Playing with my embroidery software

So I was playing with my embroidery software. I'm finding out more things, oh like I can choose more colors of thread. LOL I had no idea that I could click on a pull-down menu and get all the different thread colors. Yep, should have figured that one out a year ago. LOL,

Had to do a Giants logo. I really want to do the scripty one, but this one will do for now. ;)
This one is for a soccer team, the Millionarios. Or Millionaros. I'm bad at spelling.
And the cowboys. Not a fan here, but I know someone who is...
And Pacquiao. A friend of mine drew this up, it looks really cool!

Anyway, plan on doing some more designs this week. none of this is for sale. Just practicing. :)

What I do for my sister...

So, my sister, who is a really big Giants fan, wanted World Series shirts. She lives in Dodger-land, so of course, they're not going to carry any Giants World Series Gear. LOL
So, the day after the World Series, we were sent to Sports Authority to get her a shirt.

This is what we saw when we entered Sports Authority...

Yes, it was a line from the front of the store to the back of the store. But do you think this was the line to pay for your shirts???

WRONG!

It was the line to pick out your shirts. Yep, we all are waiting to see what they have so we can BUY them. LOL Reminds me of the old Day on the Greens, where you wait and wait for a shirt to say, "I was there" LOL.
I know people thought I was nuts to sit in the line for a shirt. But heck, how often do the Giants win the World Series?? Of course I got a shirt, my other sister got a shirt, my mom, my aunt, and even my sister's bf got a hat. LOL Good thing we sat in line too, cause there wasn't much left by the next day.

I don't remember the lines being this long for even the 49ers winning the Super Bowl.

Go Giants!

Tonight the Giants won!! I'm so very excited. Although I'm more of an A's fan than a Giants fan, I totally jumped on that Giants bandwagon. LOL

Yesterday, my sister dragged me to AT&T Park so she could take photos of the park. It was kind of nice being there with not a ton of people around.

Here I am in front of McCovey Cove. I just think it's so pretty to have a ballpark on the water. Makes you want to rent a kayak and catch some home runs! LOL

Congratulations to the Giants!!

Getting back into it

It's been awhile since I've had the time to do much creating. Mainly because I've been working. And we've had a few big jobs that we have been working overtime on, so much of my free time has been spent just trying to relax. And of course to farm, farmville is too darn addicting. Just gotta farm farm farm. LOL

A friend of mine at work wanted a couple of designs embroidered. He's in our art department, so he actually helped me out to draw out these designs. It was a big help for him to actually draw it first so that step was eliminated! :) Then all I had to do was to digitize it.



The top design is for the league and the bottom one here is for the team:

I just now have to stitch them out.

I have one more bicycle design that I'll post after I stitch it out tomorrow. It's been so long since I've actually done anything on the machine. I'm so glad that I have the time to get back into it now. :)

Wands

I just learned that one of my friends makes these really cool wands. I had no idea he loved Harry Potter as much as I do (Ok, he might love it a little more than me if that is possible).

Here are a couple of the wands that he makes. I just think they are too cool. I really do think I need to have one. :)

His shop on etsy is lighthill01. I just love all the hand carving and detail that goes into his wands. And the finishes. :) Awesome job Matt!!

Note: I think Matthew has closed his wand shop at the moment, but I can forward messages along to him if you are interested in a wand...

Romalo's Cannoli & Spumoni Factory

Labor Day weekend, I went to Monterey with my friend Debi and her daughter Alex, and my Ashley. While we were there, we stopped into this little sandwich shop and had some lunch and dessert. Debi had a cannoli. It was this rolled pastry stuffed with something that looked like whipped cream. I've never had a cannoli before, so when she offered a bite, I tried it. And man, I'm hooked! :)
So when we got home, I thought I'd google Cannolis to see what would pop up. And Romolo's Cannoli and Spumoni factory popped up. Hmm, a cannoli factory?? Phil, of course, has had cannoli's. And when I showed him their website, he starts to describe cannolis to me in detail. So of course we had to go to Romolo's to check it out.

It's a Sunday, late afternoon, and there wasn't a line at all. Since we were Romolo cannolis virgins, the owner greets us and begins to show us what all our options are with the cannolis. Do we want plain shells, which is good if we're going to eat in right away. Or we could have chocolate lined ones, which will keep the shells crispy. And once filled, we had more options. Did we want chocolate chips, pistachios, or a cherry?


We ended up with half a dozen. 4 with chocolate, 2 without. Don't they look so yummy??

And he hand makes the ice cream there. OMG, it was the yummiest ice cream ever!! So very creamy. I know I have to go back to try the other flavors!!

After we were there for like a minute, the place started to fill up with customers, we lucked out getting there first! :) Will have to go back again to try other things, the tiramisu looks so yummy!!

It's already September!

I can't believe how fast the summer has passed. Didn't the kids just get out of school just a little while ago?? I guess when you are back to work, the days fly by that much more faster.

I've been going to movies more this summer, although I didn't see all the ones I wanted to go see before they left the theatre. It is way convenient having a movie theatre just blocks away from home. I keep telling my folks, "Why didn't they build a theater there when we were kids? Would have been way more convenient to walk there then to have to get rides all the time." LOL

I haven't been as creative as I used to, mainly because when you work all week, when you come home you just want to crash or to spend time with everyone. But with Christmas coming up, I'd better get cracking!

The outside kittens have grown up a lot:

The runt kitty (pictured at the bottom) has grown a lot. We thought he would stay kitten sized. He's much smaller than the others, but he's grown a ton!

This is my kitten, bitey. I call him Bitey or Cujo cause he always bites me before he gets comfortable. I've become a cat chew toy/kitty bed. He loves to sit with me after dinner. I swear he's one of those kitties you could pose for sleeping pictures, and he doesn't care. :)

This is a new kitten that showed up the other day. He was crying and crying all day. His mom was just so tired of feeding kittens that she pretty much abandoned him. But the other kittens have adopted him, let him stay around and sleep with them. So he's not so needy anymore. Which is so great! I don't like crying kittens cause you can't tell them everything will be ok. Ok, you could tell them, but heck, they don't understand you. LOL

Other than that, I've started reading the five hundred kingdoms series by Mercedes Lackey. I really love them! I thought it was funny that they're labeled as romance novels. I still think of them in the sci-fi/fantasy genre. I have always loved reading fairy tales and mythology. At first I wasn't sure if I'd like them, but OMG, they are so addicting to read! I just love it how they incorporate all the different fairy tales in the books, and especially explaining how a fairy godmother becomes a fairy godmother. I'll let you all read them to decide if you like them or not. I know they are going to be a re-read for me too!!

Monterey Bay

Yesterday we spent the day in Monterey. I've been wanting to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for awhile now, so I decided to take Ashley, Debi, and Alex with me. It's was my kind of day in Monterey, not too warm, nice and foggy. It was awesome! Here are some photos from the aquarium:
They have a Seahorse exhibit going on right now, and i just love that seahorse. It looks so neat.

Debi was cracking up at me after I took these photos, cause they came out so cool. My comment was, "It is almost like swimming there in the ocean". She thought that was too funny. :)

Had to take my photo of Dory. I just love Dory!! :)

Here's Ashley.

And this seal was sitting on a rock outside the restaurant we had dinner at that night. It was so cool to see him swimming in the bay. It was really fun walking around the wharf, especially cause every restaurant there wants you to sample their clam chowder cause they want to reel you into their restaurant for dinner. We had some really good chowder, one that the owner called "The best Chowder on the Wharf" really wasn't. LOL You can't make that claim if you don't back it up, buddy.

All in all, it was such a nice day. We got to see the aquarium, did some shopping, and had some eats. Two thumbs up!

I can't believe it's July!

Can you believe that it's July already? Where did this month go? I'm just amazed that life is whizzing by so quickly.

So many things happening in life, it's just been crazy. And catching a cold hasn't made life slow down any. My dad had a cold, so of course we all caught it. LOL In his words, "I like to share". Just wish he wouldn't have shared his cold. ;)

The kittens are growing bigger and bigger. and they're a ton of fun. they like to follow us everywhere. I have to take updated pictures of them soon. One hasn't grown much though, we call him Runt, Hobbit, Frodo, and Speedy Gonzalez. Speedy cause he can run up the stairs so quickly cause he wants to come inside the house.

We have Cujo 2. I always have one kitten that just loves to attack me, and he lives up to his Cujo name. The only thing is that he likes to attack everyone else too. LOL But then, when he sleeps, he sleeps really hard. I always wondered how they got the kitties in sleeping photos to do such cute things. Now I know. He can sleep so hard that you could dress him up and he wouldn't care. ;)

I haven't been very creative lately. I think that having my stuff still in boxes, and having not much free time has curbed my desire to create things. I think I'll have to go to a class soon to remedy that, just what class to take is the question.

How is your week going?

Well, yesterday I left work and found that someone was nice enough to leave a big dent in the side of my truck. Guess they thought that it didn't look right, so they would leave their mark on my truck. Wish they would have signed it too, so I would know who to charge the deductable to. LOL

Can you say SQUISH? I could be mad, but why? Man, they did a doosy on it. Glad that the door and the window weren't damaged. Cause then I couldn't drive it. I was joking around yesterday that the force wasn't with me. Cause May the 4th is my favorite holiday...International Star Wars day! But really it was. Cause one of my coworkers was involved in a hit and run. He was going through the intersection legally, and someone ran the red light right into his car. Of course the person who hit him tried to run away, but luckily they caught him. Thank goodness. So I really was lucky not to have been in my truck.

Well, so to brighten my day, I'll post a couple of kitten pics. This is a pic of mom and the kittens in the small box. they're a little squished, but cute.

Here are the kittens a few days later. They're eyes are starting to open. They're too darn cute. But sad to say, one of the kittens died last night. We think a predator got to it cause their cardboard box fell over one day, so we moved them to a new box, but it was a bit too accessible to other critters.

So, my dad moved the box and attached it to a shelf so it wouldn't fall down. He also put a lid on the box so that nothing could get to them. LOL So hopefully they'll be safe.

New Thread...

So I tried this new thread yesterday for embroidering. I've been using Rayon thread since I started. And I just found out that Polyester thread is supposed to be better for embroidering. It doesn't fade as quickly as Rayon will.

So, I thought I'd try some Poly thread. I had to do new jackets for FGSA, so I thought I'd try it on that. OMG, they're not kidding when they say it's better thread. Now I have to replace all my thread. I just LOVE it! it stitches out so nicely.

So now, I'll be spending a lot of ime at Eddie's Quilting Bee replacing all my thread. LOL

Day Three

Day three...kitten watch.

Today was day three for the kittens. When I peeked in the box earlier, they were climbing all over their mom. After she left the box to eat, I snuck a peek at how they are growing. OMG, they are too darn cute!!

I'll try to keep you posted on their growth every couple of days. :)

Flowers and kitties

So outside of the house my mom planted these beautiful iris'. Of course I love them cause they're purple. I just think they're so pretty!

And the lilacs are blooming too. I love the flowers, just can't be near the smell for too long.

And surprise surprise! The mama cat that is our "friendly" cat had 5 kittens yesterday. When my mom saw her earlier in the day, she was still chubby, and when I got home from work, she was skinny. So I went searching for her kittens.

She had them in this small cardboard box. LOL right now she just fits, but with 5 kittens, they'll outgrow the box pretty quickly. So I know that Phil will build them some kind of shelter cause he always does. And we'll go out and get her fixed as soon as she's done weaning. I'm just lucky that she likes us and lets us get close enough to her kittens.

Embroidery tips and tricks

So, two weekends ago I took a class with my friend Debi that was called Embroidery T-N-T, tips and tricks. And it was a fun class. It really was a big sales pitch for this uber awesome machine that we got to use from Bernina. We all thought it would be more geared towards tips and tricks, not lessons on how to use this new machine, and by the way, would you like to take one home?

Sure, if it wasn't for the $10,000+ price tag on it. LOL

Three of us shared one machine. So each of us got to do one project. Mine was this one, it was one of those cut out types. It was cool, I loved the font that was in the project. The next project was a reverse applique, and the last project was one on monograming.

I learned a bit about stabilizers, and would like to take another class on those. It made me want to do some more embroidering though. So I think I'll spend some time figuring out some designs to do.

Japanese Kit Kats

So, Phil and I were in the Japanese market the other day, and we saw that they carried Japanese Kit Kats. I've seen them on the internet for awhile now. They make a ton of different weird flavors. Like this bag was a bag of Sweet Potato Kit Kats. I thought, that's kinda weird. But Phil was all into trying them. So we bought them.

These are what the bars looked like. They were a white chocolate, with sweet potato powders in them. And what was great about these kit kats are that they have no fat. You read right, no fat! LOL

Phil says they were really good, so I think he wants to try the maple ones that we saw. They also make a bunch of different flavors, they have shoyu flavors, miso, and a ton of others too. Not sure I want to try the shoyu ones though.

Softball Logo

So, one of our local softball teams wanted a logo done for their coaches shirts. They gave me this picture to create the logo. So I redrew it in AutoCAD, and digitized it.

This is the final product. I liked how it turned out. Their school colors are purple and gold, so we did the girl in gold, the swoosh in white, and on a lovely purple shirt. We also put each of the coaches names on the shirts.

I have to figure out some more softball logos so I can do more things with it.

Oreo in a box

So during our move, our cats were wigging out. Mainly cause parts of the house kept disappearing. We've been in our house longer then they've been alive, so that was the only home they've ever known. Oreo just didn't know what to do.

Every day I'd tell him that I was going to move him in a box too. Well, in his cat carrier. LOL I would let him know that he wasn't going to get left behind. And that we were taking him with us.

So I guess he decided to box himself up. LOL Love it when he sits in boxes.

He's very happy here at home now. My mom totally spoils him. I think she really likes having a cat around. She's buying him treats, feeding him in his own special bowl in the kitchen. It's cracking me up. :)

Lady Titans

This weekend we finally got the computer desk put together. Well, after trying to figure out where we put all the parts. You know how hard it is to remember where you put screws and desk legs 3 weeks after moving your whole life?? Well, we would have found them sooner if we had remembered that the parts were in one of the dressers. LOL

So this is the first embroidered logo I've worked on since we've moved. It's for the Lady Titans in Fremont. They gave me the artwork, I redrew and digitized it. I think it doesn't look too bad. I just have to stitch it out tomorrow to see how good it looks.

This weekend was filled with a lot of stuff. We had the plumber over cause I noticed there was a leak in the basement. One of the pipes was breaking, so we had a little leak. Well, when the plumber was putting the new pipe in, another old pipe broke. Thank goodness he was the one who broke it, cause can you imagine? We'd have to have him back. LOL So we're all better now that it's fixed. I felt bad for him cause he was here for about 9 hours! He probably wanted to start his weekend many hours ago. LOL

Yesterday was filled with organizing, and spending time with family. It's good to be back home, Phil and my dad enjoy talking every night. And I get to spend more time with my mom. He's doing really good after his shoulder surgery. I'm so amazed at how quickly he's healing. He'll have a bad day here and there, but overall he's healing quickly!

Creativity...

What is it about working that makes you want to get back to being creative? For awhile I've been doing pretty much nothing in the creating department. I was spending way too much time on Farmville or farmtown or just on facebook in general. And I was getting totally nothing done.

I saw Debi's gratitude journal this weekend, and I totally want to create a book out of fabric, or make some fabric inchies! I think after I get some stuff all organized, and I figure out where the heck I put everything, i'll get back to creating.

I also want to see some old friends, something I didn't do a whole lot of before. Facebook has reconnected me with some old friends that I want to see again.

So, now that I don't have a lot of time anymore, there's so much I want to go and do. LOL Isn't that always the way things happen??

Day in San Francisco

My niece and my sister were here visiting from Ventura this week. They were helping us out with going through some stuff at my parents' house. So we decided to take a break and go to the City on Wednesday.

Our first stop was Free Wednesday at the Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. It was great because we saved $25 each on admission, but there was so many people in there that we all decided that the next time we'll pay the admission fee! LOL

Since Kiana was taking time off from school, we called it her Field Trip. I liked the new set-up of the Aquarium. I wished we could have gone into the rainforest part, but the line was so long we skipped it. We decided to do that another time.
The aquarium is now downstairs. It's neat because there is so much to see, the above photo is from the Philippine Coral Reef. I loved it cause of all the colorful fish. And we could see the guy cleaning the tank, which was pretty cool. Reminded me of Finding Nemo. LOL
This photo is of the California Coast Tank. Love to see all of the fish that we have close to us in the ocean. They pipe in the water for the tanks directly from the ocean. I learned that from watching a show on the building of the new aquarium on Discovery channel.

The one drawback of being downstairs was that there were so many people downstairs, and it made it very warm. If you're claustrophobic, free Wednesday might not be a great idea. Too many people crammed into such a little space. Other than that, it was a great experience.

After going to the aquarium, we decided to walk through the Japanese Tea Garden across the way. I haven't been there in years, I think the last time was with my friend Christine. It was really neat to go back and take a bunch of photos.
Here is Eydie and Kiana on the bridge. The bridge is really cool, really steep though. LOL They had fun trying to climb down.

And here is a picture of the Buddha statue in the garden. It was so cool, there was a finch that kept landing on his hand. I didn't take the picture in time to get it, that would have been a cool pic.
So, of course after going to the tea garden, we had to go to Japantown to go get noodles at Mifune. And of course we had to walk around and shop. My favorite store is of course the Sanrio Store. It's a pretty big one, and they had some really fun San Francisco Kitty items. I just love getting the different city's kittys.
Here's the front of the store:
It was a really great day to play, and I'm glad we got to spend time together.

Super Bowl Fry Day

This past Sunday was Super Bowl Sunday. For those of you who aren't from the US, the Super Bowl is the biggest game of the year. It's where the NFC and AFC has their final game of the season to see which is the best team. Either you're watching the game cause you love football, or you're like me, watching the game to see what was the best commercial this year. LOL

This year Phil's family decided that we'd have a Fry Day. Meaning that everything was deep fried, and pretty much finger foods. Yes, warnings went off in my head at the thought of having mainly fried foods. But of course the novelty of it won out, even though I knew I was going to have a stomach ache afterward.

One of our favorite fried foods is Garlic Steaks. Think of a chicken fried steak with a ton of garlic in it, and you have Garlic Steaks. Phil gets Italian bread crumbs and mixes in chopped onions and minced garlic. Then he dips a thin piece of steak in an egg wash, presses that in the bread crumbs, and fries it. OMG, it is so good.

We thought that mini corn dogs would taste really good. So we bought the mini smokies at Costco, dipped them in corndog batter made from Krusteaz and cornmeal. I did a half recipe and it still was way too much. They turned out pretty good.


We also had fried Raviolis. Phil takes frozen raviolis, and he breads them with the same stuff he uses on the garlic steaks. They turned out really yummy.

We also had regular cheese sticks. Those were really easy to make. Since we weren't at home, we had to make due with what was in the house. Al bought string cheese sticks, and we dipped that in the egg wash. We used the Italian bread crumbs to coat, then dipped it back in the egg wash and back into the bread crumbs. Then deep fry. Those really didn't take long at all to fry. And they tasted like any cheese sticks you'd get at a restaurant. I wish I had thought to take a picture of them.


For dessert I made Apple Zeppolis. They're from the recipe that Giada made on her show. I think I didn't squeeze out the juice from the apples enough, cause it made the dough more like a batter. So we pretty much had apple funnel cakes. They were quite good, I must say. LOL

And not pictured are the fried twinkies. We were going to use the traditional fried twinkies recipe, but there was no vinegar in the house. That's one thing about going to someone else's house to cook. I know what I have in my house, and I have pretty much everything I need. And I get a bit frustrated when I'm told to make something, but I don't have what I need. You get used to your tools, you know. Anyway, since we didn't have any vinegar in the house, and since no one was going to go to the store to get any, we used the Zeppoli batter. And you know, it turned out pretty good. Or so I was told. I'm not a big twinkie fan, so when I took a bite, it was too darn sweet for me. But everyone else liked it.

I also made some not fried things. Phil's mom had a few mini bundt cake pans that I inherited. Mainly cause I bake, and no one else does. LOL So I've been making mini bundt cakes lately. These are mocha cakes with mocha glaze and homemade whipped cream. They were really yummy.

I think that was my last fry day party! I hope next year we incorporate some veggies cause man, that was too much fried foods in one day!