Phase II Complete!

Here are some pics from Phase II of the Closet Project. I decided to put this one against the side wall of the closet because of all those wires. Those wires, by the way, and the hole in the wall there, are all part of the wall computer.These 2 drawer units were the other part of Phase II. Those will be against the back wall for sure. Phase III will be on top of those two units.
And I re-arranged Phase I so that it is against the other side wall. There is still more than enough room to open the drawers, and it is much more easily accessible when facing this way.

Closet Renovation Project, Phase I

I decided that I would like a place to keep all my craft things together in one place- organized!!
So, I drew up a plan and calculated cost, and after it was approved by the "building manager" (tee hee), I began my project. Now, I didn't think to take a pic of the closet before I took all the stuff out, but here is what used to be haphazardly piled in there, now temporarily covering the floor in the library...
So far, I have completed "Phase 1" of the assembling of organizational units. Here is a picture of it...
The top is for my tiny supply of sewing things, the middle thingy is for yarn, and the bottom for some scrapbooking stuff. Phase II begins...NOW!

ALOHA!

Well, my Dad turned 50 on Saturday. And my sister Sarah turned 24- they share a birthday!
I put together a Luau in honor of the occasion.
Here are Maggie, Dad, me and Sarah in our Hawaiian duds.
Here's the birthday girl and guy...and Delilah too. She helped blow out the candles!
Maggie and Oliver getting a snack. Even Oliver had on a Hawaiian shirt!
Dad and Delilah being goofy.
It was a fun party. We had good food and fun games. And we found out that Greg can hula hoop like a pro! We got quite a few in on the hula-hooping. It was fun to watch. I even tried it myself, but I wasn't any good. Dad liked the scrapbook that Maggie and Sarah and I put together for him. And Dad and Sarah both liked their "birthday stockings", which were made out of some really pretty hawaiian fabric. It was a good day!

For the Trekkie part of me...

Check it out! A signed picture of Levar Burton a.k.a. Geordi Laforge, Chief Engineer of the USS Enterprise 1701-D. And E, actually. Dad brought this back for me from his stay at the Star Trek Hilton in Las Vegas. It's the coolest! Thanks again, Dad!

More Hiking

This is from a couple weekends ago, but I'm just now getting around to putting it up. Dave and I took Benjamin and Andrew hiking somewhere on or around Pisgah. It was really a nice day- not too hot up at that higher elevation. We carried the food up and had a little picnic on top of the mountain. Beautiful view!!
We got a good pic of Ben trying to keep from falling off the mountain...and Andrew too...


And here is Dave...King of the Mountain! He suggested we just build us a house up there, but somehow I don't think they'd let us! It was a beautiful view though!

We saw it!

Yes, a couple nights ago, we went out on our porch after dark and looked into the night sky, and witnessed the passing over of the International Space Station! And we could see the shuttle following behind it. It was moving fast!

Happy Flowers

Dave brought me these flowers yesterday...aren't they pretty? He made dinner last night too! What a guy!

Tale of a Saturday

Saturday, we went to Mt.Mitchell for a picnic and a hike. Sarah, Greg and Delilah came with us. We got some supplies and drove up the parkway. Here are us 3 girls at our picnic.
Unfortunately, the Observation Tower was closed, so we didn't get to hike to the top of the mountain. Instead we went on one of the lower trails.
But before we hiked, we went into the little museum. There were lots of neat things about the mountains of NC, including this old mountain man that Dave got his picture with (the only time we caught him on camera). Delilah was having fun pushing buttons...but when she pushed the one that made this big guy start talking, it scared her a little!
Here we are by the spring. This was on the first part of the trail. It was a tiny spring- just a trickle of water coming out of the mountain. It was nice and cool, and we all took a taste- refreshing!
Here is Delilah with the trail sign(she wore her safari dress). This is the trail we walked...all the way up to where it met another trail, but it was detoured because of the observation tower being closed, so we had to hike back the way we came. Altogether we hiked a little over a mile and a half! It was a fun day!

Crazy Cat!

This is Pip's favorite new hang out- in the flower box on the front porch. Today I caught him napping there, so I took his picture. These cats pick the funniest places to sleep sometimes.
We found a new website called Chore Wars (chorewars.com). You can enter in all the chores for the house, and then claim one each time you complete it to earn points and "treasures". And you are "competing" against the other people in your group. It's good for family chores, or really anything that has to be done. We've been having a lot of fun with it....and getting a lot done in the meantime!
Yesterday in the mail, I got a postcard from Warm Up America thanking me for the knitted and crocheted squares I sent....in February. Strange, huh? Yeah, Mom and Aunt Sandy and I all knitted or crocheted squares for the "Knit-In" on DIY during the Superbowl and I sent them in the next week. We need to do that again...
Dave is building us some cabinets and shelves in some of those indents around our fireplace. They are coming along well so far- I'll have to post a picture when he finishes the first one. He is making the doors to match our coffee table that he made before. And we are working toward getting some paint on the walls!!!! The only problem is figuring out where to put it exactly because the living room has all kinds of outcroppings and indents and crazy shaped walls. I've got the colors all picked out though.
Well, I guess that's about all for now.

Harriman Family Reunion

Here are a few of the many pictures we took during the Harriman Family Reunion , which took place last weekend. We all had a great time visiting, eating, swimming, playing games, and just hanging out. We had a big barbecue lunch on Saturday and spent a lot of time in the pool. Saturday night, we all gathered at the Hayes home for pizza and games. A lot of the guys played video games and several girls played an exciting game of *Pink* Yahtzee. Sunday morning we all enjoyed breakfast at Highland Lake Inn, then went to church. Then we gathered at the Hayes home again for more food and fellowship. It was a great weekend!

2007- Half Full or Half Empty?

Well, the year is half over, and ours has certainly been full so far! Dave has taken quite a few trips so far- 2 in Massachussetts, 2 in China, one in Germany and one in Pennsylvania (I got to go for that one) for a grand total of 57 days! The rest of the time he's been working, weeding, fixing computers, and making a computer model of our house.

I've kept busy with painting, knitting, rearranging the furniture, visiting family, playing Yahtzee, helping out at Kolorful Kitchen now and then...and being a member of the Henderson County Grand Jury.

We had that frost, which stunted the growth of our lilies and our Japanese Maple tree. They both ended up coming back, but they look a little worse for wear. Here is a picture of Dave and Delilah looking at a turtle that lives on the side of our house. He wouldn't peek out of his shell for us.Ah yes, and we got a Wii. It's pretty cool. We like playing the games on it- it gets us up off the couch. It does other cool stuff too, like show you your weather, surf the net, communicate with other Wii's, etc. Plus you can get older Nintendo games on it...we have the original Super Mario Brothers now. That sure brings back some memories!

Oh yeah- I added a 3rd contest to the Contests for Fun blog. Check it out! The link is over on the side somewhere ----------------------------->

Greetings from York!

Well, here we are in PA. Right now I am at the hotel catching up on emails. Dave is off working. Soon I will get to my knitting. I got a good bit done yesterday, then ran out of my yarn, so we stopped last night and got some more. After dinner last night we walked around the closest mall. It was big, but not many people were there. Then we went by Dunkin Donuts for dessert/breakfast. Yum!
Tomorrow we hope to go and check out some of the local attractions...maybe Hershey Park, maybe a tour through the Amish country, maybe Gettysburg- we really haven't decided yet. We might get to do more than one if we time it right.
Hopefully we'll have some pictures to post when we get back home.

Off Again, Off Again, Jiggety-Jig

We just had a very nice visit with our parents Carlson...they came and stayed with us for a few days before heading back to St.Louis. We enjoy having our guest room filled, and it was a nice treat to have them as company. We even drove down to GA for a day to visit with the Croteaus too (Dave's sister and family). Kelly (our niece) just finished 6th grade and won all sorts of awards- she's a smart one! This is my new reed diffuser that I got at Pier One. I wanted to try one out to see if they really were as good as they claimed to be. I have to say yes. The scent of this one is "Downpour". It smells very nice, and keeps the living room constantly scented, but it is a nice subtle scent, not overpowering. And I thought it looked really good with the river rocks around it on this candle platform thingy (thanks Sarah!).
Well, Dave's got another trip and this time I get to go with. So tomorrow evening we leave for four days in York, PA. I am going to take some unfinished knitting projects for the 2 days Dave will be working, and Saturday we'll check out some of the local attractions. Then we fly home Sunday morning. I'm sure Dave is sick of traveling, but it will be my first trip in a while, so I'm excited.

Toes Like an Ogre...

Delilah and I went shopping together yesterday, and decided we needed some new toe polish for the summer. Delilah picked out a very nice sparkly pink and a sparkly purple. My choice you see above... Not sure what I was thinking. I guess I just wanted something a little different. The color is called "Go Go Green", but Delilah, having Shrek fresh on the brain, decided that it was "Ogre Green". Well, I went ahead and tried it out (I know toes are ugly, but here they are...)
Yes, here are my Ogre Green toes. Aren't they......swampy? LOL!! Well, if "different" is what I wanted, I got it. I thought it was hideous at first, but it's growing on me.
All right, well that's all for now- I'm supposed to be cleaning! -Rachael

Lilies After All...

Well after that frost a while back, all our lilies were dead and wilted. I thought for sure we just wouldn't have them this year. However, with the warmth and spots of rain, they have made a comeback! They are looking very healthy these days- and growing very nicely. Should be some flowers coming up pretty soon. I can't say the same for our maple tree though, it's still mostly dead. Too bad, because it's a really pretty tree.

Only 220 Days Until Christmas...

Well, after all the traveling in March and April, we thought Dave might be home for a while, but it didn't turn out to be the case. He left again on Tuesday on another trip to China. He'll be getting back on the 26th. I had gone and renewed my passport so I could start traveling with him, but it didn't get here until 2 days after he left. Actually, this was much earlier than I expected it, because they told me it would take ten weeks from when I sent it off. So, I am ready for the NEXT trip...
I tried a new banana bread recipe last night. I got it from BettyCrocker.com. It uses Bisquik. It's quite tasty. It has lots of walnuts in it, which in my opinion, is the only way to eat banana bread. I had a slice hot out of the oven last night with butter melted all over it- yum!
Well...I thought I had more to write about, but I've gone completely blank. I guess I will add more later if it comes back to me...

Mother's Day

For Mother's Day, we made our yearly trip to the Greek Luncheon in Asheville. Pictured L to R: Diane (my mom), Dale, Greg, Sarah, Dave, Delilah and me. We ate chicken and rice, pastichio, spanikopita, some kind of meatballs, good bread, and of course, dessert. I had a Napoleon- yum!
After we ate, we headed over to the WNC Nature Center and walked around. We saw the wolves, the bears, the deer, the hawks....and the peacock! We got to pet the goats and the sheep, and we even saw some baby chickens and little piggies. It was a lot of fun!
This old tractor was outside the barn there, and Dave hopped on for a minute, so I took his picture. We all got a good laugh. After we left the Nature Center, we went to the Marble Slab Creamery and got ice cream. It was a good day.

QUARANTINE

Last weekend, I attended the Alliance Women's Retreat for our area/region....whatever it is. It wasn't far from home, just down the road to Ridgecrest. It was a great conference. The speaker was very good, and I came away with many things to ponder.
Unfortunately, I also came away with a virus. There were over 1000 people at Ridgecrest over the weekend (not just Alliance Women, there were about 600 of us), so it was bound to happen. It hit me Tuesday full force and I spent the last 3 days with a sour stomach and not feeling too keen. Today is the first day I have felt better, but I woke to discover that I had shared the nasty little virus, and now Dave is suffering from it. I guess when you're married, you really do share *everything*. So, I have quarantined us. Dave stayed home today, and the weekend is here, so we don't have to go anywhere or see anyone. We'll just stay home and get to feeling better.
On another note, it rained today! And yesterday. And it's supposed to rain tomorrow. We needed it. Maybe this will give all the little plants that were killed by that frost we had a couple weeks ago a second chance. I'm really hoping my lilies come back. I will really miss them if they don't bloom this year.
Well, I am going to sign off. Much to catch up on after 3 days of being sick...

Yeah, Spring is Great, But.....

I do like Spring. The green, the flowers, the warmth, you name it. They're all great. HOWEVER, with the warmth and flowers come the bugs. Now, I don't mind most bugs. They fly around, they crawl around, they do what they have to do. What I do mind is finding spiders in my house. They hang out on the front door...those little jumpy ones. I opened the back door the other day and a little black spider fell onto my arm. Then yesterday, we noted the presence of a *very large* black spider in our bathroom(and I'm not exaggerating, even Dave called it "big"). Spiders are NOT my friends. I do not like spiders by any stretch of the imagination. They creep me out. So, on finding this big ol' spider in the bathroom, Dave tells me to go get it. Me, who in an extreme case will refrain from running from small spiders long enough to drop a shoe on them from as far away as I can stay while still holding the shoe over their location. I declined his idea and informed him that as man of the house, spider killing fell under his jurisdiction. OK. A little while later, I walked into the bathroom to find....the big ol' spider under a bowl. I'm not sure what the idea was behind this unless Dave was just making sure I saw what my fate could have been. Apparently, the big ol' spider had been hanging out on the hamper, which I had just carried across the whole house the day before. I shiver when I think of it. Anyway, bowl and big ol' spider were gone this morning, but don't think I wasn't shaking out my towels and checking behind anything I had to pick up in there this morning. He might have had friends...

German Cuckoo Clock

This is the German Cuckoo Clock Dave brought back from his last trip. Isn't it pretty? When it cuckoos, a little bird comes out the door at the top, and the little guy chops on his wood.
Here is a close-up of little wood-chopper guy.
This is the owl from the opposite side. The clock is very detailed.

And of course, no home is complete without a cat. So I took this tiny blown glass cat I had gotten in Massachusetts and set him in the scene. He was the perfect size!

Snow in April??

OK, maybe it wasn't quite THIS MUCH snow. (this picture is from last year) but we did get about an inch of snow on Saturday night, the 7th. And it just finally got warm again yesterday, but windy. The snow didn't hang around long, and was melted by Sunday night except in the shady spots. However, it was long enough to kill all my lilies, which had started to come up since it was so warm and nice. No lilies for me this year!! :o(

Most Recent Painting

Here is my most recent painting. I decided to try something other than landscape, because I don't seem to be much of a landscape painter. I thought this little chickadee turned out quite well for a first-time bird painting.

Somebody had a Birthday!

Delilah turned 3 on April 10. Here she is in one of her new dresses. She said she looked just like Belle (the princess from Beauty and the Beast).

Easter Egg Hunt

Sunday evening, we got together and hid some eggs for Delilah. Some of them had fun things inside, like stickers, ducky soaps and toys...even some jelly beans! She had fun finding them all and opening them up.

Visits

Here is a pic of us with Maggie, Bob and Oliver and Mom & Dale. Maggie and Bob came down for Easter. We had a spaghetti lunch and played some games (Apples to Apples and Swipe). Before that, we had a visit from our Carlson parents...unfortunately, Dave had to fly out to Germany the day after they got here, but he did get to see them a little.

Trip to MA

My last trip was to East Longmeadow Massachusettes for work. We flew from Asheville to Detroit and then to Hartford. One of the great lakes was frozen over. I went hiking on one of the weekends. It was snow covered and icy. That makes it more of a challenge. The mountains there aren't as high as ours but it was a nice view. We also were there when a snow storm came through. It snowed 10". My next trip is to Germany, maybe there will be snow there too.

My Floating Book Shelf

Here it is! I've been meaning to blog this for a while, but just haven't gotten around to it. This is my magical floating bookshelf. I made it myself. I used cat books because it was going in the dining room with all my little cat figurines. Neat-O, huh? It's UH-MAY-ZING!!

Rumbling Bald

Another trip to the cave last weekend. Last time I went was when before we were married. Larry, Brian, Greg and I went this time. I missed the trail to the entrance and it took a long time and a lot of climbing around on the outside to find it. Once inside, it opens up to a huge chamber. We camped overnight there once. Not a great idea to have a fire in this cave. Winding around and finding a new exit, we made it to the top and took the picture with the lake in the background. The bat is the only one we saw on this trip, and the were no cave bugs this time. We had fun and will probably go again. Next time I'm getting a different headlamp - the one I was using kept getting caught on rocks.

This Weekend

Saturday we drove down to Greenville to watch our niece, Kelly, compete in Bible Quizzing. She and her team did a great job! We forgot to take our camera with us, so unfortunately I don't have any pictures. :o(
After the quizzing, we went to lunch with everyone (that being Kelly, Jordan, Lisa, Mike, Brian and Christie). Then we did a little book and craft shopping. Leave it to me to be the only one that spent money! But I got 2 great cat books and some really neat soap molds, which I used that very night after we got home.
Then Sunday...we went to church, ran by the grocery store and then came home to prepare for our Superbowl gathering. Mom, Dale, Delilah and Aunt Sandy all came over to watch the game. We had too much food (including root beer floats!) and a lot of fun. We girls knitted and crocheted squares for Warm Up America during the game as part of DIY Network's "Knit-in". We got 8 done! You can see them on my knitting blog- the link is over there somewhere------>
Sometime during the evening, Super Dave flew through the living room in his red-checked cape, thus creating an instant sidekick! I am including a picture or three...

Last Weekend

Last weekend my sister, Maggie, came for a visit with her baby boy, Oliver. Mom and Dale and Sarah and Delilah came over and we had a fun time of visiting and playing games and eating tacos. The above pics are: Oliver with Aunt Sarah, Oliver with Maggie, and "Grandma" with her 2 little grand-chillins, Oliver and Delilah.

January

Well, here it is, nearly the end of January. We haven't really taken any pictures since Christmas, so I don't have one to post. We have been busy, however. It all started with a mission to clean out all the closets. Well, it turned into a huge project. We emptied the 2 closets in the guest room and computer room. A lot of stuff was thrown away, some was given away, and some was stored in rubbermaid containers to go in the garage. We now have 2 empty closets! As if that weren't wild n' crazy enough, we started moving furniture around too. Our living room is all rearranged, and now includes the computers. So, now we have one empty room just waiting for its true potential to be realized...ha ha ha. Can you tell I've been watching HGTV??
I guess that is the whole of our excitement for this month. Maggie is getting here today with little Oliver for a visit. That will end up the month nicely, then we'll have February...