You know what I love?

1. You know what I love? Wood floors. I swore them off after our last dusty house with wood floors two years ago, but after thinking about all the crap that gets caught in the carpet that you can never vacuum or clean out I changed my mind. Sure you have to sweep more, but you don't have a crap-ton of allergens hanging out, either. And with Hubs's and my allergies, wood floors are fine by me.

Aren't these pretty?

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2. You know what I love? Big kitchens. It's been real great pirouetting and dancing around in the kitchen every night to cook dinner, but I think it'd be nice not to have to scootch closer to the counter every time Hubs wants to open the fridge. It's silly, don't you think? Galley kitchens are for the birds.

*drool* I want a big modern kitchen.

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3. You know what I love? Babies. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE at church is preggers right now. I am very bummed I can't be preggers, too. *sad face* My heart aches to have another bean to love on. Hubs and I will have another after we get through our credit card debt. Stupid debt. I hate you sooooo much.

Here's some babies. Adorbz!

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Have a great weekend! We're celebrating Pint-size's birthday tomorrow. Hope to have some great pictures.

Boston Goggies

So, when I first met my in-laws' Boston Terrier Macy, I was skeptical. I'd never owned a dog. I was fascinated by the idea of having a dog, but I hated the jumping, barking, licking, pooping and general mayhem and messiness that came with a dog. When I had my son, I spent many months yelling at Macy to not come near the baby, would never leave her alone with the baby, etc. Several years passed and Macy knew never to mess with me. I had conditioned her to not even look at Caleb. She acted as though we didn't exist at that point, which was fine with me. Then my sister-in-law got another Boston. Ellie is not a typical Boston. She is the most hyperactive and disobedient Boston I've ever met. At that point I realized how bad a dog could be. I began to appreciate Macy. When I was mean to her before, it was when she heard the baby cry and she'd come to check on him which was kind of sweet in retrospect. She always obeyed me even if I was hurtful in the way I spoke to her (I never hit her or anything, I just would be mean in voice only, which dogs read really well). I saw the older, more mature Macy in a different light. I elected to give her pets when she would let me come near, but she was, like I said, standoffish. She was keeping with the training I had given her, which was, "Morgan BAD!" :) Well, after months of kind words and pets and cuddles, she elected to lick/kiss me on my face. My sister-in-law was shocked. (Licks/kisses are a sign of submission and love). :D It took around three years for me to get past my prejudice with dogs. I still don't like dogs jumping on me and I don't like them barking, and if it came between my brood and a dog, it would be my kiddo every time. But I've grown in my appreciation of dogs. In fact, I want a Boston. As long as you get a good one, they're playful, love to fetch, obedient, eager to please and fantastic with kids.

Who couldn't love this face!?





Baroo?

Resolutions

I want to change some things around here.

I am obsessive about keeping the house nice, yet don't do it often enough not to go into a rampage and hurt my family while I'm doing it. I don't like being interrupted when I clean, I don't like being told, "Don't do that now" when I'm cleaning. But my son won't remember how clean the house was. He'll remember me. I don't want to be a mean mom. I want to be able to pause whatever I'm doing and pay attention to him. I have no idea how to balance all of those things, but I have to try.

Hubs and I have a lot of debt. I'm tired of it weighing me down. I get a sinking feeling every time I hear about someone paying off their debt. We've barely made it month to month on my full-time salary, but now we're able to pay all our bills on time. Now that Hubs has some part-time work, we need to start paying off that debt. Because if we can some of it now, imagine how easy it'll be when Hubs has a full-time job! I did a debt calculator online and I set the goal to be 2 years and 6 months. The monthly debt payments are totally doable! If everything stays steady, we'll be debt free by New Year's 2013. :D

I have gained 30 pounds since high school. :( I was always skinny and able to eat whatever I wanted. I used to be a little smug about it, but it's come back to bite me in the butt. The big fat butt. So, my goal is to lose about 20 pounds.

I'm embarking on a journey to teach art/art history to a home-school co-op and some public school kids. :) I have one student already and I'll have a booth for the local home school fair coming up in a couple of weeks. It'll be pretty straight forward this semester because I don't know what I'm doing. :) The money I make from that will roll into the debt, as well! Hooray!

A friend is giving me an old sewing machine so I can learn how to sew. I'm so excited to get into it!! There are so many times that I think, wow, I could sew something like that! And then I realize, I don't have a sewing machine. Nor do I know how to sew. I picked up knitting last September. So, why not learn sewing this year!?

I usually don't make resolutions. But here we go anyway.

1. Lose 20 pounds


2. Learn how to sew


3. Teach an art/art history class for a co-op of home school and public school kids.

4. Pay off debt


5. Read the Bible more


6. Be a better mom


OK. Now that I've gone public I have to stick to it. ;)

Pierce Nez

So after years of saying, "Ooooooh, I so wanna do that!" My hubby bought me this:

We went to 23rd Street in Oklahoma City. Fantastic shop. I cannot praise it enough. Extremely clean (probably cleaner than a doctor's office, seriously) and very cool atmosphere. It was right down the street from a restaurant called Cheezers. I am not kidding you, Cheezers is a fancy place! It was all waiters in black, serving wine, everyone was wearing cocktail dresses and slacks. Very classy. I think they just got stuck on the name. Probably the conversation went like this:

"Hey, what should we name this fancy pants restaurant?"

"Well, I don't know..."

"I don't know either!! Pick something!"

"OK, Cheezers, don't get your panties in a wad."

"Cheezers?"

"Yeah, I promised my grandma I wouldn't cuss anymore. Cheezers came to mind."

"Cheezers..."

"What?"

"Cheezers..."

"NO."

"....Yes."

There are people who swear off cussing because of their grandmas, right?

So, back to my piercing. When I went to knitting the other night someone looked at me said, "You look....different." Then someone else said, "Did you highlight your hair?"

HAHA. I think it looks pretty good. I'm really pleased with it and it doesn't hurt. Really! It hurt like the dickens when he was piercing, but right after and to this day it doesn't hurt.

Speaking of knitting: I should be receiving my alpaca fleece in time for "Zimmermania" (the Payne County Knitters celebration of Elizabeth Zimmerman's birthday) so I can wash and card it. I ordered 5 ounces of Bebo's fleece. I'm so excited to start working with paca. :D

I also have some Swish worsted coming in from Knitpicks to knit my Gryffindor scarf for the Deathly Hallows. I have about 4 months to get it knitted. If I haven't finished it, I'm sure I'll knit it while I'm in line at the theatre. :)

Hogwarts Note: after taking some (actually pretty good) personality tests my scoring for Hogwarts houses (Yes, I know I'm too old for that, but still) I found out I would be Hufflepuff. They are very loyal and hardworking. Next up was Ravenclaw :) and then Gryffindor and Slytherin was last. Just in case you were wondering. Ha!

Alpacas!

So my aunt is an animal lover. She rescues animals constantly. We would say it’s because she has a big heart. She would say it’s because she’s a sucker with a big heart. Amidst taking care of her parrots, chameleons, ferrets, horses, dogs and cats, she helped a local rancher with her fledgling herd of alpaca.




Sonny was born last spring and needed to be bottle-fed for a while. Because of my aunt’s relationship with the rancher, DeeAnna, we were able to go and frolic with them for a bit on Monday. This was the highlight of my Memorial Day weekend. They were sweet, soft and so much fun.


I got to take several samples of their fleece with me so that I could decide which animal’s fleece I wanted to buy. All proceeds are going to go back into raising the herd. I didn’t even know I wanted to spin until I met these guys. (And according to some of my spinning expert friends, washing and carding Alpaca is relatively easy)


Alpaca feels so amazing, both on the animal and after being sheared off. I got to pet Sonny quite a bit and his fleece felt soft and clean. I would pull my hand back after stroking his back and there wouldn’t be any hair on my hand and there wasn’t a greasy feeling. That’s apparently the difference between wool and alpaca. Wool contains lanolin which makes it itchy and oily and slightly dirtier.


When I got back home I met with my knitting buddies and shared the squooshiness (yes, squoosh is a regular verb around fiber fanatics) and someone said, “Oh, if you’re going to be spinning you need a drop spindle,” and gave me one! They are the best knitting buddies in the world! They gave me some cheap wool to practice on and then when I’m ready I’ll get some alpaca sent to me, I’ll have to figure out how to process it (clean it and card it) and then start spinning!




As always, my friend Paula has taken me under her wing and told me I needed to read these books on spinning, including Spinning in the Old Way.


Oh, and here are some other fun pictures from that little visit to the ranch.




Taking a Shower. Alpacas LOVE water. They saw DeeAnna's husband getting out the hose, and they very quickly made their way over to him.


They call Bebo the "alien," because if you come out at night, his face would be glowing, and that would be the only thing you could see. I really like how the fleece on his neck grows out "frosted." So neat!