Just Hanging Out......

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Mr. Squirrel was enjoying our sunny weather yesterday afternoon, jumping from one tree to the other. The trees sure look different from one week ago when they were all covered in snow!

~♥~ The Real Way to A Girl's Heart ~♥~

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This is what hubby brought home for me for Valentine's Day...I've been staring at them and trying so hard to resist them cuz I know once I open the pretty heart box they'll be gone...I have absolutely no self control when it comes to hazelnuts and chocolate! I only ate 6 yesterday, in one sitting...that's not that bad is it? Oh who am I kidding? That's terrible cuz I know that I'll end up eating another 6 today and then there will just be 4 lonely choccies left and I'll end up feeling sorry for them and I'll have to gobble them too! But what I was thinking of doing is saving all the pretty gold foil wrappers and brown paper cups and wrapping them back up real nice and putting them back in their little spots in the pretty box and no one here will ever know the difference...until of course they try to sneak one behind my back...won't they be in for a disappointing surprise! Ha! That'll teach them! Oh, Chocolate brings the evil out in me!

Hope your day is as special as you are sweetie pie!

You are growing up so fast.

I am so proud of everything you do!

I am truly blessed to have such a wonderful daughter!

May all your dreams and wishes come true!

You deserve nothing but the very best!

Mama loves you big whole bunches!

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Happy Birthday Kiddo!

~ ~ ~ ~ Happy Valentine's Day! ~ ~ ~ ~

Just wanted to wish you all a Very Happy Valentine's Day! May your day be filled with Love!

In honour of Valentine's Day, here is a handful of my very favourite Valentine Patterns for you available on the web...Enjoy :o)

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heart-shaped table mat and serviette ring

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olive you

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Smitten

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Pop Heart Pattern!

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Love Bunnies!

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Two Hearts as One Kitchen Hanging Hand Towel

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Hearts Go Round Hat

Here is the photo for this adorable crocheted hat

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Hugs for a wonderful weekend,

:o)

Rachel

The Beauty of Winter?

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Winter has NEVER been my favourite season...it's too cold and in my opinion it lasts way too long. But I must admit that it really is beautiful at times...this morning while I was outside with the kids, I couldn't help but notice how pretty all the trees around us were after our last snowfall. I swear, EVERY single branch, stick, and needle was COMPLETELY smothered in the white stuff...it looked so beautiful...my only wish is that the sun would come out so everything would sparkle nice...perhaps later on. Check out all the snowy photos...I left them big so you can click on them!

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This one above is my favourite. If you click on it you can see all the snow hanging on the delicate branches...you can even see tiny little water droplets frozen on the ends of some of them.

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First Time Felting For Me!

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Felting has always been one of those things that I have always wanted to give a try. Just recently I saw something that caught my eye on Ravelry. A couple of people have made felted coasters out of the free knitted star coaster pattern from knittingonthenet.com. You can check them out here and here. Anywho, the last time we were out shopping Hubby took me to Michael's to find some real wool so I could give this felting thing a go! Found some really nice colour combos so that made me happy and I went home and casted on the star coaster pattern. I found out real fast that I didn't like the method of picking up stitches along the side of my star after every wedge so I ripped it out and went looking for some other kind of knitted star that I could use. The first star shape that came to mind was Dione's great starfish cloth! I figured after the felting that my finished creation was going to shrink a whole bunch anyway so I thought why not do up a dishcloth? So there I went again...casted on the required 15 stitches and went to work. What a wonderful pattern to follow...the only change I made was I didn't do the yarn overs as I didn't know how the holes would look when felted so I just knit in the front and back of the stitch before the yarn over as not to make a hole. Here is my finished starfish knit with Patons Classic Wool/Rosewood.

Isn't it pretty? All those beautiful colours together? I was extremely happy with the way it knit up. So now I had the shape I wanted and it was time to figure out what method for felting I would use. I was reluctant to throw it in the washer as I didn't want to just have this one little bitty thing to throw in there and also I didn't want to throw anything else in with it being scared of the colours mixing in the hot water. So I found these great instructions on knittingabout.com for hand felting. I threw my star in a sink of really hot water with a tad bit of dishwashing soap and I swished away with it in there. It didn't take long at all for it to shrink and start getting all fuzzy...so I just kept doing that until I thought it looked good and then I rinsed it in cold water and lay out to fully dry. Here is my finished felted starfish.

As you can see it shrunk quite a bit...it's still a bit big to be considered a coaster but I am more than happy with the way it turned out no matter what it gets used for. Now I'm trying to figure out what else I could felt. What a neat thing to do with wool! There are so many things to try...bags, bowls, slippers, flowers, vases...the possiblities really are endless!

Feeling Blue............

Not the sad kind of blue, but the colour blue of course! If anyone knows me, they know that I am just crazy over the colour blue! Especially when it comes to things in my kitchen! I seem to be drawn to this colour for whatever reason...people laugh at me when I tell them that I love when Hubby takes me into Canadian Tire and Home Hardware cuz they have a wonderful selection of "kitcheny" things and lots of them in blue too!

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So you can just imagine the look on my face when I received this Gorgeous Blue Snowman Lamp from my dear friend Marilyn! She told me that she was sending me a little package for Christmas and she said it was delicate and fragile so I was expecting something small...when Hubby walked in with the parcel I nearly fell off my chair! Marilyn made me this beautiful lamp out of an old wine jug...it is so unique and so cute and so BLUE!!!
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As you can see, it matches perfect! Not sure if you can see, but the lamp shade is all sparkly too! If you click on the pictures you can see all the work that went into this beauty!
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Here is a close-up photo of the adorable snowmen..these cute little guys made their way around the whole lamp...pretty cute, hey?

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And here you can see the sparkly snow on the bottom of the lamp...when the lamp is turned on they just sparkle like real snow in the sunshine!
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Here it is all lit up...it looks sooo pretty in the evening...I just love it so much! Thank you so very much Marilyn for taking the time to do all this for me!
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And another big thank you is definitely in order...this time for my dear friend, Mary Anne! If you don't know Mary Anne, you seriously have to get on over to her blog...every Friday she updates her blog with all that's been going on in her life that week...sometimes it's knitting, sometimes it's not, sometimes it's pictures of the beautiful scenery or of a certain fella with his bike...but whatever it is, Mary Anne always has this charming way of entertaining her readers with a little humor and a little education too! Anyway, last night when Hubby came home from work, he gave me a package that came in the mail addressed to me! Here it was an envelope filled with beautiful knitted dishcloths in all tones of blue!
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Don't they all look wonderful on my kitchen counter? I love them all! There are of course Mary Anne's extremely famous Feather and Fans and also there were a couple in the Basket Rib stitch!
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Check out her beautiful yellow card with the blue flowers on it...so pretty!
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And she even sealed the envelope with a teddy...how adorable!
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All ready to dive into all those bubbles and do the dirty work now!
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Thank you so very much Mary Anne for all the delightful blue dishcloths, I love them all!
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Hugs and Love to the pair of you for thinking of me and taking the time to brighten my holiday and making me feel special with these beautiful gifts made from the heart!

Yesterday Hubby and I celebrated our 10th Wedding Anniversary! I can't believe how fast the time has flown. So much has happened since then..so much to be thankful for, so much to be proud of. 10 years ago yesterday, Hubby and I were on our way to Minneapolis with his sister, our beautiful 10 month old little girl, and two of our friends...we were heading to Minneapolis to get married in the Mall of America in the Chapel of Love...it sounds so corny and cheesy I know, but when we saw it on our previous trip to Minneapolis we both thought it would be kinda cute! Nothing seemed to be going right leading up to the big day...Hubby barely found a suit in time, I had just found a dress to wear the night before after looking around town ALL day long. A few days before that, I had had a tubal pregnancy and had to have an operation to have it removed which left me feeling a little sore. Hubby's suit pants needed to be hemmed so his Sister was hand sewing them in the front seat of the car on the way with the little sewing kit they give to you for free in the hotel room...when the teeny tiny little scissors broke we stopped at a gas station to borrow a pair of scissors so she could finsih the job! We still didn't have a ring for Hubby so when we pulled into Mineappolis we stopped at the fist store we saw which was a Target and quickly picked him out a ring from their jewelry department...thank goodness they had his size! In the meantime, we had lost site of our friends that were riding in a seperate vehicle...they ended up going the wrong way but fortunately they were able to find their way to the Mall where we all met up eventually. By this time I was a complete basket case, thinking to myself that this was never going to work out because everything that could go wrong, WAS! We made our way up to the Chapel where we were escorted to the dressing room where we all frantically got dressed. Just before the ceremony I had a little emotional breakdown where I started crying because I was just so nervous and had been worried all day that we were going to be late...talk about being stressed out! I quickly picked up my beautiful little girl, gave her a kiss and said a little prayer to myself. I opened the door to the chapel and as soon as I saw Hubby I felt better...still very emotional but I knew that the moment was finally here and all the stress of getting ready for it was over. I walked down the aisle with our baby in my arms, we said our vows and I cried through the whole time...couldn't help it, it was such an emotional day for me. Now, every year that goes by we have a little giggle over it all as we remember how everything that could go wrong, did, but in the end it didn't matter because it all worked out just fine.

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To celebrate our 10 years being married, Hubby surprised me by taking me to the jewelry store and letting me pick out diamond earings! He is always so good to me, spoiling me rotten all the time. Never wanting or needing anything for himself but always over-joyed when it comes to giving me things to make me happy...what a guy! I know that I am not the easiest person to live with at times and he still takes me for who I am no matter what and I truly love him and appreciate him for that!

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Here are my beautiful diamond earings...I love them so much, aren't they so pretty and sparkly? I am so lucky!

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(pictures are clickable)

Happy Birthday To a Wonderful Grandmother!!

With a few thousand kilometres between us, we don't get to see eachother as often as I would like to. A couple of months ago I was fortunate enough to have been able to see her for only a short time though. We ALWAYS try to make the most of our visits cuz they just don't last long enough.

She is the most wonderful Grandmother anyone could ask for! She has always been so supportive and encouraging. She has always shown how proud she is of me...from a little girl to the woman I am today.

She always says that she doesn't want or need anything, so on this special day of her's I would like her to know just how special she is to me, how much I love her and miss her, and how much I truly appreciate everything she does for me!

Happy Birthday Granny! Enjoy your day and know that we are thinking of you lots!

I'll leave you with a few photos of her and I together...a couple from a LONG time ago and one from more recently. Sure brings back memories...here's to many more Granny!

Love Rachel Marie

xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

~ My Granny...my best friend ~

*** Enjoy & Have a Safe & Happy Halloween!! ***

Hugs,

:o)

Rachel

~ Calendar of Hope 2009 ~

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13 Original Dishcloth Patterns Created to Raise Awareness and Money for Breast Cancer Research

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This is our Calendar of Hope for 2009 which I am honoured to be a part of. This all started from a little thought Cindy (aka, FitterKnitter) had to create a Breast Cancer Awareness Calendar to sell to raise money for breast cancer research and it snowballed from there into this beautiful work of art! Cindy has done such a beautiful job with this calendar. I am so proud to be a part of it!

Below you can find my contribution to the calendar, "Little Praying Cherub". It was a lot of fun working with so many wonderful people on this project. Thanks so much Cindy for this opportunity!
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This Calendar is available for purchase on KnitPink.com. It is being offered as an instant pdf download and all proceeds made from this calendar go to Breast Cancer Research. Thank you so much for checking it out :o)

Chocolate Cake For Breakfast?

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It's Hubby's Birthday today...poor guy had to start back at work today after being laid off for most of the Summer. There is never anything this man wants or needs...he's just happy with what he's got...he's always more than happy to plan little surprises for me and the kids though...he always takes great pride in providing for his family. He's just a simple kinda guy, doesn't like a big fuss made on his special day, unlike me...I thouroughly enjoy feeling special and being surprised and spoiled rotten on my day!

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So I thought the least I could do is bake the man a cake...no candles but of course there will HAVE to be icing! I decided to surprise him with a chocolate cake when he gets home...not even the kids know that I'm making Dad a cake, so really, I could eat this whole thing today if I wanted to and no one would ever know...LOL!

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Check out my little Baking Assistant, Molly...I think she is loving the smell of Chocolate in the air as well! This is gonna take a lot of will power for me not to eat this ALL DAY LONG! That must mean that I'll have earned myself a HUGE piece of cake at the end of the day though for being so good by resisting it throughout the day! I'll keep ya posted :o)

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Pictures are clickable to enlarge :o)

Hugs,

:o)

Rach

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Bill Cosby's, "Chocolate Cake for Breakfast"! Makes me laugh so hard everytime! Enjoy :o)

via videosift.com

Feather and Fan Baby Washcloth Set Finally Posted :o)

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Well, I'm finally getting a chance to post some pics of the feather and fan cloths I did up about a month and a half ago...it's taken me this long to take the pics of them. What motivated me to do it, was reading Mary Anne's Blog last week where she posted pics of some of the feather and fans she did using two different colours! So, here they are!

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I have come to the conclusion that I'm not all that fond of the self-striping cotton anymore. It's lovely when it works with the pattern you are doing, but I get so darn frustrated when the colour changes at inappropriate times like in the middle of the row or on the wrong row. So when I wanted to knit up some feather and fan cloths in a striping pattern, I decided to do some manual striping instead of using the self-striping cotton...and I was so impressed with the way they all turned out...even though there were more than a few ends to tie in. Just look at how gorgeous these guys turned out!! Too bad I don't have any babies around me...I just love all the pastel colours though! So soft and pretty!

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Feather and Fan Baby Washcloth Set

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This first one was done using baby green, baby pink, and baby blue with the white in between them...lots of ends to tie in here on this one...grrrrr!
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Done in Baby Pink and White
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Done in Baby Blue and White
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Done in Baby Green and White
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If you like this version of the Feather and Fan cloth, you can find the modifications for it on my dear friend, Mary Anne's blog, located on her sidebar. Mary Anne is absolutely crazy for this pattern...she must have hundreds and hundreds of them knit up by now! She's so awesome!

~ My Finished Group Knit-a-Long Picture ~

My pic of Pam's Tulip Dishrag that we knit for our May 2008 Group Knit-a-Long in Rachel's Knitting Room!

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This beautiful dishcloth pattern was graciously provided by a wonderful woman, Pam Walker. She is the owner of Knitter's Nest that is located in Cadillac Michigan.

I came across this pattern about 7 years ago and I fell in love with it right away! Unfortunately, when I went to the site later to find it though, it was gone :o( So I set out on a pattern hunt and was finally able to get in contact with Pam through email...PHEW!...cuz for the past few months, I've been really wanting to do something a little different for a KAL and thought that this would be an absolutely perfect pattern to try! I tried to provide some help with the videos and I know that it has been a struggle for some, but I am so proud of the fact that you kept going and pushed yourselves to continue on with it even with your frustration...mind you, it's pretty easy to push yourselves through this pattern as it is such a pretty one!

Also, thank you so much to all our wonderful members who helped out those in need through this one, I truly appreciate it!

Here is the link to this pattern that we have been doing...you will also find that Pam has the instructions written out for a matching hanging towel to go with this beautiful dishcloth! What a pretty set that would make! It is from her archived site, and the picture is not viewable, but we'll have the pics from our KAL for it:
http://web.archive.org/web/20021213122025/users.michweb.net/~pknitter/patterns.html

And here is Pam's current website:
http://www.knittersnest.net/

If you click on this link below for chicknits.com and scroll a little past halfway down this page you can read a little bit about Pam's Yarn Shop in Cadillac, Michigan...sounds wonderful!:
http://www.chicknits.com/blog020731.shtml

Pam wanted me to let you all know that she also mails her yarn out.

Here is her info below:

Knitter's Nest
10861 West Cadillac Road(old M-55)
Cadillac, MI
48418

231-775-YARN

Phone Orders Welcome!

Thank you, Thank you, Pam for a gorgeous pattern! Much appreciated! I bought myself 3 BIG balls of the cotton twists to be able to knit a whole bunch of these up for the kids' teachers at the end of the school year(which isn't that far away...YIKES!) Beautiful Pattern!

~ Bernat Handicrafter Cotton ~

~ Colonial Colors ~

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OoooLaLa! Talk About Some Pretty Colours to Choose From!
.Yesterday, dear Hubby took me into town to do a little shopping and while strolling through our WalMart, I thought I'd check out the Yarn section and I was pleasantly surprised when I saw a new selection of colours to choose from in the Bernat Handicrafter Cotton Section! COLONIAL COLORS! How gorgeous! I only purchased two of the big balls, but I will be going back for more soon, as these are really pretty colours...I love them. There are pretty variegated colours as well to choose from, including "Queen Anne's Lace"...doesn't that just sound beautiful? They are very victorian-looking, I guess that's why they caught my eye like that! Here are the pics of the two big balls that I got:
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Bernat Handicrafter Cotton ~ Colonial Colors

~ Virginia Rose~

~ Pilgrim Peach ~