rainy day randoms

It's raining...it's pouring...and I SHOULD be off somewhere snoring, but I'm not. I knew that Tropic.al Storm Ha.nna was gonna make this weekend a wash. My little "friend" (nobody special yet) is off in VA Bea.ch, in the middle of the storm for his job until Sunday. More power to him b/c I knew yesterday that whether or not I decided to take a shower today was questionable. I went to the grocery store last night, so I was ready to be holed up and vegged out on my couch watching HGTV and G. Gar.vin for the weekend. The only thing that disappointed me was that I wanted to take my baby J to King's Dom.inion for his birthday tomorrow. Since I let go of that idea, I spent my lunch hour on Friday, buying 7 gifts to celebrate his golden birthday, 7 y/o on the 7th.

Its been hard trying to wrap them while he's not looking. I plan to make it a scavenger hunt around the house and write little rhyme clues for him to figure out. It should be really fun to see the look on his face...my only concern being that he'll fall more in love with the boxes than he does the actual gifts. The last shipment that JJ received from PawPaw was in a long box. Initially, he was excited about seeing the toys and games that he couldn't bring back on the plane, but 5 minutes after that, he had cut a hole in the box, drew in a windshield and door handles and made it a car. Those toys and games got thrown to the side somewhere. He is SOOOOO my kid. That's why most of the things that I got him for his birthday are things that he has to build or put together, with the big ticket item being a Wii game that he wanted.

He finished an ice cream treat the other day and looked at the popsickle stick and said, "Mayne, I'm gonna need a whole lot more of these to make the house that I want to build." I almost got teary-eyed. I had never shown him the pics of my popsickle stick house, so this will be a joy to see. For much better results, I'll probably teach him how to draw a floor plan and a few elevations, so that the weight of the sticks doesn't cause a hardcore gangsta lean (like mine did).

I finally got off my a$$ and mounted the fireplace that I ordered for my livingroom. A fireplace wasn't on my "must have" list when I was shopping for a house, but the downstairs stays on chill mode during the winter months. I bought 2 floor heaters last year but they trip my circuit breaker and I've already had an electrician out here enough to last me the rest of the year. So I opted for something more aesthetically pleasing. And that's cool, but since it burns gel fuel, my hope is that its functional.

I love the way that it looks though. I finally bought some frames from Tar.get for the fleur de lis sketches that I picked up in the Fren.ch Mark.et during my trip back home. I really had no clue where I was going to put them when I bought them but I think that they compliment the adjacent abstract print nicely.



Plus, there are fleur de lis(s) at the tips of my cross.

Hopefully, this will be a nice backdrop for a WARM winter night. I think that I may be one green pillow away from my livingroom being complete. A coworker sent me some info about an inexpensive sewing class, since she knows that I want to do the bistro awnings for my kitchen bay window. Once I knock that out (and the backsplash), I will REALLY be in business.

Well aiight...I'm off to channel Dr. Se.uss.