{100th Post Giveaway Winner!}

Hi everyone! I know I said I was going to post the winner of Miss Hannah's books last night, but something came up and I just didn't get to pick a winner. I have used the Random Number Generator to determine this giveaway's winner......

Today is Holli's LUCKY DAY!!!!!! Holli Said:

"I'm revisiting The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. It's been a while since I read it and wanted to read it again before seeing the movie. It's pretty good. I actually looked for the Kristen Hannah books in our local library after reading your posts, but couldn't find any. Hope all is well in your neck of the woods. Congratulations on a fabulous blog."

Thanks Holli for your sweet comment and for reading my blog! Email me with your address and I will mail out your books asap!

XOXO

{100th Post GIVEAWAY!!}

I definitely can't believe this is my ONE HUNDREDTH post!!! How exciting! Thanks to all my readers for sticking around and following my crazy life :)

I stuck to the Kristin Hannah theme and read yet another of her books. True Colors is about three sisters that grow up with a grouchy mean father and have to overcome many obstacles after one of them follows their heart and goes against their father. It's another good one. Again, not as emotional as Firefly Lane, but it's a good story!

As a thank you to all my readers and a fun 100th POST GIVEAWAY, I will be sending the winner one paperback copy of each KH books I have read recently. Firefly Lane, The Magic Hour and True Colors. Just leave me a comment telling me the last book you read and how it was! I will announce the WINNER in one week! Thursday, April 29, 2010 at the end of the day.

Thanks again! I hope you keep reading! I have a few new art projects to post about soon! :)

XOXO

{2010 - A Picture A Day Project, Week 14}

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{Magic Hour}

After reading Firefly Lane, and loving every minute of it.... and crying like a little baby, I decided I wanted to check out some more of her books. Go figure,... isn't that funny, I balled my eyes out.... I think I'll go back for more. :) Anyway, Magic Hour was very different. It was also a great story. Not quite as emotional as Firefly, but a really good read. NO spoiler alert, nothing you can't read on the back of the book, but it's about a little "wolf girl" as they refer to her in the book, that appears at the edge of the woods in Washington state. It goes through her therapy and all the people involved trying to find her family and eventually their discovery of what happened to the little girl. Very good,... check it out. :)

{Washington DC}

*WARNING* Picture Overload

(I don't know about you, but the posts with lots of pictures are my favorites!)

So, the Mr. and I took a nice day off work yesterday to go to the Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington DC. I had seen some gorgeous pictures of the cherry trees in bloom and I wanted to get in on the action.

The plan was to take the Metro into DC but it took THREE stations before finding parking at any. Ugh.

We didn't end up getting to DC until about 2,... but it was really nice and sunny out and we had a great time. I got tickets online for a trolley tour that we didn't end up taking :( Luckily, they are good for 6 months so we intend to go back and see a bunch of the stuff we didn't get to this time.

These Capitol pictures were taken from the center of the National Mall, I LOVE my zoom lens!!

The Washington Monument was taken from the exact same spot as The Capitol, I turned and snapped the shot. I thought that was pretty cool. It is TWO MILES!!! from the Lincoln Memorial all the way to the White House!! That is a LOT of walking! (we didn't do that) :)

The main goal of this trip was to see the cherry trees. They only bloom for a very short period of time every year and it is really hard to predict when that will be. I believe the AVERAGE dates for blooming are around April 4th - April 10th (ish). This year, since we're having some ridiculous warm weather on the East Coast, the blossoms were in peak bloom March 31 and by the time we got there it was slim pickins.

(above: My handsome Husband)

I don't think I have ever mentioned on my blog before that I LOVE the Muppets!! I have 3 seasons of The Muppet Show and every episode is hilarious! So you can imagine my excitement when we got to see Kermit,... THE Kermit. The ORIGINAL Kermit, at The Smithsonian! SO cool. Look how cute Kermie is! *kiss*

This is a random perspective of the HUGE glass flag that is right on the inside of the National Museum of American History. If you walk around this flag, right on the other side of the wall is the HUGE American flag that flew over Fort McHenry in 1814.

It is holy and thread bare and so so BIG. It was really cool. Did I mention it was big? 30' x 42' original size to be exact. Current size is 30' x 34'.

Of course there were some street musicians. These guys were our fav. They were singing their rendition of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance". No,.. really, SOOOO not kidding. You can laugh, it was pretty hilarious.

Dinner was via Olive Garden 30th birthday gift card from my sister-in-law. YUM.

All in all the day was pretty fun (ridiculously hot for April in DC, but fun). I can't wait to go back and experience the trolley tour. Any readers out there been to DC? Favorite thing to see???

{On The Hook}

So, I've been on a crochet kick since I did the Craft Hope scarf project but I really wanted to make something other than a scarf,... since, winter is pretty much over (yay).

I bought these pretty yarns a while back with absolutely no plan for their intentions. When I saw THIS, and since I had recently learned the puff stitch, I knew I could figure those little flowers out!

I was off work yesterday so (late) morning, I set myself up in the backyard with the pups and worked away on those puffy flowers. I have this look-at-it-and-figure-it-out thing that I LOVE, but I sometimes think I'm like a super hero or something and can figure absolutely anything out then either get REAL obsessive with it, or totally annoyed when I can't figure it out.

Luckily, this one was easy :) Aren't they CUTE!?!?! My only problem now is figuring out what to do with them. Blanket? Wall decoration? Throw pillow?? Anyone have any ideas for these little flowers I have been making obsessively for days?

And in typical Jessie form, I have ANOTHER crochet project to flip back and forth between for when I get tired of making flowers. This is HOPEFULLY going to be an afghan. The colors were inspired by peacock feathers.

Here is the thing with this project, I don't really know how to connect all these squares. I have looked up some video tutorials on YouTube, but I'm not sure which method I want to use. Does anyone out there have any tips or tricks for joining crochet squares or a link to a helpful tutorial??

Also, what do you all think about the ivory edging?? I will also be using the ivory to join the squares and the reason for the ivory was just to lighten up the afghan since the other colors were so dark. Should I have stuck with the darker shades? Picked a color from the four in the squares or maybe black? I'm worried that the ivory is too light. Let me know what you think.

I hope everyone has a lovely Easter and gets to spend a beautiful day with your families. :)

XOXO

{2010 - A Picture A Day Project, Week 13}

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