New shoes!

What an insane month April has been. Writing for school and writing for work has left me with very little writing energy for here. :-( But school is over and it's only the article left and that should be done by the end of next week so I should have some writing energy left for home.

In the meantime how about some pictures?

Here's some of my latest purchases; new shoes for me! I got some extra money recently and first we went out and bought the girls new spring jackets and some new boots. The boots are great and I'd love to own a pair of each myself, but I think there's a rule about Moms and teens/tweens not wearing the same boots. At least according to my daughters there is!
So I with some money left over I told myself it was time for new shoes for me!
In the past few years I have learned that I can no longer get away with less expensive shoes from Payless and such so I figure my $200 might new me a pair of shoes. Well, I hit a great sale and ended up with 3!!! And one has heels! For those who don't know me well that's a monumental step for me as I have worn flats, flats and nothing but flats for YEARS! (I do have one pair of kitten heels in black patent)
So here are my new heels and yes, they are red! Not a bright red but rather a dark rich red that borders on being a neutral. I love them and can't wait until I'm used to wearing heels again so I can wear then at every opportunity.
Which isn't actually likely to happen but I can dream!

oh, I almost forgot - these are Clarkes and were on sale for less than 1/2 price! $75 off in fact. To me that's just about the perfect shoe; heel but low enough I'm not scared to wear them, a fantastic colour, and less than 1/2 price! Perfecto!!!
The slight discolouration you can see on the toe of the right shoe is from my sliding accident at the grocery store the first day I wore them. Seems someone had a leaking container of dish soap in their cart and I managed to  find it and do a spectacular slip and slide. Banged up my knee a bit and some other spots hurt but I'm fine. In normal light the stain is hardly noticeably.

Next up is a pair of Josef Steibels

Aren't they cute? Still a little out of my comfort zone with the gold on them but too cute to resist and also a little less than 1/2 price. These are flats though which means they'll get a lot more wear. that's okay, they're cute and should be seen a lot. I love the gold toes and I have to admit I find myself watching my feet when I walk. LOL
The third pair I didn't bother to photograph as they're very much *in* my comfort zone and therefore are pretty boring. Just nice flat black sandals. Yawn. but they were on sale too so still lovely!

Well that's it for now. But I have new patterns to share soon.

Ta!

So sad, me bad!

And here we go again. Another long wait between posts. This is not what I had planned for this you know!
On the other hand I also hadn't planned writing and article, doing Year End, a new course (with group projects - shudder) and not doing ANY sewing in the past few weeks!
I have so many sewing plans floating around in my brain that I need to work on or at least get on to paper it's scary.....and my brain is getting full!
I have managed to make some purchases for sewing though; with some bonus money I bought the 4 patterns I need for my Hallowe'en costume. I'm tired of my kids always looking better than me at Hallowe'en! I make these great costumes for them and then I go out in a (cool) witches hat and my old cape that I made for a play in high school! And *that* happened more years ago than I'm even remotely willing to admit to!!!
So I bought, from Truly Victorian patterns for - corset, petticote/bustle, skirt and polonaise. I've already bought part of the material for the polonaise too. It's this really cool hallowe'en material that's like an organza (which it's not) with foil cats on it. I'm going to do that over a nice purple (my fave colour) to make the cats really stand out. The skirt will be black and the others it won't matter because no one will see them! LOL
Before I get involved in that though, I need to make me at least one more pj shirt. After I make modification of course. I need to shrink the arm hole (and sleeve) because it's down to my waist and I need to move some ease around. I'm not built like a circle with even weight distribution like patterns seen to think. So the backs end up big and the front ends up pulling because that's where I carry my weight. :-( But I've been like this for a while now (10 years?) since after I went on Depro-provera so I just need to learn to live with it and sew for it. It's going to take some figuring but my wardrobe needs some work and I need to sew, so.....sounds like a match made in heaven.

Ta!

Monday...again?

Have you ever had one of those days where you think to yourself "wow, I thought this was Tuesday but it really feels like another Monday"?
I had one of those yesterday.
At the end of the day, on my way out of work, someone asked me how my day was. When I asked if they really wanted to know, and they said they did I told them if felt like a Monday, and a Monday gone bad at that.

Why?

Well, let's see - the skunk under my office is back, someone moved my new box of paper and I have no idea where it is, I have wasps already, the water tank in the bathroom is leaking and I found maintenance digging in my furnce room "getting rid of a nest" he said.
Maaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnn

I probably should have just gone to bed at that point. LOL
But then I might have had another one of the dreams that kept me up half the night. It was one of those that you *know* is a dream because it's just too unreal, so you keep waking yourself up but you go right back to sleep and the dream starts again. Vicious cycle that!

Today is going better - I'm actually getting work accomplished instead of dealing with crisies and I actually feel pretty good. Probably because I didn't have one of those wierd dreams last night!

Ta!

ACK! It's been too long!

I cannot believe how long it's been since I posted! Bad me, no cookie. Oh well that's okay because there are no cookies in the house anyway. LOL

So, what have I been up to since last month? Well, a whole lot of nothing on the sewing front. I have lots of ideas in my head but no time to start.

Why you ask? I started a new course on the first and I have a major time issue with doing that and getting the article I was silly enough to agree to do done. On top of that I took spring Break off and did a lot less than I had hoped for and then there's Year End.

What is Year End you ask? I'll explain - I work (once removed) for the governement and pretty much every year after massive penny pinching all the year the powers that be realize that there is money un-spent. Well, in the gov. if you don't spend all your money you don't get as much next year and you certainly can't ask for any more! So, sometime between January and March 31st (depending on the year) it's realized that Money Must Be Spent!!!! Now luckily enough the libraries I work with are often the recipeient of that largess. But it's not as fun as it sounds.

For one thing you HAVE to spend it and have everything on site by March 31st. But the worst is that it's hard to plan and do good collection development while scrambling to spend as fast as you can. On top of that when you go to a large book store I can tell you that spending 4 or 5 thousand dollars is HARD WORK! The first thousand is fun, 2 and 3 are doable and will leave you still feeling like a human but after 3 thousand dollars is just not fun any more. By the end of the day my feet hurt all the way up to my tush! Plus you start making mistakes. You buy books you already have in the collection (something we don't really have the room for) and by the end, there's a good chance you're going to buy something you bought earlier! LOL

So to recap; the past few weeks I have been on vacation and gotten diddly done, spent lots of money on books and such that I don't really remember buying, done homework, and worked on writing. Blah! No sewing in there at all!!!!

I did manage to "sneak" out in Friday though to attend a Ladies night with a friend of mine. Turns out it was a craft night but we didn't know that so we just wandered the vendors, ate pizza and treats and spent hours talking and catching up. I also won a door-prize for an hour try-it-out class with 9 friends at Goddess Movement and got a nail done.

I've never had acrylic nails and while this is gorgeous and I love it I now know I'll never get acrylics. It's gorgeous but it bugs me and the thought of 10 fingers like this!! Not! LOL At least I learned without having to pay moeny for the experience.

Guess it's time to get back to the writing.

Ta!

A Golden Day for Canada!

Okay, I admit it, I'm a patriot, and i love my country. And I really love it when we win Gold, in men's hockey, against the US! (Sorry guys, I like the US and all, having lived there and being so close to the border but....it's hockey!!!)

There, I'm done.

And now for some cool pictures from the celebrations. My girls went down to see some of the Olympic festivities yesterday and here are some photos.

The Olympic Flame. 

Some pictures of Spirit Eagles. 

On the top is Haida Eagle Takes Flight and on the bottom (from l to r) is; Search for Midnight Waters, Spiritual Celebrations from East to West, and Balancing The Life Giver.

There are many more of these amazing art works around Vancouver and if you want to see them you can check them out here Vancouver Spirit Eagles 

The biggest Canadian Flag *I've* ever seen.

Elvis does...... Metallica????  LOL 

That's it for today. My new course starts tomorrow and I still have to finish my article by the end of the month. Wish me well. 

Ta!

Nothing New except some pictures

I have absolutely nothing new to report today as far as anything creative goes so instead of a lot of nothing I thought I would post a few more pictures of S's kimono and how cool the class looked in the gym on Monday.

Here's the back of the kimono I know I didn't get the obi right, but I tried.  Def. something I need to work on for the next time.

In situ and a bit more of a side angle so S doesn't look like she has antennae.

The whole class in their white shirts with big red dots to represent the Japanese flag. Tres cool, yes? They really stood out in the gym let me tell and it was neat.

So...that's it for this week.

Ta!

Done; one kimono

Well, I did it. As usual I was sewing up to the last minute, having chosen to hand sew a rolled hem on the sash....the almost 6 metres of sash! My fingers may never be the same. LOL
Any way....without further ado here it is!
And no, those aren't antennas coming out of S's head. All the girls had their hair up with chopsticks in their buns/ponytails. 

Now, what to sew next?