thanksgiving in colorado

look at me! i'm posting! :)

i uploaded some of my photos from thanksgiving to my flickr site. you can find them here.

smoky mountains

joanie, marlana and i spent this weekend in the smoky mountains. when i got back from my sanity week in october, i had told the bunco gals how fabulous the cabin was that i stayed in. so the three of us went back. understand that i'm generally nervous about making suggestions to people because i'm always concerned they won't like it as much as i do. but i'd say this one worked out okay. we had a wonderful time! in fact, we're already planning our return in february. yay!

they also trusted my suggestion for breakfast at mimi's cafe in louisville. they enjoyed that, too. :)

i took a bunch of photos. the leaves were just begging me to take their pictures. you can see a good chunk of them on my flickr site. enjoy!

random words

i wonder how many people have taken a photo of this same horse. i mean, he lives in a national park ... i'm thinking he's pretty well photographed.

i think those might be turkeys behind him.

currently the leaves in the smoky mountains are at a "moderate color" status. that's good. that means they should still be on the trees & beautiful when we arrive.

i will be quilting on sunday. this makes me happy, but i don't know what i want to work on.

i haven't been sleeping well.

Christmas is only 8 weekends away. i have plans for 5 of those weekends. that doesn't leave much time.

my theory is that marlana wanted our addresses for Christmas cards.

one of my goals for the year was to make my halloween costume. halloween is wednesday & i haven't given it any serious thought recently. hmmm.

i think the guy who came to check the furnace today used the chair in my room for something. i think this because my baskets of fabric were on the floor, not on the chair. i think in the process of moving the baskets he dropped one of my quilt squares on the floor. i think this because the top quilt square was all dusty. i think that upsets me.

i think i should probably not post when i can't form a complete string of thoughts.

happy saturday

for those of you who hear me yap about work & wonder who i'm talking about - here's a photo of most of my team. it was taken our last day working together actually. but don't we look like we made a good team?

i'm completely against the misuse of quotation marks. i mean, seriously, they are not to be used to give words extra significance in a sentence. honest. look it up in a book about grammar. they are not to be used that way. if anything, when not used to signify an actual quote (they ARE called quotation marks for a reason), they give the quoted word a sense of sarcasm and insincerity. so i really think people should stop using them incorrectly. though i totally support people who take photos of this misuse and post it online. i will be contributing to this flickr site. it makes me "happy". :)

sanity, day 4

sanity, day 3

sanity, day 2

sanity, day 1

preparing for the festival

tonight i stretched the screen for our earring display. we'll have to keep tabs on how many sets of earrings we make - we may need another frame. my goal, however, is to finish everything i currently have started before i start anything new. i don't have a lot that's in progress ... four calendars need covers & binding and then all the preparation stuff (making tablecloths, business cards, researching sales tax, painting a mirror, pricing items ...). once all of that is finished/collected/ready to walk out the door - THEN i'll make more earrings and bracelets. otherwise i know i'll keep making jewelry & then the night before we do our dry run, i'll be going crazy trying to get it all together. and there's just no need for that. :)



these are the five photos i'll have at the booth. i have two boxes of these 8.5" square frames - free of charge. so i figured i'd use those for the booth ... but cropping photos down to squares isn't as easy as i thought it would be. so i found these five flower photos & stopped there.

and yes, julie, i'd be happy to take some inspiration from your favorite earrings. :)

i got ribbons!

the lake county fair has officially started - and thursday night i got to find out if/how i placed on my entries.


my thunder of louisville photo got a first place! i was pretty unsure about entering this at all ... and apparently the judges really liked it. gold star to april for telling me to enter it.

my interior pool at hearst castle got a second place! i really like this photo ... so i'm pretty happy this one placed.

my necklace/bracelet combo in the last post got a second place, too. no ribbons for my other photos & things. and nothing for my cookies, which disappoints me a little. but i'm happy my photos did as well as they did.

amanda, pay attention to this next part. more people need to enter cakes. this is the second year i've noticed this. this year there were only 6 cakes in the display, although my mom says there were more in the little cooler that i didn't notice. but still - there's a lot of room for someone (*ehem*amanda*ehem*) to come in & blow them away with some great cake decorating.

flying to texas

i took exactly two photos during my trip to texas. and here they are. i'm a big fan of taking photos out of the airplane windows.

i'm off work today & tomorrow for a yard sale. only it was POURING this morning, so we decided to skip today. i'm currently trying to decide which photos to enter in the lake county fair. as i narrow them down, i may post them here & let you vote. i don't promise to take your advice ... but you can still vote. ;)

the fourth, on the fifth

so it was supposed to rain on our parade yesterday. it did not. it was beautiful and sunny. i'm sporting a fabulous sun burn as proof. i bet erin didn't realize she was picking up an indiana tomato at the airport this afternoon. :) yeah, sunburn. woo.


for those of you who missed the parade, here's max chillin' in the back of the mustang getting ready to start down the parade route. i say "chillin'" because it's funny. that suit is so stinkin' hot it was drenched in sweat by the end. drenched. as in, you could take the fat suit & wring it out to make puddles on the asphalt.


and here's us a-comin' down the street. i saw a few people i knew - aunt diane (not my aunt diane, but becca's aunt diane), kris & family, julie & family, kathy. i'm pretty sure i saw at least two people i graduated with. actually, i'm pretty sure i handed millionaire money to a gal i graduated with. don't know if she knew who i was, and i'm okay with that.


we went straight from the parade to the railcats game. the weather was still beautiful. this is max leaving the field after throwing out the first pitch. i didn't get to see it, but i hear he made it across home plate. barely.


not a bad fireworks display after the game. we had a suite at the ballpark, so we had pretty sweet seats for watching the show. and, of course, i always have to try and get photos of the fireworks.


and then the good weather ended. seriously, it had been beautiful ALL DAY for us. as soon as the fireworks ended & our job was done - it started pouring. it looks like snow in the stadium lights, but it was rain. a lot of rain.

i hope you guys had a happy w3. i'm off to texas in about 90 minutes. i did, indeed, get everything fit into a carry on bag. i even checked the ata website to be sure the suitcase i think should be considered a "carry on bag" really is the correct size. so now to shower, contemplate more aloe on the sunburn and be on my way. talk with you next week!

taltree arboretum

cutie pie

day o' vacation

monday was my day o'vacation. i stayed at mel & dan's sunday night and headed home monday morning.

my day o'vacation started with crunchcakes from lynn's paradise cafe. mmmm. lynn's is, of course, not as busy on a monday morning as they are on a sunday after church. but they were busier than i expected. several good-sized corporate groups were dining that morning. i'd enjoy meetings more if they took me to lynn's for them.

eating at lynn's (and the traffic into the city) slowed me down enough to put me at the edinburgh outlets just as the stores were opening. i bought myself a couple of clothing items - finally replacing my denim jacket, yay! bethany, i waved to the coach store for you. :)

as i went north from edinburgh i decided i was going to finish filling up my memory cards for my camera. i only had room left for 26 pictures. yes, i have almost 2gig worth of memory cards - and i'd taken enough photos to practically fill them. so i figured i just finish off the job.


this one's taken through my sun roof. i realized i'd never done that before. next time i may actually open it before taking the pictures.


driving through indianapolis.


not too far out of downtown indy there was a sign saying that all northbound lanes were closed at mile 137. not the best news. but i figured, if it was true that i'd have to stop 10 miles up the road i was going to use the opportunity to swap out memory cards. (i had 11 pictures available one card and 15 on another.) i'm fine with taking photos as i drive, but i'm not sure swapping out cards would be entirely safe. so i started taking a photo at every mile marker.

turns out the northbound lanes were not closed at mile 137. so i didn't get to swap out cards. but i still took a lot of photos. and when i got home i had enough room for a couple of cute shots of my niece. yay.

puppies!

meet james & damien. james is a black lab. damien is not. :) they are quite the best of friends.


of the two, james is more likely to run after a toy when it's thrown. damien is more likely to watch james run after it, and then pounce on james as he returns with said toy.


of the two, james is also more likely to entertain himself for a moment or two with a toy. damien is too rambunctious for that.


damien's the ornery one. but they're both so stinkin' cute. and friendly. and excitable. and cute. :)

thunder - part 2

you can't have the biggest fireworks display in the country without it being pretty stinkin' cool. they shoot off fireworks from two general areas on the river - one on each side of the bridge - as well as from the bridge itself. i want to say it's the second street bridge, but i don't really know. i just know they do very good work with pyrotechnics in louisville. very good work, indeed. see the fireworks along the bottom of the bridge in the last photo? they make a fireworks waterfall off the bridge. streaming "water" of fireworks. fantastic.

i shot something like 340 photos of the fireworks. most of them, of course, look like poorly taken fireworks photos. but i enjoy the possibility of getting a couple of good ones out of the masses. so i just kept shooting. i'm a big fan of the photos that show the colors streaming like fingers of energy. but, then again, i'm just a big fan of photos period.