kdlb-pad

Vox Hunt: Fortunate

Show us a fortune from a fortune cookie.
Submitted by AdamB.

Sparkle

This is one I scanned in, played with a cool background, and posted about in my blog back in 2001. :)  I love it, that's my favorite fortune ever!

thanksgiving weekend recap

My long weekend was great.  :)

I ended up eating turkey every day last week - a Safeway sandwich on Monday, homemade mashed potatoes and open faced turkey sandwich on Tuesday, leftover turkey sandwich on Wednesday, and then of course plenty of Turkey for thanksgiving and leftover thanksgiving on friday :D  It wasn't intentional, but it made me giggle when I realized it!

Thanksgiving was nice, we had a good day hanging out with the family.  We watched the kids play with Andrew's fancy xbox that has games from a variety of other systems on it.  We did a big puzzle of the Columbia River gorge (Crown Point).  We ate a lot of food, and then a lot of pie.  Oh, and played with baby Leonard and Leah. :)

Friday, we rested and played and then went back to my parents for leftovers, and most of the family showed up at one point or another.  While Leah napped, we stayed and watched a movie with Sarah.

Saturday, we did nothing really.  Just hung out and played and all that, and I worked on looking for gift ideas online.

But Sunday morning, we got up and decided we should go out for breakfast, and there were a few things we could go look at for gifts while we were out.  It was amazing, the mall wasn't even that bad before 11:30ish.  It poured down rain on our way out of the mall, but we went to the holiday version of the farmers market anyhow, and thought the tent was going to blow over. :D  But it stopped raining by the time we came out of the next store, which was nice :)

It was just overall a great weekend, a lot of good kristine+eric time, and nice progress on gift lists, to boot!

QotD: Google Me

Have you ever Googled your own name? How did you feel about the results?
Submitted by elen.

Yes, I have.  I admit it. :)  Back in the day, I wasn't in the tops for "kristine" because there was a model who died and her name was the same as mine, and that was the top result (I can't find anything about that on a casual look now, but I swear I remember it! [1]).  Now I'm #1 for "kristine" with kadyellebee.com, and for "kristine beeson" and "kristine locatis" every top result is me, or at least about me.

I do know that my siblings are a little embarrassed by searching for their names and finding them on my site (they are all listed on my wedding page, at the very least.  But I'm not really embarrassed about my results personally... :)  And it was fun to look again, I hadn't ego-surfed for a while!

[1] Ahh, i found what I was thinking of - krissy.com is Krissy Taylor, and that was back when I was going by Krissy that I was hoping to get that domain :)

Socks

I'm wearing new fuzzy stripey socks today. That makes me happy!

Socks

QotD: Holiday Shopping

When do you start your holiday shopping?
Submitted by Murphy.

I am usually looking for presents all year round.  With a big family, that's very important.  That backfired on me this year with a change in how we are giving gifts, and now I have a few that will have to wait for many months for another event to give the ones I'd already purchased out.

So I actually don't have any of my gifts yet, unfortunately.  I've got a few ideas, and I'll be browsing the online sites for real concrete ideas today and the rest of the weekend.  I will *not* be out braving the crowds today, no way, no how!  It was bad enough last weekend in the mall, the sales people literally jump at you trying to get you to buy stuff.  So if I do go to the store for the next few months, it will be with a specific purpose in mind and finding the most direct route to that object as possible!

I usually do shop online anyhow, so that makes the holiday crowds a little less of a worry :)  Amazon is one of my favorite places to look!

QotD: Thanksgiving

What are you thankful for?

I got a headstart on this yesterday for the Team Vox post.  :)  You can see my answer there!

I have so much to be thankful for beyond that too.  Today, I'll spend a good part of the day with my huge family, and that brings me a lot of joy.  We've had a few additions to the family since last year - Jon was with us last year, but this year he's officially in the family after his and Lisa's wedding in September.  Andrew is joining us this year, and him and Megan's wedding is in February. This is Baby Leonard's first thanksgiving (he is a month and a few days old now!).  Jon's mom is going to join us this year as well, since Jon and Lisa are her only family in the area.

I think we have enough chairs at my parents house for dinner, but it'll be tight.  That's alright, as long as the table doesn't collapse under the huge amounts of food everyone is bringing, we'll be fine. :D 

I usually make Green Bean Casserole and then the last few years, I've made Corn Casserole because it's a traditional thing for E's family.  I'm also making Coconut Cream Pie (I use the betty crocker recipe because it's really good), just one smaller one, because I enjoy that alongside the pumpkin pie (although our family's pumpkin pie recipe is to die for, and we probably don't need anything but that!).  The Pie is done and I'll make the whipped cream for it still this morning, along with the two casseroles because they might as well be warm when we go.  Oh, the trick to that?  Get a big cardboard box and line it with towels for transporting the dishes.  They'll stay really nice and warm if you keep them in the box for a long time, and not need to be reheated before eating in the already crazy kitchen.

Before we go, I'll probably do some resting and relaxing and knitting.  Those are all good things to be thankful for!

Happy thanksgiving, my friends!

thinking of things to wish for

I was sitting here last night, trying to add to my wishlist so that my mom and whoever got me in the Christmas drawing and my in-laws have ideas of things to get me.  And I was having a really hard time!

I guess I've had a pretty good year, where if there's something I *really* wanted, I got it.  Or in some cases like the last video games we bought, I waited and waited until they were a better deal and then got them (Rachet: Deadlocked and Sly 3, which we did buy 2, get 1 free at circuit city to get Shadow of the Colossus for E at the same time).

And then between the library and Netflix, I've been seeing a lot of books and movies that I wouldn't have normally been able to, and may have just put some of them on my wishlist before.  And iTunes, to buy just the tracks of an album I want has made my wishlist shorter because I used to want an album just because it was by a certain person and now I'm a little more choosy.  I'm still so new in the crafts I'm doing that I don't know what books I want to OWN yet to help me out.

Of course, I have found some cool things to add to my list.  The Craft magazine was at barnes and noble the other night, and that looked really cool.  Rina's been talking about Lush bath bombs and so I added one of those. (no, i didn't want to freak out my MIL by putting the Sex Bomb, so I went with one with a cherrier name :P)  I've added a few random things that other people on Vox talked about over the last few months.

I guess I just feel bad because usually I have a lot more ideas for people :)  This year, there are less people to need ideas for, so I'm sure it won't even be a big deal to anybody that my list doesn't include very new things :D 

QotD: Heartbreaker

What's your favorite heartbreak song?
Submitted by esta86.

I don't have many "heartbreak" songs that I listen to because luckily it's been a long time since I have truely been heartbroken, but I do like songs that sound heart-breaky because I have a thing for minor keys, like Are you happy now? by Michelle Branch!  When I'm angry or upset, I tend to listen to really loud music, stuff like Nine Inch Nails.  Really Loud is the keyword though. :)

finished scarf

I finished up my scarf over the weekend and even went and got more yarn!

As I was getting further into doing it (see also Adventures in Knitting), I was less excited about how it feels.  With my scarf I bought at the end of the winter last year from Lane Bryant, I was happy playing with it and touching it.  This one just wasn't very soft yarn, and so even though it looks really pretty, it will not be my favorite ever.  That being said, this was really easy yarn to work with, and I could see every stitch nicely, so that make it perfect for my first attempt. (Red Heart Super Saver in 0315 Artist Print)

Here are some "in process" shots:

The scarf ended up being 99" long without the fringe on the bottom.  I wanted to be sure I had enough for fringe, and so that's why I stopped where I did.  I love the color, that turned out so nice with the varigated colors.

I probably could have done more fringe.

And there's one row that I messed up a little, just half of the row, and I didn't notice it until 2 rows later.  I'm calling that my "dancing with the stars" row because It's all Mario's fault that I was watching him instead of keeping track of my knit/purl combo :D  It's not super noticable though, so it's okay.

I'm pretty proud of myself for finishing my first project.  Not bad for only knitting for only a couple of weeks.

yarn bowl

My next project is going to be a softer scarf.  I know, that's repetitive, but I think it's going to make me happier to have a scarf I'm really super happy with showing off.  Basically, I went to the store and touched every yarn with the intention of finding one that was nicer to the touch :D  E helped, he loves my newfound craftyness and having to go to JoAnn Fabrics so often ;)  I'm testing out a few different stitch combos to see if I can do something more creative this time around.  (i've tried probably 4 or 5 diff things in the last few days and haven't picked yet.) I bought two different yarns, one that I'm going to use for a scarf and I'm not sure what I'll do with the other yet.  The first is Lion Brand Homespun in Barrington (this is the one I'm using first - a nice purpley color, a bit deeper than the first scarf).  The second is Bernat Soft Boucle in Forest Shades.  Both are SUPER soft.  They won't be *as* easy to knit because it looks like it will be harder to see each stitch with the interesting texture of the yarn. 

You might also get a kick out of my "yarn bowl" picture - we had this larger tupperware bowl upstairs with leftover halloween candy, and my yarn kept falling in it.  So now it's the official yarn bowl. :D 

Rainy car

The debut outing of my first scarf! It's raining today but we left the house anyhow.

Rainy car