well, at least for today. she wanted to have a costume to wear to her work halloween party that would incorporate her chihuahua. at first i had the idea of her to be a chicken farmer - we had the chicken "hat" for dogs from target and i figured she could throw on a pair of overalls and grab the rusty pitchfork out of the garage. but obviously that wasn't good enough. because i didn't have enough to do with a huge deadline at work, two quilts to finish and a swap to get in the mail. sure, why not throw in making a burrito costume. so i am sleep deprived, look like death warmed over and will probably be grouchy to the trick or treater kids, but maybe they will think that i am dressed as a zombie. one can only hope...
my best friend is a burrito...
i think she is going to be trouble...
it is official. we are getting olive. the lady is amazing and gave us a price that is unbelievable. so here is little olive at 4 weeks old. word is that she is a loud mouth and doesn't like to share her food. she also barks at her brothers and sisters for seemingly no reason. i don't care if she barks all night. she is so cute, i will take her. of course, let's see how i feel after a few nights of sleep deprivation...
missing you...
sorry i haven't been here... i am a little under the weather - sinus infection - and i didn't have internet for three days. it was crazy how dependent i am on that darn internet. not only to check my bank and email, but i really do feel connected to so many of you out there. so when i miss a day of posting or reading my blogs i feel like i am missing out on your life. maybe i have romanticized it and you guys are thinking, "man, i never think of you when i am not online..." if so, just let me live in my little world thinking that you all have missed me as much as i have missed you.
a little encouragement...
as i have been reading blogs and message boards, one theme seems to be coming back again and again - we don't believe that we are good enough. whether it is mothering, career or art, we always sell ourselves short. i seem to run in to many women who don't think their art is good enough or as good as... and i have to admit this is a trap that i find myself in frequently. i look at all these awesome blogs and think, man i wish i was that good or clever or skinny. and then today i opened up my skirt magazine (their website has a donna downey ad at the bottom - holla) to find this...
it is a piece done by summer pierre. it has been ripped out and is now hanging on my new design board. i promise i will have creative space pics in the next few days. it encourages me and i hope it encourages you too.
be brave
<3 anna
quilting with my kitty...
well, i gave up on cleaning to keep warm and decided that quilting would do the trick. i usually hate how hot i get when i am ironing seams, but not last night. bring on the heat. did i mention the guy comes tomorrow to turn the heat on. i might just kiss him...
for all of those who want to start sewing/quilting and ask questions about machines... i don't think you have to have a fancy machine with all of the bells and whistles. i have 2 machines. one is a basic singer and the other is a small janome hello kitty machine (i told you i liked her). it was a christmas present last year since i had misplaced my singer in our move. but i love her so much. and it says "sewing pretty with hello kitty" on the front. how could you not love that! it is so convenient and quiet. i can sew right in front of the tv. i use it for piecing mainly and reserve the singer for the actual quilting. so if you don't have a machine, go get one. hk(hello kitty) was only like 50 bucks. if you don't want to have a small cat to talk to while you sew, they do have a generic, boring version. just get one... let me know what you make. and if you look closely in the picture you will see that i had a real live kitty keeping me company too. that's taco. she doesn't like hk because when i am playing with her i am not loving on taco.
be brave
<3 anna
test run...
I am attempting to post this from mel's new blackberry. She got it with her awesome promotion. So I am in my bed freezing and typing on the blackberry I swiped from mel's nightstand. Apparently, the gas company decided to cut off our gas... For no reason. They said that "someone" called to cancel the service. I would like to know who this someone is, cause I would show them my angry eyebrows. I know, I am dangerous.
Be brave...
i thought it was common knowledge...
after being stuck in the house the entire week taking care of my mother who hurt her knee, my amazing best friend took over today and told me to go take a break. of course i headed to target. i mean, really, where else would you go after spending an entire week inside. i try to always bring my own bags for my stuff. i got some great ones at ikea for so so cheap. 
so as i was checking out i placed my bag on the conveyor and told the check out girl that i had another if she needed it. there were a few items that were large so i told her to skip the bag altogether. so when she handed me my filled bag, she said, "so you don't like plastic or something?" and for a minute i thought the entire recycling movement was something i had created in my own mind. then i realized that one of my reusable bags was from target. i kind of just nodded and maybe i said no, i can't actually remember because i was so confused by the fact that the girl did not seem to not that plastic bags are just little piles of trash that will stay in the landfills for 10 years before they begin to degrade. or maybe it was a little confusing because the first item that i purchased was an industrial size pack of paper towels...
i'm it!
my dear, sweet, amazing, intelligent, funny best friend tagged me. and actually, i have never been tagged so i was a little excited. so i am supposed to say seven things about me. here goes...
1. it bugs me when blog posts do not have pictures. and cz said that pictures make your blog cool. and i need to be cool... so you will get pictures too. (the one in the photo who is way to excited about tj's is jen, the tagger.)
2. the house i now own is my childhood home. my family moved in shortly before i was born (35 years ago), my mother raised us here and after college and my mother's heart attacks, i returned home to care for momma. i don't know what it is like to not have a place in the world where i know that i always have and always will belong. no matter where i go, this place will always be home. i have some memory of every single room in this house of every stage of my life. it is a pretty good place to call home. (the picture is actually the "back house" on our property where mel and i lived before we started renting it out. now we live in the "big house".)
3. i am an introvert. as a youth leader, God challenged me greatly to reach out to students and to be comfortable in front of large groups. i do enjoy spending time with close friends, but it is hard for me to get excited about going - even though i always have a great time once i am there. i am definitely most comfortable at home alone with a book, art supplies or my sewing machine. i am thankful that i have such great friends who encourage me to get out of my comfort zone - or else i would be queen of the hermits. well, maybe princess... i think momma has the hermit queen title in her firm grip. (photo by Valentinian on flickr.com)
4. i have always had tons of pets in my life. even at moody, we snuck a kitten in for a week. growing up we each (four of us) had a cat and had a family dog. we also had hamsters, a bunny and fish - not all at the same time, mind you, but the minimum animals we have had in the house is 3. i didn't realize that our abundance was unusual until my childhood friend came by years later with her fiancee and said, "yeah, this was the best house. we had so much fun and there were always animals crawling all over." i will not tell you how many animals we presently have, but there is still room for olive.
5. i love hello kitty. i don't know why, but that little cat is so cute. i have underwear, jewelry, and a build a bear hello kitty. i love her, but i cannot explain it.
6. i was editor-in-chief of my college newspaper (that is my dorm building in the pic). it was challenging and very scary and one of the times in my life where i learned to lean on Christ. i had no experience and honestly, i think the advisor had no other choice. but i was excited and any editor is better than no editor. i was successful - due in no part to my abilities or knowledge. we received high desination from the college ap for the year i was editor. i was stretched and pushed in ways i didn't know were possible. i still dream about what it would be like to be a high powered newspaper editor. this does not mean i want all you genius grammarians to start correcting me. unless i really sound like an idiot.
7. i really want to work at target. i love the store. it is pretty and clean and i really want to use one of those "bleepers". you know the things that you use to ring up the items. but alas, they don't want me. so i will still hunger from afar and get my fix by going through the self checkout lanes whenever i come across one.
so there you have it. so now, who do i tag???
julie
petey
felicia
chiara
jennifer
big mama
judy
be brave...
Isaiah 41:10 "Don't panic. I'm with you. There's no need to fear for I'm your God. I'll give you strength. I'll help you. I'll hold you steady, keep a firm grip on you."
this is the quote that my best friend has included in her signature of all of her emails. today i really needed to hear it. i had set up three different creative projects to work on and post about but that was preempted by a day-long trip to the er with my mother. she was having severe knee pain and the ortho couldn't see her for a month - is there really that many people with bone problems? - so we opted for the much hated er hoping for at least an rx for some good drugs. we were succesful, and the pain ended up being arthritis that will probably need a cortisone shot. but for now vicodin will have to do the trick. so today i really needed to hear that God would hold me steady. as i have been lifting my seventy three year old mother many times a day it is overwhelmingly refreshing to know that, while i am holding on to her, He has a firm grip on me.
this entire year has been very difficult with financial stress (i know i am not alone there), putting our bulldog to sleep, taking a sabbatical from youth group... so earlier this year God gave me the thought - BE BRAVE! it became my mantra to help me get through all of the crap that came my way. and it has been encouraging to see how God has been encouraging me to be brave. from my best friend's email signature to the example of courage of moses' mother we studied in bsf, God continues to remind me that i can be brave as long as i remember that He has a firm grip on me.
so look forward to some projects and a revamped craft area coming soon. promise.
be brave...
<3 anna
busy...
today is one of those days where i am just running around trying to get a bunch of random things done. and i have a wedding to go to... so that should be fun. at least it is an outdoor wedding so i will be able to get out in the beautiful weather. i have been stitching and working on felicia's fall quilt as well as trying to get my new sewing space organized. hopefully i will be able to show a before an after by the end of the weekend. have a happy day.
be brave.
it's a girl...
meet olive izabelle...
so, assuming God performs a miracle and the columbian (yes, you heard me right - long story) lady who owns her gives us an amazingly low price, little olive will be coming to live with us in january 09.
i cannot believe that it has been ten months since we had to put daisy down. i can still feel her litte paw in my hand at the last doctor's appointment. but i told mel that i didn't want to have another bulldog for at least a year. when we were kids and a pet passed away mom would just get us another one. i know it was her way of comforting us, but i think there is value in allowing yourself to grieve.
so, yes i do think it is providence (come on, you know you want to sing old school michael w. smith) that little olive was born in columbia (yes, the country), that mel just so happened to be working in the office that the mother of the woman in columbia cleans at night, that they happened to see daisy's picture and hear the sad story of daisy's brain tumor, that a native columbian works in the office with mel fell in love with olive's sister and is working to get the price lowered. the fact that she will be ready to come home at the exact time i said i wanted to think about another is just the cherry on top.
moral of the story: God gives good gifts. and yes jen, a slobbering bulldog IS a good gift.
**Edit... apparently there is a difference in being from puerto rico or columbia. so, yeah the girl at mel's work is actually puerto rican. whatever, angie. lol.
be a follower...
okay, so the blogger people are geniuses. or maybe i am just a little slow. i was taking a little too much time out of my real job checking blogs to see who had updated and, i must admit, getting a little frustrated when there was not a new post. then i discovered that the blogger people have something to fix that. you can follow blogs. you just put in their name on your dashboard and it tells you when someone on your list has updated their blog. i am in love with the person who came up with that. i can check on all of my blog friends with one click. you can follow anonymously or with the blogger knowing that you are following.
i also want you to follow donna downey in her quest to make the world more creative. that is why i have her cute button over there on the left. she has inspired me in more ways than one. i know she will inspire you too!
be brave, friends!
<3 anna
see, i really am crafty...
three of my closest friends and i realized that we weren't getting together as often as we liked (only on birthdays, holidays, etc) and that when we did get together we spent most of that time catching up. so, earlier this year we decided to have purposeful get togethers every four to six weeks. it all started with our trip to the botanical garden. it is affectionately call the KLAM dig (using all of our initials-mel is so smart) because the point is for the four of us to come together and "dig" into things that one of us enjoys. as a result we have fun and the other three learn something about the fourth. so september was my turn. i planned to go to the state fair - which i LOVE - but the weather threatened to make the day very wet so i decided that we would have an art day. i took all of these supplies out... 
and we each chose a name out of a hat and created a piece of art for that person. we were not allowed to tell whose name we had and at the end of the day we tried to figure out who the art was made for. it was such a FUN day. the girls - who occasionally mock my craftiness - had so much fun. and the explanations behind the art were so meaningful. so here is what we ended up with...
my canvas
kristy's canvas
lynn's canvas
mel's canvas
and some pictures of my sweet, dear friends at work...
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