A little relief....

Jason's preliminary diagnosis is good. There is a small tumor between his L1 and L2 vertebrae, but the type that they belive it to be is rarely ever malignant. HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF!!

My house? Well, it's a mess. (What's new?) Should I be cleaning right now? Yep. Am I going to? No! I am emotionally exhausted after this week and just can't face the housework. I'll clean on Saturday. I am planning on decorating for Christmas that day anyway. We are also going out for dinner with Jason's family to celebrate his 31st birthday (which is actually Monday). We have a lot to celebrate this year.

My next craft project will be something that my friend Amanda put a bug in my head about. She told me that her sister often buys fabric on clearance after Christmas and uses it to make gift bags for Christmas. Just nice little drawstring bags that can be reused year after year. What a great, and simple idea! I bought a bunch of fabric last year after Christmas and I fully intended to finish these bags in January and put them away with the Christmas stuff. Well, as usual, I got sidetracked by something, I don't even remember what at this point, and never even started them. These will be great for my husband. He hates wrapping gifts and usually kind of makes a mess of whatever he wraps. In fact, he never even used to wrap any of my gifts. He just made me close my eyes as he brought them out of their hiding places, sometimes in a plastic bag! LOL These bags will be perfect for him to use this year! We will see if I have time this weekend. Otherwise I have Monday and Tuesday off from work. (Had to use those last two vacation days!) I am cashing in a gift certificate for a massage and pedicure on Tuesday. I definately need it! I might find some time those days to do a little crafting.

I really should clean my house...

But I don't want to. With everything that has been going on lately, I just don't feel like it. J's MRI results were different than we expected. He had to have another one today. They now think that he has a benign tumor at the base of his spine. Hopefully it is benign, anyway. They told us that most of the time they are, but you never know. It puts a lot of things into perspective, that's for sure. Hopefully he will get the results at his appontment tomorrow morning. Right now, I just want the time to pass until I can know whether or not he is ok. I don't know what the next step is, whether they will want to do a biopsy, or what. I am praying with all my heart that he is ok, but I won't rest easy until I know.

In just a little less than an hour....

In just a little less than an hour, my dear hubby will be having an MRI done on his back. He has had pain in his lower back, and his leg for weeks and has barely had more than 2-3 hours of sleep a night for the past couple of weeks. The chiro thinks he has a bulging disc which is pressing on a nerve. The test will let us know for sure if that is what it is. I will be going with him to the test. It will take about 30-45 minutes for the scan. My husband is a man of large stature and so when he is in the enclosure, his face will be only a fraction of an inch from the side. He is more than just a little freaked out by that. Hopefully he will do ok and not have a panic attack. I know that I would be very claustrophobic if it were me. Me, I think I'll take my crochet project along to work on as I wait.

Finished Christmas Dress....

Got the Christmas dress finished!






I listed it at ARF (Angelic Reborns Forums). If I don't sell it by Monday, I'll list it on ebay.

Remembering why...

Sometimes I lose site of the reason that I am trying to sell things that I have made. I have made a commitment that the profits from everything I sell from now until whenever our eventual adoption from China is final will go to help pay for the adoption. I know that by no means will it make a large amount of money, but I figure that every little bit helps. Our plans are to start paperwork in 12 to 18 months, and it could be another two years after that before we have our daughter. It all seems so far away right now that it doesn't seem real at times. Sometimes I need to get back in touch with the goal that we have set before us. I ran across this video one day a week or two ago and wanted to share it here. I don't know the people at all, I just ran across it at youtube.com and was touched by it. Adoption Video

I'll take some pictures of my finished projects in a little bit and get them posted, I hope.

Had a little time yesterday...

I had a little time yesterday morning to do just a little more sewing. My hubby has been having some back trouble, and neither of us have been sleeping well, so I was awake at 4:30 yesterday morning. :P So, in the quiet of the morning, I got the bloomers for the dress cut out and sewn up. I rinsed the markings out of the dress and hung it up to dry. I'll take it to work with me and sew the ribbons and bells on it while I am there today (shh... don't tell!) and hopefully get some pictures tomorrow of it. I work for a bank and we moved into a new location not too long ago and it has been really slow out there so far. We are not really close to any of the shopping that will be happening today, so I don't forsee a busy day by any stretch of the imagination. In fact we will probably be deader than dead.

I also decided to shuffle things around a bit. I have a smocked bonnet that was nearly finished that was way down the list that i decided to finish and give to Melissa at work who just had a baby along with the minkee blanket. All of about an hour or so and it will be finished. The blanket won't take long either, I just have to get the flannel for it washed first. Maybe tonight I will do that.

I am still planning on doing the buntings for China, but I really don't want to pay the $$ to get my serger fixed until after Christmas. I don't know of anyone traveling that soon, anyway. So I may shuffle things around so that I can keep working on projects until I can get the serger fixed.

No time for crafting....

Today or tomorrow, it looks as if I will have no time for crafting. I decided that I needed to do at least a little bit of housecleaning today, and tomorrow, well, I have to bake a pie. Pecan. That will pretty much take care of the evening after dinner is overwith since I have to work until 5:30. I'm bummed as I wanted to have the dress and bloomers finished. I have a crochet project that I think I will take with me to my mother in law's to work on Thanksgiving day. She is making a scarf for this project, so she wants me to show her how to finish the end off.

I hope that everyone has a great Thanksgiving and that everyone feels truly blessed this year!

Almost done..

Well, all of the sewing is done on the dress, I have a few ribbons to sew to it yet and the bloomers to do, but bloomers won't take long at all. I have made 3 pair of those in an hour before. Project #3 will be a quick little minkee blanket for a girl at work who just had a new baby daughter. My darn serger is on the blink and I will need to get that fixed before I start on project # 5.(Project #4 is to get my serger fixed, a project in and of itself) For project #5 I am going to make a couple of polar fleece buntings to hopefully send to China with someone who is going there to adopt their baby. Many of the orphanages there have very little or no heat and in an effort to keep the babies warm, the ladies caring for them bundle them up in layer upon layer of clothing and blankets. While this can help keep them warm, it restricts their ability to move. This can cause them to have poor muscle tone in a lot of cases. While this picture is initially cute, imagine a child living like this and it suddenly isn't cute anymore. This picture is from a book called "Mei Mei: Little Sister, Portraits from a Chinese Orphanage"
I hope that my small donation will make a difference for some child, somewhere, maybe even the one that will someday be my own.

Only slightly less naughty...

Aeris was only slightly less naughty yesterday as I continued to try to finish the dolly dress I am making. I discovered that all of her toy mice were missing, so we had to go on a mouse hunt, so she played with them for a little while after I found a few for her. They wind up under the furniture where she can't get them. Hopefully this little dress will be done in a couple of days. I think I will list it for sale at Angelic Reborns before I try ebay. Sometimes things sell quicker that way and maybe I can avoid ebay fees, too.

What am I, nuts?!

So, I just bought 3.5 yards of fabric on ebay. I must be crazy, lol. It was cheap though, so it was hard to pass up. Less than 10 bucks including shipping, that is way less than you could buy it for at any fabric store. It will go in my stash for now.
Now back to my dress that Aeris didn' want me to sew! LOL

About that cat...

I spent the day trying to sew today. I say "trying" because that was all it really amounted to. I got a little bit accomplished, but my nutcase cat was making a nutcase out of me! Let me introduce you to Aeris. She is our part Siamese, 19 month old. While I was sewing, or as I said, trying to sew, she decided it would be fun to sit on the ironing board (twice), lay on the dress that I was trying to sew (twice), sit behind my machine and attack the thread while I was sewing (constantly), attack the cord for the iron, jump into the drawer of my organizer, swipe a bag of jingle bells off of the shelf and steal my length of elastic (again, twice). All in about an hour and a half. I finally gave up for now. Is there any wonder I am so far behind on my projects? I love the little bugger to death, but some days she makes me crazy!

A Year of projects...

So I sat down yesterday and made a list of projects that I either have started and not finished, have bought the materials for and never started, or seriously want to do. How many were there? 33. That is just what I could think of off the top of my head. Some of them won't take much to finish, but some will be big projects. I figure if I can get one done an average of every two weeks, I'll have things caught up by early 2008. That is kind of depressing as I am always seeing new things that I want to try! I need to stay out of the craft and fabric stores! LOL. I was lamenting to my husband just the other evening on my lack of time to devote to my projects. I guess I'd better get busy!

Project #1 Yellow embroidered baby hat. Finished 11/17/06
I'll post pictures later as I intend for this to go with a baby dress that I will be making down the line, hopefully in the spring.

Project #2 Christmas baby doll dress, started two years ago, intended for ebay, but never finished. Hopefully finished this weekend. Gotta go dig out the pieces.

Well, here I am...

I'm gonna give this a try. I have so many craft projects that I need to finish that I don't know where to even start, and sometimes I don't feel like working on any of them at all. I hope that by reading other people's craft blogs, I can find the inspiration to finish what I have started, and to find new things to try. I hope to meet some new people here and maybe we can learn from each other.
What types of crafts do I do? Well, a lot of stuff. I'll give anything a try at least once. Mostly I sew, crochet and make dolls. I have just recently begun to experiment with web graphics. (I SOOO need to figure out the html to change this boring template!)
I look forward to reading blogs and getting to know people!