Friday, November 29, 2013

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

we're cooking with gas!

Yes, you are still small.
But you are bigger and WORK
So I can't complain.
Welcome to my new stove. Just in time for the biggest cooking day of the year. Of course, I am going to friends' houses tomorrow so that is besides the point, but I am sure that there are some important casseroles to be cooked in my future.

Thursday, November 21, 2013

in which i give the paparazzi what for

I'm having fun editing the pictures from Amy's and my adventure to Elioak Farms and integrating them with mine to tell the story of the day.
Rea and I maintain that we need staff photographers to capture our lives so that we can be IN the pics instead of just behind the camera.
Looking at Amy's pictures of the day reinforces that thought because there are a jillion pics of me to choose from: me with goats, me with horses, me with giant shoes, me with alarming bears.
There is however one snap that makes me wonder if I would actually like having my photographer:

Wow.

I look super unamused.

Funnily enough, I don't even remember looking up at this moment and Amy had been there the whole time so it isn't like I was suddenly Why can't you vultures leave me alone on my day off? Can't you see that I am having a moment with these goats? Go earn an honest living that doesn't involve barely legal stalking!
Plus the whole day was fun, fun Laughing-ville so I was never actually this unamused.
It does however give me a good avatar to use when I need to broadcast utter disdain with an undernote of incredulous.
Don't you even...

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

i love people!

Festival season has been great so far, but I am spending a LOT of time alone in the studio so I am trying to make a concerted effort to spend time with actual people.
Last week I went to see fTM Erin three days before she was going to the hospital to birth son #3.
She couldn't quite bend over to finish packing her hospital bag (I tried not to giggle) and I stayed with the boys while she went to her last doctor's appointment.

Caleb Henry was born late Friday night after a long, somewhat tricky labor.
Congrats to the whole family.
And good luck with three boys under the age of 4.






Last night fTM Felicia and I met for yummy quesadillas and then went to a deep water running class.
Yes, all you moms out there, not only did we eat before exercising, we ate before jumping into 12ft of water. Good news, neither of us died.
Deep water running was a much better workout than  I was expecting. You wear a floatee belt since an hour of treading water is too much for anyone, especially while you are doing jumping jacks and cross-country skiers and crunches. Yes, crunches. And there was some weight work as well. My shoulders are still sore.
Tonite I am taking a class on a new stamping product.
Wait, did I mention that I am now a Stampin' Up! consultant ?
I am not planning on actually doing any parties, but got a REALLY good deal on ink that I needed to buy anyway.  If you need any SU! stuff let me know because I will be placing one more order in December and am happy to share my discount.
But between now and then, fTM Amy and I are getting together for tea and to exchange pictures from our adventure to Elioak Farms. Hopefully that means a blog post about it soon.

Friday, November 15, 2013

Wednesday, November 13, 2013

randomly catching up

The festivals/ craft shows every weekend continue to go well and i thank all of those who have come out to say HI to me. However, continuing in the grand tradition of my first ever festival, the thwart-hog continues to plague me with the sorts of illnesses/injuries on festival days that only seem to occur in the Nikiverse.
I woke up with my jaw locked at 4am for the Hereford Festival; given my handling of broken metal daily tetanus didn't seem like too far of a stretch. Good news: as with many Nikillnesses after  a few days of handling symptoms - odd swelling, shooting pains that came and went, a hole in my lip that may or may not have been related - everything cleared up just as i decided that I needed to see a doctor.
Getting ready to leave for the OMHS craft fair I managed to catch my foot on a mirror that is up against a wall and slice the entire webbing between my third and fourth toes. Mind you, the mirror is flush to the wall and I walk by it 10-15 times a day. Ever tried to bandage between and under toes while bleeding profusely? Take my advice: don't bother. Dump on peroxide, wad in a bunch of sterile gauze, tape the toes together and pop two tylenol. You can be out the door in under six minutes, pain-free and without a blood trail. Viva Frontier Medicine!
Last weekend, the Browse and Buy was mostly incident-free so maybe we've broken the chain. We'll see this Saturday for the Emanuel Lutheran holiday craft festival.

When do you wash out your salt and pepper shakers?
I needed to do a refill on my table shakers -blue flower corelle ware from my childhood- and the cooking shakers -tall Tupperware cylinders from everybody's childhood. With Maryland humidity you add rice to the salt to keep it from clumping and normally I just pour more salt in since the rice doesn't come out during use, but this time I decided to get new rice as well. Dumping  the little bit of salt/rice mixture left in both shakers into a bowl I could make the right rice/salt ratio to put back in the shakers and as I reached for them it occurred to me that I never wash my salt and pepper shakers. They get low, I add more, they get low, I add more, over and over again.
In fact, I couldn't recall ever washing them or seeing anyone was them. Ever.
Salt and Pepper shakers are never empty so when would you wash them? Weird.
So I dumped the pepper left into a bowl as well and then soaked all of the shakers and caps. In fact, I emptied my light bulb pepper mill and washed it up as well. Everything is now shiny clean and filled with new salt and pepper. That should suffice for at least another 20 years, right?

Dr Cool basically told me that I needed to do a routine eye checkup before I saw her again or she was going to beat me. Not really, but she did shoot a stern and disappointed look in my direction which is the equivalent of a physical threat to my people-pleasing heart.
Though glaucoma runs in both sides of my family my eye pressure is fine.
But, I am getting old.
My visual acuity is down to 20/20.
sigh...
I know all of you glasses-wearers out there have no sympathy for me at all, but you need to understand that at one time I had 20/13 vision. fTM Brian used to call me Eagle Eye; now I am just Human Eye. It doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?
In fact, my lazy, slacker right eye is way down at 20/25. Sub-par and unacceptable right eye. In fact, I will need 1.0 reading glasses within the next couple of years.
sigh...
In brighter news I think I have found a new look for myself and perhaps the next breaking fad:

Even on a completely overcast,  rainy day my freakishly light blue eyes have to be covered when dilated (look closely and you can see the tiny ring of blue). These disposable UV blockers really work with the shape of my face; I think you will be seeing them on the Milan runways next season.


On the way to the eye doctor a guy backed into my car; I mean, we were on a one-way street, he stopped, put his car in reverse and backed right into me despite my frantic honking.
There was no damage, but what the heck?
He claimed he didn't see me (or apparently my entire freaking CAR).
The doctor commented that a lot of accidents do happen in his parking lot because he is an eye doctor after all, but it actually wasn't in his parking lot.
Do these insane things only happen to me or am I just the only one to admit it?

Speaking of crazy, I took this picture three days ago.
These beautiful blooms were in the midst of naked trees and brush.
They look like something in the azalea/ mountain laurel family which are spring and summer flowers respectively.
Does anyone know if there is an autumn blooming version?
Mayhaps it just bloomed late.
Or had enough energy for a second blooming.
Or didn't get the winter memo.
Regardless of how it was heartening to see this last burst of life.
 
Spontaneous generation has been disproven for centuries, but I can understand why it seemed so reasonable for millennia.
Last week I bagged up all of my trash to go out and then got distracted by something -probably shiny- so it sat in the kitchen. Two days there were tiny flies buzzing around alerting me to my oversight.
It is winter, the doors and windows are closed and there were no flies just 2 days earlier.
Where did these freaking flies come from?
Took the trash out, but the flies remained so being proactive I bought some fly strips.
They are ugly, but effective.
The directions say pull the cord and unwind the strip like a ribbon which sounds easy enough. I don't know what kind of ribbon is familiar to those direction writers because it was all stuck together and then a crazy tube and then in my hair. After 15 minutes more than it probably should have taken my fly strip was ribbon-like and hanging. Despite the difficult installation it did indeed catch all of my magically appearing flies and has been properly disposed of in a trash bag  that went immediately to the curb.

The Browse and Buy last weekend was at the Catonsville Historical Society again this year.  Arriving so early on Saturday that I was locked out of the building where NikCo was set up, I took the chance to wander the grounds.
Last year I only went around the side and saw the giant railroad crossing sign, but I went all the way around to the back where there is a nature walk.
This cool, old rail runs to right before the start of the trail.
I love how it looks like the track has been abandoned and nature is reclaiming the space with plants and rocks.
Wait...
What is going on with that one rock at the end?

Now THAT is random.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

come see me this weekend


2nd Annual Objects Found Browse 'n' Buy
Rain or Shine Flea Market
  
Join us for a weekend of deals and savings; get in your holiday shopping before the madness of Black Friday!

When
FRIDAY, SATURDAY and SUNDAY
NOV. 8th, 9th, and 10th, 2013
From 10 am to 3 pm

Where
CATONSVILLE HISTORICAL SOCIETY
1824 FREDERICK ROADCATONSVILLE, MD 21228
Our stores in Arbutus and Catonsville will still be open!  All items in our Catonsville store are 20% off; all items in our Arbutus store are 50% off THIS WEEKEND ONLY!

 
NikCo will be on hand with Quirkees and handmade cards.
Also, I've done a thorough studio purge and have a lot of good materials -paper, beads, charms, embellishments- to sell at yard sale prices.

not still in the forest

Soooooo, when your dad calls you because you haven't updated your blog in 7 days and he isn't sure if you ever came back from your trip or are mayhaps laying dead in a ditch, it means you have been off-line for too long, right?