drink up

Sometimes when browsing through Wegmans on a Tuesday or Thursday evening after working out I pick up a little something for myself. I treated myself to a new Margarita glass this week...marked down.



A couple weeks ago I picked up this glass for all those Martinis I drink...not. Help me out. What drink would look pretty in this glass?

fairytale food

looking forward to making and posting some fairytale food from this little cookbook I found at Wegmans this week

toastmasters

Last year at work we had to set some personal goals....something that for some reason I can not fully explain....I hate to do. Maybe it is because I focus on how I will feel if I don't accomplish them instead of how I would feel if I did. And in a previous post I explained how much I hate to self evaluate myself because I am always afraid that I will come up lacking. Last year one of my goals was to prepare and deliver a presentation on grossing up payroll to my fellow employees. Well...needless to say....I did not accomplish this goal last year due to my overwhelming fear of standing up and talking in front of a group of people. So this year I established a goal of joining Toastmasters to help me overcome my fear. Just saying this leaves me shaking in my boots. Our young and pretty HR director was president of the club that meets in our building last year and was pushing this heavily. I held my nose and jumped right in before I let myself think about it and chicken out. I have attended maybe four meetings now. My first meeting I sat there all cynical watching these people with big smiles on their faces encouraging everyone at the meeting. But cynical gets you nowhere. So I changed my tune and joined them. Caroline, our HR director, said she was in the club for 6 months before giving her first speech. I'm easing myself into it. There are a lot of roles you can volunteer for at each meeting for the next meeting. You can give a speech, evaluate a speech, be the toastmaster, the humorist,the WAGmaster, the timer, the table topics director, the general meeting evaluator.....the list goes on and on. To ease myself into standing in front of that room and giving a five minute speech, I decided to volunteer for some of the roles first.

At my second meeting I was called upon to do one of the three small impromptu table topic speeches where you are asked a question and then have to speak off the top of your head. I didn't do terribly although I had more than 5 ahs or ums. The WAGmaster stops counting after 5. At that meeting I volunteered to be the WAGmaster at the next meeting. So the next meeting I had to stand and explain what the WAGmaster does. The WAGmaster has to come up with a Word of the day that everyone tries to incorporate into their speech or evaluation or whatever. The word should have something to do with the theme of the meeting which is chosen by the toastmaster and relayed to everyone several days before the meeting. Then they have to count the Ahs, ums, you knows, likes and other unneeded words uttered by everyone at any point in the meeting. (This reminds me of a funny story.....once when Jay was in gymnastics, we were at a meet in Syracuse. After the meet was over one of the contestants was searching for his gymnastics shirt that he had misplaced. Finally he grabbed the microphone and in a shaky hesitant voice that I hope I don't use when I give my first speech, he said "Has any one seen like a red shirt like?" This has become a phrase that we have uttered over the years whenever we are searching for a lost item.) They also have to be the Grammarian and point out any errors in grammar. This requires great focus and attention. So I pulled this off without a hitch and volunteered to be the humorist at the next meeting.

Several days before the next meeting I found out that the theme would be props....using props in your speech. The other slang usage of the word popped into my head also....givings someone their props. This certainly is a theme of every meeting of Toastmasters. Everyone is praised and encouraged and given their props. So I searched the Internet for funny stories involving using props in a speech. In all the meetings I've attended thus far the humorist has found a joke or poem on the Internet and read it verbatim. Well, I found some stories involving the use of props but they were not funny to me. I kept thinking of giving everyone a big hand and suddenly I decided I would write a limerick and that's what I did. I googled limerick first to make sure I had the form right and I found a little limerick about limericks that I used also.

So this is how it went.....

My role as humorist today is to inject a little humor into the meeting so.....
I decided to write a limerick because....
A limerick packs laughs anatomical
In a space that is quite economical
But the good ones I've seen
So seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

But that didn't stop me from writing a limerick so you have fair warning that the limerick that I wrote is clean.

There once was a humorist from Larkin Land
Who preferred to bury her head in the sand
But when the topic was props
she pulled out all stops
And gave everyone a big hand.

And at this point I unfurled my poster



Okay....it's corny and stupid but it was very well received (in fact it was awesome and some one else got a kick out of it) and it was my own material and it is one of the baby steps on my way to my first speech.

I went on to volunteer for a table topics question and delivered my answer with only one um and volunteered to be table topics director at the next meeting.

light at play

diamonds on the wall

produced by the diamonds in the window of the front door

crystal rainbows

lace curtain pattern on the bedsheets

a solid rectangle of sunshine

but i find that

when I analyzed one of my most favorites things I've written that

I write like
Vladimir Nabokov

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

and I didn't write it in Russian

but sometimes

I write like
Cory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

who do you write like

I write like
Stephenie Meyer

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

look for my next novel to be made into a movie

compromise

This is how the master bath looks today.



Several years ago we got tired of the damaged tiles near the base of the shower and decided to replace them. Of course we couldn't find any pink tiles that matched so looked for a complimentary tile to act as a border at the shower bottom.....



and top since these tiles from a remodel job by the previous home owner didn't match either.



We replaced this white cabinet and a white vanity with an oak cabinet and an oak vanity with a new granite countertop but left that flowered wallpaper.



These were the new border tiles we selected but left them paired with that crazy flowered wallpaper, a blue toliet and blue and white linoleum tile floor.



Then last year we remodeled the powder room. First we bought these porcelain tiles for it and then changed our minds and decided on marble tiles for the powder room. We decided to use these porcelain tiles in the master bath. B thought that after he put in the new floor that he would be done but I couldn't bear the thought of that blue toilet going back in and I was tired to death of that 20 year old wallpaper. I wanted a new white toilet and wanted to paint the bathroom the same shade of pinkish beige that the bedroom was painted. B agreed to paint since the wallpaper was in disrepair but my pleading for a new toilet fell on deaf ears. I remember once when I was a little girl, we had visited my Grandma in Springfield. We were driving home and I knew we would be passing by a MacDonalds. I started begging to stop at MacDonalds for ice cream. My mom said no but I knew that my dad always caved in and gave me what I wanted. I was confident that he would turn into MacDonalds. When we cruised on by I burst into tears. And that is exactly how I felt when I came home from the grocery store and there on the new porcelain tile floor sat the old blue toilet. I removed all my things and transferred them to the hall bathroom and swore I would never use the master bath again.



Then B brings home some paint chips from the hardware store and they are all various shades of gray. I said I didn't want to introduce another color into the decorating scheme. The bedroom is beige, the granite countertop is beige, the border tiles have a beige background, the floor tiles are beige. B says the tiles are gray and the floor is gray. At this point I don't care anymore. I say paint the bathroom whatever color you want. I left on a ten day vacation to Illinois to visit family. When I arrived back home and pulled up to our house I don't think I could have seen a lovelier sight than this blue toilet sitting in the front yard.....



replaced by this lovely white toilet. I realized that a compromise had been made. Even though B had painted the bathroom in the way I wanted it painted still it was gray and I was nasty about it for several weeks refusing to even look at it. Then slowly I started to warm to it a little.



I found a new toothbrush holder that blended into the countertop.



But the thing that made me finally like it was this picture.



These had been three separate pictures. One matted in peach, one in blue and one in pink. I decided to have them all framed together with a clay-colored mat that matched the accent wall in the bedroom and pulled the two rooms together. Even though I like the way it looks now, neither one of us use it anymore. We both got used to using the hallway bathroom during the remodeling and have continued to do so. And I still think it would have looked better beige.

black and red and cats

because I loved these shoes so much in black......



I bought them in red also.

guest bedroom curtains

Jay asked me to make curtains for his guest bedroom. The walls are a very pale gray. He bought this bedspread and matching rug. At Joanne's we found a fabric that was sort of the inverse of the rug and bedspread. I suggested we go back home and measure the windows but Jay guesstimated.






This was only my second project on my new Bernina. The first being a skirt that is still lacking a quarter of it's hem. I'll post it soon. I was very careful with the planning and measuring for these curtains. I discovered right away that we had shorted the amount the of fabric we needed by about a foot, then I quickly realized that because of the repeat that we were short a little more. I didn't panic though. I suggested to Jay that we add a border to achieve the required length.



Jay had at some time purchased two room darkening panels and I decided to cut these down to use as a lining for the curtains. The color went pretty well with the fabric and since they are going in a bedroom the room darkening effect seemed appropriate. I liked how professional they looked after I pressed the lining.



Tess joined me in admiring the quality work.



My border before the decorative stitching. I had suggested to Jay that I try out a decorative stitch on my new machine. Later I told him that maybe it wouldn't be a good idea because it might make them look too gay. He agreed. But after looking through some of the stitches......



I found this circular pattern that complimented the fabric design. I tried it first in white, then thought maybe black on black may look more sophisticated. But black on black looked like nothing. Jay liked the white and agreed to it.



Here is the almost finished product. I brought them home with me to hem. I also brought home fabric for office curtains and kitchen curtains. My Bernina is going to get a workout.

perfection

Perfection is this cute little apple that came with my Panera lunch today. I've never had anything bad at Panera. Tried the new tomato basil mozzarella bread salad today with a half smoked turkey on country bread. It didn't disappoint.