Two on Tuesday

Gosh, it's been forever again since I've been able to sit down and write something to share!

I wanted to do [another] recap post before I jumped into all the plans I have for my blog in 2016, but time doesn't seem to allow for such "luxuries" so I'm jumping in!

Any of you who are friends with me on Facebook and/or Instagram know why life has been so busy the for me the past couple of months!

Lilia Louise Weston was born at 2:12 p.m. on Friday, October 9, 2015

So much more to share in future posts about the crocheting and crafting that I've done for her over the past 3 months - not to mention all the future crocheting and crafting that I'll be doing for her.  But that's for another day, when I have time to write more!

I wanted to stop in quickly today to share my first Two on Tuesday of 2016!  I used to love reading these from Debi Y in years past, along with coming up with 2 things once a week that were making me happy so I'm bringing in back!

1. my baby girl, obviously!  She's 110% the love of my life these days.  Hard to believe that she's already almost 15 weeks old.  I'm pretty biased but I think she's the absolute BEST
2. The work I do with the Lucille Ball Little Theatre of Jamestown.  You can click HERE to visit our Facebook page and read a recent article that was published about our history as Jamestown's Community Theatre.  Over the past 30 years my involvement has ranged from going to see shows as a child with my Grannie to joining the Jr. Guilders (a childrens theatre group where I was trained for over 10 years, and am still a choreographer for the group) to being cast in main productions (15 to date including: "Cats", "Boeing Boeing", "Oklahoma", "Annie" and more) to choreographing productions, to becoming a Board Member 18 months ago, to joining the Play Selection Committee to doing all marketing for the theatre for the past 18 months.  To say this is a passion of mine would be an understatement.  Please to do read about our history, it's truly an amazing place!

I hope you are all doing well!  I'm slowly trying to catch up on your blogs after spending my maternity leave with Lilia and not my computer.

Holy Moly

I know, I know, it’s been forever since I last posted….again, but it’s been a VERY busy year!

January through March, not only was I working full time Monday-Friday, but I also spent my time after work (5:15-7 p.m.) split between two different local high schools where I was choreographing their high school musicals (“Damn Yankees” and “Anything Goes”).  Then from 7:30 until 10:30-11 each night I had my own rehearsal for the French Farce “Boeing Boeing” at the Lucille Ball Little Theatre here in Jamestown.  The link above takes you to the full Facebook photo album for the show, which was an absolutely BLAST to be apart of!  I hadn’t done a straight play since middle school, with the exception of scene work in my college Acting classes.  This was the first "challenge" that peeked my interest in auditioning for the show (after the fact that the show is a RIOT).  Next came the fact that I was cast as Gretchen, the German stewardess.  I spent 6 weeks working tirelessly to master the best German accent possible.  I still love throwing it around every now and then ;-)  And the final “challenge” that I overcame during the rehearsal and performance process during Boeing was announced to our friends as follows:

A few thought we were getting another dog, but we did not!  This October, we are expecting our first baby!!  I realized I was pregnant about 3 weeks into rehearsals and was 10 weeks pregnant by the time the show closed.  Other than our parents, no one knew until the end of March about the baby’s arrival.  I had to tell my director, and good friend, a few days before Tech Sunday because my flight attendant dress could not be worn w/o the jacket without my belly starting to show (more of a carb baby that actual baby pump at that point LOL)! My counterpart in the show also figured it out one night and was great about keeping my secret until I told the reminder of the cast closing weekend.

I enjoyed every second of all the theatre work I did this spring.  I was EXHAUSTED 90% of the time and had to drag my nauseous self to every step of rehearsals that I had on a particular night, but once I was there I felt just fine 99% of the time.  I think if I’d just gone home every night after work I would have done nothing but sit on the couch like a blob feeling horribly sorry for myself!

Plus, we found out the end of May that

Our summer has been very busy.  In addition to slowly trying to get ourselves ready for the baby’s arrival, Jonathan and I are both busy running our family business, Panama Rocks Scenic Park for our 2^nd year and the 130^th year since it was founded in 1885.  We have been having a great summer so far and have seen a wonderful increase in the business over last year.  I am, of course, still working Monday-Friday outside of the Park so that we have a steady income and health insurance, and have still kept very active with marketing and choreography at the theatre.  There’s no slowing me down just yet – in fact I’m getting ready to start rehearsals next week as Choreographer for “The Addams Family”, our annual fall musical.

In June, Jonathan and I were fortunate enough to be able to get coverage for the Park’s office, and took a week off and went down to the beach.

My in-laws currently own a condo on Estero Island, Ft. Myers Beach, FL and we hadn’t been down since June of 2012.  They have decided to sell the condo for multiple reasons so this was a combination last trip before the condo sells, and Babymoon.  It was a wonderful, relaxing week on the beach filled with lovely memories of our first vacation together, honeymoon and now babymoon (plus a few other vacations in between).  We will certainly still vacation in Ft. Myers Beach in the future, but it’ll never be quite the same.

There was crocheting from my favorite spot in the world (the condo's lanai), virgin Mojitos at Doc Ford's, amazing sunsets, a growing belly, sunset selfies, LOTS of ice cream, the most incredible rental car in all the land (2015 Mustang Convertible) and a tan & growing baby bump!

Oh August 6th, Jonathan and I celebrated our 4th Wedding Anniversary.  Still hard for me to believe that we've been married for 4 years already, and yet only 4 years.  Here's a very detailed collage of pictures from us from the past 11 years that I posted to Facebook back on the 6th - you should be able to click on it to see more detail if you're interested in seeing how we've both aged over the past decade ;-)

And here are me, and the "girlfriend", as I've been calling her, at our Anniversary dinner last Saturday night:

As far as crocheting, I didn’t really do any during my first trimester.  I was too busy, too tired and too nauseous to  really have any desire to do so.  My nausea went away around week 14 and I’ve continued to putter and play with multiple different projects since then.

From July until December I have 7 babies, including my own coming into our lives (6 girls by the way and only 1 boy – GIRL POWER!!) so I have some little projects that I’ve been working on since June on that front, but nothing is actually finished.

Then, a co-worker of mine returned to work last week so I whipped this up real quick over the weekend for her baby-girl (another girl!!) to wear this fall:

This caused me to be bitten by bit of a "fall crocheting" bug that still hasn’t let up this week!

Over the weekend, Jonathan and I were fortunate enough to get a day off from the Park (first one since June 28th when we returned from the beach) and went to Chautauqua Institution for the day.  We set ourselves up for a picnic in the shade by the lake and I started crocheting this scarf:

I'm not exactly sure what this stitch is called, but after you chain your width you do a sc ch1 then skip the next stitch.  Starting on Row 2 you continue the same sc ch1 pattern with each sc going into the ch1 space of the previous row.  I half thought this was called the Moss Stitch, but the quick Google search that I just did proved me wrong.  Anyone wanna help me out so I know for future reference??

The past couple of nights I’ve been pulling out half finished Owl Hats from last fall, and some additional colors to stock pile on these for gifts & orders, and spent the past two lunch hours this week crocheting the whites for the eyes on as many hats as I can get made.

Two days progress - if you’re curious it does take me about 5 minutes per eye J

I also have the most AMAZING blanket for myself that I’ve been working on since early June.  I’m obsessed with it but don’t actually have any photographs of it to share right now – will have to be sure and take a few soon.

Last, but certainly not least, I did finally pick a pattern and yarn selection for my baby girl’s baby blanket.  I was ridiculously picky in this process but have an inspiration photo that I love, that Jonathan instantly loved, and all of the yarn just arrived earlier this week.  It’s a new to me pattern that has been making it’s rounds on some of my favorite crochet Facebook pages for some time now – hopefully I pick it up quickly!  I also have purchased multiple photo prop patterns for our newborn photoshoot with the little one in October.  I haven’t started on these yet either as I’m waiting on some clothing that was also purchased to arrived to make sure that my yarn matches accordingly.

So, as you can see, we have been VERY busy up here in our little corner of Western New York!  Sorry it’s taken me so long to post anything.  I’ll try and be better as I finish up some projects and have exciting news to share!  I still read all of your blogs, almost daily, and Pin and print loads of patterns and recipes to try!

January Recap and on to February Goals

Before opening the image I created for my January goals, I was feeling pretty good about things.

Then I reread them

1.  I have made a LOT of progress on one of the baby blankets.  Unfortunately it's taking longer than I anticipated given it's size, and had to rip out almost the top 1/3 because I needed to go down a hook size to get closer to a square.  This is before I started my "ruffly" border.  Have any of you ever crocheted a ruffle border?  It looks adorable, but good golly it's taking me forever!!! 

2.  Basically haven't touched by craft room since my original post about January Goals.  Started out giving myself an F on this, because it felt like I deserved one, but I did get [almost] all of my yarn put away early in January, and I have been able to get in there to access yarn when needed, so I'm not calling it a complete failure!

3.  Eh.  Early January I put away our Christmas decorations and got out my Valentine's Day stuff - which was amazing because I hadn't seen any of it since 2013, possibly 2012 (I can no longer remember which holiday I decided to make my last with decorations pre-move to WNY).  We also got our coffee pot set up with the fridge, but has been more hassle that it's worth when we don't have any water access on our side of the house just yet.  But the fridge is nice to keep beverages cold from when we're watching TV!  My in-laws left to go south for the next 3 months last Wednesday, so we primarily spend our evenings watching home downstairs in their living room since our pups are down there, and they have cable, which we do not on our side of the house!

4. The pattern continues - I haven't opened my gift-giving spreadsheet 1/8/15 (according to the last time it was saved).  I've had gift ideas running through my head for Valentine's, and Jon's birthday which is in March, but I haven't taken (or HAD) the time to go in and add things in as I think about them.

5.  TOTAL SUCCESS!  On January 11th Jon and I went skiing for our first time together as a couple, and my first time in almost FOURTEEN years!  The lift tickets that were removed from an old ski coat that still fits me were from March 2001.  Craziness.  My equipment is pretty old.  No joke, my skiis were likely purchased around 1997 and are JUNIORS skis.  Jon wanted to buy me new gear this year, but I told him it made more sense for me to ski with what I had (once it was graced by the local Ski Shop) this year to make sure I was still going to ENJOY skiing - after all, 13+ years is a very long time.  Well, I loved it!  After making Jon go down the Bunny Hill with me twice I was off and skied every run at Peek'n Peak that Sunday night.  It was as much fun as I remember skiing, if not more!  And I was skiing better than I ever remember skiing in high school.  I couldn't wait to go back.  We went back on the 18th with another couple, and I did not have the best of times.  It was super icy which I've always hated, and it made my knees very sore.  I ended up having to call it quits before anyone else was really ready to, but I was skiing terribly and didn't want to get hurt.  Our third trip skiing didn't happen until this past Saturday.  We went with the same couple as before, but this time we did a day trip up to to Holiday Valley.  It was AMAZING.  Just enough fresh snow to have an amazing time!  The next time we go, I want to rent equipment so I can try out a pair of parabolic skis.  Don't know when it's going to exactly be, but I.CAN'T.WAIT.

Hard to believe it's already February, isn't it?  I'd originally planned to do my January recap and February Goals as separate posts as to not make either too long, but it's already the 3rd of February so bare with me, cause I'm plugging along!

1.  I wasn't 100% successful in January, but I can't give up now!  Realistically I doubt I'll finish all 3 with such a short month, but hey, a girl can dream [crazy dreams] right?  right.

2.  I feel as though I've talked about this before, but last November after our whirlwind trip to NYC I felt amazingly rejuvenated.  On the drive back to Panama we were discussing this weightless feeling that I had, and we talked about saying that one day over every weekend would just be about us.  Maybe a little laundry if need be, and it could be with another couple but no remodeling with my dad, no major overhauls of rooms, etc.  Just Jonathan and Holly time.  We're not always the best and keeping true to this every weekend, so I'm hopeful that 4 consistant weekend's this month could make it a habit!

3.  I'm tired of feeling like I live in a mess.  Overall it's not going anywhere anytime soon, but I'd just like to feel like there aren't piles of clothes waiting to be put away in the bedroom and piles of yarn stacked on the caught and a mess lining the walkway in the hall and projects that are way overdo that I still don't have done.  Just want to feel more on top of things come March 1st!

4.  I've definitely caught the bug, and want to keep skiing while the weather is good.  Yesterday I totally wanted to play hooky and go skiing in all that amazing snow we got over night, but I was a good girl and went to work.  I definitely foresee  Jonathan/Holly time in February also being skiing time.  And I'm okay with that!

5.  This one probably got a big WHY out of many of you.  Well, the next show that I'm going to be in is "Boeing Boeing" this March at the Lucille Ball Little Theatre of Jamestown.  I'll be playing Gretchen, the German flight attendant.  We've just started blocking this week, but I'm very excited about the challenge of this part, and being apart of this hilarious production.

Here's a peak at the Broadway revival in which Mary McCommack portrayed Gretchen and recived a Tony nomination:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7AE07B1C90&feature=youtu.be

^This 2nd video is better, but Blogger won't let me embed this, but please, take the 4 minutes to go in and watch it, you will not be disappointed!

So there you have it.  I'm going to try my best to work on all of these goals during the next couple of weeks, but it's not surprise that rehearsals are going to take up a lot of my time, especially in the evenings.  Add to it that I'm also working to choreograph not 1 but 2 different high school musicals ("Damn Yankees" and "Anything Goes") which both open in March.  Throw pesky little work in there, and the fact that I actually need to sleep and my schedule is F-U-L-L