Embarrassing Moment and an Apology

I've had my share of embarrassing moments here at the Church Office Building. The most embarrassing of all would have to be when my friends dared me to try to fit through the "tours on 26th floor" sign in the lobby. I had done it before, so they dared me to do it again, so I did, but my purse got stuck sideways through it, which made me get stuck, and I had to back out of it. The security guard yelled from across the lobby for me to stay where I was!!... so he could get his camera. Nice.

And yet that doesn't come close to the embarrassing moment of one of our interns here whose skirt fell off in the elevator. Haha. I still laugh out loud about that one. That takes the cake.

So my embarrassing moment yesterday doesn't quite beat me getting stuck in the lobby sign, or the intern losing her skirt, but it was pretty bad, nonetheless. I was walking to the parking elevators on the lower level when I turned the corner and heard the *ding* for one going down. I wanted to catch it, so I cruised past the people talking in the lobby area and got in, ready to go. One of the guys talking in the lobby got on after me and was laughing. I didn't say anything, but wondered what was so funny.

Then he said to me, "That was Elder Perry."

Me: "Oh, yeah? I didn't notice."

Him: "Yeah, I didn't think so. He was talking to you and asked you how you were doing."

Me: "What? Really!? I thought he was just talking to you!"

"Haha..."

Then the guy gets off, still laughing.

"...hahaha..."

Blast. I hate that. I really have to pay more attention. I told Chris and he said Elder Perry probably just figured it was pregnant brain. That's what Chris chants whenever I do something dumb, and it happens a lot lately.

So I decided to blog about it, because if Elder Perry follows my blog (haha!), he will know it was an accident and then he won't feel bad. So my apologies to you, Elder Perry.

So that's my story of how I snubbed one of the 12 apostles. Not the most embarrassing moment, but I hope I don't make it a habit.

(That was my second embarrassing moment involving Elder Perry and an elevator, by the way, just for the record)

Before and after

I was looking at our old blog we had while we were building our house.
I thought I would post the before and after of the lot.
I must say, I like the after better.
(You don't really need me to tell you which is before and which is after, do you?)

Oh boy! It's a girl!

So cute!!! Look at her little hands...



Snug as a bug in a rug...



Chris thinks she has his nose...



I spared you all the gender shot. :)
I'm pretty sure I could have sat there all day and watched her on the screen.
She'll make her appearance february first-ish. :)

My Latest Project

Last year our neighbors across the street moved out. The landlord was cleaning out the place and I saw this great desk and asked if I could have it. It's been in my garage ever since, holding my extra bike tires and tools, vegetable seeds, and other junk I don't have a place for. And currently my canning stuff.


I've decided it would look great in our second bedroom - so I'm going to strip it down and paint it a great green color. I went to Lowe's last night and asked the lady there showed me what to use, which I can't use (but Chris can... sorry, Chris!) and when I told her I was going to strip it and paint it green she practically threw a fit. She begged me to keep it natural. I told her I'll have to see what it looks like when I get all the paint and graffiti off of it. (I sure hope that's not a bad word on there... I can never tell what they're trying to write)


So this is what it's like now... I'll post pictures after Chris strips it, and when we decide whether to keep it natural or paint it.

Garden Views

This year I tried a few things in my garden I've never tried before. Chris and I love artichokes, so we decided to plant some and see how they did. Has anyone seen baby artichokes when they are the size of an egg? Very cute.

We've pulled a few from the garden, but I decided it would be cool to see them bloom...





I also planted a lot of eggplant this year. I've planted it before, but it's never done well for me. This year has been great, though. We went on vacation to San Diego last week and when we got back, I had monster eggplant - pulled four from the backyard and had eggplant parmesana for dinner last night. I also planted cauliflower and cabbage later in the season... I hope I can harvest it before the snow and frost get here.



I've done peppers each year, too, but I've never had them grow as tall as they have this year. Chris and I built a new box along the south side of our house and put some peppers, zucchini, eggplant and a tomato plant in there. Some of the pepper plants are nearly four feet tall - they may pass me up any day now! :) The only problem is they haven't given many peppers. Now that it's cooler, I might see more...



It's been a lot of fun getting new things from the garden. Next year I might skip out entirely on the squash (except I looove spaghetti squash and will always plant that) and grow pumpkins. I just finished my first batch of salsa this year and am excited, because it turned out great and it's something that will actually get used and won't just sit on the shelf like the tomatoes I bottled last year!

The one challenge I have had with canning is that I have a glass top stove. Everyone says you can't can on it, so I've always had to borrow someone else's camp stove or go to their house... it's been pretty inconvenient. So the other night while Chris and I were out shopping for a crib, we stopped by and bought a propane stove so I can process all my canning without bugging anyone else for theirs! This is what we settled on: A fold up double burner - propane powered - we thought it would be good for canning, camping, and emergencies. (haha... ignore the toilet paper box in the photo)



Other things I planted this year that was new: onion, beets, sunflowers, grapes, garlic, and corn. And wildflowers! But most of them died, so I'm not sure I should count those... :(

Let the catching up begin

I took a really, really, I mean really long break from blogging. The story is way too long to share, and maybe eventually I'll share some here or there. But not now. For now I am going to post a new border and a few other things I did for Silhouette. I haven't done much for Silhouette lately, either... and I blame it on the same reasons as not blogging.

I will try to post some other things, too. I've had a great garden this year - most everything has done really well, except my squash plants. I had an infestation of squash beetles that ate my plants away. I doused them with vinegar, which seemed to work, because my plants are coming back. I don't really mind not having the zucchini... I still have a ton in the freezer from last year! It's the spaghetti squash that I wish I had more of.

I also planted some fun, different things this year that I don't usually, so I will post some photos of those, too.

For now, here are some designs you can find in the Silhouette store... plus, like my new watermark? :)







Oh, plus - I learned how to Crochet. Yet another step in the domestic direction.

More Stuff

Here are a few things I worked on this past week.

This is a card I made for Chris for Valentine's day.











Other random things







These are the scraps from making the hearts for the card. Sometimes the leftovers are just as great as the actual project.

More bookmarks

Here are a few more shots of some bookmarks I made for the Silhouette.



I made these for the Young Women in our ward. The mutual theme for 2010 is from Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage." I thought it would be a great idea to remind them of what they are - that they are strong, instead of telling them to be strong. That they would respond better to flattery than commands. We are talking teenagers here, after all. :) Just kidding! We all react that way, don't we?



Side note... is what you get when you don't clean your silhouette blade.

Irresistable

I was looking through my iPhoto library and saw this. Gracie got ahold of one of the bags of chips during lunch while we were building our house a few years ago. Isn't this the perfect photo for a Lay's potato chip ad?
"Betcha can't eat just one... even off the floor."

Love these flowers

Did anyone see Loni's 3d flowers on the silhouette site or on her blog last week (and in her etsy shop )? They are pretty much fabulous. I told her I was going to make them and put them in every room in my house. I have a whole pile of them on my desk at home right now, but have yet to display them like I want. I do, however, have some on my desk at work.





Have I mentioned I love them? I also bunched four together and gave them to a friend to say thanks for something pretty great that she did. They make a great alternative to a thank you card.

Tropical Fish

I really need to get more creative with my titles.

So... no surprise here... these are my tropical fish.

And bubbles. See how well they go together?

Falcon, Raptor, Tomcat

I've been doing a lot of animals and birds for the silhouette lately (and I did fish, too, which I'll try to post tonight) but I branched out a little bit this week... took a little different approach...

Here we have a falcon, a raptor and a tomcat.

Bookmarks

Here's my lastest group of designs for the Silhouette. I started doing the Young Women values, but added a few others that I thought would appeal to a broader audience (some like Knowledge and Integrity have been tweaked so they cut better since I cut these out). What do you think about me making the rest of the YW values? Let me know! Any other suggestions?

Snowflakes

Some designs I've been working on for the Silhouette...

Playing Catch-Up

I have a lot to post today... from Halloween to projects I've been doing for work and with friends. So lets begin, shall we?

This week, I am going to be featured on the Silhouette blog - they will be highlighting me and my designs, and will show some things I've been working on and a few things others have created with my designs. Here are a few now...





I'm in a gratious mood lately, can you tell? :)



They also started a free download of the week, and asked me to create one - so here's the free download for this week:



... and another design I submitted this week...



We just finished with the Halloween rush, and we did some pumpkin carvings for the site, too...

A witch's hat...



A fall leaf embellishment...



(It's a tradition at my parent's house to have meatloaf in a pumpkin the sunday closest to Halloween. My mom usually draws a smiley face on the pumpkin, but carved this into it instead.) Notice Loni's spider and web design on the pumpkin on the right. She also mentions the meatloaf in a pumpkin on her blog.

We also had a monster salad for dinner with the meatloaf. Notice we had weeds and grass and goblin fingers and mummy wraps... you get the idea...



And played Halloween Bingo where we used pictures instead of numbers...



And a cute kid in costume. This is my nephew. His big brother helped with the face paint. I think his dad wore the same costume when he was that age!



Here are a few other project I've done in the past month or so. Some friends from the ward came over and learned to preserve apples. Some sisters in the ward had apples they weren't going to use, so we took the opportunity to learn how to make applesauce and apple pie filling. I think there were 7 of us in all, and we did 137 bottles of apples (give or take a few). It was a lot of fun, but I thought we'd never see the end to all those apples. Our floor is still sticky in spots, but it was great to be able to get together and learn from one another. None of us knew exactly what we were doing, but with all of our knowledge put together, I'm pretty sure we made some great botchulism-free apples. :)



The last project I'll mention is these really cool paper lanterns I found on a blog I follow. I usually catalogue idea after idea (or recipe after recipe) but never get around to doing any of them. But during General Conference, Chris and I made some of these and have received a lot of compliments on them. I had a few friends over this weekend and we made some for them, too. We used scrapbook paper and used fall colors for one friend and Christmas colors for the other. I think they will turn out great! We used the larger c9 christmas bulb strands. They turned out really cute! We will probably do some halloween ones next year...





Phew! That's it. And about time! Are you seriously still here reading? Hard core! ;)