Kindred Spirits

I can't believe it, I got my second blog award today. I am so touched and honored. Vickie over at Vickie's Scrapbooking and Tidbits gave it to me. The longer I know her the more we find out that we have in common. We both live in Michigan, and she currently lives in the town I grew up in. So I can talk about stuff like Mile Roads and she knows what I'm talking about! She is married to an accountant so he's also a math guy just like Brad is. Brad's a chemist but double majored in mathematics too, he actually likes math better than science. Math runs in his family as his mother is a retired middle school math teacher. I'm a complete dunce when it comes to numbers and figures so let's home ER takes after him. We're both SAHM's, Vickie has three girls; I've always said I want to have three girls. We've got one down, and we'll have to see about the other two. For now, I can live vicariously through her. We both like purple, scapbooking, and reading history, especially about European royalty. I think it's safe to say we've also got a love of blogging in common too. I am so glad I clicked on someones Blog Around the World button on a whim, where I found her under the listings for Michigan. Speaking of which, I am now passing this award on to Joy at Joy to the Blog, who I also "met" at BATW. She's another Michigan blogger and she lives right by me! We both love glittery things and thrifting; she's introduced me to some great stores in our area. I can't believe how much fun I am having in such a short time and all the great ladies I've met! I wanted to start a blog for a long time before I did and I am so glad I jumped on the bandwagon.

Big Bright and Beautiful Bags

I used to carry cute little handbags and prided myself with how much I could fit in a tiny little bag. Well those days are certainly LONG gone and their disappearance coincided with the arrival of a certain little someone. Now I find my collection of cute totes ever growing along with the pile of pull ups, wipes, snack cups, drink boxes, toys, crayons, books, and my own stuff like wallet and cell phone that all need to fit in them ever growing.

These days I'm carrying this sizable bag from, gasp the ultra uncool Land's End, and I'm lovin' it. It fits all my stuff and camera with room to spare. Plus it's so colorful it's bound to match nearly anything I'm wearing. Yes I'm one of those people, type A enough to bother changing what I'm carrying to match today's outfit. The only downside is no zipper, but sometimes you have to make sacrifices for fashion!

One of the reasons I got a sewing machine all those years ago in the first place was to make my own bags. Fast forward a few years and actually using it to make anything has become one of this year's resolutions. As you know from past posts, I've had some sucess but definitely have a LONG way to go. Spent some of my baby free time yesterday while the MIL watched our kiddo at Barnes & Noble in the craft section reading up on how to make it around the dreaded curve.

Since I am so far from making my own little, I mean my own big bag to carry I'm always excited to see a chance to carry an exclusive design and not have wait until I can maintain a seam allowance and learn all that right side to right side stuff. Keri over at Quaint and Quirky is celebrating her one year blogiversary and giving away this lovely one she made. After the last few dreary days of MI weather and being in a car accident I could use a little ray of sunshine don't cha think? So when I saw the big bright flower on it, I knew it would be just the thing to cheer me up. So go on over, say hi, and enter. Once I get up and posting my own craftiness more, I even hope to sign up for her Sew Craft Blog. I'm really a scrapbooking and papercrafts gal, but trying to branch out into more general crafty goodness, wonder what category I'd fit in.

She is very crafty and sells handmade things on Etsy, where I love to waste way too much time browsing. She even has a blog post on Henry VIII, for those of you not in the know British history is an obsession of mine and besides scrapbooking and crafting books often the only other thing I read. I have the book she mentions too, the author Alison Weir is supposed to be in my area next month. Keep your fingers crossed that she actually makes it for the book signing. She's my all time favorite author and the one who started my whole love of England. I'm more excited about meeting her than any movie star. Yep, I'm a big history nerd! And how lucky was Keri to go to England for her honeymoon! That's where I wanted to go, but settled for Maui instead because I hate flying and when we lived in CA it wasn't ever going to be a shorter plane ride there. When Brad moved me against my will to NM from CA if we hadn't gotten pregnant within the first year, we were going to go to England, well you all know how that turned out! Not that I'd ever trade ER for a trip to England...

Home Again

Breakfast at Grandma's, such a nice way to start the day! We got up bright and early because some of our little friends had their birthday party this afternoon; we needed to get moving. After a quick bite and a little snow play, we were off. Like usual ER couldn't go directly to the car, she immediately stomped through the snow drifts on the porch, put her mitten into piles on the side of the driveway, and started a snowball fight with Daddy. There's nothing like a child to put a smile on your face!

Thanks for the comments and emails expressing concern and thankfulness that we're okay! In the grand scheme of things it was a minor accident with just the back end damaged. The drive home was slow going and we did see a truck spin out ahead of us, luckily almost everyone slowed down and there wasn't yet another accident. But wouldn't you know, in the left lane there were still impatient drivers, probably annoyed we'd come to a stand still trying to zoom around. People like that should stay home and not endanger everyone else. I know we're a society of cell phones, but when your car is skidding around the corner maybe it's time to hang up. We saw more than one driver weaving, who was on the phone. We also saw a multi-car accident with the cars banged up quite a bit more than ours, so yet another reason to be thankful for our outcome. We've decided it was a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, because that woman was going to hit whoever was in front of her; it just happened to be us.

As far as ER is concerned this weekend was great fun: made brownies with Grandma on Saturday, ate them with ice cream, jumped around in the snow today, played with friends at the birthday party, and got to eat a big cupcake with pink frosting.