Crafty Blog

The great Ms. Erica Sage, http://craftyblossom.blogspot.com/, has inspired me to do some crafty blogging. Check out her blog...it's pretty awesome :).

Marcus is out skiing his heart out today (maybe I'll have some pictures of his sore butt later) and I am enjoy another day of sewing in my jammies...I'll have to get some work done soon, but right now I'm crafting-up the house! This morning I got a wild hair up my booty and decided to make my own switch plate covers...cool covers are expensive to buy and I bought some in Oregon recently that are kind of a pain to use with a dimmer switch. I think they turned out nicely...and I took the opportunity to practice a few techniques on my own before trying to sell these on etsy.

The project that started this crafty binge of mine was the tree skirt. This is our first year getting a tree and decorating for Christmas in the new house (last year was too crazy) and I'm super excited about it. We don't have a tree skirt, so I decided to make one from the table cloth fabric we used at the rehearsal dinner. While it turned out okay, I learned my lesson about "winging it" and free handing a pattern...it turnout out more of an oval than a circle. Now, I could claim coolness and that I intended to be trendy with my oval tree skirt, but you already know that I'm not that cool. It was a mistake, but it will do until I learn to slow down and have some patience!

fancy little stitch around the edges...
We'll see what else I get myself in to...after the work is done, of course!

Foosball and 10-year-old Tornados

The weekend started off with some yummy Papa's and Beer, Big Beers and Foosball! Marcus was brave enough to be the lone male on a "Dawn, Libby & LeeAnn" outing, but he survived nicely (and even drove me home at the end of it :)). We had our first sample of this season's Cold Mountain Brew from Highland..it was tasty! With loving and longing thoughts of Phoebe we also forced ourselves to play a few games of foosball...as you can see,

it's just too hard to manage without her!

We spent Saturday hanging around the house...Marcus took the opportunity to hike and mark the boundaries again and I sewed a tree skirt (recycled rehearsal dinner table clothes)...

we're regular riots sometimes!!

We picked the boys up and made the mistake of hitting Sam's and Ingle's...apparently the Saturday before Thanksgiving is not too early for the whole world to go grocery shopping. We headed out to Sue and Al's for dinner and some friendly competition between DeAndre and Al (poor Za just gets caught up in the mix...he's too nice for competition). They started with a game of Blockhead and then moved to a Dance Off...they would have made LeeAnn proud. I have to say that De won Blockhead and Za won the Dance Off...

but Al's a good sport :).

Back at home, the boys were allowed to stay up as late as they want and wake up whenever they wanted...a first around our house. Armed with Strawberry soda and cinnamon jumbos (Sue's famous cookies) they proceeded to stay up until 2am destroying our living room (if you asked them, they were just playing wii). Sunday brought a day of house cleaning, more wii for the boys and chili with Sue, Al and the new neighbors...who have "rescued" our dogs twice before even moving in! Monday has rolled around a little too quickly, as usual, but we're excited about Thanksgiving in Knoxville with Mike, Jenny, their boys and my folks...then Christmas Tree decorating at home and TG II on Saturday with Sue and Al and my folks again!

Hope you all have a good one...

Oregon with the Meskil Clan

Last week we took advantage of a long weekend and headed to Oregon for a Meskil-style family trip. We started with an evening in Greenville, SC thanks to an early morning flight. We celebrated Al's birthday and hung out with my folks for the evening. After the long day of travel we landed in Portland and drove a very impressive mini van (ask Marcus, he loved it) to Corvallis. Once Missy and Andy finished work we quickly started enjoying wine, beer and a super yummy pizza (we loved the pizza so much we ate it three times while we were there, once was for breakfast). Even though we were only there for a few days we packed in a lot of great stuff...thanks to our awesome tour guides. We spent the first day hanging around Corvallis (shopping) and then had a little house party with Andy and Missy's friends...great food and the cutest kids :). The next day we headed to Newport on the coast...we saw the sea loins, visited a few shops, toured the aquarium, visited Rogue brewery (Marcus' highlight) and walked on the beach...I don't know if it could have gotten any better! The Clam Chowder and Nut Brown Ale at Rogue was the best part if you ask me. On Monday, we headed to Portland to shop around town and hang out at Edgefields which was an amazing place...if I'd known about it sooner we might have spent the whole vacation there. It's a hostel style hotel (former sanitarium) with sweet little rooms, at least 10 bars on site, it's own brewery, winery and distillery and tons of gardens to explore. It was absolutely amazing (we'll be going back, no doubt). We loved hanging out with Missy and Andy and get a taste of their stomping grounds...

And, the best part, we can now announce that the first Meskil niece or nephew is in the making....congrats to Missy and Andy!!!

Marcus is a **ROCK STAR**

We spent a quite Halloween eating a yummy dinner at MoDaddy's and then people watching with a beer outside of Thirsty Monk...Asheville always has interesting people watching opportunities, but Halloween is by far the best!

On Saturday we met my bro at Papas and Beer for lunch...yes, another yummy! He was headed off for a man's weekend of football, but I did have to give him hell for not bring the babes for me to spoil! Then we headed off to run errands...stopped by Hops and Vines to help celebrate their One Year Anniversary (and yes, partake in the free beer and wine). I headed to Beauty Parade for a haircut by the awesome Terra and Marcus headed to Harvest Records to spend a b-day gift card from the Gonzos! A twist of events had Marcus back at Beauty Parade (with a beer from Westville)getting his very first ever haircut in a shop...

After the family haircut event we headed downtown for a trip to Mast General and a stroll around. The evening had us at the Downtown After Five volunteer party at Scandal's...woohoo!!! Free drinks and food and a fun time with awesome peeps! Marcus was surprised during the awards ceremony...he was honored with a ROCK STAR volunteer award which included an Earthfare gift card and a Chicobag shopping bag (I quickly commandeered both).

We ended that evening chowing on a couple of slices at Barley's. Sunday was spent with the fabulous Rob, John, Al and Sue and watching a funny movie.
While Monday is almost always anticlimactic, we do have an exciting day tomorrow...the world will change! And, at the end of the week we're heading to Oregon to visit Missy and Andy!!!

Oct 08 Birthday Bash

Um ya, I married in to this family...really though, these costumes were awesome!

A ladies game of washers...competative in words if not in actual tosses!

Gettin' the fire going as the sun goes down...

and the devil horns start to show!

Pheebs tryin' a new do...

the little devil and his pimp....otherwise known as Sam and his Poppy :)

Coco passed out first!

Grace Potter, Wood Bros & Clemson

We packed it in this weekend!
On Friday night we saw the Wood Brothers (above) and Grace Potter at the Orange Peel...great show...they are all amazing. We used one of the Wood Brothers songs as the recessional in the wedding ceremony...that's how much we like them. We actually considered hiring them as the reception band, but with the venue change, etc. that was no longer an option. Grace Potter made her debut (to us) at the Christmas Jam last year, but she is blowing up now!

On Saturday, we got up early to head to a Clemson game with my mom and dad...very exciting considering it was the first game since the firing of their coach. They played a good game, but still lost to Georgia Tech. After some post-game tailgating we headed to the house to grill out and meet the newest family member....Boomer. He was rescued in more ways than one and after Decker spent some time teaching him who's boss they are now best buds. We're hoping that in return he'll help Deck loss some weight :).

We capped the weekend off with a yummy dinner at the Meskil's and brought the girls home from their weekend of getting spoiled rotten...we're exhausted now, but we love it all!

Flower Beds and Cows

So this weekend we mixed fun with flower beds...well, we had fun in between putting flower beds in. We started the weekend in downtown Marshall...red wine and yummy Italian food with Sue and Al. Then Saturday morning, while I was wired on coffee, we
headed to Ream's Creek Nursery to get mulch and a few more
plants. Spent the rest of the day playing in the dirt and then went off to play some pool with LeeAnn and Dorsey! Sunday was much the same except we started the morning by digging a gazillon rocks

out of our yard. And yes, I did get to drive the tractor...

Coco and Bella did help us out quite a bit, but of course their efforts are under appreciated...and usually counterproductive. This flower bed includes strawberries from Tara and Joel!!!

I'm definitely not interested in parking the tractor though...I'll leave that (and the holes in the wall) to Marcus :).






Not super related to this blog entry....but isn't she cute! The wind is blowing her hair over her eyes...she rode this way all the way to Mars Hill...partially because Coco was taking up the rest of the back seat.



And finally, this is what greeted us this morning on the way to work...he actually turned around, faced me, walked towards the car and mooed at me. I got the evil eye as I drove around...pretty awesome I'd say!!