i can't believe it's halloween already.

well, our good friend jimmy got here about an hour ago.

i made cupcakes for this momentous occasion:





i don't really know what's going on for tonight (if we're going to dress up when we go out, or not. i'm assuming not-since we don't have a huge 80's style video camera or a huge boom mic, nor have we made any of these things.) so i guess i'll be "forced" to dress up as....Mary Tyler Moore. i'm pretty much going to wear the green dress i wore last year when i was a "sexy secretary". except i'll have to do my hair like the picture from yesterdays post and wear my contacts. but that'll pretty much look like the way i look normally....

(schields-i need you here so that we can dress up together-i'm going to be the only one dressed up with four non-dressed-up boys!!!)

scratch that*!

i just caught wind that we most certainly will be viewing the season premier tonight.





PSYCHED!!!!!!











*but im still in love with liquid cheese, which i think is probably one of America's worst inventions, until i found this. EW!

my secrets

well, it pains me to say that (1) i will not be able to view the first episode of the 5th season of NIP/TUCK tonight.

however, in lieu of watching the new episode tonight, i just got done watching the series premire of NIP/TUCK (we have the first season on DVD) while i ate a box mix of KRAFT mac and cheese (even thought we have a serving left of the good home-made kind), (2) i have a weakness for liquid cheese.

both of these things (1 and 2) are embarrasing for me to admit, and so i'll post some pictures to remind you how great i am, in hopes that you will forget my secrets.











i had originally planned to post these pictures with the subject "hello, sunshine" because it was stuck in my head for like 3 days, and because i'm so cute! i dyed my hair the other day: highlights=burgandy (but it's more of a purple and i like it like that) the rest=dark brown or something to that effect. it's the same as before, just refreshed.






and HELLO, BANGS!!!

OMG!!!! NIP/TUCK starts tonight!!!!

three things i'm absolutely obcessed with right now:

(1) the song, "Love Like This" by Natasha Bedingfield, featuring Sean Kingston (i had to remove the video form this post because it wasn't even working!!! (thanks a lot MTV!!!)

(2) wearing my hair like this in a pony tail never down-i think that's tacky and the bigger the better!!)













(3) Pumpkin Spice Latte's from Starbucks (it's bigger and better in person!!! go get one!!!-you won't regret it!)

finally!

i couldn't log into this blog for like two days-i was going through withdawl!!

just got back from walking Achilles-full moon tonight (or so it seemed) it was soo beautiful. all big and bright. whew!

i decided that our den should be bigger, so i took on the task of switching our bedroom into the "den" and all of our office stuff (desks, book shelves, junk, etc...) into the "bedroom". so now our bedroom is small-which is fine because all we do is sleep in there! and our den is HUGE! that way we can spend more time in there and hang out with eachother and stuff. and i have a ton more room for my knitting and sewing machines and my desk and stuff. so i'm so happy about that. also-jimmy is coming to visit this week and is staying for a few days, and he stays in the den on an air mattress. so now his room is big!!!

it only took me about 2 hours. it was a surprise for kev.

i also made home made mac and cheese today-mom sent me extra sharp cheddar (we can't find it anywhere in va!!!!) so i've got to eat some of that now.

peace!

hum drum

ugh:

(1) it rained allllllllll day yesterday. don't get me wrong-i love the rain, but i didn't have an umbie with me and that dog takes soooooooo long to find a spot to poop!

(2) registering for classes right now. i'm glad that this semester is almost over but it's hard to figure out what i want to be doing at 9 am every monday, wednesday, and friday-sleeping/just waking up or waiting for class to start?!!?

TOTALLY ANNOYING!


(3) halloween is just around the corner and i haven't even decorated!! (i probably have more halloween decorations than i have clothes*) we're going to a halloween/birthday party tomorrow!! and we haven't even gotten our costumes yet!!!
we're supposed to goto the pumpkin farm on saturday, but i don't know if we're going to or not. (LAME!!)

(4) no time to re-dye my hair!!!! ARGH!

(5) busy, busy, busy with school, school, school. (annoying!!)










*this is not an exaggeration.

jeff buckley-halleluja

omg-i lo-hooooo-hoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo-ve this song:

Well I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and he pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
Well, it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah

Well your faith was strong, but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you
And she tied you to her kitchen chair
And she broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips you drew the hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah

Well baby I've been here before
I've seen this room and I've walked this floor, you know,
I used to live alone before I knew you
And I've seen your flag on the marble arch
And love is not a victory march
It's a cold, it's a broken hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah

Well there was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show that to me, do you?
I remember when I moved in you
And the Holy Dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah

Maybe there is a God above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
And it's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah,
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah.

it's terrible, just terrible.

a funny:

i found this woman's blog by searching in google images for "knitting machine" (please don't judge!) and after tons of pages, this womans blog caught my eye.

anyway, i was reading if for a little bit (she blogs about her knitting machine!!! that's soooooooo cool!), i saw that she posted this and i think it's really funny:

"I got a spoof email today, supposedly from an ebay member. It's obviously someone trying to get me to follow a link and enter my details. I get them all the time and I just foreward them to ebay. I only answer ebay messages through 'My Messages' in 'My Ebay'. Anyway, here is the message I got:

'Now that you have the money send me the laptop. When you will send it because I sent you the money a week ago.I don't like this silence. What to think from you action ??? that you scam me ?? u better not because I know your address also I am a police man I forgot to tell you. SO SEND ME THE LAPTOP OR I WILL BUST YOU PERSONALY FOR THIS ! OR SEND ME THE MONEY BACK. LAST WARNING , NEXT YOU WILL SEE ME AT UR DOOR .'

I nearly wet myself laughing at that one - it's the best one yet. Do people really fall for these? Surely not."

haha! that's so funny!

sighting!

when i was walking Achilles yesterday i saw a female and a male cow-dnow at different times.

the female got scared by the dog and hopped behind some bushes and later on in the day, i saw a male in a tree looking around. they were both so beautiful!

in other news: we woke up to a big dump on one of kevins books this morning. (no, kevin didn't do it) Achilles has been sick since he had surgery.
dumb dog.

pictures:











this is the yarn for the socks i'm knitting.










i've only finished one so far. and i haven't tried it on yet...so i hope it fits. also, i haven't yet decided who i'm making these for. so one of you might be the lucky owners of this snazzy pair of socks.

last night.

we watched Premonition lastnight but only because Julian McMahon (from Nip/Tuck) was in it.

it's probably the worst movie i've ever seen.

so, incase you haven't figured it out already, this is my new blog and not the other blog.

pumpkin farm next weekend-pictures to follow.

recovering pooch

we just picked our little pooch up from the vets office. i've never seen a dog who was more calm. they must have used a TON of sedatives for his surgery. he was walking all wobbly and sideways and swaying. i felt terrible! so he got home and staggered into the livingroom and just layed down in the dinning room. he hasn't eaten since 9 pm lastnight, so we gave him a huge bowl of food and he just layed down there and ate it. then i helped him get up on the couch, but kev brought out his "bed" from the bedroom and was really excited about that, so he layed on that on the floor instead. his little paw paws and ears are cold so i put that sheet on top of him. and he won't drink any water. so we're majorly babying him today. i bought him a huge raw-hide bone because he loves those-he knew what it was even before i took it out of the package!!!

oh! also-they trimmed his toenails!!! without even asking (he needed it soooo badly!) and they didn't charge for it! AND they removed his choke chain, (which i'm assuming has been on him since he was a puppy, on account of it being so small that i couldn't remove it myself!) and they didn't charge for that either!!
AND we were supposed to give them a $40 off certificate for the castration that we got from the Mountgomery County Animal Shelter (where we got him from). we didn't have it with us, so the girl was like "oh, your total is $105 even" and kevin said "oh-did you take the cupon off?" and she said "oh-that'll be......$20"
um....what? okay!

i don't know how she did her math or how smart the vets are there, but we're pretty happy about that!!!

okay i've got to go drain my pasta!

my dad, the photographer

i know i put these pictures on facebook already, but i'm just so impressed, so here you go again:







this one is my absolute favorite!













and there you have it!!

oh-this is mostly for schields and emily because i think you guys visit starbucks the most: they have this thing going on in october where they are giving out little cards with a code on it for a free song download! i have a lot of the past ones if you want the codes (hehe).

the en.d

i love this song: "Your boyfriend sucks" by the Ataris. I remember driving around oswego listening to this when i was like 16. in the middle of the song there is a quote from a movie (i can't remember which movie it's from) but this is it:

"Alright, listen to me. you pull up right where she is, right? you go get out of the car and you lock both doors. you get out of the car, you go over to her- you bring her over to the car. you take out the key, put it in the lock and open the door for her. then you let her get in. then you close the door for her. you walk around the back of the car and you look though the rear window. if she doesn't reach over and lift up that button, so you can get it, dump her. just like that! listen to me, kid if she doesn't reach over and lift up that button so you can get in, that means she's a selfish broad and all you see is the tip of the iceburg. you dump her, and you dump her fast."

the quote doesn't really go with the rest of the song-the song is about this guy who has a friend who's a girl who has a boyfriend andher boyfriend isn't nice to her and this guy wants her to get rid of this boyfriend. but then the quote is about how the girl is a bad girlfriend....it doesn't make sense!

but i think that quote is so beautifuli-it's the simple things that matter in relationships.

anyway, i'll post a picture now:



this is my knitting machine, which i've had for....almost 3 years and never used. not even once!!! ive got to get it set up-it's depressing me-it deserves to be used!!!!



in other news: Achilles is getting his balls cut off today! hopefully he'll calm down a lot

oh-i love this song: "hello sunshine" by Super Fury Animals. (em and slash-it's the song that plays when seth and summer have sex for the first time) the song is seriously so beautiful. and now i miss the OC like whoa.

green thumb(s)

these are some handwarmers that i'm making. i actually made them last winter for kristin then i demanded that she give them back to me so that i could knit some thumbs on and i started to do the first one then stopped for some reason. (i think i wanted to use the needles for s different project-the brown mittens-or something)














see-on the left is how i made them originally. and on the right is where i picked up stitches along the edge of the thumb and started knitting a thumb on. i'll finish it eventually.

messed up mittens

this is a pair of mittens i started a long time ago. we might have still been living in buffalo...? maybe not. anyway-i haven't finished them becausei sort of forgot about them until the other day when i found them again. as you can see, i'm going to have to redo the second one because it's way shorter!!! the look i was going for was: opposite stripes on each glove, but on the second glove, i think i was just going by 5 or so rows of each color, which really messed me up. oh well. i'll finish them.

the cowgirl purse

this is what i refer to as the cowgirl purse. i made it almost a year ago. and it took me longer than i week, i think. i made it out of a denim shirt that mom bought for me that had embroidery of a cowgirl on her horse on the back embriodered in large letters across the back shoulders it says "WESTERN". the patches on the purse are ones that i cut out of a beautiful vintage sheet with green flowers all over ith which i got at the salvation. this view is what i refer to as the "front" of the purse.



here is a detail of the pocket. i sewed a patch of the sheet to the pocket because i thought i was going to like the way it turned out-turns out i don't! oh well.





the bottom of the bag is a square.








side view and detail. i'm actually still not done with this bag. while i was putting on the finishing touches (the dog is laying right over my lap and nudging me and making it very h ard to type) like the zig-zag in the picture on the right, i ran out of thread!!!!! (for you non-sewers, this is a sewers worst nightmare!!!)


these are views of the "back" and strap of the purse. i had envisioned the strap coming out differently. i think it's a little too thick for my liking and for this purse. it doesn't go with the style of the purse, but it was a bitch to get it to work, so i'm not going to try to fix that any time soon.

this is the inside of the bag. i lined it with the beautiful vintage sheet fabric. (i looooove, love, looove this fabric!!!!)



this is the inside pocket. it's the first pocket i've ever made like this. i hada a brilliant idea to make this pocket that ad different places for my favorite things (cell phone, pens, and junk). i wanted this pocket to be multi-functional. then one fateful day, i was looking through my new martha stewart magazine (thanks ash!!) and there was a pattern for the exact pocket that i wanted to make!!!! and it was seeeeeeewwwwwwww easy!!!! (that was just a little pun for you.) seriously though-it was sew easy. so that's my pocket story.

now, remember how my first sentence in the last paragraph contained the word "inside"? well, i wanted this purse to be reverseable. SO IT IS!!! so it's either the inside or the outside pocket.



and voila! inside becomes outside!!! it kindof looks like a tool-belt pocket. man, that pocket!!


i really had high hopes for this purse. it was really the first serious purse i've ever made. i didn't really do any drawings for it, and i certainly didn't follow a pattern-just whatever my little heart desired.

the sad thing is that i put so much time and effort into it, but i've only used it a few times. i did a lot of things wrong with this purse. well, only one thing, really:

the strap

i really have a problem figuring out how long straps should be. i hem and haw and measure and re-measure, but it never seems to turn out right. the strap on this purse is okay, but i chose not to sew the arm hole closed and so there's a huge opening on the sides (big enough for an arm to fit through) and it makes me weary about using it too much. mostly because i don't want to lose any of my stuff!!!

BUT MAN, THAT POCKET!!!!!

the green purse

this is the green purse i made the day after i made the purple purse. it's very big (i'll post the dimensions at a later date) i used it for school for a few days but it didn't quite work out right. can't pin-point exactly what's wrong with it, but it doesn't work as well as other school bags i have.

the material i used:
green fabric=corduroy left over from a jacket i made at buff state
plaidfabric=i bought thisfor a project at buff state where we had to make a pair of shorts, but the pattern had to match up at the seams. needless to say, i didn't buy enough extra to match the seems up, so this was just plain left over.

this is a side detail. i thought it would turn out more hole-y than it did. oh well.

this is a strap detail. it's where the strap is sewn onto the bag. i sewed the wavy design onto the strap as a means to stablize it more, but it's a good decoration as well.

one of the straps has a lace ruffle sewn onto the outside of it. this was meant to be sewn onto both straps, but on account of me not checking to see how much lace ruffle i had before sewing the one side, i ran out, and therefore this is how it ended up. in the end, i think it makes it more interesting. (and since the bag is identical on both sides and on account of me being anal retentive, it lets me know which side is the front-ashleigh you ought to appreciate this aspect of it.)

blah and argh.

sorry i haven't posted in a few days, family. my sister just informed me that this was a really good idea....duh.

i bought some sock yarn yesterday FOR SOCKS!! so i'm done with the first sock's ankle. hopefully i'll get the heel turned tonight. and i'll post pictures when i get home from school.

in other news: we might have to get rid of the dog. someone from the office knocked on our neighbors door yesterday (because they thought he had the dog....?) and told him they couldn't have a dog. or something. i don't think kevin had all the facts straight. so i don't know if the dog is barking when we're not home or what...

the other throw pillow

this is the other pillow. each image is on one side of the pillow.



these pillows are under the "knitting" categorie because i knit the image then i sewed it onto a piece of square black fabric. the knitting took longer than the sewing. i filled the pillows with filling from....michael's or joanne fabrics.



once i get my act together, i'm going to make more pillows for this series, which is supposed to be about the ups and downs of being in a relationship.

throw pillows

this is a pillow that i made for an art class. it was supposed to be part of a series but i didn't have enough time to make more than 2. (a series consists of 4 or more-or something)

"i miss you" is on one side and "no i don't" is on the other.

the purple purse

I made this purse one day when i was bored. i didn't have a pattern for it (it makes me feel stifled), so i had the idea in my head and made it up as went along:

it's been holding up pretty well-i use it almost every single day. but it has a few loose threads because the fabric is a loose weave, and my gold scaly belt (that i got from otterbine thrift store-thank's mom!) always catches the threads.

the shoulder strap and D rings are from a belt that i never wore, so i cut the belt to length and sewed it in place.

the fabric is just beautiful, i think. i got it from te salvation on 57-i was going to make a prom dress out of it!! hah! but it was two large curtains when i got it....i don't know where the rest of the material is!

prifile view with some loose threads hanging.