I finally finished all of my holiday cards, which include the 10 extras I had to made because I had let 10 people off of the growing card list. It took me about two hours tonight to cut all of the paper and stamp 10 cards, not a big deal.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any colder, it gets colder. Tomorrow is supposed to be the worst. Well, you live in Chicago, you should be used to the cold, well, I am not used to it being this cold this time of year. According to the guy on the news, this is the coldest Christmas we’ve had since 1983. So see, it’s usually not 12 degrees at the end of the December. Noooo, it usually waits until late January or February to get that cold! It was funny today, but not in a ha ha sort of way, I was outside running errands and it didn’t feel as cold as yesterday and it was colder outside today. The wind chill was colder but I must be getting used to the cold because I was able to walk about 50 feet without mittens on my hands and a scarf around my mouth.

Tomorrow will be a good day to stay inside most of the day. We will be finally hanging the lights in our apartment. We’ve had our little tree up for almost three weeks.

(a bit like Charlie Brown’s tree after they’ve decorated it) (And yes, those are Barbie ornaments in the tree and on the table.) But we haven’t gotten around to putting the lights around the sliding glass doors. We’re having Christmas dinner at our house so I would like the place to look a bit more festive. It’s my first Christmas away from my family (we did Thanksgiving with my family this year) and it’s going to be different. It’s all part of getting married, although I am missing a bit of the Christmas feeling that I have when I am at my parents’ house at this time of year. My mom always has the house so beautifully decorated.

We are attending Christmas services at the Unitarian Church tomorrow night. Growing up our church never had Christmas services, unless Christmas was on a Sunday. And the Unitarian Church celebrates a lot of things in a very unique way, which I love, so it will be a special Christmas for Bryan and I, our first Christmas as a married couple. Just a bit of an aside, the first time we attended the Unitarian Church was Mother’s Day and they had a flower ceremony that was so lovely. Then this past Sunday were Solstice celebrations, it was really cool. I feel like such a spiritual person now, considering that I felt very unspiritual for years.

Tonight was an evening of writing the holiday card letter and me knitting about 10 rows on the baby hat. I have another 3 cm’s before I start decreasing for the top of the hat. I could barely finish the 10th row because my hands were getting so stiff. I think it’s partly the cold and my addressing envelopes, cutting paper and rubber stamping all afternoon.

Here is the finished Daydream sweater. I gave it to my niece, Paige.

Detail of lacework around bottom of sweater.

Update on the Giraffe blanket. All four giraffes now have spots. All four have horns. One has legs.
Before spots.

With spots, horns and legs.

Happy holidays to all! Stay warm. And let’s hope for a very peaceful new year! I will write more soon. If I don’t write before December 25, for those that celebrate Christmas, have a Merry Christmas. I have to write later something interesting that I read in the Simple Abundance book that I’m reading. It’s about some of our Christmas traditions.

I am still not able to knit. I get to start knitting at the end of next week.
I’ve been so busy with all of the stamping things that I’ve been doing that I haven’t really had time to knit. Although if the Democratic convention was on the broadcast channels and I had time to sit and watch it, I would really be itching to knit. So actually things have worked out for the better. I really don’t want to have to deal with the pain of tendonitis again if I can help it.

The days to the wedding keep getting smaller and smaller! It’s 51 days! The invitations went out on Monday. The people that have received them have said, they are beautiful. I have to agree, we worked hard on them and I worked really hard on addressing all of them! I would hope they are beautiful, they are my wedding invitations. :) The items on the checklist keep getting fewer and fewer! :) Bryan and I will be ordering our wedding rings in the next few weeks. We also make the final payment on our honeymoon to Nova Scotia. I have two more fittings for my dress and I have studio portraits taken Labor Day weekend. I’ll be working on the ceremony program and the menus in August. It will get really exciting as the response cards for the reception start to arrive! :)

I was in Galesburg, IL on Friday for a stamping meeting. For my card swap, I did this card.

Stamp artwork © Stampin’ Up! 1990-2004

I hope it’s the last swap card I have to do for a while. I’m all swapped out. :)

Right now, I’m working on stamping tiles for coasters to sell this weekend at the Lake County Fair. I would like to have cards to sell, I don’t know if I’ll have time to make any cards though. I’m hoping that a lot of people will book workshops this weekend to get my business really going. I have only booked one workshop since early May, it will be a great workshop at the library, but it’s not until November.

I’ll be at the Lake County Fair working our Stampin’ Up! booth. Alisa, my upline, said that things have been quite good the last two nights. It’s supposed to be nice this weekend, so I am hoping for the best while I’m there on Saturday and Sunday during the day.

I’ve been listening to the Democratic National Convention this week on NPR and watching the few hours of it that I can on tv. We don’t have cable, which is fine almost every other hour of the year, but I would really like to watch the convention. I can’t believe how the networks are showing reruns instead of the convention. What a bad message to send to people, “the convention is so staged that it’s not important enough for us to broadcast” or “you have to subscribe to cable to get any of the coverage you’d like to see.” I would watch it on our public tv station, but the public tv station comes in just as fuzzy as most of the other channels. We don’t get many channels, we do get ABC, Fox, WGN and a local station. It’s pretty pathetic, but we don’t want to pay for cable. I will be getting the most basic service for the Olympics.

So back to the convention, I’m really enjoying listening to it and watching it. I thought Al Sharpton last night was really great. He totally went off script but I think he said what many people really want to hear. I think those voters that are not sure who they are going to vote for are probably not going to be watching the convention anyway. I know the Republican convention will do this act of “we’re not as right-wing as we may appear in the White House.” It’s almost like the Wizard of Oz, “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” It seems like they want to say, “pay no attention to the last four years.” Give me a break. This administration loves feeding on people’s fears and taking advantage of the weaknesses in the Florida voting system. I am so not surprised that Gov. Bush once again “purged” people from the voting rosters. They are going to do whatever they can to “win” this election. They would like to rid this country of anything democratic that they can. If that means getting rid of the Democrats they’ll do that too. They would rather not have to pass their legislation through the Congress because then it gets changed and stuff gets “leaked” to the press. They would rather just enact their laws and do it behind closed doors, never mind who it hurts as long as it is in their favor and is according to their idea of “God’s will.” Since, you know, God speaks through George W. Bush. I loved this paragraph in Molly Ivins column, “President Bush’s slightly alarming claim to the Amish on July 9 that God speaks through him — that’s what he said — raises some troubling prospects. I think God has a better grasp of subject-verb agreement than George W. Bush do. When Bush changes his mind, as he frequently does, do we think God has had to rethink things after the polls have come out?”

Enough about politics.

Enjoy the rest of your July. It’s almost over. How did it get to be almost August so quickly?!

Whoa! Only 59 days until the wedding. Eeek! I’m still addressing invitations, I should say madly addressing them. I have 60 finished and 30 to go. I did 25 envelopes on Monday, so I think I can get them almost done tonight. Last night, Wendy and Alisa helped me assemble the reception invitations. We had 30 to do and managed to get them done in less than an hour. I couldn’t believe it. Now I just need to trim the ribbon on the invitations and send them to my mom for envelope stuffing. I think one of my biggest pieces of advice for brides making their own invitations and addressing them, is you can never start too early! We were supposed to have them out on Monday and they are going to be a week late going out. They will go out just a few days short of 8 weeks, so I guess they’re going out pretty much on time.

In other wedding planning, I ordered the trees for the reception favors. From what I’ve read on the company’s website - the trees are always a hit. :)

The mini convention on Friday was a lot of fun. I swapped about 50 cards. My card was a new version of the Best Witches card that I did before.

Stamp artwork © Stampin’ Up! 1990-2004

I had people telling me that they had people asking them who made my card. It was quite a hit. Everyone said, “Oh how cute.” I also met a lot of people.

This Saturday is our stamp group’s big meeting in Galesburg, Illinois. So in addition to working on invitations, I’m working on my swap cards. I started them last night and I think they will be a hit. Bryan and I are going down on Friday evening, then going to Champaign on Saturday evening to see his friend, Tanya. She’s the best woman in the wedding and in Champaign for starting her Master in Library Science.

Well, I’m sorry that I haven’t kept up better, I’ve been busy at work and at home. :) I know that’s really no excuse. If it was a priority it would get done, the same way I feel about stamping and knitting. You always make time for the things you want to do. Unfortunately, sitting in front of the computer at night after work doesn’t appeal to me since I sit at a computer all day at work.

Soon-to-start reading: I Sailed with Magellan by Stuart Dybek

Wow! The weeks seem to fly at times. Unfortunately some of the days seem to drag on forever.

I have been trying to get invitations addressed so that they can be sent out on time. I have tendonitis in my elbow and so have been trying to take it easy. I had to move my mouse to the left side of my keyboard, which took a bit of getting used to, but it’s not bad. But at least, I’ve finished all of the inner envelopes and have about 10 or 15 of the outer envelopes finished. I have a total of about 95 to do.

This past weekend was pretty leisurely. We saw Before Sunset on Friday night. I thought it was good. The rest of the weekend, I did a lot of reading. I’m about 30 pages from the end of Hillary Clinton’s book Living History.

I’m going to a Mini Stamping Convention this Friday night. The big Stampin’ Up! convention is this week and this mini convention is for those of us that can’t go to the big convention in Florida. I’ve been hurridly working on 50 card fronts for the swap on Friday night. That makes two stamping weekends in a row - this Friday and then next Saturday, I have a big stamping meeting in Galesburg.

Currently reading: Living History by Hillary Rodham Clinton
Currently listening: Long Gone Before Daylight by the Cardigans

I’ve tried to redo the template for my blog and it looks bad, so I’m going to have to stick to the boring white for a while. I was thinking that I wanted to redesign it before anyway, so maybe this was a sign to really redesign it. :)

I gave the scarves to my mom while I was home 4th of July weekend. She really liked them.

I am going to be sending the baby socks that I recently finished to the new mom as soon as I make her a card. A handmade gift needs a handmade card. :)

Last week, I worked about 8 rows of the Giraffe blanket. I have about 2 more rows and then I will be 1/3 of the way finished with the blanket! :)

Unfortunately, I found out I have tendonitis in my elbow and I’m not allowed to knit for three weeks. It completely sucks, especially when I don’t have any elbow problems at home. I know it’s related to work. They’ve looked at my workstation and told me everything looked fine. If everything was fine, I don’t think I would only have elbow pain when I’m at work. I’ve had to move my mouse to the left side of my keyboard, which took some getting used to since I’m right-handed. It’s so annoying. Maybe I need to find a new job, like the doctor recommended. :) I doubt that will happen anytime soon since I’m so consumed with planning the wedding.

It’s been about two weeks since I last wrote. I’m trying to remember what’s been going on.

This weekend was a very low-key weekend! We hadn’t had a free weekend (both Saturday & Sunday free) for over a month, so it was very nice to be bums! :) Sunday, we attended the picnic after services at the Unitarian Church. We’ve been attending on a weekly basis and really enjoy it. This past week, they presented parables from different religions. It was really a fun service.

I’ve done a few cards in the last few weeks. I sent out invitations for a retiring stamp set party that I’m having in July. These won’t be in the new catalog. The new Stampin’ Up! catalog comes out in mid-July and they discontinue some stamp sets that are in the current catalog to make room for the new sets.

I worked with my mom getting the wedding guest list down to a manageable number that we can actually invite. The wedding is in a small chapel that only holds 90 people, not including the wedding party. I didn’t realize that it would be so hard to pare down the guest list because I didn’t think it would start out so large! We ordering the invitations this week! Woohoo! Things are really picking up as far as wedding planning goes. I have a calendar of what needs to get done each week. It gets crazier as the summer goes on.

It’s so crazy there are only 94 more days till the wedding!

Happy early Father’s Day to all of the dads out there! :)

Thursday, Bryan and I went to see Death Cab For Cutie at the Vic Theatre. Friday, I went to Galesburg, Il for a big Stampin’ Up group meeting. I drove down on Friday morning, the other women in my group went down on Thursday night. Friday afternoon and evening, we stamped as much as we could with many of the stamps that one woman owns. We stayed with a woman named Lona, she has has over 200 stamp sets, so we were all in stamping heaven! :) It was like letting kids loose in a candy store! :) I stamped frames, backgrounds, small images to use on scrapbook pages and cards, and I made a very nice sympathy card. Saturday was the meeting. Janice Weightman spoke at the meeting. There are photos on Janice’s photo page. It was a very fun weekend. Late Saturday afternoon, I drove back to the burbs. I got home and figured I would just crash, but I was so pumped that after dinner I HAD to do some stamping! :) I was working on what I’ll be demonstrating at the party on Friday.

Sunday was the most productive day of the weekend, surprising considering what else I was doing this weekend. Sunday morning, I worked on a few more projects that I’ll take as examples at the party on Friday. Then we went to see Eternal Sunshine at the first matinee of the day. After the movie, we came home and I started making paper for the wedding. I was going to make invitations but while I was hand-dipping the paper, I realized that the paper was not turning out the way I wanted my invitations to turn out. So that paper will be the programs for the ceremony. Then Sunday evening, I practiced calligraphy. I even managed to go to bed earlier than normal! :)

Yesterday it was back to work and the regular week. This week is actually very busy. Last night, I went to my calligraphy class. Our homework for this week is to address an envelope. I always feel funny telling people what my homework is for my calligraphy class because it sounds so simple. Last week was to practice my capital letters. Last night, we learned how to do the numbers in Copperplate Calligraphy and how do envelopes. This is what I’ve been waiting for since we started the class! :) I guess in a few weeks we’ll be doing placecards too.

I’ll have to schedule myself for when I’ll work on addressing invitations and when I’ll be making paper for the invitations. I just have to keep myself from stamping as much and concentrate more on the wedding things that need to get done!

Tonight, I have a Stamp Fair meeting at Alisa’s for our group. We have about 2-1/2 weeks left before our Stamp Fair on May 8!

Tomorrow, I’m going in for a fitting for my dress and picking up the bridesmaids dresses. I can’t wait to see the dresses. It was hard to see how they would turn out when I ordered them because the fabric swatches were about 2″.

Thursday night, I’ll be cutting paper and putting things together for the stamping party on Friday night.

Woo woo! New PJ Harvey will be out soon!