My Grandma Ellen

Today would have been my grandma Ellen's 98th birthday.
Here is a picture of her when she was young:Ellen Wilhelmina Olson VanDerWerf

Wasn't she pretty? Holidays always remind me of her. Especially Christmas when she would make each of us 11 grandchildren and the 5 sets of aunts and uncles sugar cookies with our names written in frosting on them.

forboding

I'm not too sure but I think it's bad when I get to work and sit down at my desk and I have the overwhelming urge to get up and go back home.

That's never a good way to start the day.

I experimented with a cookie recipe last night. I will post pictures tonight and talk about them.

Living alone

I have been living alone for two full days now. I'm not used to it yet. With the house being so clean I don't feel like I should do anything that would make more cleaning for me to do. So I've been drawing and playing spider solitare. I finally cooked something tonight (first time since last week).

Jeremy is doing well in Seattle, finding his way around and exploring new restaurants that we both will be going to when I finally get out there. He is enjoying his new job and I am so happy that he is working for Nintendo.

Work is work, It was a busy and hard day for resolutions but I ended up getting all but four of them done. A total of 111 resolutions today.

It's amazing how fast you grow accustom to having someone around and then when they are away how jarred your life seems, empty almost. I'm doing well though for my husband being 1600 miles away. more tomorrow...

wacky weekend

So we went to Jer's Aunt's house yesterday for his family's traditional Thanksgiving. Man was that turkey good. We were there for a bit, and Jer finally told his family that we were leaving, and they were really shocked but excited. They asked when Jer was leaving and he said "tomorrow". So we came home and cleaned some more. I got up at 7:30 this morning to start cleaning more...Jer was up by a record time of 8:30 (for a Sunday that is unheard of). We worked really hard, vacuumed the entire house again, I cleaned the bathrooms again, we moved more and more stuff to the garage, finally at about 12:40pm we walked through the house as if we were the ones looking to buy, and our verdict was yes!

So we left feeling like our house was ready to be shown to potential buyers. We swung over to Best Buy because we bought a point and shoot camera and the guy forgot to add the service package on. After settling that, we headed to the mall for Jeremy's final Minnesota meal. He got ManchuWok (orange chicken is his favorite) and I got A & W. We stopped in at Zales to see if his watch was back from being repaired (it wasn't) and then headed out to the Rochester Airport to drop him off. He is now on his way to MSP and then out to SEATAC airport and Nintendo!

I have returned home to a pristine 4 bedroom house, Now what? It's very quiet and odd.

Who wants to come over?

My Brother's blog

Welcome to blog-land DAN!

Now we just need to get dad blogging and it's the whole family!

Mexican Thanksgiving Scramble

Today was the day we had our official Thanksgiving planned. We had decided to make home-made tortillas, refried beans and the fixings instead of turkey and stuffing. So this afternoon Candi (my second sister) and my mom rolled up 52 balls of carbs... I was sleeping because of course today I woke up feeling rotten. While we were finishing up getting ready for dinner ( mom was rolling out the tortillas, Candi was cooking them, and I was cutting tomatoes, olives, and cheese) my phone rang. It was Edina Realty looking to see if they could show our house on Sunday at 1:15 pm. Well that changed the plans for the evening. Since dinner was finished the whole family (Jer, myself, Dad, Mom, Candi, Hailey, and Logan) have been cleaning the house from top to bottom. We've moved furniture, moved lots of stuff to the garage, went through clothes to be donated, and clutzy me split my mom's glass of raspberry wine right on the floor in the living room...sigh...always me...

Anyway, I'm now tired, but there is still much more to be done. The food was fantastic, in fact I'm thinking of having a couple tortillas now!

Happy Turkey/Ham Day

I am currently at work, with three resolutions in my inbox and three samples to track in...then nothing...

I'm so thankful for people covering most of my shift today!

Then it's home to eat ham and scour the ads for shopping chaos day tomorrow.

Hope you all are safe and enjoying some form of good homecooked food!

awesome co--worker

Well "Swanksgiving" is tomorrow (see Erin's blog to find Carla's blog about the word swanks) and it is my holiday to work. However this morning my co-worker M. came over and asked if I had family coming into town...I do indeed I told him, and he said that he would like to save his vacation time so he wanted to work for my shift tomorrow! Well I checked my own bank of vacation and realized yes he could work for me for 5 of my 8 hour shift. I was 3 hours shy of having the whole day off. But the assistant boss approved the coverage switch so I only work from 8-11 am tomorrow!

I then have the rest of the day and Friday off! Which is a great thing since Jeremy is flying out Sunday from the Rochester Airport to Redmond. He will be gone 3 weeks and then they are going to fly him home around the 20th for Christmas break.

Yay he's going to be home for Christmas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That is the major thing I am swankful for. I am also swankful for an extra week to clean our house as the holiday pushed off our "Realtor Walk-through" from yesterday to today.

edit: if you read my post earlier...I apologize for the typo...I'm so sorry!!!!! If you didn't see it...swank heavens for that!

microwaves stink!

I am disgusted with our microwave. When Jeremy and I came back from our camping excursion in July, our microwave didn't work. It would light up, turn on, spin around, time everything, but no heat...

we finally got around to calling a repairman over this because of selling the house and everything...

$220 to repair!

stupid expensive electronics...

sigh...hopefully we can get out of the house before anything else happens.

update on the house cleaning

We have all the upstairs but the spare room cleaned. We still have the downstairs to do as well. Jer got up early and went out to "rake" mow the lawn and just as he finished with the last bag and it started to snow/rain. We then hauled all the bags (in two trips) to the compost site and made it home to shovels some food in and welcome our Realtor over to start the paperwork for selling the house. Tomorrow he is bringing by the official for sale sign. Tuesday his team is coming through to give us pointers on things we should pack away and how we should rearrange furniture or things.

it's thanksgiving week... mom and dad are coming wednesday and so are Candi and the kids and maybe Erikk...so our house is almost clean for them but clean for the showings too...

i'm tired, can I have a break now? tomorrow is the complete downstairs...and work...

Samurai Bunny Beginnings

So one of the things I am doing to get ready for going to Washington is to learn as much computer science as I can as well as hone in my drawing skills with the graphic tablet my husband got me for Christmas a couple years ago. It's almost like learning to draw all over again, probably the main reason I haven't used it as much as I should have.

Anyway I picked it up tonight and decided to draw:
So that is my Samurai Bunny as it stands right now. I am going to come back to it and continue to work this picture as the days pass and I am all alone in the house. If you want to see more things I have done, see my blog links and click on My Artwork.

shopping and cleaning

The never-ending job of cleaning and preparing for our house to be officially on the market is tuckering me out and it's only been two days. Jeremy was feeling the same way after vacuuming out the garage and rearranging things, so we went to the mall for dinner and browsing. We hit the usual GameStop for him - they have new carpet, a new counter, and a reorganized store. We oogled the different games we wanted, then headed out the JC Penny for some browsing. We ended up finding three pair of pants for him for work, and one teal sweater for me. That's a red letter day because I usually don't find things that fit or look good.

Yay for new sweaters.

Birthday Wishes with snow

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERIN! I hope you are having a wonderful day. It's snowing down here...just for you...and maybe so we don't have to do yard work...


Welcome to year 26, it's been great for me, hope it's great for you too!

BIG NEWS REVEALED!!!!!!!

Jeremy accepted a position at a new company. He will be working for Nintendo. That's right, home of Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Princess Peach, Koopa, Bowser, Wario, and all their friends. This job is obvious not in Minnesota. It is in Redmond, Washington. We're moving!!!!! Hence the Realtor, housing selling, major cleaning jobs going on, and the reason I am not at my job today.

Jeremy helped me get the books packed, we have four overstuffed shelves of books so there were many boxes. I went through the pantry and cleaned that up, did the dishes, and now am trying to decide what my next plan of attack is. I have already taken and pared down my closet to half of what was in there (stuff I haven't worn in 1-2 years). We need to move so much stuff out of the house to get it sold...it's going to be a long couple weeks.

So Jeremy starts at Nintendo, believe it or not, the week after Thanksgiving. He will be gone for three weeks (basically right after Thanksgiving to right before Christmas). I will be work on getting the house ready to sell (it will be on the market as of Tuesday)...and keeping in clean and still getting prepped to move across the country. I am also trying to prepare myself with as much computer information and graphic design information as possible because the recruiter at Nintendo asked me to send my resume in too...

I haven't lived outside of Minnesota for more than 2.5 months at a time in my entire life. This is so exciting. My best friend from high school lives four hours south of where we are going to be and that's so awesome! I have extended family out in the area as well so I hope not to feel so homesick.

so...life is a roller-coaster and Jeremy and I are gripping on for dear life trying not to fall out.
Please pray for the perfect buyer to come along quickly that would like to buy our house for what we posted so we don't have debt when we leave Minnesota.

Holy moley, batman!

So we're putting our house up for sale. That's part of the big news. And the realtor wants to take pictures of our house today. Problem? I've been gone since Wednesday, and my house is a sty. So I will be cleaning all night long, and packing....and cleaning.

Holy crap this is craziness.

Project Runway

So I turned on the tv when I got home tonight and realized that the new season of Project Runway starts tonight on Bravo. This coupled with the weekend of sewing made me get my sewing machine out and set it up to finish a few things that I didn't get to finish at quilt retreat...

PROBLEM!

I forgot my iron at camp. sigh... I guess it's not so bad. I believe I am going to go out and get a new iron anyway (since the one I got was older and I'd like a new one like my mom brought to Quilt retreat that was Teflon and had a retractable cord.

Plus those major changes I was talking about are presenting a million things that I need to do personally. I would like to say, NO the major change is NOT me being pregnant. I repeat, I am NOT pregnant. But I can say I am happier than ever to go to work these days and as bad things happen there I am able to shrug them off and just turn the volume up on my I-pod.

Yesterday I had my final post surgery checkup and I am happy to say I don't have to use my Vacation time to go to the doctor anymore.

Photos from the weekend

So here are some of the photos from quilt retreat. To see all the ones I have upload go to:

my flickr site

Here is the mittens my Mom, sister, and I made at quilt retreat. I love them They are made out of old wool sweaters that have been felted and cut out.

Here are the cloth napkins my mom taught Tia and I to make. Mine are the center ones, mom's are the snowflake ones, and Tia's are the floral ones.



This is Jan, I love this lady. She is a wealth of Knowledge and I learn so much from her every time I go to retreat.


Kristi had this strip quilt that she worked on all weekend. I love these colors. They were a theme for many projects being worked on this retreat.

Erin's mom was making these Westies Dogs. I love them too! the texture of the white fabric was brilliant for the dog fur!

And now I shall be done blogging for the night. See Erin, Kristi- you have created a monster - 3 times in one day!

sadness

It is with much sadness that I say that I have officially returned the 160 G I-pod to Bestbuy today because my teeny tiny 30 G I-pod is back from being repaired.

I am sad because it held so many songs, books, and podcasts that I never even got it filled to a quarter of the way full. I did get a shiny new 30 G but it's small...so tiny...

now begins the process of what shall go on this small I-pod and what must retreat back to the server whence it came.

sigh...good by Marian Zimmer Bradley books, goodbye Harry Potter series, and goodbye most of the Podrunner and Ask a Ninja Podcasts.

someday batman...i will have my revenge!

things are changing

I did not get the pictures uploaded last night because there are big things happening here in Rochester on Emerald Lane. I can officially declare anything yet, but check back later this week and you might find some huge news and excitement going on.

I miss quilt retreat after one day of work. Can't we retreat most of the year and work for three days twice a year?

I think that should be Kristi's campaign platform!

Who's with me?

quilt retreat

I am home from the quilt retreat with a little bit done and lots more to finish. I worked on my turning twenty red,black and white quilt and got all the pieces sewn into blocks, now I just need to square them up and sew them together. I also started on my tablecloth that I have fallen in love with and have a bunch of embroidery to do on it before I can sew the pieces together. My mom brought the patterns for making placemats and napkins and I finished all 8 napkins and 2 of the four placemats before I had to leave. I also took a class on making mittens from felted old wool sweaters (I love them!)

I can say this year the hardest part of going to quilt retreat was the drive home. I was more tired than I felt when I started out but pulled over passed the cities for gas and got a snack to keep me awake.

I came home to find Jeremy excited to have me home, the house look much like I left it (excluding 3 more knives in the sink) and to feel really happy to be home. I snuggled up down stairs in my new Wood Lake zip up hoodie and watch Night at the Museum with Jeremy. It was hilarious - definitely on my must own list. I fell asleep watching another movie and woke up at 1:30 am to Jeremy telling me to go to bed upstairs. Man I missed our bed.

I will post pictures of progress from the quilt retreat tonight. Hope you all have a good Monday back from retreat.

apologies

I had no idea that people were checking my blog (people other than those that share the same parent as me). I apologize for the lack of posts. Now that I know that you are out there...I will strive to be more attentive to my blogs.

I am quilt retreat this weekend. I have brought a suitcase of stuff to work on and am enjoying the time away from work. I was surprised and mostly happy to wake up to the light flaky snow coming down, the view from our cabin was gorgeous. I will post pictures once I get home and shrink them.

A group of trooped into Grantsburg to stop at the local Ben Franklin and made a pit stop at the library to get our "fixes" on the internet.

If you have ever tried and found a second blog I have about experiments in the kitchen, here is the link:


http://kitchenstoriesetc.blogspot.com

That is where I experiment with cooking, baking, and eating.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle **cue G.I. Joe Theme song**
Back to the sewing machine!
Check back soon, I have resolved to be better about updating!