Oooh ooh ooh!  These are so pretty!!!!

Felt Dahlia Flower Brooch Tutorial

By Megan Reardon of Not Martha.

BTW:  ¿Alguien aquí habla español?  Estoy tratando aprender mas.  Necesito mas amigos con hablar.

So I have this friend named JoLynn.

We are running buddies (no not really) and our puppies are the same age and she’s a really good photographer who did our wedding.  Her husband and my husband play nazi-zombies together.

Anyway, she had a birthday last month and I decided to give my cake-skillz a try.

Little chocolate petit-fours with poured fondant and candy-clay flowers.  Painted with shimmery stuff and vodka.

Seriously, these things took me all stinking day and when I finally got to take pictures, the lighting was bad.   Annnnnnd poured fondant is much harder than it looked in the pictures.  I got cake crumbs in it

But all in all, I was very proud of myself.  And now I know that I am not meant to be a cake decorator and I have no desire to do it again.

I need to make one of these.  Today.  Definitely.

Pinhole Camera Tutorial at A Beautiful Mess.

I discovered this tutorial and blog over at One Pearl Button, which is a very frequent source of inspiration for me.

My youngest sister, Alanna; my mom; and I went to the UW-Madison men’s rugby game to see my brother play.

It was intense, that’s for sure.

There were people thrown in the air along with the ball!

There was even a friendly dog:

But most of all, there was my little brother (#14)!

And of course, there was the cheering section:

We determined while we were there that nobody really knows how rugby is played.  Seriously.  I think they just make it up.

My mom and I tried to go fly-fishing last week.  Truthfully, I have no idea what I’m doing.  But I swung the fly around and looked like a champion, as far as I’m concernced.

There’s my mom!

No bites, but it was really nice to be out in the water with my awesome waders.

Sooo no knitting for me lately.  I’ve been struck down by a horrible flair up of carpal tunnel- something I’ve successfully managed for a few years.  Now, with my new job which involves typing allllll day long, I have pretty much lost use of my left hand.  Hunting and pecking is for me!  And yes, I have tried knitting without doing much with my left hand, but it is extremely inefficient and nearly impossible.  So we’re just not going to knit.

Or type.

Or sew.

As you can see, I am very irritated by it.  I have an appointment with a neurologist on Monday, and I am praying that he has a solution for me.  Besides “find a different job and stop knitting”.  Okay, seriously, I’ve had a few doctors say that.  “Well, if your hands and wrists hurt from knitting… don’t knit.”  That’s like telling me not to breathe.  What else am I supposed to do with my time?

Anywho, Matt and I went on a mini vacation last weekend.  We took Rory and she was an excellent car dog:

She likes the wind in her face

Later I’m planning on posting my knitting projects that are currently hibernating but that I am very excited about!

I’m going to do a sew-along!

One Pearl Button is hosting a Sew-Along for the Burdastyle Marie Skirt.

Wooo!

I’m thinking about going fully google.
Okay, first of all, does anyone else think that Google is taking over the world? I mean, on one hand it’s very useful. On the other, can we ever escape???
Okay Okay, I guess I’m not going to go *fully* google. I tried Google Chrome and was pretty disappointed. It was just too much work to figure out how to get it set up like I have Firefox. On Firefox I have all my bookmarks, my de.licio.us buttons, my ravelry button, etc etc. Chrome was just a pain. And the themes, which I thought would be cool, were kind of lame.
I used to use google reader for my RSS feeds, but now I use Sage which is a Firefox add-on. Much more convenient. It just hangs out in my sidebar.
I’m thinking about switching to Picassa rather than Flickr, just cause then it’s in one place… but I’ve used flickr for a long time! And photobucket before that! When does it stop?
I just found out to use my flashcard app on my ipod, I have to use google docs to upload my flashcards. And actually, I use google docs quite a bit.
And what the heck is the google buzz thing? It’s kind of like facebook. I logged in today to see that I have three followers already! Following what??? And everyone’s first posts were like “WTF is this???” Hahaha.

Okay, it’s time to watch this awesome video from The Onion; America’s Finest News Source.

Google Opt Out Feature Lets Users Protect Privacy By Moving To Remote Village

Favorite Games  (Courtesy of Listography)

1. Settlers of Catan – Yeah, i know it’s super dorky, but I tell ya what- I kick BUTT playing Settlers. I can settle the hell out of Catan.

2. Cribbage – I’m such an old lady. I knit, I have cats, and I play cribbage. Actually, being old sounds like a lot of fun.

3. Skip-Bo – When I worked at my last job in a group home, we would spend the evenings after the clients went to bed playing Skip-Bo. And still, I love just about any simple, addictive card game.

4. Farkle – Playing Farkle with dice is pretty awesome. Similar in addictiveness to Skip-Bo.

5. BANG! – If you haven’t played Bang, you *need* to. Each player is assigned a role- either the Sheriff, Deputies, Outlaws, or the Renegade. It’s like an old-west shootout. Plus, the Sheriff gets to wear a badge.

6. Bohnanza – Bohnanza is a game about bean farming. Every time we suggest it, people say “Bean farming? Why the heck would I play a game about bean farming?” And then we play, and then they go and buy the game because it’s SUPER FUN.

7. Scrabble – I used to be the Scrabble Master in my social circle until I married an English major. Yeah, those days are over.

8. Dr. Mario, Mario Party, Mario Kart, or Super Mario Brothers – I LOVE Mario games. Matt and I had to stop playing Dr. Mario together because we get so competitive. Otherwise, we’ve spent many a night with friends playing the New Super Mario Bros. for Wii- does anyone else feel like that game can be *totally* unfair?? Your “teammates” can throw you into holes and enemies and stuff! Not cool!

9. Spoons – Ask my family, I WILL OWN YOU AT SPOONS. That’s why I started playing Roller Derby. No lie. I will DESTROY YOU TO GET A SPOON.

So I’m a little obsessed with Project Runway.
I finally got around to watching episode two yesterday (since I have to catch them on the net), and I have a few comments….     (Warning:  Spoilers after the jump!!)
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