IN for the Midwest Stash Exchange at House of Stitches. It's about an hour and a half drive for me but well worth the trip. I saw so much I wanted to buy but had to exercise some restraint. It'd be a long walk back to Three Rivers if I spent my gas and toll money on stash! One gal had some great bargains on Shepherd's Bush kits, but the one item I kept picking up and putting back down was The Riddle by The Drawn Thread, all kitted up with fabric and silks. I tried my best to justify it as a 'house expense' but in the end I had to pass. I wish I'd had the sense to get her name and email address! I'll be crying myself to sleep over that one for a while!

Got back home around 2:00 and after a quick trip to the grocery store we went out to the lake to grill burgers and putt around on the pontoon boat. Anyone else have the feeling we're in for an early fall? Maybe it's just all the back to school ads I keep seeing, but I feel like summer's almost over and I need to spend as much time outside and eat as much potato salad as I can.

Sunday was a lazy day, doing a few chores and taking care of paperwork. We made Tex-Mex rice for dinner and had it with leftover taco meat and fixin's from Friday's dinner. Deee-lish! I would have sat outside on the front porch to eat it but we seem to have attracted every cat in the neighborhood this past week. We'd been putting a little bowl of kitty krunchies out for a stray and it didn't take long for the news to spread. I had three of them lined up and waiting for breakfast this morning at 6:00 AM!

I found some time to stitch Sunday evening and got a little more done on A Wish For You. It finally dawned on me to stitch all the windows and the door so I wouldn't make any mistakes with the checkerboard part (hopefully). Why didn't I think of that before?


It's back to the drywall and sweating through my undergarments today. What a pretty picture that must paint! There's no AC upstairs and it's stiffling hot in the closet we're working on. I'll be soooo happy when we get it finished.

Hope everyone enjoyed the weekend and had time for some stitching and potato salad!

Midwest Stash Exchange

Just a happy little reminder to all you stitchers in the northern Indiana area (because I almost forgot myself!)

The Fourth Annual Midwest Stash Exchange will be tomorrow at the House of Stitches in LaPorte, Indiana from 10:00-3:00 Central whatzit time.

More details are here.

Anyone else planning to go?

Sweet Popcorn in a Bag!

(The title of my post is something we heard being shouted by a vendor selling kettle korn at the Ballpark in Arlington. We now use it as a sort of expletive as in, "Sweet popcorn in a bag! It's hot today!") (Yeah, we're weird.)

Not much progress to report on A Wish For You but I have an excuse! We took a break from all things 'house-renovation-y' and visited the Shipshewana Flea Market in Indiana. What a fun place to spend a day! I wish I'd taken my camera! (Because what this blog needs is more evidence of my lack of photography skillz, right!?!)


I've used some of our purchases from Yoder's Meat and Cheese Company to prop up my q-snaps for the picture. I could easily spend my monthly grocery budget there on cheese alone! And yes, that's a bag of kettle korn, or "crack-korn" as Edgar likes to call it. It is addictive, that's for certain! We had ourselves a Charlie Brown's Thanksgiving type of dinner last night, feasting on cheese and crackers, and kettle korn. Not sure what we'll have tonight but I know it'll involve cheese!

Don't even mention the Rangers to me! They blew a 6-1 lead over the Yankees last night, losing 7-6. I'm sure the neighbors must have heard me yelling at the TV and wondered what was going on! (And true story... my daughter woke me up at 2am one night in TX to tell me there was a roach in her room. The neighbors must have thought some horrible crime was being committed because after 15 minutes of us screaming while we tried to kill the damn thing there came a knock at the door. All I can say is some folks don't have much of a sense of humor at 2am! Maybe they were just trying to politely ignore that I was dressed in Hawaiian luau print boxer shorts and had monkey slippers on my feet!)

Oy! Half the day is gone and all I've managed to accomplish is measuring for shelves in the bathroom. Does that even count as work?

I think it's time for a snack...

Two New Projects

A heartfelt thank you to everyone for the sweet comments on my Winter Wonderland finish! It's so nice to hear from folks who stop by my little corner of the webbernet!

As promised, I started A Wish For You. I started with the easy peasy part of the checkerboard house but I'm going to have to start being careful because some of it looks a bit tricksy when you get around the windows and door. It might behoove me to pop over to the library tomorrow and make a working copy of the chart. I can just see me getting off by one set of squares and then spending three days scratching my head trying to find the mistake. Anyhoosie, here's how she's lookin' after last night's stitchin':


I also have another DIY project in the works. This time it's an upstairs closet that needed some 'revision'. The sheetrock on the walls was about 1/4" thick and full of holes. I swear, the stuff they used was more like cardboard than sheetrock. And when I say holes I don't mean nail holes. These were more like somebody put their fist through the wall. Again and again.


I'd never be happy with just patching the stuff and hoping it looked okay, so out it all came.


We're taking the opportunity to put in some insulation while we can. The only insulation in this house is in the attic, and I know this is just a closet but the way I look at it is every little bit helps, especially up here in the frozen north. I'd hate to not make the extra effort to do it and then regret it later on.


In closing, my work gloves (yes, I know they're actually garden gloves but I like them because they're thicker than the cloth ones but not as thick as the heavy duty leathery type) would like to offer a round of applause to all of my bloggy friends, commenters, followers, stitchers, and DIY'ers!

Hooray! And thanks for stopping by!

Happy Dancing in a Winter Wonderland

Winter Wonderland
Blackbird Designs
Fabric: 30 ct. Dark Chino linen from R&R Reproductions
Fibers: Weeks Dye Works & Gentle Arts
I'm happy to report that Winter Wonderland is finally finished! At least I hope it is! Twice I've thought I was done only to find a few stitches I missed. Chances are there's one or two more!

Next project in my to do pile? Another BBD! I've had A Wish For You kitted up and waiting in the wings for almost as long as I've been working on Winter Wonderland. I can't wait to get started!

Another Project

This one is of the DIY variety and, like Winter Wonderland, is almost complete.

The old house I bought back in 2007 was in need of some major repairs and updating. Okay, that's putting it a little mildly. Check out the bathroom...


Yeesh! It's hard to imagine anyone actually using this bathroom!

First order of business was to remove all the old fixtures and flooring. We also opened up the little closet-sized area where the toilet was, planning to completely rearrange where things were...



Next came all new plumbing and electric, tub, toilet, sink, vanity, lighting, mirror, faucets, tile, paint. I'll skip over the bazillion pictures of the work in progress and show you how it looks today...





Quite an improvement, don't you think? There's still more trim work to be done, and I'll be adding some shelves in the area to the left of the sink but those things have been put on the back burner while I work on other projects.

I've just realized this means my bathroom has officially become a UFO!

Almost There!

All that's left to stitch are the bits and pieces in this corner and I'll be finished with Winter Wonderland! I swear someone's going to have to super glue me to the chair first because I'm just not gettin'er done! I must have an acute case of finish phobia! Is there a cure??

Whoa!

That's what I said when I pulled Winter Wonderland out of the q-snaps to take a progress picture. I've only been able to stitch a little bit here and a little bit there, but goodness! It's growing! I had to stand on a bucket of drywall mud (everyone has a 5 gallon bucket of mud in their kitchen, right?) in order to fit it all in the picture. And while I was up there I had to do a little jig because I'm just soooo excited to be this close to finishing!

In other news, Michigan is now home to it's very own oil spill. An estimated one million gallons of crude oil seeped into the Kalamazoo River from a broken pipeline that is almost as old as I am (don't ask!) and is now on it's way to Lake Michigan.

Booms have been set up to contain the spill ...
and critters are getting baths...
Let's all hope they're able to clean this mess up soon!

My Laugh for the Day

I'm off to go twirling on the beach in my white spandex yoga pants!

(P.S. While the commercial is great, I tried a free sample of this product and did not like them. At all.)

I've totally lost my bloggy momentum so here's a quick progress pic of Winter Wonderland. I'm fairly confident I'll finish it this year so I went ahead and stitched 2010 for the date. Just hope I didn't jinx myself! Does the '2' look a little big to you? I goofed and made it one stitch too tall. I need to have at least one mistake, right? So I'll leave it in and avoid the dreaded double jinx!

Gonna go watch the end of the Rangers game. They're playing Detroit so we have it on a local channel. One of the many things I miss about Texas is being able to catch a Rangers game on TV. I don't follow them as close as I used to but they're still my team! Heck, one of my very first cross stitch projects was the Texas Rangers logo! (It's changed a lot since then!)

I Love Watermelon

I needed a break from Winter Wonderland so I stitched up this freebie from The Sampler Girl.


It was a really quick stitch even for sloooooow me. I started it a couple of days ago and finished it up last night while watching the Mythbusters put duct tape tall tales to the test.

(BTW, the myth where they tape a car to a street light actually worked! It was great!)

Looks like we're in for some rain today. I sure hope it cools things down a bit. I've been wilting in this heat! Is everyone else managing to stay cool?

That's about it for me this morning. Think I'll make a run to the hardware store so I can get started on one of these...

We Interrupt Tonight's Stitching

No sooner had I sat down and made that first stitch when this guy dropped down out of nowhere and onto my magnifier. Right under my nose!

Whatcha workin' on??
I tried whacking him (rather timedly) with a rolled up newspaper only to have him hop off the light and into my tennis shoe.

Anyone care to trade lives? Just for tonight?

Good Times, Noodle Salad

I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday weekend! We were out at the lake both Saturday and Sunday, soaking up some sun, lighting fireworks, and proving that it is indeed possible to survive for two days on hamburgers, hot dogs, baked beans, and noodle salad. (You need to say 'noodle salad' like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets!)

I took a bazillion pictures while we were out cruising around the lake so I thought I'd share a few of my favorites.

There was an abundance of happy screams and giggles carrying out across the water from this small campground:

I love this house:
I'd go crazy with flags and bunting if I owned it!

These folks were getting ready for one heck of a party:

And here's the Rambler, Her Very Self, après noodle salad:
(I was attempting to suck in my chin and nose for this picture!)

Dinner tonight is ham sandwiches and potato salad because I'm still in that holiday frame of mind! Once I get some corn on the cob and watermelon in me I should be good!

Happy 4th of July!

HAVE A SAFE AND HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!