I trust you all had a wonderful Mothers Day!  Mine was fantastic..   A very lazy day..  With 4 beautiful daughters I have been blessed beyond words.  My babies are soooo perfect (of course I may be slightly biased).  My girls decided to get mom some fantastic gifts this year.  My absolute favorite things..  FLOWERS!!!

My gosh I just love them all...  I have been planning on making a victorian(ish) garden in the back yard this year.  I think these will be a great start..  Thank you my angels!!

Geezzzz....  It has been forever since I posted to my blog.. I swore I was going to get better at it..LOL 

Alot has been happening in my life...  Starting with all the house fixing up...  I did some trim work, but need to get that finished..  Here is a couple sample pictures of what it looks like.

Now... I have also been doing a bit of crocheting... I love to crochet.. hahaha...  I am particularly fond of this new pattern I found on Ravelry   Ravelry has the largest collection of patterns out there..  Very worthwhile if you like to crochet or knit.

These are all made using the Chromium Star Pattern

The idea was to use up all the stashes of Red Heart Yarn I had packed away in tote bins..  I am a complete sucker for sales, so when I find yarn on sale I tend to go over board..  So.. I bought very little yarn for these 3 afghans...  The rainbow one is completely done..  Macky claimed that one..  The primary colored one is Katies.   Not completely done yet..  Ran out of a few colors and refuse to buy more until I get thru a few more totes.. LOL...  And I am not really sure who will get the blue one..  It is complete and very cute..

Next up...  I have a fondness of making crocheted roses too...  My Grandma had a bunch of little granny squares made that I was not going to use, so i pulled them out and made these...

I do have a pack of 10 left over that I have listed in my Etsy Store..  Here is the direct link..  I would also be happy to make them in any color you'd like if you wanted a custom order..  As long as I have it on hand there would be no price change..  If I special order yarn, then I would need to adjust the price...

And speaking of my Etsy Store, I have a huge clearance sale with free shipping going on with most of my crocheted items..  Sale link is here...

So there....  hahaha.. I have updated you on my projects.. At least a few of them..  I am working on Coffee Cup Sleeves at the moment..  They are knit and quite fun to make..   These will be stocking stuffers for Christmas this year..  yes.. I know..  Christmas planning already.. I really gotta get back to having all my gift giving wrapped up by Halloween..  So much easier and makes a less rushed holiday season....

Love you all...  I am off to get some dishes done and the kids in the tub... 

The wood flooring is finally in..  Well  it has actually been in for a week or so..  I am loving it sooo much...  I will share some pictures with you..  The boys did a fantastic job..  Thankfully one of them worked for a flooring company so he had the basic idea of how to do it.  Didn't realize how much work it really was going to be..  But  Here we go..  this is  my front door entry..  I was going to carpet it, but decided to use the wood just to be different.. hahaha  You can see that the living room carpet has already been installed..  I did the carpet and this section of wood flooring by myself..  Notice there is no wood trin on anything..  Those will all be replaced with knotty pine firring..

Now we move on to the dining room.  This is my huge cold window that leads out to my deck..  you can see a chair thru the curtains.. hahaha..  Anyway.. I was able to cut and lay this section of the flooring myself.  See the ugly tile beneath the padding.. YUCK.. I liked it a long time ago..  But not anymore.. lol

Again my progress amazes me..  I stopped there and realized that I was going to need more people to help me with it.  This is laid in long strips and you have to have extra hands to hold it in place..  SIGH...  Hit a darn sandbar in the middle of my peaceful river...  But wait...  Is it possible I know some nice boys to help me? 

OMGosh yes.. I do..  James and David to the resuce!  They came over right away and started in.  Didn't take them long to figure out it was going to be a pain in the butt to do.. lol

Courtney and Macky decided to sit and plan.. See how it all turned out and tease the boys at every turn...  The boys worked very hard to get the measurements just right for cutting around my pain in the arse island and counters...

Here is David snapping one of the long strips.  We had to do a few rows at a time to get the measurements for the counter edge cuts..

So this is where my fridge and stove go.. I totally FREAKED OUT at this part...  As we were laying it.. I discovered a huge hole behind the fridge section.  I thought it was a darn mouse hole..  Nope..  To my incredible relief it was just the hole for the old fridge with the water dispenser.. hahaha..  I almost started crying.. I am not a fan of mice!

You can see what we are doing here..  Cutting around the island and cupboards.  It was not hard, just time consuming.

  

This is the other end of the above picture.

Here it is all put together where the table sits.  I just love it..  It is so much nicer and way different.  Once the wood trim gets installed it will be just perfect!

Okay.. so ignore the half human child on the edge of the picture.. hahaha..  That is Macky supervising my picture taking skills..  We got the fridge and stove put back so we could actually cook..  Hadn't been able to do that in 2 days.. lol  TAKE OUT!!!

And the edging was installed by Brian my savior!  He graciously came over after work on night..  11pm ish to put my strips in.  This is the seperation from the dining room and the living room..  I love it!!

So.. as soon as I get the trim done I will take much better pictures of the finished project..  Not overly hard if you have extra hands..  Next up will be Katies room and the bathroom!!!

I hope that you all are surviving this very cold winter..  I have been remodeling my house..  New carpet, laminate flooring... real wood trim that I will be doing myself..  It is just soooo great.. I didn't think to take before pictures, but I did get some while we were doing things.. I will post them soon..  You just have to ignore the mess.  Everything is all over the place since I don't have an awful lot of room.

My friend, Brian, took me to Menards tonight to get the wood for the trim.. I got some fantastic knotty wood..  Once I put the poly on it, it will look fantastic.. I got glossy for a nice shiney finish.. I got the idea from Brians parents house..  OMG it is a great home.. Wish it were mine.. lol 

I have decided that I will need some carsiding to trim up all my cupboards..  It will look great too and add alot of character to the kitchen.

On another note...  James and David are coming over around noon tomorrow to help me finish the flooring.  I took a nasty spill on the ice this morning and my left shoulder is really messed up..  Hurt like crazy.  The neighbor said I was so graceful.. Just like an angel when I was falling but said that I was none to graceful when I landed..  DUH!!!  Does anyone really land pretty? I think not!

I am heading to bed now..  Been a long day and Mama is tired.. lol
Hugs....

Omgosh...  My store is finally completely up and open.  Seems like it took forever..  Well.. it did take forever..  I did almost the whole thing myself with the exception of moving in the big shelves and the painting of the walls. 

It is nice and lively with bright gorgeous coloring.  Now to advertise and get things going.  I had the paper come today.  Unfortunately I was closed for the afternoon due to a doctor appointment to remove the stubborn stitches that are supposed to be disolvable.  Well.. they aren't for me.  Apparently my body does not like to disolve them.. It likes to spit them thru the skin so they make nice scratchy pokeys..  Darned irritating.  Anyway..  They left a card and a message to call them.  I am sure they will do an article and that will be great for my business.  Free advertising.. LOL

Word of mouth has been great.  I have had alot of new faces show up.  Some to browse and some to give suggestions and a few to purchase.  All ages have come into the store so that is a good sign.  It is so perfect.  Now.. I have to get my friend who dyes wool to maybe stock some of her yarns in my store.  That would be fantastic for me and a benefit for her.  I hope anyway.  I would love to get some more business for her. 

On a different subject..  I am looking for doggie sweater patterns to knit and crochet.  Mainly looking for the kind without the leg holes.  More like ponchos with a belly strap.  Those are harder to find.. So if you know where to get some give me a shout. 

I am off to bed now..  It has been a long day and I need to get to bed earlier these days.  Been to tired in the mornings and almost had the kids late for school today..  That is never a good thing. LOL

hugs and love

Here are some before pictures of the store.. See the yucky green.. that had to go.. so I started taping it off for new paint..I opted to go with a grey so it would match any color scheme I decided to go with...  Was not real sure at this point what I was going to go with for decorations..

Then I got some neat shelves that came from a video store.. Paul bought some and gave me 2 of them..  Plain white so.... I got me some craft paint and painted the shelves bright colros to spruce them up a bit...Guess I picked my color scheme.. LOLSo it was all painted and time to get things moved in..  Here is my counter.. yucky but effective... Needs some covering I think...More stuff being moved in.. my desk is behind that tacky counter thing..I went with live plants to use up some space and not to mention that it wouldn't be mine if it didn't have lots of greenery.. LOL  You can see my 55 gallon terrarium peeking out in the picture below...This was a plain wooden shelf that I painted white to match the others...Now you have the gist of it.. I have gotten much further along since these photos were taken.. But.. I didn't want you all to think that I had been slacking.. LOL  I will add more photos of the store soon...  Watch for new products too...

Good almost afternoon.. lol I have been making all kinds of new stuff for my store opening. I have a ton of dry oil sprays in all kinds of wonderful fragrances... I just made up 5 different sugar scrubs.. my favorite being the warm vanilla sugar one.. well.. i also like the hazelnut coffee one alot too.. lol

I am hoping to get all my hats hung up today. I decided to go with plastic chain and colored clothespins to clip them to. It is going to look great i hope.. Not sure yet. But.. if I don't like it I can always change it. The important thing is to get things in there and up on display.. any display..

Paul is having Kevin come and finish the front side of my counter. It looks lind of rough right now.. But Kevin is the master.. He will make it look great like he always does.. He really is handy to have around.. Not to mention he is great eye candy..

I got struck with the end of summer allergies.. This is driving me nuts. But.. what can you do.. other than stay in bed all day.. I would love to do that, but then the world would end so we can't have that.. LOL

And here is another picture of my Asif..  Isn't he just grand.. LOL  I really miss him alot.  I wish my London trip would come faster so I can go and see him.  I am also looking forward to meeting his friend Arshad in person.  They are both very wonderful people. I spend alot of late nights chatting with Asif on the cam.  Better than nothing and it always makes my days better when I get to see him..  Anyway.. I am off.. gotta get some more stuff done today.. As my gramma used to say "daylight is burning in the swamp"..  Have a great day to all...

Here are a couple pictures from above the clouds.. Enjoy!!

I went to the races last night. It was a blast.. My friend Shawn races in the nascar late model division and he had a terrible night.. It really way awful.. He got bumped and flipped his car. There was a fire, but he got out okay. THANK GOD!!! It was so scary. I started crying.. Reminded me of when my other friend Dennis Pennel crashed his late model car many years ago. My heart went right to my toes... But.. the main goal is to make it out okay and he did.. so life is good..

My best (male)friend Andy did great too.. He won his heat. Finished second in the thunderstox feature. He also got second in the hornets feature.. His car is just so fast.. It was AWESOME!!!!

The girls got to do the penny search on the track. They had a great time grabbing up the lpennies trying to find the one with the hole in it.. Whoever found it won 300 dollars.. It was a good time for them.. It is so nice that the track offers things like that to the little fans..

I am off to get some candles made up. I am trying to get all my supplies used up so that I have a full store when I open. It is really fun. My new store adventure.. I am enjoying it a lot.. Have a great day to all... Big hugs..

I hope everyone is having a great summer.. I wanted to give an update on my new store.. I have rented a storefront in downtown Sparta, Wisconsin... It is a small shoppe... but it is definately perfect.. It is all painted.. I have some shelves in there now.. Still need more of those.. Will be looking at some today.. Hope they are what i am looking for. We have the counters and my desk in there now too.

I have started taking products there, but it looks so empty.. I need to get some plants and such in there so it is more filled looking.. And it really needs my touch. I love big plants, so i will go shopping for some of those this weekend.. I will be uploading before and after picks once i get further along in getting it set up how I want it.

I have a doctor appointment today at 2pm. I am hoping that everything is healing the way it is supposed to. I had some set backs. But.. as far as i can tell things are getting better much faster than i expected. I will keep you posted on that. Let me remind you all.. If you are a smoker and want a breast reduction... stop smoking first.. and do not start up again.. It really slows the healing process...

So.. I am becoming much closer to my Asif in London. He and I talk every night on yahoo messenger with our web cams. It is so nice to have something to look forward to each day.. He is sooooo sweet.. I cannot wait to get back there to see him. I feel like I have found the other half of my heart. The one that we all search for all our lives.. I just wish I had found him long ago. Something to be said for traveling to other countries.. LOL

Anyway.. I have been learning the Urdu language. It is very cool.. I am not making great progress, but it is a difficult language to learn. I will keep learning so that I can communicate with his family. Thankfully Asif speaks english very well..
Did i mention is voice is incredible.. lol It just melts me.. Anyway.. I have to get moving.. HAve a great day to all.. Hugs....Oh.. here is a picture of my janu. Isn't he just yummy!!!