Random Snapshots

Happy Halloween!

Have you ever seen a cuter bumble bee?

I think not!  I can assure that is the cutest bumble bee around. 

This picture of my niece Camryn just came across my inbox and I had to share.  :)

I love Halloween.  I mean, I REALLY LOVE Halloween.  My cousin Denise and I share this love and used to have the best time around Halloween and fall in general when Adam and I lived home.  I miss those times...spiked cider, serious pumpkin carving, general Halloween debauchery.  :) 

Even though those good times can't be beat we've started some new Halloween traditions around here.  For the past 2 years we've gotten together to carve pumpkins with our friends Allison & Rob.  We've had a really great time both years and I hope to continue this tradition.  My Mom was here this year which was great because we always liked to carve pumpkins together when I younger. 

Poor friends...last year I think they were a little taken aback.  I get pretty serious about pumpkin carving...not as serious as a certain friend of ours who uses a Dremel to carve photographs, but still pretty serious.  I'm serious about tools, stencils, picking out the pumpkin and having hot cider available!  HA. 

This is a blurry photo, but you can see my game face:

Here are a couple more:

From left to right: Mine, Mom's, Rob's & Allison's.

I actually carved a second pumpkin this year at the pumpkin carving party we went to a few weekends back.  I don't think I ever got a photo of it though and of course it's rotten already. 

That's all for tonight.  Happy Halloween everyone!

Some new stash

Good Monday morning!  :) 

Not much going on around here to blog about.  Same old routine; busy with work and school, but I'm fitting in a good amount of knitting as well.  I haven't had a chance to take many photos to share either, but I've got a few FOs, WIPs and almost FOs to share in the near future.

I do, however, have photos of my new stash additions and that's always blog-worthy.  :)  You might know that the creator of Duet Sock Yarns is in my knitting group.  She's a great person and it's always a plus to have a yarnie in your knitting group!  Why?  Because of "oops yarn."  :)  Every couple of months she brings in a box of yarn that isn't up to her standards to sell for full price and sells them to us for a discounted price.  Maybe a little mistake in the dying here or there, but otherwise perfectly good sock yarn. 

So here's my new sock yarn:

Can't wait to make some Christmas socks.  :)

I think I also might have forgotten to mention that I'm on the Ravelry Beta now.  I have been for a couple of weeks now and I'm really enjoying it.  I feel like such an organized knitter/crocheter now.  I've been adding to my stash, filling up my queue and getting my projects in order.  It's such a great site - I can't believe it's just been invented!  :)

Anyways, I like Ravelry friends so if your in the Beta and need another friend my username is ElizBeans.  :)  I love seeing people's projects and queues.   

What my husband REALLY thinks of me...

Went to a pumpkin carving party at a fellow photography-obsessed friend's house this past weekend.  Each couple was taking turns doing these photos.  It didn't take Adam but a minute to decide what he wanted to do for our photo.  :)  So there you have it...I'm the devil and he's the angel.  Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. 

Enjoy your Tuesday.  :)

Cooking day

Today was cooking day.  I went to the grocery store early this morning to get food for the football game and decided to make a morning out of cooking.  I figured it would be great to get some things cooked up for the week.  It will be great not to have to worry about dinner since I have so many other things going on.  If I could only be this organized all week.  :)

For the football game I made a garlic and rosemary pork loin on the grill with roasted root vegetables.  It was our turn for football Sunday.  Lucky Allison got to go to the game and Rob came over to watch it with us.  He and Adam raved about the dinner and I thought it turned out really good as well.  It was my first time making a pork loin and grilling it was super easy.  Roasted root vegetables are my specialty and were really good with the pork. 

While that was cooking I made my normal pot of sauce for the week, black bean soup, onion soup and hardboiled some eggs for the sauce and egg salad.  Everything turned out really well and it will certainly minimize my stress this week.  :)

We had a great visit with my Mom.  She was here last week, hence the reason that I've been blog-less for a little while.  It was really great to spend time with her since we only see each other about once a year these days.  I think we had a great mix of sight-seeing and relaxing at home.  Of course I wish the visit could have been longer, but I'm thankful for what we had!

Here's a little run-down of our week:

• Friday - spend the better part of the afternoon at Pike's Place Market.  We walked around and stopped at almost every booth.  I even found booths that I haven't seen before.  It's hard to stop everywhere when Adam's behind you pushing you out.  :)  Bought some good stuff and went out to dinner after Adam came home from work.

• Saturday - went down to the Seattle Center area.  We went to the Pacific Science Center which was really great.  Adam and I hadn't been there yet so it was fun to see it.  They had a great dinosaur exhibit going on.  We attempted to go up in the Space Needle, but the line was a couple of miles long as usual so we just walked around for a bit and then headed home for some pizza.

• Sunday - went to Allison & Robs for pumpkin carving, good food and football Sunday.  Had a great time carving, eating and watching (aside from the horrible showing by the 'hawks).

• Monday - woke up deathly ill!  I was so bummed.  Congestion from the weather hit me like a bus so most of the morning was spent hanging around here.  I felt a bit better in the afternoon so Mom and I went to see Elizabeth: The Golden Age.  It was really good and I was glad to see it with her.  We met Adam at home who also didn't feel well.  A pot of Mom's chicken soup did the trick!  :)
• Tuesday - Adam worked 1/2 day and then we headed over to the Space Needle again to give it another shot.  I'm so glad we went because it wasn't nearly as busy.  This means that we didn't have to wait and we got plenty of time to walk around and really look at everything.  Again, I found things that I'd never seen before because it was so packed last time we went.  Ended up being a great trip.  After that we went over to Pyramid Ale House for beer and food - it's a favorite of ours.

• Wednesday morning - Mom left  :(  Good news is that I'll see her again back home in less than a month.

I'm working on getting my photo albums together right now.  I'll post those when I'm finished.  :)

 

Look what I got...

Finally - my very own swift and ball winder.  :)  I feel like I am officially knit-obsessed.  Up until now I've been either winding at the LYS or asking a friend to bring hers to knit night.  Not any more though - now I'm all growns up and winding on my own dang swift and ball winder.

I've been wanting one for quite some time and considered buying a set at the fiber festival last month.  Joanne reminded that I could the ones like hers off Joanns.com though and use a coupon.  After we came home that night I went to Joanns.com on a whim and turns out they were each on sale plus I could use my coupon.  Turns out I got a smokin' deal and both of them turned out to be the price of one.  How can you beat that?!  The shipping took forever, but it finally arrived last week and I couldn't be happier.

Yesterday I wound this:

into this (one cake is off to the side):

and today it became this:

which is A Scarf Askew in Blue Sky Dyed Cotton for my Dad.  It's so soft - I hope he likes it!

I finished blocking the back panel of the Minimalist Cardigan and it's perfect.  Must just have looked weird because of the stitch.

I'm also about 75% of the way through one of the front panels:

And while I'm sharing WIPs I might as well show the minimum progress on Juliet:

I was a lot further along, but got screwed up on the lace panel somewhere.  I couldn't get it back the right way so I ended up ripping the entire thing out and starting over.  It's a pretty quick knit though so there wasn't much time lost at all.

In other news, we had a nice football Sunday with Allison & Rob today even though the Seahawks lost.  It was a perfect day for chili, cornbread muffins, hot cider and delicious no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies. 

The rest of the weekend has been spent cleaning up this place.  Trying to get each room organized and simplified a bit.  We've been unloading some things on Craigslist too which has been a help - got rid of some big items that have been taking up space.   My Mom arrives this Thursday so I've been trying to get things in order for that as well.  :)

And because I don't have enough things to work on I decided to paint my dining table and chairs set today.  :)  I didn't start until around 3pm and just ran out of steam about an hour ago.  1 coat of primer and 1 coat of paint were enough for me tonight.  Tomorrow after work I will do another coat and hopefully be done with it.

I'm off to knit and relax for the remainder of the night.  I think I've earned it.  :) 

Eye Candy Friday

I'm so happy that it's Friday.  I've had such a long week and I'm exhausted to be honest.  :)

I don't have any pictures of my own to share for ECF, but I do have something to share.

Here's the coat I will be sporting this winter:

Photo is from the website as I don't have a photo of me in mine yet.  I think it's really cute on though!

I'm not sure if I've shared this or not before, but I'm currently rebuilding my wardrobe.  I've lost 15lbs in the last few months and plan on losing a little more.  As a result, none of my clothes fit!  That's good and bad I guess.  I've been slowly buying a piece here and there because I still have more to go.  I'm just getting what I need to get by at this point. 

At lunch I bound off the back panel of the Minimalist Cardigan.  I'm not sure if it's the moss stitch or not, but it looks a little weird - it appears to be biased, but I counted stitches all the way up.  I'm going to block it tonight actually and see what it looks like - I'm hoping it's just the stitch and needing to be blocked. 

That's all for now - hope you all have a great weekend!