Walk Around - Finally!

Go Pokes!

Ok, so I've been a serious slacker blogger lately. I have a long list of things to blog and now I'm all behind. It stresses me out. Seriously.

So this is my story about our OSU Homecoming from nearly 2 weeks ago now. I haven't been to the walk-around since Marleigh and Elliot were little bitty. So we decided this year that it would be fun to go. Especially since little Selah got to help do some pomping on one of the house decks.

OSU has a huge homecoming celebration and it's one of the biggest and most celebrated in the nation. We're all about partying!

Marleigh was away at camp during this time but I took the little girls into the Gamma Phi house where I (and my mom before me!) used to live. Here I am with my two smallest legacies outside of the GPhiB house!



And on a side note, can I just say that I have a college work study here at my office and she along with a few other girls have said that my sweet Gamma Phi house is not sportin' the best reputation in town these days. It makes me so sad! Something about a significant member

So each of the sororities and fraternities pair up and make this huge house deck that is judged. Some of the houses also participate in floats for the parades. The dorms all do house decks and floats as well but the walk around is generally focused in the greek housing area. The hours put into these displays are just incredible. Members are generally required to put in so many hours of pomping each week leading up to Homecoming. It's amazing! Here is just a sampling of some of the house decks that we saw that night...













Here's a shot of the back of one of the house decks. They are made out of chicken wire and pomping is when you shove all these little pieces of tissue paper in to make the design. Seriously, it's amazing!



I know, I know. This is a long post but I'm still not done! I'm close though!

Selah's small group leader at church just happens to be the house mom and the Kappa Delta house. One Wednesday before homecoming the small group got to go have dinner at the house and then they got to go and pomp. She had a blast! Here she is in front of the deck she helped make!



And just for good measure and because he's too cute. (I know, I'm the mom so I have to say that but seriously. Isn't he handsome!) Here's one of Elliot that night. ;)



Hope you enjoyed OSU Homecoming through me!

Random Ramblings

It's a rainy Monday here in Oklahoma and I'm feeling it. Just sort of seems like nothing has gone quite right so far today and although I'm hoping it will improve I'm not counting on it.

First of all, the family all headed out to OSU's Homecoming walk around on Friday and I took a ton of photos that I wanted to share here. Of course, I haven't had a chance to put them on so I spent too much time this morning getting them ready to upload to flickr. Then I figured I'd post from work, because otherwise I'd have to actually do real work and who wants to do that? After a good 20 minutes of resizing and entering into the upload box I hit the upload button and then *poof*. Everything was gone. Not sure what happened but I didn't have time to sit there and do it all over again.

Tess complained about her throat hurting this morning and was being extra whiney. She wasn't running a fever but I hated that I had to just go ahead and drop her off at school with her feeling cruddy just because I have to come to work. I told her to have her teacher call me if she didn't start feeling better. I'm sure she's fine but I still feel bad that I couldn't make sure she was fine before sending her off to school.

Then there is my credit card mystery. It's disappeared. I used it at lunch time Thursday and on Friday I realized it wasn't in my wallet. Actually, my boss used it on Thursday when she ran to Subway to grab lunch for us. She remembers handing it back to me but I've gone through everything, including the trash and it's no where to be found. There are no new charges on it which leads me to believe I've stuck it somewhere safe and no one else has it. But until I find it I'm just sort of out of luck in the money department.

And the big kicker is that Selah's halloween costume isn't going to come. I ordered it on the 6th of October and it said it was backordered until the 12th. Then I get an email saying that it will be shipping out on the 18th instead of the 12th. I called the beginning of last week to make sure it really would ship out on the 18th. They said it would. This morning the order tracking says that it still hasn't shipped so I called to check on it and was told that they are completely out of stock and it will not be shipping. Um, seriously? What the heck am I supposed to do now that Halloween is a week away?

AND... OH. MY. GOODNESS. It's a good thing that I decided to write in my blog. And it's a good thing that I didn't just go ahead and cancel my order when I spoke to the company on the phone a few mintues ago. While looking for the link to add to my post here I decided to add the item to my cart and see what it said as far as being backordered. Imagine my surprise when it let me order the costume and it said "in stock". Oh no you di'nt! I called them back and told them what was going on and this time I was told that the items were in and were being processed. Um, how come I was just told that I wouldn't be receiving the costume at all?

I'm supposed to have it by Thursday. So help me if that costume doesn't show up!

Wonder what other wonderful things will happen today.

Open for business

Actually, it was open a couple of weeks ago but I didn't share. I've opened up a new store over on Etsy. Still have a lot of work to do to get it looking all perty like it should. Maybe I can work on that this weekend. I wouldn't count on it though. *snort*

So this afternoon I took off work a bit early and somehow decided I would finish a project that was long overdue. I started this purse probably a year ago and had just a tiny bit left to finish it up. Got it finished, and got it in my store all this evening. Go me.

So feel free to mosey on over to my new little Etsy store. Hopefully I'll have lots more things to add in the near future.

Friday Night Lights

So last night we went to the local High School football game. Go Neers! (Pioneers, actually.)

Marleigh had a friend spend the night and the two of them wanted to go to the game and hang out with their friends. Elliot was spending the night at a friends house. So Hubby, Selah, Tess, and I headed into town to watch the Stillwater Pioneer's play Enid.



It wasn't long before Tess was tired and ready to go home. Thankfully she found a leg to rest on...


And then a lap to sit on...


Selah entertained herself by drawing a pretty picture...


Later she was mezmerized as she ate popcorn,


and watched the cheerleaders do stunts.


Then there was the cotton candy. I told each of the girls that they could get something from the snack bar. Selah chose popcorn...easy enough. Tess on the other hand had to have cotton candy. Unfortunately the lady in charge of scooping up the cotton candy was evidentally on her first night doing so. She was all over just getting as much as the fluffy messy stuff around the stick no matter what sort of formation it might be in.

So little Tess ended up with a big mess of Pioneer blue cotton candy.




As you might have guessed, it made a pretty big mess...





All in all it was a fun night with the fam. Hubby was a little sad seeing all the parents there who were watching their boys play ball. He is all too aware that his own son will never be a football star. Or any sort of sports star for that matter. But as long as he doesn't end up like this poor guy who does flags in the marching band I think Hubby will be fine.

Breakfast of champions

Nope, no Wheaties around here. Only Diet Pepsi. Every morning I drop the kids off at school, then I hit the On Cue gas station. Currently they have a special where you can buy a 32 ounce pop and get a free Reese's Peanut Butter Cup product. Seriously, this is doing nothing for my Weight Watchers program.

So I take this Diet Pepsi to office where I immediately turn my computer on to check the days schedule. These are the only quiet minutes of my day. From here the phones generally start ringing and patients start arriving. Then it gets crazy. Literally...seeing as how I work at a mental health facility.

Maybe one of these days I'll start having a little more healthy breakfast. Until then...bottoms up!

My list

I have a list, a really long list. This list consists of things that I would like to do or learn to do. I made this list about 3 months ago and sadly, I've only accomplished one thing. And I've added more. Seriously, it's never ending.

In my dream world, I would be independently wealthy and have an abundance of time to spend with friends and family. I'd also have all sorts of time to craft and play and not feel guilty. What Mom wouldn't love that, huh?!

So I figure if I put my list on here then maybe I'll be able to look back in a few months and say, "Hey, I did that one!" So here goes...

1. Soldered Jewelry - this is the one I already did. Yeah! Loved doing it and of course now I want to do more. I have all sorts of ideas in my head. Wouldn't a thick leather bracelet look cool with a piece of soldered art sewn to the top of it. See, now I've added another one to my list.

2. This is silly, but seriously I've always wanted to write and publish a book. I was just never really sure what sort of book that would be. Well, until this summer when I ran across some entries on blogs I visit. These ladies totally inspired me and made me think about doing a book on crafting. I've got this big book of remnants and thought it would be fun to write and publish a book about what to do with all those leftover fabric scraps everyone has. This is just one box of remnants. You seriously don't want to see how many more I have. I can't throw anything away!


3. If you think I have a lot of remnants, you should see my fabric stash. It's bad, seriously bad. I've got an entire sewing room packed full of it. Our coat closet is overflowing with fabric as well as the laundry room and two upstairs bathroom. It's stashed just about everywhere. If I ever got it all out and put it in one room Hubby would have a heart attack. The majority of these fabrics were purchased with specific plans in mind for it. I have a bad habit of buying fabric and then letting it sit. So third on my list here is to actually DO some of the fabrics I have planned. Maybe BEFORE my kids are too big to wear them would be nice too, huh?

4. With lots of fabrics come lots of patterns. Again, out of control. Especially patterns and books for making totes/bags/purses and such. I'm a bit addicted to them. I have a friend who wants me to do a "handbag party" for her. Where I would make up some samples and take a bunch of my fabrics and get orders to make custom bags for everyone. Wouldn't that be fun! Yes it would. In my little make-believe world with lots of time of course.

5. Scrapbooking. I think I may be able to open my own scrapbooking store. (Do you see a pattern here?) I love to scrapbook but I get so overwhelmed with all the possible pages I could do that I just don't ever do it. Well, that and the whole not-enough-time thing. Each of my children has a book that I planned to make for them and give to them when they graduate from high school. You don't even want to know how far behind I am in them. It's pretty much pathetic. In addition to the kids' books I also have these on the list:
a. Book about me (in case something happens to me, so the kids will have it. This one is near and dear to me.)
b. Postcard book (a few summers ago the kids and I set out to collect postcards mailed to us from all 50 states. How cool would a scrapbook with all of those in it be!)
c. Songs book (I'm so inspired by songs and music. I've love to make a book of my favorites.)
d. Vacation book (I started but of course never finished a book with our vacation photos from earlier this year. Really need to finish that one.)

6. Did you know that you can do digital scrapbooking too? Me thinks I need to learn how!

7. I have Photoshop. I can't use Photoshop. I want to be able to use Photoshop. (I should add that I have a a Photoshop book already on the way to me from Amazon.com)

8. Those patterns and books I mentioned earlier? This one sort of goes with them. But after taking Japanese classes starting in middle school I've had a love of the language and now that Japanese fabrics and craft books have become so popular I've really jumped on the bandwagon. I bought these books back in August and I'm dying to do some of the projects in them but of course I haven't. Don't they look fun!


9. I really want to learn to silk screen. I have NO idea how to ever start. Well, I'm guessing I could learn online. Just not really sure where to start. But my good friend Eren just posted these iron-on tees she made and I'm thinking I might be able to make these and hold off on learning the silk screen for a while.

10. Here's the big one...I want to be a photographer. I want to take great photos of people and babies and children, families and couples, Marleigh with her volleyball team, Selah cheering for the football team. You get the idea. Photos make me smile and they make me happy. I want to give that to other people too.

So there you have it. My big long list. Looking at just 10 things it doesn't look that long. Huh? It is though. It seems unattainable to me. I don't want it to be though. So now that I've posted it maybe I will have someone ask me in a couple months if I've done anything on the list. Maybe that'll help.


***Edited to Add***
Yep, I remembered another one. No. 11. I want to learn to stamp on metal. You know what I mean. Like all the cute little personalized bracelets and whatnot you've seen around lately. How do they do that? I'm not sure...but I definitely wanna know.