Funny Pic of the Day

What Flavor of Ice Cream are you??

You Are Coffee Ice Cream

Energetic and lively, you are always on the go. You're doing a million things at once and doing them well. You tend to motivate others and raise spirits. You are most compatible with chocolate ice cream.

What Flavor Ice Cream Are You?

I don't know how true this is??? LOL But i love taking quizzes! Go see what flavor you are! Follow the link and have fun! There is also "Your Wrestler Name" , "Who's your 80's hunk?", "Are you a genius at heart?" haha... and many more! Have fun! :D

Dog House Rug

Been hooking a little bit. First time since back from both of my camps! Just been a crazily busy summer this year - and kids are back in school on Aug 7th!!! So now doing the school shopping thing for all 4 of them! (yes Calli starts kindigarten this year!!! Holy cow!)

Felt really good to just sit and hook last night!!! :-) Slow but sure. I am still not sure what to do with that cat on the roof? Color wise?!? Any ideas?

My Bountiful Harvest

Well i got to reap my first harvest of the season, from my garden!! :-)
hahaha...check it out!!!

LOLOLOL!! Well the green bean was the only normal sized veggie this first time around! I was laughing my butt off when I put these on the counter! Tooooo funny after all my hard work in the garden! LOL Little itty bitty veggies. Maybe the fairies would look at this as a bountiful harvest? :D

The zucchini and squash are well on their way... and the other maters are much larger but still green... and well... i'm sad to say the radishes just aren't going to happen this season. :-( I have little buggies that ate them all up! And now those buggies are working on my cabbage - and boy do they eat FAST!! I had never seen nor heard of these... they are called "flea beetles" - and their name suits them well! That's exactly what they look like! Anyway, i went and got some bug spray and sprayed everything down yesterday. Hopefully that will keep the little munchers at bay, so we can have some veggies this year! LOL!

I will make sure to post a few pictures of my normal size harvests! :D

Blessings,

Bren :0)

Green Eggs and Ham

Well... my 5 year old loves the Dr. Seuss books.. of course! And miss drama queen is in a stage of "i don't like that". LOL

Welllll..... i did this for both the boys when they were at this stage.. and boy did it make all the difference in the world! They just thought this was sooo cool! Was hoping it would help Calli get past the "i don't likes" ... we'll see! :-)

(hahahaha!! Look at HOW GREEN that ham turned out!! Holy cow!)

:D

All Alone!

Well wow! I am alllll alone - I can't believe it!! This NEVER happens - and boy am I enjoying it!! LOL!! We have had sooo much going on the last few weeks, and have been going at a dead run it seems! We had company the week of the 4th, and had an awesome time visiting with our friends! They moved to New Mexico a year ago, and we have missed them soo much! My son Bailey, and their son are best friends - poor guys have just been lost without each other! Well... they left their daughter here with her best friend, for a week, and then meeting her dad at the half way mark bringing her back. So, i get a call on friday night, saying "I know this is last minute... but can Bailey come visit for two weeks? He can ride down with our daughter - and we can just meet up at the halfway mark in two weeks!" So we were scrambling, trying to figure out if it would work, whether or not he wanted to, and cancelling some other plans to make it happen!! Got him all packed and we dropped him off on Sat morning for his road trip! :-) Oh my gosh i'm gonna miss him!!!!!!! But i know he will have so much fun! Our daughter Emily is in California for 3 weeks (due back in a week! yay!). My oldest son is at his dad's for a week. And that leaves us with Calli! Wow - how often does that happen? Going from 4 kids to 1 ??!! haha NEVER!! So of course hubby and I saw this as an opportunity for calli to have some quality time with her gramas this week!! :D hee hee So she went to grama's and spent the afternoon and night with her. Dan and I hung out in our jammies and actually R E L A X E D !! I actually pulled out my hooking and got a little done! We were able to have several conversations without being interupted every two seconds, and then we went to dinner and a movie!! Holy cow!! It was AWESOME!!!!! LOL!! I had forgotten how nice it is to be able to date my husband!! :-) I got to wake up today with the house totally quiet... drink my coffee in silence (aaaahhhhh!!), water my garden, read some blogs - what a wonderful gift! But i need to scoot. I have a doctor's apt in 30 minutes! Ack! Where'd the time go?!? And then time to pick up calli. Perhaps she would like to go visit nana tomorrw? :D Hey, a girl's gotta take advantage of these types of rare opportunities! Just think of all i could actually get done this week if calli is occupied too!?! woohoo!! Doin the happy dance! :-) OK... now i must boogie! Hope you have a blessed day and enjoy your monday! ~Bren :0)

Bay swimming

My son, Bailey, is 10 years old. Such a goof - sooo 10 year old BOY! LOL
He did fantastic in swimming today, but i didn't have my camera with me!! These are from yesterday, jumping off the diving board, and trying to learn his rotary breathing. He finally GOT IT today!!! woohoo!!! I'm so proud of him!! (he's really been struggling with putting it all together - and finally it dawns on me... duh!! He's a lefty!! So i suggested he breath on the other side - and voila!! That turned out to be the key!! woohooo!!! Us lefties can be so weird that way in so many little things! It's natural for us to use our left side, and when forced to do things on the right, it just confused the heck outa our brains! LOL! Poor kid! Here his mama is a leftie (more ambi tho) and it took me a week to figure this one out! LOLOL!!

Swimming Kids

Kids and their swimming lessons!! Calli is doing sooooo good!!! She's putting her face all the way under the water and holding her breath!! She made a friend right away, who shared her goggles with her on the first day... and the courage that came from wearing those goggles, was mind blowing!! So... yep... we went that day and got some of her very own! :)




Calli-bell, the smilin fish :)

quick friends!!

that's calli's head to the left of the teacher! Holding her breath for a realllyyyy long time!!

Ready? Set?

GO!!!! (down under next to her friend)

Doing the "ice cream scoop" w/ the teacher.

Backfloat....

BRRRRR!!! waiting their turn to jump in!

Jump!!

The ham at work....

Newest Rug

This is the new design I am working on, and brought to camp with Cynthia Norwood. It's called "Faith" .I had decided to use two lighter colors... like an antique kahki (similar to a tea dye) for the middle, and a light chocolate milk color for the border. Basically a medium value and light value. The border being done in mediums and dark values.
Well... i don't know what was up with the water the day i was dying?!?!? But after dying 4 yards of the same color, and similar colors trying to acheive my normal chocolate milk color (mocha latte) they all came out more of a taupe with pink undertones! soooo that is what i ended up using! It did kind of change the whole look of the rug... that pink undertone versus a brown undertone changes a LOT!! So, i'm kind of struggling with the "pinkishness" of it all! LOL!
I kept catching heck from my fellow campers, when i would say "but it's so... pink!" - they would all say "It's NOT PINK"!!! hahaha! (ok different meanings of pink! They were right, and so was i. LOL It was pretty funny!) Anyway, even thought it's not colors i normally work with, i think it will turn out ok. I am trying to stretch beyond my love affair of antique kahki and antique blacks!!

The wording looks a little bit funny, because i have not cut my tails yet. As I get the top two lines hooked (in an 8) i will then pull them all out and rehook them in an 8.5, so they will be sharp and crisp! (A wonderful little trick that works wonders, for those of you that like to hook letters!!! AND for those of you that don't like to hook them because they seem to dissapear!! Give it a try sometime, you will be amazed at how awesome they end up looking!)

You can see the little areas that we hooked in some paisley, and in person it really is a wonderful touch! Something I have never done before, and I am really enjoying! :D

Cynthia was a wonderful teacher!! She TAUGHT!!! She taught alot of the "why's" for color planning, as well as they "why nots"!! The way she combined color was sooo surprising to me - as they are things i never would have chosen together in a million years!!! LOL!! And they were fantastic!! We got to watch and learn as she planned other's rugs... i learned a ton! I wish now that i would have taken pictures of everyone elses in progress rugs, so i could have shown you! But.. sadly i ran out of room on my camera during the rug show. But.. hee hee... i have a gob of pictures of great prim rugs!!

I am going to email the gals, and ask them if it's all right for me to post a photo of their rugs here. If and when I get permission i will post them for you to drool over also! :D There were such talented ladies at this camp!!! And it's always such a joy to me to be able to see other's rugs - and in person is even better!! So crossing my fingers they will let me share them here!

For now i have to get back to work! Taking the month of June off (and it FLEW by) i have orders backed up that i must get done now!!!

More soon..

hugs,

Bren :0)

PS you can click on the photos to enlarge them!!

I'm back!

Well, i am back from my rug camp. :0) In some ways very happy to be home... and in others so sad I had to leave! Everytime i go to Steamboat Springs, I strongly want to move there!! I just don't want to leave!! It is a quiet, remote mountain town, down in a valley... actually a ski resort town. But there is just something about it there... a friend summed it up in one word... SERENITY.
Yup, that's exactly what it is!
I am a country girl at heart... having grown up with wide open spaces, lakes and oceans, I have a very hard time living in "the city" . And after coming back from the mountains, even the suburbs feel closed in and unnatural! I think i leave a little piece of my heart there each year that i go!
Aaahh... well... snot much more to say about that!
The camp was terrific!! I will go into more in the next post. But here are a couple of pictures..
This is a picture of the room where we were hooking... well part of the room. Next to me is the pool table that they covered to use as a "work space & teaching space" - worked perfectly!! To the right is another large section of the room, this was only one corner of the great room! Everyone hookin away!! See what i mean about serenity?
One morning i woke up to see a hot air balloon less than a mile away... behind it you can see the ski slopes. Below are just various shots of the view from the house that the camp took place at, and I was fortunate enough to stay for those three days! These were taken from right in front of the house!

Is it any wonder why i leave my heart there every year?????

I guess it's time to get my head back into reality, and my butt back in gear!! Back to mommy duty, and work mode!

Sigh... until next year steamboat! :0)