Getting Ready to Leave!

Only two more days 'til we are in Florida! Wow, I can hardly believe that the time is actually here. We've been really busy this week getting ready, and getting things to take to assorted family members. Here are just some pictures of things that we've been doing, but I'll post pictures of the finished products later.



We're making a blanket for Leilani, which is all cotton flannel and will be long strips made into a ragtime quilt. We're also making a bunch of Rum Balls (or Bourbon, Kahlua, Chambord, Brandy and more!) to take down. We've got little tins and Elizabeth is going to wrap each ball in foil and put them in candy cups to make it look like a box of chocolates. Pictures to come!

Happy Birthday, Samwise!

. . . "For he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow, for he's a jolly good fellow, that nobody can deny!"

Another year has come and gone, and Samwise, Frodo and Aramintie are another year older. They all turned four today! Wow . . . and to think that they're the babies around here. Seems like just yesterday that they were born in the dining room.

I tried to get a birthday picture of Sammy, but he just wasn't very interested. This is the most awake one that I got! He's a very sleepy fellow, in fact, he sleeps about twenty hours a day and is sleepy for the other four. Just kidding . . . sort of.

Counting down to Florida . . .

Only a week and a half from now and we'll all be in Miami! We're leaving next Saturday and returning on the following Wednesday, and we'll be staying with Dad's parents. The coolest part of it all though? Leilani is going to baptized that Sunday while we're there! Wow. How cool is that?! We're already trying to get things ready that we want to take down with us, and it looks like we're going to need several suitcases.

This past Saturday we went to another Fiber Show. This one was down in the Southern half of the state, in a place called "Yellow Springs". We still managed to come home with a big bag of wool! It seems that good old woolly sheep are "out" and llamas and alpacas are "in". Silly me, I still prefer to felt wool, so it's a bit harder to find stuff sometimes. I'll take some pictures of the colors that we bought. Mom and Elizabeth want me to felt some dolls that they can try to market and sell, so they've decided it should be an international collection. Christmas is approaching though, so I think that I'll probably have to start working on some secrets . . .

Goodbye, Little Joe.

This past weekend was pretty sad around here. We had to put one of our little kitties, Little Joe, to sleep. He had been failing for a while, but was still a very happy little bloke. Then, two weeks ago, on the advice of a vet, we had all of his teeth pulled. This would, supposedly, make him into his old self. Well, the surgery turned out to be a bad job, and poor Little Joe was left about sixteen dry sockets, and half of his jawbone exposed. There was nothing to be done for him, so Dad took him in to a vet on Saturday to go to sleep. He's joined the other kitties in the cemetery behind the shed. He and Aline were special pals, so now they're together. We are sad, but it was the best thing for Little Joe. Poor little fellow.

We would have had Little Joe for five years come December 22. He and Beatrice came to our house after we adopted them from the local shelter on the same day as one of our other little kitties, Deanna, went to sleep.

Introducing Mrs. Hood

Well, I have finally gotten around to posting pictures of another needle-felted wool gnome. She's actually been finished for about a month and a half, so I guess I'm just running behind. She is wife to Mr. Hood and mother to Pip (see their picture in a previous entry). There will also be a crawling toddler with her, but he's not been made yet! We actually ran into a friend of ours who had just had a baby, and that inspired me to make Mrs. Hood pregnant. :)

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I finished another needle-felted doll last night (he's not a gnome, really). This time it is a Hawaiian Surfer. He only took twenty hours, which makes him the fastest one yet! Elizabeth is painting his surfboard now, so we'll have pictures of him later. The Tomato Show starts on Wednesday, so he's going to be entered. We're saving the gnome diorama for next year, as there are still a couple to make.