Some Outlandish Humor....

This will only be funny to Gabaldon fans... unless you are a Gabaldon fan w/o a sense of humor, but I haven't met too many of those.

Every year there's a group of us that get together with DG, and I always try to make a card that pokes fun at the whole Jamie thing. He's not real you know!

Here's a few of them...

This would be the year the movie rights were bought for like the ..... upteenth time...

The year Claire's Ring came to be...


This was the year nothing of DG's was out, so I improvised...


I do think the National Enquirers, are my favorites...

This wasn't a card, but back when I posted the Bdays on LOL, years and years, and even more years ago.



I think this was a card, I'm getting old and you really can't expect me to remember this kind of stuff... or any kind of stuff for that matter.




But this was the card last year.
"An Echo of the Bone" was released...

That's all she wrote, or uploaded! :-)

M

My sister told me I needed to update!

......and I always listen to my sister. Right Georgia?

Okay, Ive been a bit busy...... all good things!

Brians brother got married, to a woman I just adore! I kinda wanted to marry her, she's funny and she really gets things done! :-)

Then Scotty and I are finishing up the headboard. The second coat of paint goes on it tomorrow, then I need to pick up some cute knobs and its done.



We're going to make another one after this for Ians room. Im going to put tin or something cool on the back panels.

We also made a desk for Ian, for his apartment at school. He went back yesterday, today we brought out what wouldnt fit in the car. Cassie his cousin now goes to Purdue too! Next weekend, we hope to meet up with Mim and Norm for lunch with both kids.

And the most fun and most time consuming projects lately, I made a website for "Outlander- The Musical", for Diana and two really neat guys in Scotland, Mike and Kevin. Neat guys, Im not sure that how they would describe themselves, but they are both very sweet, very funny, and both love dogs, so there!

The logo was made by a gentleman in Scotland, no idea if he is neat or not! But its much easier to make graphics for a website when you have something to go from.


Website: click here!

Also made some youtubes for it......



This one is of the song snipits, took me forever and of course once uploaded, there was a typo, maybe two *G*, so its all cleaned up. :-)


There's a typo in the first one too, but I really thought his name was spelled that way when I made it, that one was not my fault. :-)

Last weekend my sister Renee came out for the weekend, and then Georgia and Will came for a night too. Saturday night we played Balderdash, and Sunday we sat at the table and ate all day... yum!

Now, once I typed it all out it doesnt look really busy, but really Ive been busy!

M

Scotty's Stripper Bathroom!

I bet that got your attention, an explanation will come later!

Click on any picture to make bigger... alright here we go!

With the exception of the trim around the door that needs to be taken off, sanded and painted, the bathroom is done! It's a very small bathroom, so hard to take pics of but here's the before...

The ceiling was really nasty!


First thing we did, well in this case Brian and Scotty did, was take out the old rusty 1950's tub and put a new one in. Scotty made a frame and side for it, they laid concrete on the floor and set it in, and then I tiled around the top of it, and on top of the bead board side.

And repainted grout.


It looked like the old owners were re-doing the bathroom in the 80's and never finished, so none of the drywall in the corners or ceiling was finished, so I mudded all of that. My shopping karma rubbed off on Scotty and he got a Martha Stewart shelving/drawer unit for 30 bucks!

We painted the bath blue, the same blue as the guest bedroom. Switched out the icky medicine cabinet and light fixture. We also put a wooden cornice up to hide all the curtain rods.

Recognized the light fixture?
If you have been to my house you might, I bought it silver for here, and then I painted it bronze when I first did our li'l bathroom, and when I re-did the bath for the second time, I switched it out. So its back to silver again in its new home. Gotta love spray paint!
I looooove bead board, nothing makes a house look neat and clean like bead board. We did that half-way up the wall, and then Scotty made, yes he made it, trim for it! He also made the little heater frame with towel hooks. It was pretty nasty before, it stuck out two inches from the wall.



The Stripper Pole!
Most of you know Scotty, and know he is 79, and he needs a wee bit of help out of tub. We looked everywhere for all types of grab bars, and found them all overpriced. Sekret Message to the Old Fart Grab Bar Manufacturers, most old people are on a fixed income and can't afford 80 bucks for a grab bar, hence have to use stripper poles! Scotty headed to Lowe's and came home with a shower rod, and then he made a little wooden holder for it at the ceiling.

In this picture you can also see the textured ceiling I did, and Scotty covered up the ugly fan hole, he made crown molding too! I'm thinking I should hire Scotty out!

To make a room that reflected Scotty, besides the Stripper Pole *grin*, I added some pictures. I got this little set in Scotland when I went with my sister in 2001. They are the cutest little minitures of things Scottish. Scotty's father emigrated to the states from Scotland.

(The litte jars I got from Hobby Lobby for a buck each.)

The hard part was finding something for the sides of the heater frame, but I found these brushed steel picture frames that I thought looked a bit masculine. I've tried to put Scotty's initials in every room I've decorated. So far I have the kitchen, bedroom, front room, for his bathroom, I ended up with his last name. I made some graphics and printed it on cardstock. The backgrounds of each letter are pictures of the Whitmore/Redding area where he moved from.


You might have to click on this below to read the picture descriptions.

Yes, I know what you are thinking, why would anyone move away from there, two words.

ADULT CHILDREN!

And that's about it, enuf' huh! Now it's back to finish the guest bedroom, which we stopped in the middle of to do the bathroom.

Just in case you are wondering what an 80 year old stripper looks like...


...yeah, I'm thinking she needs to keep her clothes on too!

The trellis............

Since we put in this little pathway from the garage to the backyard I thought a trellis would look good there. I saw this one on the net...

Found some iron work at Hobby Lobby, and don't be too impressed with my drawings of my plans.

Scotty could some how read that jibberish and went to work.

Then I painted it a nice grey, since I don't care for the grey that Cedar wood turns, I have a whole fence of it, so I thought I would make it a grey I like.

Then last week Brian and I put it up.

It really sets off the bag of garbage nice, dont you think?




Final cost was about 110-120 bucks, not bad!

Anya Seton Month at Historical Tapestry

This is Anya Seton Month at Historical Tapestry, one day of course featured "Katherine" by Anya Seton, which you all know is one of my favorite books!

They are having a contest to win a Roet Shield Pendant... CLICK HERE! You can still enter, just post a comment, you need to put your email in the comments so disguise it a bit, so auto-spammers dinna get at it.
lolmichelle(at)yahoo(dot)com

And, they asked me to write up a little something about how I came about Anya Seton and jewelry, that is CLICK HERE!

Long time ago, years, I've made a webite for the novel... CLICK HERE!

After the website I started a Yahoo Group for the novel, which attracted over 400 people, and they were waaaaay smarter than me concerning all things Katherine and John of Gaunt that I handed it over to a wonderful woman who knows all things Katherine. When I figuring out how to use Windows Movie Maker, I was doing casting for novels I like. So with suggestions from the yahoo group made this...


It was one of my favorites to make, since I made some of the graphics from The Book of Kells.

Soooooo enjoy June otherwise known as Anya Seton Month!

M

Before and Almost After....

People keep asking me whats going on at Scotty's house, well..... lot's of things going, but none of them done. :-)
(As always, just click on pics to make bigger)

Been diggings up some boxwood shrubs here and planting there in the front,, planted some lillys and hostas painted an old milk can I had to match his house. Still have to change out the light fixture, but here's the old and new pic.

Seeded where the pool use to be in Scottys backyard. We still have mega-things to do back there, repair and paint the deck, shovel up and move about 5 million rocks!


Tore out the old tub in the bathroom, unfortunately the old rusty tub isn't showing, more fortunate for you though since it was uuuuuuugly! We replaced that light fixture and medicine cabinet too. built a frame around the heater that was sticking out two inches from the wall, still have to paint and add hooks for towels.

Scotty wanted a spa tub, so Brian and him cemented that to the floor one Saturday. Then Scotty had to crawl under the house yet again, to do some plumbing, and jack up the weight bearing beams a bit. This was the day he was pulling a cement block and yelped, and he heard a pop in his arm... turned out to be a muscle!

Scotty made a wood frame and bead boarded the side. I tiled around the tub and the top of the frame, and re-painted the grout on the wall tile.

I hope to start drywalling this week. We're going to bead board all the way around the bottom wall, and then I have to fix the ceiling, not looking forward to that!

Meanwhile he is still working on the bookcase headboard.


And a verra cool trellis for my house, which is ALMOST done!

Here's the inspiration from the net.


I asked Scotty if we could make it like this? He said, "Yes." I don't know how he knew what I was thinking from my drawing though! :-)



But he did, and he got to work!


Before you know it, one side is done.



The I brought it home in pieces, and he came over the next day and put it together.

Right now it's in the process of being stained grey, some more iron work put in on center top and sides, more rails on top and then it will be ready to be cemented in.

This is the picture of the house when it was up for sale, seven years ago already, on the right, drawn in pink is where the trellis will stand.

And that is where we are at!
M

Renee's Victor....

The weekend of May 22nd was spent up in Pittsburgh, PA. I had never been to Pittsburgh before and quite honestly would of gladly missed visiting the city, since it was under horrible circumstances.

You all know my sister Renee, my oldest sister, and the one who so galantly battled Stage 3B Cervical Cancer four years ago, and won. Well, one year ago she met a man named Victor and fell in love. My other sister Georgia, dh Brian and I had the honor of meeting Victor last September in Dayton, Ohio at a Diana Gabaldon signing. Scotty (old Scotty, not the brother) and I drove up to Dayton for the signing, and instead of waiting for the long line of readers to get their books signed,S cotty, Renee,Victor and myself went for a drink to pass time and get to know each other.

Georgia, Will, Will's Mom, and Brian all drove up later and we all met for dinner. Renee would always talk about the romantic things Victor would say to her, and I had made Victor a little journal, so he could remind Renee of his kind words, to welcome him into the family. Renee said Victor was a manly man, so of course I made his journal as pink and feminine as I could!

You might remember the blog post...
http://m-another-m.blogspot.com/2009/09/last-week.html


When you met them you would of thought they had been together forever, their mannerisms, their ease and comfort with each other all spelled out... OLD FART COUPLE!

Renee's Victor had a fatal heart attack on May 21st. Renee had made an unexpected trip to Pittsburgh that weekend, only to be the one that had to call 911 and perform CPR on her fiance, before he was led away in an ambulance. She was thankful she was there, since who knows when someone would of found him otherwise.

I usually dread the calls in the middle of the night, but this call from Renee came Saturday morning at around 9 a.m. Brian and I were just about to leave for Chicago to visit his Mom, who had broken her ankle and is in a rehab facility. Instead, Brian still went to visit his mom, and I headed to Pittsburgh to be with Renee since no one was with her.

When I heard about Victor, the saddest thing for me wasn't his death, but Renee with all Renee has been through, she now had to go through this tragedy. She really really loved this man... correction... loves this man. Victor was a mushy guy, he said mushy things all the time, hence the journal mentioned above. She would call him her "Hallmark Card".

That Saturday night, she was listening to a condolence message from a friend, but Victor's messages played first on her phone, all sounding a bit like this...

"Hello Love of my life, I'm just calling to say I was thinking about you."

When I first met him, his first words to me were, "I've been waiting forty years for your sister." Victor had just turned 60 in May.

Renee was in the process of moving to Pittsburgh, she was just waiting to get a job there and make the big final move. They had planned to marry when she moved to there for good, so Sunday and Monday were spent getting her things together she had already moved there to bring back home to Chicago.

I could only stay till Wednesday, I ran out of meds, and clothes, and home was calling. I stayed the first two hours at the wake, and left Renee in custody of some of Victor's good friends.

Victor had three other loves of his life, his three Golden Retrievers, who thankfully have gone to another home all together, but without their master.



Renee had only a year with Victor. Renee lost her love in the Honeymoon phase of their relationship, so Renee's memories are only of good and happy times with her soul mate.

If only the rest of us could say the same thing.

God Speed Victor!

Around the world with ivmoores!

So tonight I was emailing a friend instructions on how to view her website statistics on her server. So then I thought I should check mine. You find out things like...

All my sites combined got around 185,000 hits this month so far.

My "Painting Kitchen Cabinets" website got 1785 hits since May 1st.


83.9 % of people that visit my sites use a PC.
14 % use a Mac.
1 Hit came from a Nintendo Wii!

As for Browsers........
Browser/Hits No./Percent
MS Internet Explorer No 80528 59.8 %
Firefox No 29412 21.8 %
Safari No 15412 11.4 %
Google Chrome No 6309 4.6 %
Mozilla No 1619 1.2 %

For some reason your front door is on a Russian blog, what the ?????
http://azasexugix.blogspot.com/2009/12/j-c-penny-outlet.html

Okay now this is really odd, here's my front door again on a blog as JC Penney Outlet curtains!
http://pictures74.bloguez.com/pictures74/page565/

Claire's ring is all over in Germany
http://tara-buecherblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/claires-ring-2.html

Brianna's Bracelet on an Arabic site. I'm hoping this is why I get so much Arabic spam mail, I know I'm being watched by the CIA by now!
http://a7la-school.alafdal.net/montada-f9/topic-t132.htm

Shauna of "Clayton and Shauna" plan on using Claire's Ring for her wedding band, which is very sweet!
http://www.projectwedding.com/biography/list/claytonandshauna
(Not to be confused with Shauna '88)

I don't know how this happens, but it's my website on another site.
http://www.fanpop.com/external/583526

I also found my jewelry site in some French romance magazine, assorted book clubs all around the world, and on people's blogs, pretty cool!

There's a person out there, on assorted message boards hot linking to a graphic I made. Now, I don't have a problem with her using my graphic, but she posts over all over the place 1,000's of times, so just copy the picture and use it, instead of hot linking and using my bandwidth.


So what I usually do in this case, is just upload a picture with the same name so it replaces the old pic. Right now I'm reading a biography of Heloise and Abelard, so I'm going to replace the Bronze Celtic Circle file with an Abelard file named the same as the Celtic Circle, so whenever she posts Abelard will show, and then I'm guessing she will stop using the link for that picture.

So now when she post it will look like this........

She prolly won't think it's funny, but I do! What is also a bit funny is, Abelard is now on my Outlander site for a bit, till I change that. :-)
http://ivmoores.com/outlander/outlander.htm

I wonder how long till she post on a message board and realizes her (MY) Celtic Circle has been replaced by Abelard. Maybe she will think he's dreamy and keep him!

Watch I know who it is, I will keep you all informed.... like you care! *grin*

M

What's Happening......

I know most of you think of that 70's series when you hear that, and I think of this from "A Mighty Wind".




A couple of people have asked whats going on at Scotty's house, and here's my report!Finished painting the guest bedroom. Here's the before picture. Under that paint was two layers of wallpaper. Took forever to strip. Yuck!



Scotty put up new closet doors he found in the Clearance bin! I painted and added the cute little knobs. :-)



I had some left over quilt from my guest bedroom and made some window boxes.


Scotty found another table to cut up and make a desk from.



He cut it up, and sawed every which way.....


I painted and added the cute little knobs.




Some parts still need to be stained.




This week, he's putting in a new tub, and then we can start the bathroom. Brian is going to help him take the old one out Friday, and Saturday they will put the new one in.

We had at great Easter. Ian came home for the weekend and we went swimming with the heathens at Great Wolf Lodge. And "NO", I didnt go on this sh!t! :-)




I made a website.......
http://clearlythebest.ca/


That's all she wrote!
M