Brace yourself for the cute

Even though my mom suggested that both of my youngest nieces might like monkey pillows, I went ahead and made this bug as #3 and I think he may be the cutest of them all!

I already bought the fleece and i kind of wanted to use the stripey stuff. I must have been thinking of some different color combination when I bought the stuff though because I had quite a bit of orange and I remember trying to add up yardage at the cutting table because something else was allocated part of this orange (i don't know what though!) and I think I originally envisioned orange and blue for this guy, but whatever - it all worked out and there's no harm in some leftover fleece!

So Isabelle will get the monkey, Genevive will get the lamb (thanks Emily and Catherine for clearing up that mystery - I totally agree now that you said it!), and Jude will get the bug.

and then there was a monkey

Each weekend the menagerie of pillows grows - this monkey is for Isabelle.

Let the Christmas makin' begin!

I'm trying to avoid planning knitted Christmas gifts this year because I'm anticipating my mom's ponchette taking a lot of time (although I'm ahead of where I thought I'd be on it by now!) Instead I'm thinking of things I can sew - it's just quicker. For my 3 youngest nieces and nephews, I'm making these funny fleece pillows:

This pattern caught my eye because one of the designs is a monkey and my niece Isabelle is big into monkeys. I'm not sure what this one is supposed to be (other than just cute!)

Yeah - a fridge!

I've only been talking about wanting a new refrigerator for like a year now. This will sound hard to believe, but I really think my main hangup was the fear of irritating the delivery guys. I want them to take my kitchen fridge to the basement, and take away the fridge that's in the basement now. I know that's their job, but it just felt like a lot to ask.

Anyway, I took a couple vacation days to make a 4 day weekend and I decided that I just might get crazy and go look at refrigerators today. I did - and I bought one! whee! Apparently I'm hopelessly out of it though because I really want a refrigerator without all that water/ice jazz in the door (i feel like I sound just like my mom now!) but you can't get them that way anymore. Also, I wasn't super keen on the bottom freezer because it reminded me of having to dig down to the bottom of my chest freezer and that's not fun. I realize it's much better designed than that, but they only kinda sorta started to grow on my after 3 stores. i also wasn't really into the idea of paying $1600 for a fridge.

I ended up going with an old school top freezer, but it's a stainless steel one which I didn't even consider because they're always more expensive and I was just aiming for a shiny black or something - this one was stainless and cost less at HHgregg than the same size, same brand, but different model white one at Lowe's that I also liked. Plus the folks at HHgregg were really nice and helpful. Yipee - it's being delivered tomorrow! so now i just have to do all the annoying cleaning out of 2 fridges! (and doing stupid things like taking the stack of books off the dining room table so the delivery guys don't see it! i have no idea why, at my age, i worry so much about not making delivery guys think ill of my housekeeping skills!)

Anyway, now my obsession lies with this stove that I saw there while I was waiting for the guys to figure out some kind of computer codes:

(it looks cooler in real life - it's stainless and the gas burner covers look cool - but the kicker is that griddle piece over the 5th burner in the middle - how cool is that?)

how many gingham buttons is too many gingham buttons?

It's a question that cannot be answered by me. Apparently my gauge of the number of buttons one person should own is somewhat skewed.

For some reason I decided to look at an etsy shop -Buttons and Such - that I'd gotten a bunch of adorable trims and buttons from about a year ago. I knew it'd be a problem. Once I saw the gingham buttons, things went a little nutty. There were so many colors! and they were so inexpensive! Can you see the gold threads in the brown and red ones on the right? (i feel the need to point out differences to justify the number of buttons there!)

Additionally, I got this super cute Japanese tape measure trim!

Unfortunately there's a message on her Etsy shop page that she's closing in a month (I have no idea when that was posted, so it could have been three weeks ago - you better get shoppin'!)

Paul why won't you come in?

Yesterday I went out to get the paper off the porch and this guy was there.

And he was all like "hello! I love you!" I went in and told Billy that there was a boy version of Margo on the porch so he went out and met him - we call him Paul. He's got to be someone's pet because he's super friendly and not at all skittish and he'll just let you pet him for as long as you want. We gave him some food and he wolfed it down. Every time we went out, he was there and we just fell in love with him. I sent an email to our neighborhood group to see if anyone recognized him. This morning I went out to see him and he wasn't there, but then a few minutes later my neighbor came over with Paul in his arms, thinking maybe he was ours - he'd been hanging out on their porch. After a little bit of a discussion, where neither one of us really said it was a good idea to take in another cat, we sort of decided maybe one more wouldn't hurt - because he's so friendly. I went to the store and bought a flea comb and also a flea collar, just in case. He didn't mind being brushed at all - even though he now smells like oil of olay dish soap! Then I brought him in. He was super curious, and not terribly crazy about the other cats - not that I thought he'd immediately get along with everyone. Then he kept going to the door and climbing up to look out the window to the porch. we knew that we couldn't force him to stay if he didn't want to, but I don't know how to tell ol' Paul that it'll just take some time to feel comfortable. I opened the door and he went right out, but stayed on the porch and meowed as I closed the door - but when I opened it again, he wouldn't come in. I stayed inside for 30 minutes or so, and went back out - he was sitting on the porch bench, as usual. I tried bringing him in again and carried him around to show him the place. Then when i put him down he went back to the door again and went right out as soon as I opened it. Then just turned around and looked at me like "ok, come out here!"

Oh Paul - this is all exhausting me! You're sweet as the day is long (he'll lick your lips and tuck his head into the crook of your arm to fall asleep) but you don't want to come in and live with me! why?

nekid

I hate to laugh, but this is a pretty silly look for poor ol' Stella! However, she had knots and wasn't very keen on letting me cut them out so I decided to take her to the pros.