jessica

wordless wednesday 04.30

where???

i snagged this from heather's blog.  another nice, mindless meme.

Where...

is your cell phone? in my purse. purse is - who knows where. 

is your significant other? he is in the next room working on my studio floor. i love him!! i should really go help.

 

is your hair? on top of my head. tucked behind my ears and tickling my neck.

 

is your mother? probably at her soon-to-be-open quilt shop or at "craft tuesdays" at the local church.

is your father? wherever my mother told him to be today. kidding, probably working on a house project as the road bans are on and he can't go to "real work".

 

is one of your favorite things? my baby girl is sleeping peacefully in her crib... almost

    

was your dream last night?  hmmmmm. i don't recall my dream last night.

can you get your favorite drink? the state fair. my favorite drink is lemonade.

are you right now? in my black leather office chair.

 

is your ex? married with a baby on the way.

   

is your fear? losing someone i love.

do you want to be in 6 years? comfortable.

      

were you last night? right here... at home

 

was the last place you drove? to my friend's house to return chairs we borrowed for monkey girl's party

 

did you grow up? near the north shore of lake superior, minnesota

 

was the last place you ate? mcdonald's.

is (are) your TV(s)? one tv in the bedroom. that seldom gets used. one in the basement for video games (don't use it as a tv)

are your pets? swimming happily in their dirty tank

   

is your computer? staring at me

 

is your mood? happy

 

is your oldest friend? hmmm. i wonder if you'd be my oldest friend, kel!  about 15 min from me. my other oldest friend, in wisconsin.

 

is your car? tahoe's in the garage. impala's in the driveway.

 

is your wedding ring? on my left ring finger.
 

is your favorite store? that's a tough one.

       

is your favorite place to be in the summer? by water

was the last place you laughed? right here, at monkey girl mimicing sounds

 

was the last place you cried? at the movie juno the night before last. i was pms'ing

are five places you go on the internet on a regular basis?
-my hotmail email
- my mommy boards
- my photography boards
- my blogroll
- EBAY

finally got the help we needed!

good progess is being made on the studio. i called in the experts:

measure twice, cut once.

look! i found it! is this the right tool for the job?

this is easy enough...

whew! after all that work i need a break...

checking to see if it's level?

lookin' good...

my neighbor sucks

i think i mentioned this once or twice in prevoius posts. i'm too lazy to link to them now, but maybe later. aw, who am i kidding. if you wanna dig through my archives, go ahead. just take my word for it.

we have a neighbor (just one) who is a complete moron. i think he's looking for trouble.  in fact when he moved in, about a week after he moved in, one of the first things out of his mouth was "i had to leave the last place because we had problems with the neighbors".   uh, maybe you were the problem?  just a guess. this dude's name is jeff. jeff is married to kim. they have two boys, a bit older and a bit younger than j-man.

let me summarize for you. i will even give you the bulleted version of his past stupidness:

1. first time he wandered over it is evening and we are having a recreational fire out back (we have 4 acres) he has a beer in each hand and has obviously been at this consumption project for most of the day. he will. not. leave. he tells us the same thing over and over. he raves over how much he likes us and how we should get together and have fires this upcoming summer. he drives us nuts for oh, a couple of hours. we finally have to go inside to get him to go home. he still stays out by our fire for some time and finally wanders back to his house.
2. he puts a sprinkler system in.  he decides to do it himself.  he puts it over the property line by over a foot. we mention it to him but decide to let it slide because it makes no difference to us and we aren't ones to make waves.
3. his dog bites j-man. it breaks the skin and bleeds but takes a far more emotional toll than physical. it is a large akita brand of dog. dog previously would snarl and run at me barking ferociously, coming right up to me when i would go outside to get the mail or any time during the day. i started to carry a hockey stick to get my mail. when the incident  happened, jeff and kim came over, knocked on our door (the three boys were out playing and we were inside  visiting some company that had stopped by)... kim is in tears. i am confused. they tell us that their dog bit my son, but hastily add 'but he's ok, and the kids went back to playing now"... i am freaking out here but trying to stay calm. it has obviously been a good amount of time that has passed since it happened.. they had time to calm down my child, say whatever they said to him, gather their thoughts, decide to come tell us... they go on to say that "we said if this ever happened that we would put the dog down"... ummmm - if it ever happened?   it could have been so much worse, from the sounds of it. hubs calls the sheriff's office just to file a report. apparently in our county they send out an officer to both houses. we did not know that. dog is put down the next day. i take my son to the doctor the next day also on the recommendation of the vet who calls us to let us know that the animal was destroyed. she didn't tell me to, she said "if it were my child i would take him to the doctor". great.
4. he owns at least as much land as we do. yet he puts ALL of his large kid toys ON THE PROPERTY LINE. unless i am unclear of where this is for some reason, as he seems to think it's not something to pay attention to. so on the line sits a swingset, a full size trampoline, a 12' pool... and last summer he built a large play "shed". right. on. the. line.
5. my parents come down to visit. not being ones to sit still, my dad cleans out our garage and my mom proceeds to burn some  wood and cardboard. jeff (or kim) calls the sheriff and tell them we are 'burning garbage'.  officer shows up and doesn't even say anything about the garbage until after he says 'say do you have problems with any of your neighbors?'  - duh.

ok, so i've laid enough groundwork for you to know they're morons. let me fast forward to my daughter's birthday party thursday evening and the scenario:

it is raining, and people are parking on the street. we don't have sidewalks. we have no neighbors on one side of us, and jeff the moron's house on the other. a couple of guests park their cars on the jeff side of our driveway. all is fine. hubs' cousin, E,  (the city cop in our town) stops by during his shift (in his car and uniform) to have cake and ice cream. on his way out, jeff stops him. he has been taking photos of the cars that were parked in front of his house.  he tells E that "these cars are on my lawn" and "they are tearing it up and causing ruts!"  E tells him that he is a city cop and he can't do anything about his complaints, but he could call the county if he really has a problem. jeff ignores this and keeps ranting about all the ruts.  E tells him "show me where there is a rut".  jeff changes the subject because there really is no rut and takes another angle. they're ruining his sprinkler heads. (the cars were nowhere near sprinkler heads) after a bit of this back and forth, E tells him that about this new thing called an easement,  and that the cars are not anywhere near 'on' his property. he also points out that if he calls the county sheriff that they could make him tear out his sprinkler system because it is in the easement. then he tells jeff "stop being such a big baby"... he then came back in to tell hubs... hubs decides to tell the offending parkers to move their cars.  they do, and one happens to be hubs' uncle who is a retired county sheriff. he does not help to keep the peace at all, because after moving his car, he walks past jeff (who has been standing out there the whole time) gives jeff looks and says loudly to hubs "gee what fantastic neighbors you have here".    

ahh... what can you do?  please tell me i am not the only one with morons for neighbors!  it would have to be the only house close to us... everyone else around here is quite lovely.  like the fellow who plowed us out the last time we got snow.

so very wrong

i just double checked my calendar. and it IS  less than a week til may.

what gives?

scroll down to previous posts for happier things.

first things first: the first birthday party

the party was very nice. it was raining and it was cold, but it turned out very well. except for a stupid neighbor incident (another post), we had a most lovely time. we had guests that drove from "up north" and continued on to aubriee's birtday party several states away.  happy birthday, aubriee!

i know you want to see pics. i've gone through a handful of them so here you go:

another picture of the cake all set up and pretty. notice the monkey tribute.

the cake candles were a big hit with the birthday girl:

there are no 'cake smash' pictures because she had no interest in the cake. only after we gave her a spoon and she pounded the cake with it. no fun mess.

she looked fetching in her party dress (pardon the colors here, they are a bit wonky because a friend of mine picked up my camera and switched it to auto mode and started shooting away... i haven't taken the time to adjust them)

she got lots of great loot. our own  'where's waldo' photo op.

it's great to be 'back to normal.

i'm calling it

i know i have been MIA, that's been pointed out a couple times...

i could consume my whole day... no, my whole WEEK with this cake. there are soooo many possibilities, like art on canvas! so i have to try not to overdo it. you would not believe the cleanup i have to do. in addition to getting my HOUSE cleaned up in general for the party.

six and a half hours later (too bad i'm not being paid by the hour. or at all)... here is monkey girl's first birthday cake.

the only things not edible are the green ribbon with white polka dots and the curling ribbon. i did make some edible curling ribbon (see near the bottom of the cake on the plate in the first pic) but i just do NOT HAVE THE PATIENCE. and i would have had to start this on monday.

as promised - smash the cake!

i posted a while back that we did a little cake smash sesson for monkey girl's upcoming first birthday. instead of posting these on here, i really should be cleaning, shopping, and preparing.. but i've made a decision to have quizno's cater so wah-hoo for that. what else can i do to make it easier on myself so i can concentrate on the fun stuff like decorating and making the cake?

so, without further ado, to kick of the Celebration of Monkey Girl Week... the dirty girl in all her chocolate cake glory:

i like to call this one the "travolta"...

spring cleaning - any rubber stampers out there?

so, i am spring cleaning. i am going to get rid of a TON of rubber stamps from stampin' up that i just do not use anymore. i have listed about a third of them on my flickr. i used to be a demonstrator, yeah, for the discount... i did maybe ONE demo. ha ha!  these are all in excellent used or new condition. they are all retired also. i'm working on adding more and when i get them up i will post. here is the link. all information is included... any questions please let me know. these are dang good deals, people. have you seen the cost of this stuff lately?

let me know if you're interested! i'll combine shipping.... first come, first served. i'm also sending to hubs' boss' stamping group, so get on it if you're interested.  i'll do paypal.
happy MONDAY!

six words

jenny tagged me with this. my life in six words. this is how i feel today. tomorrow may be different :)

"full of change, surprises, love, possibilities."

i'll tag lib and michelle....

happy sunday!