Friday, June 15, 2012

Yarn Haul

Hi y'all!

I am super excited today! 

Yesterday while I was visiting a friend of mine she asked me if I wanted some yarn. Well you all know I said yes! She told me she would contact me today and let me know when I could pick it up.

Well, I sure wasn't expecting what I got!!!!

You see, my friend's boyfriend also crochets AND his mom crochets and when his mom visits she brings him yarn. He has two totes full of yarn AND he had two trash bags full of yarn.

Bloggy friends, my friend gave me the two trash bags of yarn.

She gave me:
25 skeins of various acrylics

3 skeins of various fluffy yarns.

These two barrel shaped skeins of yarn and this little ball.

These 3 skeins of Patons Showboat yarn. I love the color AND the sparkle!

These 10 little skeins of yarn

24 balls of various acrylics, wools, threads.


3 ziploc bags of angora (yet to be spun....hmmm....can't afford a spinning wheel...wonder how I can manage to do that....any suggestions) and 5 other ziploc bags of various yarns, threads and such


These 2 skeins of virgin wool.


8 hanks (right word?) of Persian virgin wool.

and 2 unfinished projects

Can you see why I am so excited?????
So if you lost count.....
That is 76 various skeins, balls, hanks, and odds and ends. Not counting the unfinished projects, then angora, and the 5 ziplocs of odds and ends.

 So now I am dreaming up various uses for this yarn! I am super excited to start organizing it!

I am also super excited about trying to spin up the angora! I think I will make my own drop spindle (if I can find a decent tutorial on how to do it)!

Whew....the excitement is overwhelming me...I need to go lay down!
Hugs from me to you!
Erin

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Hey, You....what's going on

Hello again my friends. Just wanted to post a little update on what I have been doing since we spoke last.

For starters, I have been reading the 50 Shades of Grey Trilogy. Oh my goodness, those books are steamy and the story line is such a roller coaster...I haven't been able to put it down! I am currently on book 3. I would highly recommend these books to anyone who wants a good story line and doesn't mind the steamy sex scenes.

Secondly, I have been playing around with my new Nikon point and shoot. I keep it in my purse in my Michigan Wolverines (GO BLUE!!!) pouch! I have to say, it has been a little hard for me to transition from my D40 to my point n shoot. I am used to faster shutter speeds from the D40. But here are a few pics I have captured.

First is an onion flower from my garden. I just love these beautiful flower clusters. They look like perfectly round snowballs!!!! And guess what they smell like.....They smell like onions. Who would've thought :)


Here I have a pic of my Kentucky wonder pole beans climbing high up the trellis. I have really enjoyed watching these beans wrap themselves around and around. It truly amazes me.


Next is a simple dandelion flower.



The flag pole at the school. Look at that brilliant blue sky!!


I dunno if you can see but right in the middle is a yellow spot. I have 2 baby squash growing. I am so proud.

A blurry pic of a petunia.
 As I stated I am still trying to get accustomed to the new point and shoot but I think I am getting the hang of it!


I also enjoyed a special treat from my garden this week.
My first batch EVER of home grown sweet peas.
Here you can see the pods I picked filling a blue Easter bucket.

Big beautiful plump peas.


And here is the mess of peas after they were shelled. 
 Let me tell you, these peas were the best I have ever tasted! I usually eat frozen veggies unless I can find fresh seasonal and oh my these were a delicious treat!




My kiddos have been having fun as well. Last night they closed the curtain panels in the bay window and were reading by flash light. It was so funny watching 3 of the four in this little "hide out"


Here you can see the light of their flashlight. I swear they stayed in there for a couple hours playing and reading.



Today we had some errands to run in Chillicothe. We went to Menards and to Hobby Lobby and we took the kiddos to pet land to see the animals. I didn't get to take a picture of it but they got to play with a very cute old English Bulldog.

Here are some pictures I took while at Petland.









Oh I almost forgot...we also stopped by Sally Beauty supply. My daughter has been wanting hair feathers and I didn't want to pay the outrageous prices for her to get them at the salon so I went to Sally's and spent $7 on a pack of 4.
My daughter gave me the white one.


My daughter got the bright pink and bright green ones.

Here is another pic from the front.

My oldest got one that is light brown. It blends really well with her hair.


Here is my beautiful oldest daughter from the front.

Well that is all for my update. I hope you all are having a wonderful week. I am off now to delve back into book 3 of the 50 Shades trilogy. 

Hugs
Erin



Saturday, June 2, 2012

Family Fun Day

Hello wonderful friends. We had a fabulous day yesterday. It was the last day of my hubby's vacation and it was payday AND hubby had a nice bonus on his paycheck so we decided to take the kiddos and do something fun. So we all decided to go to Cincinnati.

Yesterday morning when we got up the weather was HORRIBLE! The skies were dark and grey. Rain was drizzling down. It was chilly. YUCK! But we didn't let that stop us.We all got our showers and off we went.

It takes about 1 hour and 45 minutes give or take to get to Cincinnati from our house. The drive was rainy but nice. We saw many things that interested us. 

Once we got to Cincy our first stop was Bass Pro Shop. Now as luck would have it, I actually remembered that I had a camera on my phone so I did get tons of pics of our outing even though they are crappy Blackberry pictures.

My kiddos LOVED Bass Pro Shop.They loved all the stuffed animals, they liked that they could climb aboard boats inside the store, they loved riding the escalators, and all the different adventurous displays.
Here you can see 3 of my kiddos being a little afraid of the bear.

They quickly got over their fear and posed nicely by the bear.

Their favorite part of the Bass Pro Shop was this airplane that you saw as soon as you walked in the doors.
Overall the Bass Pro Shop was awesome.
Since we were starving our next stop was Chick-fil-a. This was a super special treat for hubby and me because we hadn't ate at a Chick-fil-a since we lived down south nearly 10 years ago.


Our kiddos loved it too. And do you see the lady in the white shirt and black skirt? She made this stop so sweet. She just doted on the kids. She said they were the best behaved kids she had ever seen and she gave them a whole bag of mints. She was such a nice lady.


After getting our tummies full we went to mall that was close by. I wanted to go to Forever 21 to buy a dress I had seen online BUT they were sold out of my size at this store. So we walked the entire bi-level  mall letting the kiddos spend their allotted amounts of money. It was really fun to actually shop in a REAL mall again.

Once we finished walking the mall we decided we would take the kiddos on a special out of state adventure. This was extra special for our youngest son because this was the Very first time he had ever been out of the state of Ohio!!!
Here you can see we were heading to Newport, Kentucky.

Crossing the Ohio River we were greeted by the Welcome to Kentucky sign.

We took the kiddos to Newport on the levy. We had been talking about the huge Barnes n Nobles store there and since my kiddos are all avid readers, we took them.

Here you can see them posing and cheezing in front of the window that overlooks the Ohio River and downtown Cincy.

At Barnes n Nobles I decided to buy the Fifty Shades Trilogy. I had heard tons about it and well wanted to read it. I also bought a street map of the greater Cincinnati area. The map came in very handy once we left Newport on the levy as the roads we needed to take were closed due to construction.


Here is my hubby and kiddos in front of the big, silver marlin in front of Mitchell's Fish Market.

To top off our family day, we surprised our kiddos with a visit to the Newport Aquarium. 
I won't bore you with tons of descriptions of the following pics. 
However I did want to say Sorry for the poor quality and that my youngest daughter took the majority of these pics.







 Seeing the sharks and petting the sharks was awesome.
























The pic below is of Mighty Mike.






I giggled when I saw these frogs...They look like mudpies with eyes.



My kiddos 
















They Newport Aquarium was AWESOME! Can you believe this was the very first time I had EVER been to an aquarium in my 32 years of life???

Oh and in the middle of walking through the aquarium a guy stopped us to take our picture.
Here is a fun family photo of us getting attacked by a huge shark. 

After we left the aquarium and getting ourselves a slushie we decided we would head back towards home. 
Once we got out of the Cincy traffic we saw an exit that had another store I wanted to go to.

When we lived in Jacksonville, Florida I loved shopping at target! It was my favorite store. I was super happy to be in one again.

As we browsed around the store I happened to notice that a point n shoot camera I wanted was on sale. I told hubby it was a great deal. He was looking at Kindle fires so I just left him there to look. He met up with me later with a target bag in his hand. I thought he had gotten a Kindle but he had gotten me this:


I couldn't believe it!!! I had been wanting a point and shoot to keep in my purse for a long time. You know, for those things you wanna capture to blog about. Now don't get me wrong I absolutely adore my Nikon D40 but it is too big and bulky to take everywhere. I wanted another Nikon because of the quality of the cameras and of the Nikor lenses. This one is perfect. I can't wait to experiment with it and show you the pics I come up with.

We got home around 10:30 last night. We were all worn out! We all went to bed by 11:30.

Thank you for checking out our family fun day!

Hugs
Erin