They were very sad when it was time to say goodbye three days later. We miss you Clara and Mary!

Taken by Ethan.

Oh my god people! I have UPDATED MY BANNER!

You do realize, that this now means that black = white, and white = black.

So.

You know, …

Sorry about that.

BUT WHAT DOES IT MEEEEAAAANN??? (the banner, I mean. What does the banner mean. Was I being cryptic? Sorry.)

It means that since christmas is over and I no longer have an occassion to give my jewelry away from, and also because I keep placing $80-$100 orders at various bead stores both in the real world and in cyberspace, and since I can no longer actually have any chance of WEARING all the pieces I am making[1. that’s a lie. i would totally wear all the pieces i am making, all at once, if at all possible.], and I have opened an etsy shop!

So, you know, please go check it out! And by all means, buy something! Because I have a bead order I want to put in already! Clicky clicky!

OK, so actually, there’s not much there yet. I’m having product photography issues. It’s hard, man, like, really hard! But I’m working on it, and hopefully will have some more stuff in the etsy shop soon.

Oh, and in the banner? On the left – the necklace I made my sister, which I really kind of wanted to keep, so it sucks she actually loves it, and on the right, the necklace I made for my mom, which she told me with glee she wore on her birthday[2. that i forgot to call her on, what a daughter i am!] on Monday. So! Success! I’ll show you the others soon.

So in the meantime! Go here! And feel free to buy something! Mommy needs a new set of hammers and anvils.[3. OK, actually, it would be momma’s FIRST set of hammers and anvils, but who’s counting?]

-Amy

Maybe not THREE months, but it feels like I’ve been making or trying out a lot of things that I’ve neglected to report on. Some of which is DARN CUTE or DARN TASTY!

Darn cute:

Baby Blanket

Big Footed Bunny with reversable dress (this shot was still in progress, never got a completed shot):
Dress on side A

Dress on side B

Granola (it was OK at best):

And with no photo accompaniment,
Monkey Bread

Potato soup (it was ok, but got much better as it aged)

Beef Stew (Still have some of this in the fridge, and it was Yum, despite some technical difficulties)

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting (orange, with jack-o-lantern faces painted on) (I guess I could still take some photos of these) (for some reason everytime I eat one, I think of our friend Kurt, who loves anything with pumpkin – Kurt, you would love these)

I also have a bunch of things on deck that I am aching to get started on.

I need, nay, I REQUIRE myself to make chili in the very near future, along with some cornbread.

Butternut Squash soup

Butternut squash risotto (this one may be dropped)

Braided Challah Bread

Picture Day dress for Jocelyn
I saw this adorable corderoy jumper at Kolh’s yesterday that I am going to try to make for Jocelyn. It was a dark chocolate brown with a pink long sleeved knit shirt underneath. Pink and brown always make me swoon, so sweet. We’ll see if this actually gets accomplished. There was another one next to it, pink with cute little princess embroidery embellishments along the bottom.

It is also at Kohls.com.

Very sweet. I am not going to repeat my mistake from last year and put her in a busy print for picture day. NO SIR.

Circle Skirt for Jocelyn
This, I actually did for Jocelyn last night, using the Fold Over Elastic that Angry Chicken has been going on about. Now, with normal elastic, you measure the waist and then make the elastic 2 inches shorter. I cut the elastic about 5 inches shorter with some trepidation, and it is still too loose. I should have just not worried about the actual measurement and just stretched it as tight as I could while sewing it on. There will be sewing and adjustments made tonight. I also don’t like the look of the full circle of the skirt, so I may be fiddling around with using only half a circle as well.
Final note on this skirt, I cut into some beloved fabric that I had been saving forever, but looking at the HUGE STACK OF PINK fabric, I shook it off and cut (the fabric I used is the top right in the picture in that link). As my mother always says, there will always be cute fabric, no need to hoard. I will be showing this skirt off when I finally work out the kinks.

*UPDATE* SKIRT COMPLETED! Here it is!

Picture taken last night, immediately after finishing

Taken this morning.

Hopefully James got some good pictures with the camera, as these iphone photos leave much to be desired. Still, I am VERY proud of myself, as this sucker pretty much came directly out of my head, no patterns involved (though some tulle inspiration probably came from the dress I saw in Kohl’s).

And finally, I have ordered a bunch of stuff to start beading jewelry again. I say “again” like I used to do it last week, but I haven’t done anything with beads since high school, when me & friends used to string beads onto fishing line, melt the knot with a lighter and call it good. I have actually ordered some tools and got a book and even am going to take a CLASS! My initial order should have been here by now, but due to my recent ordering of fabric on the internet for my mother, I accidently put down an address that was half my own, and half my mom’s, for my bead order. Who knows where it is now, DOH. So this, “Did it come did it come??!” ending with deflation and RE-ordering has made me super excited to GET GOING ALREADY!

– amy will string you along with a trinket or two

I’ve been fiddling with my iphone for a week now, and while I first added EVERY free app there was, I’ve since gotten happy with the delete, and been reorganizing my home screens. Here’s the apps I love the best, and the apps/features I think are worthless or are in need of some desparate HELP.

Top Ten Best iPhone Applications! They’ve Made the Cut!

1. 

   Tap Tap Revenge by Tapulous

   This is my very favorite app. A song plays and bubbles come down 3 separate “tracks” and you must tap the bubble as it crosses the bottom of the screen in time to the music. Think Dance Dance Revolution for your fingers. I need to figure out some tricks for higher scores though, because I play all the time, and then I go and pester James (who NEVER plays*) to play against me (they have a 2 player mode!) and he kicks my ass. Consistently. Grrrr.

   *Unless maybe he’s secretly practicing and pretending to not be good. I wouldn’t put it past him.

   Love me some tap tap revenge!

   Even though I REALLY suck at the super duper hard songs (the range is Easy, Medium, Hard and Extreme) I still try them out all the time. My high score for Canonfire is 73,245, which I have never come CLOSE to since (I usually range around 20-30k for that one.)

2. 

   Twinkle also by Tapulous

   Not only can you twitter away, but it will take your current location, and show you tweets of people within 5, 10, 25, 50 miles of you. Very groovy. I kind of wish it would reverse the order of the tweets so you can see older ones first, but that’s a small pet peeve. I have a bigger pet peeve — which is it is very unstable. In fact, as of writing this, I can’t get it to load all the way. But when it works, I love it.



WordPress

I see myself using this more and more. Before this came out, I had to set up a whole “email posting” thing on crazymokes, only to be frustrated by the automatically getting the mail and the lack of iphone’s ability to include more than one photo in emails. I can happily ditch the ’email in your post!’ method and open this up for quick posting. I tested it out and found a few bugs, which I hope will be fixed up quickly. The major bug was, the “save” button disappeared after I added some photos to my post, which sucked. Don’t want to “cancel” and lose my post! Somehow I got it to come back and didn’t lose my post. Hopefully that will be worked out quickly. WordPress app gets the primo front page real estate on my iphone!

3. 

   Zenbe Lists

   Zenbe Lists is – you guessed it! – a list maker. But not just any list maker! It’s especially nice because you can send a list to anyone and then that list will sync with each other without any fuss. And I mean without ANY fuss! At first, I just logged in with james’ zenbe account, not realizing that the sync feature was so cool. After heading through the grocery store with it, checking things off with just a touch of my finger, I got home and made my own account and tested out the sync. Once you “share” a list with someone, anytime either one of you change something, it’s changed for everybody. There’s a little “sync” button at the bottom for easy syncing, which only takes a second. You can also manage your lists on the website. Overall very intuitive and simple to use and easy sharing/syncing of lists between users.

   I am actually not a list maker by nature, but when things grow hectic and chaotic and I start to feel weird and out of control, that’s when I grab my notepad and start listing everything in my head. It’s as if, once it’s out of my head and down somewhere where I don’t have to remember it anymore, I’m able to breath more easily. So this is a list application that will get used at least weekly for grocery lists, and then probably more heavily off and on as life shoves stuff at me.

   Props go to James for finding this one! Definitely a front page app for me.

4. Pandora Radio

   Pandora has been around for a while, but I have been clueless about it. No more! I can’t believe how cool this is! To start off, you have to get your account going in a browser. I did this on my desktop rather than on my iphone, but it could be done there as well. You enter some of your favorite artists/songs and it will create a channel for you. When you play that channel, it will start to pull in other artists/songs that it thinks you might enjoy, and you can rate them with a thumbs up or down. You can also add other artists/songs to the same channel for a broader mix. Switching back to my iphone, all the channels I created online were there, and when you play a channel, you have the option to bookmark the current song, bookmark the artist, or buy from itunes. I tend to be pretty cut off when it comes to new music (and I don’t even mean newly RELEASED music, just music I haven’t heard before, which could be old music!) so this is a great way for me to find new artists that I totally love.



Shazam

This one is pretty cool, but I see it being deleted after the novelty has worn off. Basically this application listens to a song for a few seconds, and then tells you what it is. Very handy for when you’re in the car, or in a store, or on hold, hearing a song that you’re totally digging, but don’t know what it is. It shows you the song/artist and you can save the information for later, visit the itunes page for that artist, or even buy it. Awesome! So far, I have only used it to show others what it can do, not for it’s intended purpose. Not sure I will actually have a NEED for it, but it’s just so cool, how can you not have it? Hollering, “SHA-ZAAAAAM!” as it pulls up the found info not required (but still fun!)

5. Google Maps

   This is a built in iphone application. It’s basically google maps on your phone.

   I use google maps way too often just when I’m sitting at my computer, even as just a basic phone book for finding nearby businesses, so having it when I’m out and about is just pretty darn nifty. You can get directions from your current location (or somewhere else) to a specific address, and it also has a toggle that will show you current traffic, although on my daily trek up and down I-66, that can be touch and go as far as accuracy.

6. Phonesaber

   Pretty basic geek-boy (and girl!) app that loads up a picture of a lightsaber, with colors to choose from on the side. Once you’ve chosen a color, the saber lights up with the requisite lightsaber sound, and as you move the phone around, it makes the nifty lightsaber crashy noises. How can you not love it? Light saber is still on the front screen for now, but I see that going away as the novelty wears off. However, with my kids, that won’t be anytime soon!

7. And finally, myLite
   Who hasn’t crept into their bedroom with their sleeping spouse snoring away, lighted only by the glow of your cell phone? This application lights up your screen so you can tip toe into your kid’s room and not trip over Woody and Jesse, or the latest Geotrax creation. And to set it apart from it’s “FlashLight” competitor, you can change the settings to strobe, including changing the color and speed of the flash. For you know, when you come home from Mamma Mia and just need to disco it up right. Ahem. Not that I know from personal experience or anything. It’s on the front page, baby!
8. 

   Google Reader

   This technically isn’t an app. It’s a bookmark that sits on my home screen. However, it’s made the cut to be on the front page of my home screen, because google has really optimized their reader for the iphone. My only beef – I wish it would inherit the settings your normal google reader has, such as, sort from oldest to newest, as I like to read everything chronologically. I also haven’t tried adding any feeds, so no feedback on how that process is — or even if it’s available.

1. Check Please
   This is the first application I tried on my phone, and the first that got cut. It is to be used in a restaurant for splitting a bill between several people. It’s for those kind of groups of people where you don’t quibble over who got what and just split the check evenly, even though yes, I got a diet coke and you only got water. We do this at my work on a nearly weekly basis, so I was interested in checking it out. I found it to be kind of confusing. You enter the total bill, and then the tax, and it has a slider bar to use to increase the amount of a tip you want to give, and then you enter in the # of people dining and it will split the check, dynamically altering the split number as you slide the slider back and forth. It pulls up the regular keyboard which is overkill, since you only need numbers, not letters. A somewhat useful app, but I deleted it. I will just use the iphone’s built in calculator, which pops up a calculator screen instead of the keyboard, and does the job just as well. If it got rid of the tax field and brought up a number pad, I’d probably get it again. But as is, plain old calculator wins out over this one.

   From here on out, I don’t dis any apps actually, just iphone capabilities.

2. Calendar

   I haven’t had a chance to even use the calendar, which is too bad because I LOVE my calendars! However, I use google calendar, and the iphone will only sync with ical (on a mac) or outlook. I’m keeping my ear to the ground on other ways I can sync with google calendar. I have heard of a few jailbroke apps that do this, so once all the jailbreak app builders have caught up with the new 2.0 software and jailbreak software, I will check into it. For now, the calendar just sits there, unused. If anyone has any tips for this, I’m dying to hear them!

3. No cut and paste.
   Um, hello? This is kind of basic.. This sucks.
4. Adding contacts from missed/received calls
   If you get a call from someone not in your contacts, there’s no way to add them to you contacts. I would love to be able to tap a phone number in my calls list and have a “Add to contacts?” option. You would have to go into contacts and add them in manually. I am actually hoping I’m wrong on this, and just missing something obvious, so if I am, please enlighten me!
5. Contacts
   It will sync with google contacts in your gmail account, but it won’t import the photos you have set up in gmail to your iphone. Bummer. I have also experienced some wonkiness with losing some info I put into my phone, after I synced, but I can’t rule out user error in that one. It flashed a popup about adding and deleting and I just shrugged and hit the ok button and then feigned ignorance when I couldn’t phone up my dad anymore.
6. No front camera – which makes taking a picture of yourself pretty tricky. Never realized I would miss this ability from my old phone, but I do. This was one of the “will it have it? won’t it have it?” features that people postulated about wildly before the 3G announcement came out.
7. I know I said it already. But the whole google calendar thing it REALLY sucks.
8. YouTube app. It doesn’t suck, but I’m not sure why it needs a permanent position on my home screen(s). I’ve moved it to the last screen, because whenever i watch somethign on youtube, it’s because someone sent it to me, and i will click on it from there.
9. Clock – I have set up a few daily alarms/reminders (do your timesheet!) but other than that, fairly useless. If you really want to know what time it is in London, good for you. I don’t though. Last page of home screens.
10. Notes
    Just your basic notes. When I need to make a note of something, I’ll open up zenbe instead. I guess you can email your Notes. I’ve stuck this one on the back page of my home screens.
11. Stocks – This is probably nice for some people, but useless for me. No need for me to check on cow futures. Although we do own a few shares of IBM… Last page of the home screens.

Well, there you go.

I have not yet taken the plunge to purchase any applications, being stingy and worried that I would try it out and not like it. Mostly it’s been a few games I’ve wanted to try out. I will probably bite the bullet in the future and give some a try, but for now, aside from some bugginess, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve got.

Nice app. Let’s me put in a whole mess of photos. Hope it resized them.

As you may or may not know, I stash things in my bra from time to time.

Yesterday I worked from home, and when quittin’ time came ’round, I made up some PBJs, tossed some grapes in a tupperware, filled up some water bottles, and stuffed all the various swimming paraphenalia into a bag. I went upstairs and got my swimming suit on, went downstairs grabbed all the stuff, stuck my keys and my phone in the top of my swimming suit and took off to get the kids. They were very excited to go to the pool.

And of course, I forgot about my phone, in my suit, until after I was in the pool.

It’s dead now. Completely defunct.

I am eligible to get a new phone but they’d probably try to lock me down to a 2 yr contract and James and I are eyeing the new i-phone. I know we shouldn’t get them, because aside from the $400 bucks for 2 phones, the monthly bill would be a lot more than we’re paying now because we’d have to add a data plan for each of us. I get mad at our cell phone bill NOW and if we got iphones it would be $60 BIGGER.. Grr.

But with no phone now, and the new i-phone coming out in 2 weeks for only $199… Well, I’m making no promises.

The saddest part? Whenever I got a new phone, I was going to keep this one to be my bedside sudoku game phone. Hmph.

-amy

Ethan at the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space museum, looking at the “space toys” exhibit.

Birthday cake for a co-worker, which reads, “One Step Closer to Death”.

Metro grafiti