I have been too busy this summer to do any sewing. The sewing machine has been neglected, but it is summer vacation and my oldest will be starting school in two weeks.

A friend is getting married in three week, so I have been helping here with getting stuff together. I will need to use the sewing machine for the placemats and napkins she wants for the rehearsal dinner.

My summer has consisted of swimming and camping up the river with friends, swimming lessons at the pool for my boys, and lots of canning. Peaches and applesauce to be exact. I need to make more vanilla extract next. My garden didn't do so well this year, and I don't know why. Oh well, maybe next year.

Hopefully I will be around here more often after school starts.

Still here...

I have been super busy with the PTO at the elementary school, so I haven't got much sewing in. What sewing I have done, well, that is for me. I am doing the "block of the month", which just started in February. School gets out on June 9, so I will hopefully be back to to sewing sometime after that.

I have so many things that I have gotten behind on. Housework, yardwork (oh, what a mess!), sewing. You name it, I am most likely behind. Oh! Especially my veggie garden in the backyard! I haven't even planted anything yet! I had the whole thing planted the last weekend of APRIL last year. Um, yeah. June is less than 72 hours away. Told ya I was busy!

I did sell the last set of dryer balls I had listed, so I need to get more made and listed. I had originally started all of them back in July 2008, but never finished them until October/November 2009. I don't know why, but I guess I was just busy with something else.

A few more weeks and I will be around a little more often.

I should have knocked on wood!

I woke up Thursday morning feeling tired, but good. I was tired because I had about 3.5 hours of sleep. I just couldn't sleep. Don't know why, but I couldn't.

So I take my oldest to school, but realized once I got him in his classroom, that we had forgotten his Chapstick at home, but I had another in the car. So I ran back up to the car, in the rain. The ground is soggier than a piece of bread left in the bowl for french toast. We have had so much rain in the last week, it is UNBELIEVABLE!

But I slid.

I slid far down a little hill.

And then my left knee hit the ground.

I am still sliding away here.

Then my right leg does this weird little twist thing, and I am still sliding.

And then I stop...about two feet from a huge puddle.

Nevermind that I just slid about three feet - while still on my feet, and then about five feet on my knees.

I was embarrassed. Very, very, very embarrassed. I had just said to my son two minutes before that we needed to walk very carefully because the ground is soggy and slippery.

I get up and pick chunks of mud and grass off my knees and between my toes.

Yes, my toes. Because see, here in Oregon, if you are an Oregon born-and-bred girl, you don't use an umbrella (unless you are escorting your child somewhere - but it has to be pouring down rain), and if you are into Birkenstocks, chances are you don't wear socks. I own a whopping four pairs of socks at the moment, and three pairs of trouser socks for my Dansko clogs.

A dad had missed the show, but three women had seen it all. One of them is the mother of a boy in my son's class, and she happens to have been a year behind me in school when we were kids. The entire time I am sliding, I can hear one of the women, Jacquie, yelling my way, "Melanie! Are you okay?" Yup. All okay, just very embarrassed!

I give my son his chapstick, drive back home, and go back to sleep for a few hours. I was dead tired. When I finally woke up, I had a sore throat. Seriously, what is up with that? Didn't I just wrote about STILL having a little bit of a cough left from my cold I got a few days before Christmas? Yes, I did.

Anyway. I went about my day, and then the soreness kicked in.

And then the soreness was even worse this morning. And it is still kicking my butt. My legs are sore, my back is sore, even my butt is sore. I never landed on my butt, but I must have been using the glutes for something when I was doing a new version of "Slip and Slide", which I swore off in the 3rd grade because I kept spraining my wrist. I am just thankful for not wearing my Dankso's. Had I been wearing them, I probably been a little more than sore today. I probably would be sitting here with a cast on my leg - which is what I heard happened to another mom earlier this week. She slipped on the same patch of grass and cracked her ankle. Eeeks!


I just want to be cold free for at least two weeks. I have a lot of sewing to get done, and I need to get a bunch of my pictures moved onto this computer.

So for now, I cross my fingers and hope that I don't slide down any more grassy hills, or get any more sore throats.

I need to set a goal of how many bags I want to get done by the 31st. I have that showcase on Etsy on Feb 1, so I need to be ready to go.

Well, hello there!

Okay.

So I have super slacked off and I am sorry. I got sick a week before Thanksgiving, ended up in the ER the day after Thanksgiving because my tonsils were so swollen, I was having a hard time breathing at times, was put on Zithromax for 5 days as a result, and also had a nasty shot of antibiotics in my hip so that whatever "virus" I had - wouldn't damage my heart or kidneys.

I seriously had a panicy moment in the ER at 12:30am at the thought that I could be dead in a week because my heart had been attacked by a virus. It had happened to a former local man just five years older than me a week after Labor Day Weekend. He ended up being flown to San Francisco and underwent a heart transplant, but the virus had down too much damage to his body. So, I sat and silently panicked in my little room, all while my husband was a half hour away, at home with our two little boys.

My tests came back negative for both strains of the flu, one of which was Swine Flu, but dang! That test was horrible! The taste in the back of the mouth for a few hours after, the runny nose because of it, and the horribly watery eyes. ICK!

If any of you have ever had nasal flu test, you know EXACTLY what I am talking about! For those that don't, here is a run-down:

The nurse came in with a tray with all sorts of little goodies. (insert multiple eyerolls, please. thank you very much!) One was a swab to swab the back of my throat to test for strep. The other was the long swab thing for my nose - the flu test. It has a red line up a little way from the "swab" part. Oh yes. A little red line. The nurse was telling me that the little red line needed to be lined up with my nostril. So I am looking for this little line, but I am not seeing it. She then directs my eyes to a little red line probably 10-12" from the tip of the swab. Oh no! Oh boy....here we go. Oh YUCK! My eyes were watering and I was gagging. I seriously couldn't wait to gag on the tongue depressor to have my throat swabbed for the strep test. I hate that, but I was really welcoming it at the moment. PLEASE!!!!

I finally got home at 2am and was dead tired.

Fast forward a few weeks, some listings on Etsy and a post (or two) here, and I found myself doing a ton of stuff my oldest son's kindergarten class. I had this wonderful idea to have the kids stuff a little Christmas tree ornament, write their name on the back, and then I would sew it up at the bottom, after I had pinned the already stuffed tree trunk in.

Yes, I was gutsy and took my most favoritest sewing machine with me to a classroom with 20 5-6yr olds. Some people thought I was crazy. I even thought, AFTER the fact of course, that maybe I was crazy for doing it. But seeing those kids have fun with the project? Totally worth it!

Then I had to finish up all the loose ends for their Christmas party that was on Friday, Dec 18. My oldest had been home sick on Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday that week. He had a bad headache and fever on Monday, and early Tuesday morning, and then he woke up throwing up at 4:15am on Thursday.

He was seriously throwing a kink in my holiday sewing. He was fine around 10am that morning after he had thrown up, and was ready to go to school. Um, no.

By 1am, Monday, December 21, he was sick AGAIN! An ear infection. Lovely! We were able to get into the doctor at 5:30pm. Our doctor's office is 30 minutes away, in the next town over, so we ended up having his prescription filled there, and having dinner at Pizza Hut.

I slept like a rock that night, only to wake up the next morning, the 22nd, to find myself with a funny feeling throat, and sneezing. LOTS of sneezing. JOY!

So I was sick. Great. Didn't I just get over being sick...like 6 days earlier?

Here it is, four weeks later, and I am still with a tiny bit of a cough left.

But hey! It is a new year! We finally have a new computer, which is great for my Etsy shop. I had a really hard time getting pictures off my camera when I did my last listings in early December because my computer was getting so slow. Now my only excuses will be laziness to take pictures, etc., which does happen - but usually in the spring and summer months because I am usually in my backyard hanging out under our huge yellow plum tree, or weeding my garden beds. I would like to eat lettuce and not some nasty dandelion weed that has snuck in there.

I have a few pieces of new fabric, which will only make a few bags. But I may be able to get some more. Those will be in the shop soon.

I also working on some tie hairbands, but need to get the length right.

I have also purchased a showcase slot for the "Bags & Purses" section on Etsy for Feb 1, 2010. Keep an eye out for a special sale section for that week in my shop!

Take care!