Curated By Shelley

As I sit here staring out at the white snowy mess behind my house, I'm reminded again that I never posted my FINISHED deck pics. Oh how I wish it was warm and pretty out like in these pics! BEFORE: IN PROCESS: FINISHED:

What a year I faced this year... March 6 is when I found out I was going on layoff. March 20 was my last day before burning my three weeks of vacation. March 26 I headed to Nashville where my BFF Mandy and her husband took good care of a super depressed me. April 9 is when I found out I was going back in temporarily to cover someone's maternity leave. April 13 is when I started temp assignment. May 19 was when I finished my MBA. May 29 was my official last day before layoff. June 1 I filed for unemployment. The month of June saw me refinish the deck, clean out the garage, painting the kitchen, knitting furiously on Decimal for The Alpaca Yarn Co (wonder what ever happened to that....... ) June 24 I headed off to Pennsylvania for a reunion with all my dear friends there. July 9 I started teaching the first of what has now become several knitting classes. July 20 I found out that I was being brought in to interview for a couple of jobs I applied for at my company that were in the loc...

Before this goes into a indulgent post where I gloat over all my goodies...I must say...for me a big part of Christmas is the fun of getting other people JUST the right gift. My brother, sister and I all went in together on a Kindle for mom this year. Mom knew..and after MONTHS of research and debate finally decided on the Kindle versus the Nook. I've NEVER seen her so excited about a gift we got her...and we've gotten her some pretty awesome stuff in recent years. Not only did she play with it for 2 hours after present opening on Christmas Eve, but she got up early when I did on Christmas morning to ask me more questions (I already have a Kindle) before I left for my dad's house. I also think I did really well with my dad and stepmom this year. I made a hat for my stepmom this year, the Star Crossed Slouchy Beret, using less than a full skein of Berroco Lustra. She put it on right away when she opened it and kept it on for the next hour or so til she was too hot. For dad I...

So....as all my readers probably know...I drive a lot for work...like... a LOT. I think back to my early years as a rep (pre-GPS) and wonder how I'm still alive today sometimes. I mean...the number of times I was looking at printed directions or a map while driving.... I get chills when I think about it now! 3 or 4 years ago I decided I wanted GPS finally. I asked for Christmas, but Santa didn't grant my wish that year. Someone in my office mentioned that for about $100 I could buy a software program for my laptop, that came with a little USB GPS adapter. When working, it would allow my laptop to give me turn by turn directions. I liked how affordable this option was and jumped at it. And it worked okay most of the time. But occasionally the GPS would lose signal, or the computer would lose it, and it would take a while and some rebooting to get it working. Not exactly convenient or safe while driving. I'd had a few incidents that were frustrating but not critical. Then one...

Well...maybe they aren't necessarily related to that...but years ago I promised myself I'd never fly the Monday after thanksgiving again...it was the year that my friend Mandy and I had spent the previous week on a cruise in Hawaii. We flew from Hawaii back to LAX on a red eye Sunday night on United. Landed around 5am I think on Monday. I had a 7:30am flight from LAX to Oakland then on Southwest. I claimed my bags from United, hugged Mandy goodbye, and wandered off to find Southwest Check in. For those of you who know LAX, if member serves its kind of a big U shape, United is at one end of the U and Southwest at the other. I didn't know this at the time, or I would have just walked through parking lot to get to southwest. Instead, I dragged my heavy bags (pre-samsonite spinners days) ALL the way around the U. When I arrived at Southwest, the line was so long it stretched not only through the inside, but outside, and down past the next airlines's terminal. And this was ...

So during my last week in Hartford I finally had dinner with my new (old) boss. Its the first time I've seen him since he was in IL traveling for work back in like February. He asked me an interesting question at dinner "How did you keep yourself busy while on layoff". He went on right away to say that he knew how much I needed to keep myself busy, and talked about his struggles when he was just on his rolling lay off weeks. See, my boss, does NOT know the meaning of work life balance. He said that the first couple of weeks he was on rolling layoff he went home to Brazil, so that was easy, but his second two weeks were at home. He did some honey do activities the first couple of days into that first week..but after that he was going crazy not being able to look at his laptop or blackberry. Mind you, my boss normally DOES check his blackberry from the beach, in fact, he's been emailing me from his vacation THIS week. I answered, which I'll share below, but we came ...

Well 2009 has turned out to be a strange and interesting year for me. Looks like the last time I posted was in June, mid-deck refinishing...will have to dig up some "finished" pics to show off in a future post. But it looks amazing, and Elphaba and I have enjoyed spending time on the deck knitting, reading, eating, and just enjoying the summer weather. Other summer projects included painting the kitchen finally to match the rest of my house, cleaning out the garage, cleaning out the basement, lots of knitting, a little sewing, loading up stuff on our etsy store (Like Mother Like Daughter) , and spending a GREAT deal of time outside walking. Our average daily walk is between 4 and 5 miles. I also started teaching some knitting classes at my LYS, Village Stitches . I've taught 2 sock classes, both DPN and magic loop, and a tulip sweater class. Just started another sock class last night. Jennifer, the owner, has been great about working around my crazy schedule.... speaking...

So.....when I moved into my house I had a beautiful deck out back - compete with a gate so Miss E could enjoy the deck with me and I wouldn't worry about her running off. Only ONE small problem with my beautiful deck...the hideous red stain. In itself the red might not have been so awful (other then why on earth they would have chosen red is completely beyond me)...but it also was in desperate need of refinishing. The stain was peeling in many places. So....the first on my to do list of activities during layoff....refinish the deck! To set the mood...here is a before picture. So last week...can't remember which day...I set to work. First I got out my power sander and started sanding away some of the obvious peels. Then I headed to home depot to get paint and stain stripper. Since then I've been working 2-4 hours per day painting on the stripper, wetting everything down, and scraping it with a wire brush. Good times for sure! Slowly but surely though I'm starting to make...

Well I've been a horrible blogger these days! Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Plurk make it so easy to post little updates that it seems I abandoned my blog. For my readers who haven't seen/heard already....I'm unemployed as of Monday. I was notified on March 6 that I was being affected by the first round of layoffs for my division of the company. March 20 was my last day. They were generous and let us take our vacation, so the next three weeks I was on "vacation". My last day of vacation I received a call, someone doing my old job had just had a baby, and they wanted me to come in and cover her maternity leave. Fortunately for me, she covered the local area, so it was an ideal situation to prolong my layoff. As everyone around me expressed their hopes that she would not return from maternity leave after all, I was just grateful to have a job for a bit longer and an opportunity to put a little more money away. My savings have been .... well....tiny...since movi...

I decided to tackle some of the decorating around the house since I'm off both work and school this week. Basement Before: (Before you ask - the before pics are from the previous owners taken when I was househunting). Basement Now: Tomorrow I'll start hanging the assorted Disney artwork I've purhased to turn this into my Disney themed basement. The paint colors are both from Disney's Behr paint collection. The black is "Cinema Star" and the grey is "Mickey's Shadow". I've got a black slipcover for the sofa, a gigantic black beanbag, with plans for a red one as well, Disney pillows for the couch, and whatever else I can come up with without going over the top. The nice thing about using the black and grey as the paint colors - it will be SUPER easy to restage this into a more elegant look when the time comes to move again. In addition to the basement itself, I've been working on the basement powder room. Before: After: This paint color is ...