Grandpaparazzi does it again!

http://www.photoshow.com/watch/zE5Ga5Kv?source=em_ps_show_recipient

My dh loves to take pictures and make photoshows from them. Last week our daughter had about 12 inches cut off to donate to Locks of Love, which is an  organization that cuts hair to make wigs for children with cancer.

Jen was quite touched recently, by the story of a young family from the Houston area. Their daughter was just a bit younger than Livvie at the time, that their daughter died with a quickly growing type of brain cancer. Although she didn't remember it, this was actually her second encounter with this disease. Before we moved to TX, a neighbor's son passed away with the same type of cancer. He was a great kid, and it was truly tragic. From diagnosis, surgery, and treatment to his death was less than a year. 

Anyway, we have an assemblage at the above link of numerous family members, but the majority of them are our daughter at various ages, and her daughter. Steve selected the tune "Hair" and although a big part of it is always knowing the people, he did a great job compiling many different hair "do" and possibly a few "dont's" :)

Respectfully hoping.....

My husband's pick for the Superbowl. My pick will be watching the commercials, and having unlimited access to the computer! But as he said, both teams represent blue collar towns where Made in America means made with pride and a product you can trust!  Go Packers!

Another Great Color Tool and Way to Play!!!

http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr/     is a tool that was shared on the Welcome Mat, and online rughooking group.

Basic directions, go in and slowly select up to 10 colors from the grid to the right. Common photos from Flicker that include the selected colors will swap out. WAY COOL!

A Finish, and a WIP (another rug for Livvie when she's grown)

The quilt above is for a friend, made from tshirts. The shirts were a man's so finding flannel that went with them was a bit of a challenge. This backing really did well, blending with the quilting.

I found this rug backing at our quilt guild garage sale a little more than a year ago for $25. (Figured the linen was worth than that, and called to its owner to sell it to me sight unseen.) What a delight, when I opened up the linen to discover a pattern called Victoria's Rug by J. Soehnge! The dimensions of the rug are 28" x 52" and it is clearly meant to be a rug for the floor. Christy Mason did the hand dyed wools for this rug, are they gorgeous?!  Livvie is almost 3 and this rug is clearly not for a child's room, so it is fun to work on without a deadline. I got the wool already cut into strips, so on evenings when I'm tired, it is a perfect rug to work on! This is the only rug I've ever actually color planned and stuck to the plan. My dear friend, Lurie McAdow, helped me choose the colors for it. We made some good choices!

Want to Know how Popular your name is/was?

http://www.birthdayalarm.com/name    will send you to a web page that will tell you and show you graphically when your given name was most and least popular. Kinda interesting to me, and thought you might enjoy seeing it too. We're freezing cold but no snow!

Another One Bites the Dust!

Today I had an amazing realization! We have just finished the first decade of the twenty-first century. How in all of the reminiscing about a passing year did it escape my attention that we've just burned the first ten of this new millennium? Remember when we were wondering about the Y2K bug? Well maybe you weren't but my dh and I stocked the pantry just in case. We have a pool, so I wasn't real worried about water. Can boil it, on the gas grill till we ran out of fuel... Then like so many other straw men, the problem didn't turn out to be the downfall of society at all.

10 Years! That was the year that I got my hip replacement and moved from a world of pain to a world of  no yoga, but no pain either. The joy of getting into a swimming pool after enough weeks of recuperation that the incision could get underwater...the wonderful sensation of being able to do a frog kick with what had been a frozen joint.

Dr. Glen Landon transformed my hip joint as one of the miracles he performed that day.  He wouldn't think of it as a miracle, or the chance to work magic. He is talented and shares that talent not by building skyscrapers, but by rebuilding people's lives. My prosthesis even has some bling. ;) While pounding the titanium spike into my femur the bone developed a tiny crack, but he knew that could lead to problems later. A twist of wire to secure the bone, and voila!

He is a modest man, at least if you try to give him praise. But he will be forever my hero.

I still limp, but now it is my other hip, this old body keeps on moving, and still haven't lost the weight I vowed to myself would come off. It did, then came back, lost the same 10 lbs lots of times. Karma really does operate in life. If you eat too many or too much of the wrong foods, your body protests! Why is it, that good habits are tough to form, but easy to set aside? Hard won muscle tissue turns to flab without the daily use of them. Oh well, gonna keep on keeping on. Maybe I'll be around when we put the next decade to bed...

Back to Work or Off to School

The first Monday after New Year's Eve is traditionally the time I'd head back to school. Like teachers all over the country, two weeks of much needed rest brought a new burst of enthusiasm.

No longer a teacher, but this first Monday will be a day of work for me and most folks anyway. Whether you work with your hands, make your home a sanctuary from the world, drive a cab, work all day between the phone and computer, or wait on folks at a diner, I wish you a Happy New Year! Remember to appreciate all those who help you through their work this year. When it comes right down to it, they improve our life (mostly or most of the time) while working to provide for their families.