Mystery at Casa Noel

The weirdest thing is happening at our house, and it's driving me crazy.  We have a sound.  It kinda sounds like a purring cat/wood hitting against something.  In the following picture, (which is totally to scale!) the blue shaded part represents the areas of the house this noise can be heard in.  I was up at 3 AM the other day and I couldn't sleep, so I walked around the entire top of the house trying to figure out where the noise came from.  I didn't do the basement, just in case it was a burglar trying to lure me to my death.  However, I did tell Clark when he got up the next morning that I thought the furnace was making a weird noise.  Nope, not it.  I thought it was the fridge.  Wrong again.  It is a continuous noise, at least while it's quiet in the house, so I'm not sure just what it could be.  Does anybody want to put on a fancy hat, stick a pipe in their mouth and walk around my house while calling me Watson?  Oh, and you have to tell me what the noise is too!

Proverbs 17:22a "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine..."

Strange how some things come about

For those of you that know me very well, you will know that I am not an overly friendly person to people I don't know. I have to force myself to go out of my way and make conversation and get to know somebody. I think part of that is because the last 4 years have largely been spent in the company of my children, and I've lost the knack for small talk. I feel awkward when meeting new people because I don't know how to talk to them. The other part of it is probably laziness. I don't want to take the time and effort to cultivate new relationships. If they land on my lap, so much the better!
This past year has been better. We started going to a new church that has an active Mom's group, so every Tuesday I am forced to talk to people that while I probably would have never gone up to and talked to on my own, I am now glad to call them my friends. They're a great bunch of ladies! And, they have kids that are my kids ages, so my kids have friends too!!!
So, on to the point of my story!
I am sewing a dress for my friend Carla. It's really fun. It's purple/black paisley corduroy. The pattern belongs to my Mom and is from the 1960's. It's very retro. When it's done, I'll post a picture. We went shopping for material last week, and while I was walking into Fabricland, a girl from our church, Aoi, was walking out. She had been purchasing fabric to make herself a sexy apron (JUST for cooking, nothing else, because if you're like me, your mind probably jumped to something else entirely!) *I asked if I could mention the apron, she said I could even say sexy, but to clarify what the purpose was for.*
Anyway, she had seen Carla, who mentioned that I sewed, and so I was asked by Aoi to give her sewing lessons, since she had never sewn before. I am not a great teacher, but I taught my friend Sally to sew a dress, so I figured that an apron wouldn't be too hard. Tonight was her first lesson, and I had a lot of fun getting to know her. We only got as far as cutting out the material, but I think we got a lot farther getting to know each other better. She is someone that I would never have gone up to in church and talked to. We don't hang out with the same people, and there has never really been an opportunity to just talk. However, we have a lot in common. We're both Type A, organizational freaks (which I bold to show that it can be fun!), we both own a cat, we're both married, we like things done right away and not down the road...and I'm looking forward to getting to know her better.
To get to my point....I'm glad that I am making friends. I'm glad that I'm making a dress for one of my friends, and because of that, I'm glad that I didn't make an excuse as to why I couldn't teach Aoi to sew ("Um, sorry, I have 3 kids...." would probably have done the trick) but then I would have missed out on getting to know a great person!


And I apologize for that last run-on sentence.

Cute things Abigail says (Part 1)

Abigail (the middle child) saw my blog for the first time today. She got up on my knee and started looking at the picture of our family, and so I asked her who the people in the picture were. All she could say was "Cake!" That kid has a one track mind.

Hello

I love reading blogs. I read some about do it yourself craft projects, sewing, life....anything that tickles my fancy, I read. I also like reading blogs where people blog pretty regularly, sometimes I get frustrated by the people that I like to read that don't write! So, I told my husband that I was going to start blogging (hopefully more than once or twice a month!) He gave permission, as long as I gave him a different name. Clark. Maybe he's trying to channel Superman? I am allowed to use my name, our children's names, the cat's name...his name is the only one that has to be different. Hmmm...I'm not sure how that's going to work for anonymity.

I wanted to start this blog as a place to write down funny things my kids said or did. I told a friend I was going to start blogging, and she asked if it was going to be a crafting blog. (I assume that means you would read it if it was, right Alison?) So, maybe it's going to be a little bit of everything! I am not a writer, and I must admit it's kinda intimidating putting my words out there, especially since I read such great blogs that are well written! Oh well....sometimes you just have to do things even if they make you uncomfortable, right? Right. Well, here goes!