like a hole in my head

that's how much i need more fabric.

but of course, i got an email announcement that this really really pretty fabric called "roman holiday" was half off. isn't it pretty?

so, just in case i don't have enough on my to-do list, i can also do some holiday sewing.

i am not really a traditonal red/green holiday kind of girl. i like coppers and browns and pale blues thrown in there for fun. anyway, i think i'm becoming one of those weird quilty ladies. how the heck did THAT happen?!

doh.

full up

oh. monday mornings are rough. especially after a holiday. i do already have one meeting under my belt, but still. i am feeling more firmly planted in the weekend, than in the new work week.

on saturday, carey and i traveled to rapid city for a visit to karen and her family. we knew that we would be pretty useless in a physical sense, but we wanted to somehow "do" something for karen as she continues on the path of caring for her mom Sue who has cancer. actually, i hate calling her that. if i discovered one thing this weekend, it's that karen's mom is NOT a woman with cancer. she is a woman who has made a difference, whose life has had and still has much purpose, who is planned for and cared for and loved by Jesus, and who God has chosen to shine through, even though (and perhaps because) the experience of having cancer has consumed many of her days.

i was nervous. not really to see sue, because i have seen relatives during the end of their lives, and i have held their hands and through tear stained eyes, said goodbye. i was more nervous simply because i did not want to be in the way of sue spending her time with people she loved. also, i didn't want to take any of karen's time away from her dear mom or the rest of her family. when you get right down to it, i just went to hug karen, because even though blogs are nice, they are not the same as really touching someone.

i was hoping i had a pretty good picture in my head of how sue would look when i saw her. apart from karen's description of her as a little yellow turtle, carey and i did kind of wonder what state she would actually be in. i was worried for carey, who had spent time growing up with this woman, and who has not been faced with too many dying people in her life.

all of the silly worries were for naught. carey was wonderful, she is so warm and able to show love and concern, and i'm glad she got to see sue again. and even though sue didn't communicate much on the day we arrived (it was later in the afternoon, and she must have been tired by then) i was surprised by her absolute beauty. she IS a small little woman, obviously very ill. but she is also luminous. her skin is actually delicate and lovely. her expression when she is awake is one of kindness, and her eyes are just gorgeous. she has the light of Jesus in her, no doubt. you can SEE it. when the girls were reminiscing about the past, she looked around with her small little face and her eyes said that she remembered too. it was hard to see her wince in pain, and even harder to see karen have to see her mom wince in pain. but for me, the thing i will remember is her eyes. THAT is what Jesus looks like. THAT is why He brought carey and i there, so that we could see Him. in person. and touch Him. in person. which we did.

so thank you sue for showing me my Lord. and thank you karen for showing me His feet and His hands. and thank you Lord for showing Yourself. you truly filled me up with you, and i am grateful.

when i took sue's hand to say goodbye, and tell her i was glad to meet her, she looked up at me with those sparkly eyes and said very clearly "it was nice to meet you. i will see you again either here or there." to which i replied "i'm looking forward to that day."

i am. it's good to know that my new friend and i will spend time together again, because He has promised us both that we will. in the meantime, i'll keep praying for a peaceful journey for sue and her family as they travel down the road He has layed for them.

scones for kirsten

Kirsten asked for a good scone recipe, and somehow i could not find the one i usually make. i went hunting (not too far!) and found that www.joyofbaking.com has a bunch of good recipes! i altered the recipe below a bit (i'll add the changes here) and found them to be light and delicious and sconey....! happy baking!

Berry Good Scones

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1/3 cup granulated white sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

3/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold and cut into small pieces

3/4 cup old-fashioned rolled oats

1/3 cup dried cranberries or cherries (i used cherries)

Zest of one lemon or orange (about 1 T. zest)

2/3 cup buttermilk

Egg Wash: (i forgot this part, and sprinkled a bit of sugar on top of them)

1 large egg

1 tablespoon milk or cream

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and place rack in center of oven. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl place the flour, sugar, salt, baking soda, baking powder and whisk to combine. Add the butter and using two knives or a pastry blender (the new/old kitchenmaid mixer set on low worked perfectly) cut in the butter until it resembles coarse crumbs. Add the rolled oats, dried cranberries and zest. Mix until combined. Stir in the buttermilk (adding more buttermilk if necessary) and mix just until the dough comes together. (dough will be sticky, but that is okay).

Transfer to a lightly floured surface and knead the dough four or five times and then pat, or roll, the dough into a circle that is 7 inches round and about 1 1/2 inches thick. Cut this circle into 8 triangular sections. Place the scones on the prepared baking sheet. Make an egg wash of one beaten egg mixed with 1 tablespoon milk or cream and brush the tops of the scones with this mixture.

Bake for about 15 - 18 (mine took about 21) minutes or until lightly browned and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Makes 8 scones.

dreams come true

i had the incredible honor yesterday of accompanying kristie as she did her first art show for her beautiful jewelry called Flatwear. (i also witnessed her the night before, only slightly pannicked and whipping up the finishing touches of her jewelry - man, she's GOOD.}

anyway, it was fun. the trunk show was at a local coffee shop, which turned out to be the perfect setting. i'm always amazed at how God fills in the details that you could never guess, like the perfect table, or just the right size necklace stand that "just happen" to be there when you need them. thanks Lord!

kristie did a great job smiling and talking with her public. and people were very interested to know how she got started, and how she made the stuff. i was the comic relief, and i kept forgetting to help people because i was chatting and shopping myself! doh. it was really fun to set up though, and even though the photo does not do it justice, everything was lovely.

whew. it's so satisfying to get to participate when God is actually making one of His dreams for His kids come true :) we're proud of you, lou!

sometimes

when you go to kmart to buy laundry detergent, you hear little voices pleading in your ear "take me home with you!"

i'm just sayin.' sometimes it happens.

monkey sox

today is a full-out, hands down, ALL DAY jammie day. i'm wearing my new red and brown monkey socks that kirsten gave me when she visited (which somehow i have already managed to put a hole into!), my old standby velvet stretch pants, and a long sleeved tshirt. ALL DAY. i'll be wearing this outfit if you come over. be warned.

anyway, i am very excited about this day. not that i don't ever have these kind of days, but lately i never have them during the work week. but THIS kind of day is the best part of being a designer, the cherry on top of the dessert.

see, i have a big presentation at the end of this week. it all started about 2 weeks ago when i met with a client about rebranding their company.

it was a good meeting, but not the easiest client in the world to brand. not really my kind of subject matter. so, i did what i usually do when stuff is hard to figure out. i called carey :)

ha. seriously, she is the bigger thinker of the two of us. i mostly hang with the pretty pictures, and she does the hard part. so, she went to work on it, and came up with about 10 ideas about what we could do for this client.

and i didn't really like any of them. sometimes i'm like that, which probably drives her nuts. but she KEPT thinking, and we talked, and it turned into THE BEST IDEA EVER. in my head, anyway, it's really a pretty good idea. that is what always has to happen, i have to SEE the finished project in my head. then, i get really excited about it. like right now.

E X C I T E D.

so, for the last few days i've been plugging away. finding pictures, and thinking of color palettes, and playing with fonts, and moving stuff around on the page. and finally, i think i have something i really like.

and TODAY, i will put it all together. all day. sitting here and forgetting about time, and turning the phone off (you might want to not call me til tomorrow) and making this thing a THING. the very very best part of being a designer. i HOPE that in Heaven, the Lord will still assign me projects and let me do this part. i am assuming that He will. because it really does feel like this is the thing i do better than most things, and it still brings me real, true joy to make something that sits there on a page. i know it's only work, and it doesn't define who i am, and in the end it doesn't really do a whole lot of good for the world, but i do really really LOVE this part.

and hopefully, when i show it to the person i am making it for, he will love it also. whhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeee! here's hoping for a round of jammie days for you guys too.

it's quiet today...

well. she's gone. not quite gone, but kirst is on the road right now, traveling back to her family in minnesota, and the house is quiet for the first time since thursday night.

i forget how much i love spending time with her. this was especially nice, because it was the first time in a decade that we got to spend time without the kiddies around, demanding her attention too. she was ALL MINE, and that was great.

i think it was 1988 or so that we met. she had a blueberry colored long shirt on, matching socks smooshed just perfectly up over her black leggings, and a million jangly bracelets that looked like they came from some foreign land. they did. MINNEAPOLIS, or the big glamourous city, as i thought of it back then. she was cool, and i was not! ha. until i became her friend, and then i was a little also.

anyway, somehow we have kept in touch all these years!! 20 years is a long time! always 4 or 5 hours apart, and maybe only once or twice a year of actual contact. but lifetime friends are lifetime friends, no matter what. so we catch up, and we talk talk talk, and we go away again, each time with a little bigger chunk of each other engrained within us. it's good.



naturally, we shopped on friday. it's the kind of shopping i usually only do with one or two people i know. CRAFT shopping, mostly, although i did get a new winter coat, and we each hit the $1 section at target pretty hard. whew. fun.





then, saturday was Girl Saturday. it was neat to share kirst with the cool artsy girls in my life here. a good mess was had by all. i wish i could share more fruit for my labor, but i got too excited to actually make anything. well, i made one thing.



the funnest part was laughing as we read thru the old books that kris brought, looking for fun phrases to collage. i made a little collage, but the other girls seemed to have better stuff than mine to show for their time. next time i will actually think about what i am doing. oh. and photograph the good stuff that the others make!

schwew, fabulous weekend. now i'm going outside to mow my lawn ON VETERANS Day (or nearly so)....wow!

happy sunday everybody!

thank goodness i don't work here

so, carey and i were just on the phone, talking about the craziness of some of the business people we know, or work with. which we should not have even been doing, because our bible study this week was about having judgemental thoughts about people, often WRONG thoughts, when God is the only one able to judge. our group agreed to sort of "keep track" of our judgemental thoughts or words this week, but i knew i was in trouble when i was up to about 15 by the morning after our group met!

anyway, i digress. i was getting out of my truck today, and found this note laying near my curb. must have fallen off the bundle of "shopping news" rags that get delivered to all the homes here in SF once a week ... the crappy paper i wish they would just stop littering my lawn with (inserted just so you can see how that judgemental thought process works...)!

um. yeah. even though the big capital letters at the bottom REALLY made me laugh, i am kinda glad i do not work here. forgive me for judging, but this person doesn't sound like a whole lotta fun.

singin' along

i wonder how many days it will take before singing this song NON STOP will happen? i've been humming since monday, and today i went back and watched it again for more...i challenge you to find a better song that EVERY LIVING HUMAN loves!


thanks to the 2k's at paulsen for the tip...:)

day and night

well, here we are, 3 days into daylight savings time (or is it the cancellation of daylight savings time?) and i am still messed up.

it started out quite nicely on sunday morning, when i slept EXACTLY one hour later than i normally sleep, thereby (i thought!) cancelling the whole thing out.

unfortunately, my body did not agree.

anyway, the last 3 days have been the LONGEST days of my life! so far, the biggest change is that i am absolutely DONE working at 3:30pm. finito.

the funny thing is that my bedtime has not seemed to change at all. last night, thanks to a series of misadventures best saved for another post on another day, i ended up staying up until about 11:15...which 3 days ago would have been 12:15...on a school day! EEEK!

and this morning, just like clockwork, i popped open my eyes at 6:30am as if i'd been sleeping for days, and here i am. i will need a nap at about 10am, i am sure.

i don't remember things like this ever being so difficult before. better add it to the list of "things SO not to love about being middle-aged."

the upside of the whole deal (and you already know this if you ever ride in Ernie with me) is that my car clock - which i forgot how to set in 1999 - is once again only 4 minutes slow, instead of one hour and 4 minutes slow. much less math calculations to do whilst driving, for the next few months anyway :)

happy day!

error 3259 erradicated

schwew.

back into the communication loop. email fixed.

dave, this is waiting for you whenever you want it :)

thank you, thank you, thank you.

the dreaded error 3259

okay.

so it's not even 9am yet, and i am kind of freaked out! apparently, i am like one of pavlov's dogs and i did not realize it. because i am missing the sound of the "ding" of my email.

my email system has been down since yesterday (pray for my friend Dave to not have a heart attack, and for it to be all better!), and i almost cannot STAND it that i am sitting here, stranded from the world! THANK GOODNESS i have y'all, or i would really be going nuts.

okay, that is just weird. as much as i like all of the internet friends i have, i think perhaps i need some real humans. or siesta. yea, she'll do in a pinch.

here, kitty kitty kitty....

:)

into the wild

last night kristie and i went to see 'into the wild' for a birthday celebration. it was an extraordinary movie, very odd and oddly filmed. i liked it for its beauty, and the story was touching too.

i guess what i am thinking about this morning, is that in the movie, chris is hurt early in life and it drives him to reject people pretty much altogether. he cannot understand why people hurt each other, so he looks around him, sees all that God has created, and sets out to live for THAT instead of people (or society).

what we see are his brushes with death, moments of pure exhilaration (hey Care, he jumped off a cliff too!) and finally his demise thanks to some miscalculations about the alaskan wilderness.

in between, he reads books and meets some odd characters that help him along his journey.

great story. of course, i don't think the movie, or chris for that matter, really ever got to the heart of why we are here. that we as people are made to have relationship with, not just knowledge about, the Living God. that his creations ARE a display of His power and awesomeness, but not the whole of Him. that the REAL adventure for each of us is designed by God, just for us, and cannot be completed (or even started for that matter) without Him.

so yeah. chris mccandless was an adventurer. i think at the end, he was becoming aware of the real purpose he was made for, that relationship with God. i certainly hope so anyway. as for me, i'm reminded of the geoff moore song "when i get where i'm going" where geoff talks about flying, and petting animals, and just the goodness of Heaven. i think i'll get through this life by living a little less large than chris did, but not give up the hope in my heart to someday do everything he did, and more.