Monday, December 31, 2007

Hi Ho, Hi Ho

Geocaching we will go!

Uploaded 10 waypoints to my GPS~ all within a 2 mile radius! Whoo hoo!
Hopefully the weather will hold out for us today!



New Year's Plans?? We're heading over to Tara and Danny's, where I'm convinced we'll convert them into letterboxer/geocachers with little effort!!

Happy New Year's to you!! Everyone be safe out there tonight!

Sunday, December 30, 2007

Got a New Toy!!!

Garmin eTrex Legend GPS system!! Whoo hoo!
Sadly Garmin doesn't work well with Mac. Stupid fools! However, after many many hours of screwing around and googling, I found a way to load geocaches from geocache.com onto my Garmin. There are at least 5 caches within a half mile from our house. And our local park, just a couple miles down the road... 12!!!
I can't wait to go out for them!!

On the Letterboxing note.....
We were quite successful in Spring Hill. Found a total of ten boxes!! One of them had a hitchiker and one was a bonus box with 2 stamps! Great day!! When we got to one of the parks and found our first box, the log was stamped from someone else for today! We looked all over, hoping to run into them, but never saw them. When I went onto atlasquest to log our finds, I noticed those same people also went to our first stop. It's a shame we didn't catch each other and do an exchange.

Secret of the Stole

is FINAllY off the needles!
hoo-freakin'-rah!
can't block until ant goes back home and i can use his bed.

Saturday, December 29, 2007

Have you noticed......

more blog posts~ holy cow!
I'm trying to make a more conscious effort to blog more! No need to write a novel of a post trying to catch up on everything if I wold just blog more to begin with! So there you have it.

Spring Hill, here we come

Found a park in Spring Hill with 9, yeah, you got it, 9 letter boxes!!
Also, along the way is another stop that is the second of a set of 3 stamps~ Gator's Nest #2. We'll be picking that up as well, since we got #1 the other day. Ant's super stoked!

When we have a little extra spending money, we're going to look at GPS's to get started in geocaching. Even more fun!! I was on geocaching.com for giggles and found a TON in our area!

Roxy Update

All is well and happy now that our baby is back home again!!

Even better was the fact that the vet's bill was a good $100 less than originally quoted! Whoo hoo! That celebration was short lived though. When I was sitting with her this afternoon, I happened to notice a dark bump in her fur under her collar. Ruh-roh! We have our first tick folks. Not okay! I guess that's what happens when you bring your dog traipsing through the woods for three days in search of letterboxes! We went out immediately to purchase some Frontline for her. And a nifty tick remover~ not that we needed it after that. I used my nails and with a great deal of effort yanked that mother out! It disgusted me beyond belief!!

Because of the surgery, Roxy won't be able to take any extended walks for awhile. No letterboxing for her :o(

Friday, December 28, 2007

Poor Roxy

Merry Christmas to her, she got a trip to the vet today to be fixed. They also found that they needed to fix an umbilical hernia she had when she was born. Thankfully that bill is covered by the puppy place where we purchased her. She also needed a second follow up shot to a shot she received a month ago. In the end, its a $430 present! We pick her up tomorrow. I'm sure she'll be fine, but she won't be the same for awhile.

Ant told Randy tonight that he doesn't like Roxy being gone.

Frogs and Hitchhikers, oh my!

I haven't been able to post about my knitting because, well, I haven't been knitting!

I have, however, been a letterboxing maniac!!! Randy and I went out on Wednesday and hit up two parks. One we had been to previously, but Randy hadn't made a stamp at that point and neither of us had journals. Lucky for him, I bought him a stamp carving kit from stampeaz.com for Christmas and a nice leather journal!

We went back and got the first two stamps then found a third in the same park. We left there and headed a couple miles up the road to the next park. These two boxes proved to be a little more difficult. We were off in the woods looking for an uprooted tree, but ended up in a broken tree by accident. We searched for a good ten minutes before I said lets move on. We were supposed to be around pine trees, of which I saw none! Sure enough, a couple minutes down the trail were pine trees and the uprooted tree we were searching for!! There was a second box that went with this one. It led us up a hill through this teeny tiny path. It was difficult because it was walled by bushes and roots were protruding from every which way! when we got to the top of the hill, we found ourselves at the top of a cliff overlooking the trees and in the distance was a big lake. It was GORGEOUS!!!! Not only that, but we found our first hitchiker there! All the way from New Hampshire!!

After that we headed to a park clear on the other side of town. We were looking for the statue of the man for whom the park is named. We walked, and walked, and walked and couldn't find it anywhere! We were at it for well over an hour and walked every inch of the park. Finally we had to leave because it was just too dark. We were both perturbed and Randy really didn't want to quit. So, we drove around the outer perimeter of the park, along the main highways, and lo and behold, there was the elusive statue. Needless to say we made it a point to go back the next day. When we did finally find the box, which was cleverly hidden inside a locked wooden box, nailed to a tree and labled "Entomology Study", we were surprised to find a trio of frogs hopping around with the goodies!

Since we were driving out to Bartow to pick up Ant, I found three boxes that were in the area for us to search. We found the first park with no problem, but unfortunately it was a total bust. We were in the exact spot for the clue, there really was no mistaking it. We dug around, we searched under and inside wooden poles, I even climbed to the bottom of a creek that was below the bridge we were at~ NOTHING! We had a woman and her daughter curiously approach us to find out what we were looking for. When we explained the whole letterboxing concept, she was quite interested. Too bad she didn't get to witness a find~ i did feel like we were under pressure with her watching.

We left park number one, feeling jipped. We found the second location quite easily~ too easy really, no challenge. We drove around in circles looking for the trail with the third box. We asked Ant's grandmother to point us in the right direction. Apparently we just needed to head further north of where we were. Ant was quite excited about the idea of finding these boxes. We finally arrived at the trail, hiked about a half mile and into the tree we went. What sucked was discovering that the shrubbery surrounding this tree was filled with sandspurs!! We were all covered. And poor, poor Roxy!!! We've taken her with us the past few days. This time she was an absolute mess! All those sandspurs stuck in her long hair and in between the pads of her paws. It was a disaster!!!

Ant had a blast so we attempted one more find at a rest stop off the interstate just a bit farther north than where we live. Unfortunately the picnic area that we needed to get into was closed at dusk. We must have just missed it since the sun was just starting to go down when we got there.

Today we took Anthony out, again. Randy carved him his own ant stamp and we picked up a small notebook last night. We headed out to Tarpon Springs for a blue diamond box. We were in the exact place that we needed to be. Dug through all sorts of plants in front of an abandoned church right out at the intersection of two fairly busy streets. We were concerned someone would yell at us, especially since a realtor was showing a house just a couple doors down. We never got in trouble, but we never found the box either. We were there for like half an hour.

From there we headed to a nearby park where there was definitely one stamp, and a questionable second box. The questionable box had been reported missing but the owner seemed to think people were in the wrong place. We were definitely in the right place and it was indeed missing! The other box we found no problem.

We rounded out the afternoon in a hoity toity residential part of town where there were three more boxes. Two of the stamps were lame cheesy leaves, with a 50cent price tag still on the back. They weren't very well hidden either. The third was a much better stamp and a slightly more difficult hike (though calling it a hike would be exaggerating). Ant's gotten quite into the letter boxing experience! We're going out again this weekend! Can't wait!!!

Belated Christmas Update

As usual, I've been a very bad blogger!!

I had to work like a mad woman on speed, but my procrastinating slackass self managed to get all of my handmade Christmas items completed on time!! Of course, I failed to take pictures though~ DOH!

I made Dammit Dolls for my friends and family but reworked the poem to fit their personalities. I made Teacher Dammit Dolls for coworkers, Bucs Dammit Dolls for the guys, and a very special Fishing Dammit Doll for Randy. They were a huge hit!

I also made magnets from flat clear magnets for an elite group of friends. Christmas themed for a couple friends, cutesy pink ones for Tara, flowers for mom and vintage pinup girls for Yoly.

I was also working on jewelry from polyshrink, but only managed to get one solitary butterfly necklace made for Tara. I attempted a pin for my mom. I was to say "CRAFTY" and then dangling from that were going to be a hot glue gun, needle&thread, and scissors. This went horribly wrong the first time. It didn't shrink nearly enough and then ended up all wavy. I ran out of time before I could try again. Oh, well. Maybe mother's day.

Christmas treated me well! I was quite excited to get what I was hoping for~ a jewelry armoire. Woo hoo! My mom made took the cake by making me cry with one of her gifts. She had saved them for last and made one for both my brother and me. They were "create-your-own" calendars, but she had already done all the creating for us! Each month she scrapbooked using photos from our childhood that fit with that particular month. It was the best gift ev-ar!

So, yeah, Christmas was quite nice. Now we face the dreaded clean up! I'll be happy when dh finally gets all his stuff put away. At least 98% of mine is where it belongs. Clutter makes me crazy!

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Species Identified

Thanks to Chelsea the Yarn Geek directing me to whatsthatbug.com , I now know that the spider that hopped on me during our walk was a Golden Silk Orb Weaver.

It's not so harmful.....Good to know.

Monday, December 17, 2007

Found 2!!

Letterboxes that is! We went for a quick hike through Lettuce Lake Park and found two letterboxes. They're actually a pair that go together. We had to rush because the park was closing in less than an hour, but we found them and made it back to the car in like 30 minutes. I did have a run in with a critter. I was putting one of the boxes back and felt something on my face. I brushed it off and saw what fell~ this bohemith monstrosity! It really freaked me out; and bugs don't normally get to me! I've never seen a spider like this before!

Sunday, December 16, 2007

Letterboxing

I think we are going to take up a new hobby, thanks to the latest LnV podcast. Randy got so into the idea of letterboxing that I think we may even go out today!! We went onto atlasquest.com and found a TON of letterboxes in our area. We're so stoaked! What a great way to get out of the house and get some exercise~ with Roxy too! We can even take Anthony along, he'd get a kick out of a "treasure" hunt! I ordered a stamp carving kit for Randy for Christmas. Don't think it will get here in time, but you never know.

Oh, yes! Another compulsive hobby to take up more of my little time!
Can't Wait!!

Sunday, December 9, 2007

cookies are done

Our craft group is having our second annual cookie exchange tomorrow night. I couldn't decide on just one recipe, so I made two. They're super delicious, I have to admit. The recipes were found on Kraft foods web site and were really easy to make!

3 dozen Citrus White Chocolate Macaroons~ mmmmmm.....


4 dozen Chew Chocolate Chunk~ chocolatey goodness!


then there's beef stew in the crock pot. nothing fancy, just a bag of Marie Callendars from the frozen foods aisle

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Cliche' Family Photo

Of course, it's the holiday, and I just had to! It took sev-er-al shots! sadly, i own no tripod. and roxy was just a little rambunctious!

i have been a busy bee!

i've been so busy at work, and then coming home to work on Christmas crafts that i'm hardly ever on the computer anymore. that really makes me a bad blogger. i can't really mention what i've been working on as my best friend, tara, might be lurking my blog. she tries really hard to get me to slip on hints, but i'm solid like a rock! here are some photos of my last dye batch. i need to order new yarn blanks, i'm totally out! but since it's also Christmas time, i don't have much money to spare.







and hmmm..... what could this be??? i'm not tellin'!