From Saturday Night to Saturday Night Live

When we lived in Bloomington with our 3 little girls, they loved to watch "The Lawrence Welk Show" on Saturday night on PBS. They would hurry through their baths and sit on our bed as we combed out their hair, rolled curlers, and laughed at the silly songs and frilly dresses on the show. I remember this song in particular, because we loved to hear Eloise's little voice singing "Frankfurter sandwiches".

It's hard to believe how long past those days are...and it really hit home the other night when Rob showed Maddie this Lawrence Welk skit from Saturday Night Live. It actually was late on Saturday night and she laughed SO hard and was so silly about re-enacting the skit the next day with her sisters. Very funny stuff, but it made me wonder--how has our life changed so much, so soon?

Thank You Bryan, whoever you are....

This afternoon I took a much-needed hour for myself and went running on the shady, autumn-leafed greenway near our house. As I ran, I began to notice messages along the path, written in children's writing with sidewalk chalk. GO GO GO. Go Bryan! Cool! You Can Do It!! You're Awesome! Run Fast!

At first it just made me smile, but then I started to feel like I had my own personal cheerleading section and I felt inspired to push on a little further than I'd planned. I saw a couple of messages that said 40 B4 40! and began to picture this Bryan in my head...a neighborhood Dad type of guy, coming up on the big 4-0, and setting some goals for himself. 40 miles? 40 races? 40 hours on the trail? I realized I could squeeze in 40 miles before age 40 if I did another half marathon and then a full marathon. I began to wonder, and to put "Flori" in wherever I read Bryan's name. (Go Flori!)

All this wondering about "Bryan" and I started to realize that life is good and people are good and all the little things that annoy me and frustrate me are not my LIFE, they're just little annoying things and they will pass. In the midst of all these thoughts, I saw a runner coming toward me. A dad-type of guy who was actually just how I'd imagined Bryan. I felt weirdly happy. And then I noticed that this man only had one arm--the other was off above his elbow. But he was just trucking along, enjoying the beautiful fall day like I was.
It really made me think. Not "Oh, my life could be so much worse..." but "my life could be so different". But it's not. This is the life I have right now and there are so many good things about it. There is so much I can do and enjoy, even if we can't manage to sell our house.

The last message on the trail said, VICTORY!!! Thank you, fellow travelers, for lighting my path today.

Designer Genes

Always looking for new and interesting creative challenges, I decided to try my hand at clothing design. Here are my dress designs for the Shabby Apple Dresses contest:

The first two designs hark back to the dropped-waist of some of my favorite 80s dresses. I am happy to see this style returning! The v-neck top and underskirt are made of a lycra knit covered in chiffon. Lined sleeves and a flowing 3-tiered chiffon skirt give plenty of coverage for modesty. Neck and dropped waist are trimmed with a matching cotton crochet trim to add a little texture. A detachable flower pin can be worn at the waist or shoulder. The color varies with the monitor, but the first dress is meant to be ivory colored with an orange/scarlet poppy. The second dress is a two-toned apple green with a white or cream flower.

I plan on making this dress whether I win the contest or not. I am IN LOVE with this fabric, Poppy Bouquet by Laura Gunn. Really, the entire line of hers is my favorite ever. The design is modeled on a girls dress I bought years ago at Goodwill. It has a zipper back, cap sleeves, a high waistline with no gathering, and a wonderful twirly skirt. I've added a matching grey belt, though I think it would look lovely with a bright red belt too.

The Beauty of two ugly quilts

My maternal grandmother Ruth Adams is a skilled quilter with many beautiful quilts to her credit. She has finally stopped quilting in the last year and divided her long-held fabric stash between my mother and aunts. While visiting my parents this summer, I cut squares from 36 of those vintage fabrics, including a scrap of the fabric used for the bridesmaid dresses at my parents' wedding. This was my triumphant and happy return to sewing after a 3-month hiatus and it was a great project! I was wondering what to use for the backing--I wanted something that looked old but wasn't too scary. I was so happy to find this length of fabric at Goodwill for $2.



Now that Rob is working at UGA, we feel obligated to pay homage to the famous Georgia bulldog. He was so happy to find this really awful fabric at Ikea: Varmt Hund. We bought one in red/white and one in black/white since those are all UGA's colors. The red one is a now an office wall hanging, and this one is a lap quilt for his attic office when it gets cold. You can't see it, but I machine quilted all around the dog. Again, I found an awesome backing at Goodwill--almost 4 yards of black velvet corduroy for just a few dollars.

I think these are the ugliest two quilts I've ever made, but they were very inexpensive and fun to do and I hope our family will get lots of good use from them!

Swooning

We are getting close to swooning around here. Maddie had developed an intense interest in historical fiction with a romantic twist. Over the summer we watched several versions of Pride and Prejudice (Colin Firth, *sigh*), Sense and Sensibility, and Jane Eyre (oh, that Mr. Rochester!)

We ended with an emotional Anne of Green Gables marathon. I remember the summer I first fell for Gilbert Blythe. I was 15 and we were visiting friends in Canada. They lived far out in the country and I was being a very ungracious house guest and proclaiming my teenage boredom throughout the house. The mom suggested I watch this new movie they had and I was hooked. I think I watched the whole series at least 3 times that week. It is fun to see Maddie get giddy for these romantic heroes and every time we watch one of these movies, I am SO glad I have girls who will swoon and sigh with me.

I laughed so hard the other day, talking with friends about the huge posters we used to have on the backs of our doors...Kirk Cameron, George Michael, the Top Gun team...and how we would get so dreamy about them. (Do they even make giant posters any more?!) I know those boy-crazy days are nearly here for Maddie, but I'll be glad for every day she keeps stars in her eyes for Gilbert Blythe.

Jello TAP-ee-OCA pudding

It may (or may not) surprise you to know that I have a serious weakness for commercial-grade pudding. I love pudding packs, and tapioca is my favorite. (On a side note, I really love homemade tapioca pudding. For some reason, my mom used to always put red food coloring in to turn it a pale shade of pink. I was an adult with my own children before I knew that tapioca is not really pink.)

Our small, limited-selection store, Aldi, usually only carries chocolate and vanilla packs. As I was gearing up for school lunches at the grocery store last week, I noticed they had a special purchase of both tapioca and butterscotch pudding. So I totally stocked up. Today as I made lunches for the first day of school, I proudly slipped a tapioca pudding and spoon into each lunch box, thinking what a fun treat it would be for the girls (and surreptitiously tucking the 4th snack pack in the fridge for my afternoon snack....)

Imagine my horror when one by one, each daughter came home from school, and told me, "Mom, that pudding you gave me was all rotten and curdled. I had to throw the whole thing away." Oh, the waste...
And oh, the sadness, when I told them they missed out on tapioca pudding. I sure enjoyed mine.

I think it might actually be okay...

One good friend took the older girls to the beach for a few days. Another good friend offered to keep Bea all day and overnight. (Don't I have the best friends, really?) That left Rob and me a little over 24 hours to make a quick trip down to Athens. He got his office keys, chose furniture and paint, finalized new computer details, and got his official University of Georgia ID. I committed myself to this move by buying a "Bulldogs" sweatshirt at the UGA bookstore, not a step to be taken lightly. As we drove to Georgia, I hoped I'd have better feeling about Athens than I had last time (when I cried on and off all weekend, and sobbed on the way home). I had a better feeling this time. MUCH better.

• It was interesting to walk through campus and absorb the energy of a big university and the history of "the oldest public university in the country" --as Rob reminded me several times, trying to impress me, I think :)

• It was encouraging to meet with a realtor who understood us and to narrow our search down to a manageable area of town with good schools and proximity to church and work. We still need to sell our house here before we can commit to anything there, but I was happy with our options and saw lots of neighborhoods that looked likely.

• After the past few busy weeks, it was lovely to have my husband to myself for a whole day. It's been a while since just the two of us have taken a road trip and it was fun just to be together and explore our new life without distraction. Simple pleasures like browsing in the bookstore, sleeping in, and sharing a diet vanilla Pepsi from the gas station just don't happen in our regular life.

We ate a really late dinner at The Grit, a little hipster, vegetarian college hangout type of restaurant. It was awesome and exactly the kind of place they DON'T have in Charlotte, but seems to abound in Athens. We had the best chocolate cake that I've ever had in my life, and I've really tried a lot of chocolate cake. I find myself looking on the bright side of things.