Pay It Forward and NaBloPoMo

I posted here and here that my friend Alissa from Have Stroller Will Travel was spending the month of November blogging about Paying It Forward.  Well the month has come to a close and today is the day to go over to her blog and write how you paid it forward this month for a chance to win a bag of Hershey's drops, a new candy by Hershey's.  I have truly enjoyed reading her posts and participating in the month in the small ways I found to Pay It Forward myself. 

The month has also come to a close for National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo).  I am excited to say that I posted every day, at times it was hard to find a topic or to put into words what I wanted to express but I am glad I did it. 

After a very long day I will say good night!

NaBloPoMo aka National Blog Posting Month

 I decided that I would really try hard to post every day in November for NaBloPoMo and I must admit I didn't really give much thought to how often I will be out of town this month.  So here I am at a hotel for a 3-day conference with a picture on my camera that I can't figure out how to get on the hotel's computer.  So after sitting in workshops from 9 this morning to 9:30 tonight with breaks for lunch and dinner I am totally wiped out and going to bed. 

My husband coaches high school hockey and his team is playing in the Frederick Cup in Frederick, MD tomorrow and Sunday.  Even though I can't be there to root them on I wish them the best of luck!!

Have a great weekend!

Gotta love productive days 192/365

Today was a productive day around here and I LOVE that!   One of things that always interest me is how people divide duties within their household.  For us we both do outside stuff and we both do inside stuff.  Sometimes I cook, sometimes he cooks.  Sometimes I clean the pond filter, sometimes he does, you get the picture.  For outside I do the plants and flowers and he does the vegetable garden.  Here in Maryland they say May 1st is a a good day to  put your plants in.  Last week we went to the local Master Gardener plant sale and today those veggies got planted.  I have to confess that the plants we bought at the sale I put in last weekend since we were expecting so much rain I figured they were better off in the soil than sitting in a pot.  Today, I did some transplanting and planting of some other plants we bought during the week and I am becoming happier with the beds.  Patience is not a virtue I have in abundance but gardening is teaching me to be more patient.

After we finished outside we ran some errands and one of those was to buy a blind to replace the one that is in our main bathroom.  When we bought this house 3 years ago (I can't believe it will be 3 years in a couple of weeks) we replaced a lot of the blinds but left the bathrooms as they were livable.  However, the faux wood blind in the main bathroom has become unbearable as of late as all it does is collect dust and no matter how often you clean it it still looks like you have never touched it.  Now that the new blind is bought I took down the old blind and decided that the mustard color on the window frame had to go so I have started to sand that off but since there was a mint green color underneath I am still not done.  Before you comment and tell me I could have just painted over and didn't need to sand it down the paint had a weird rubbery feel to it and I thought it wouldn't take another layer of paint well.  Here is the before picture and hopefully I will have an after picture soon enough.

So how do you divide the chores in your household?

Mama cow 191/365

This week has a been a struggle to take a picture every day.  Earlier in the week I was sick and yesterday I spent a lot of time trying to sync my calendar to my new blackberry.  Very long story but suffice it to say I am a blackberry girl and I had a lapse in judgment about 2 weeks ago and bought the droid.  I am back where I belong with a blackberry and I am much happier.  So no picture yesterday but today hubby and I had to drive to PA to pick up a item I won in a silent auction bid a couple of weeks ago and on the way home we saw this mama cow with her baby and she was a good mama checking me out and all.

The daily commute 190/365

I was sick on Wednesday, my sinus and head were so painful that it made doing anything painful so I never got out of  my pajamas all day and didn't take a picture.  That is just life sometimes.  However, on Thursday I was back to work and the daily commute.  This is what I look for when traveling home.  It is a very welcome sign.

Azalea 189/365

The Alphabet challenge ended yesterday and I am sorry to see it end.  The 6 other bloggers that joined me did a great job and they really kept me going.  I thank them all for making it fun.  I hope you enjoyed it!

Today my sinuses feel 3x too big for my head and I am headed off to bed and if you know me I never go to bed this early but I feel lousy. Even though I made the commute into work today I just didn't take any pictures so I came home to take pictures of one of our azalea bushes and every picture came out blurry.  I am sure the wind was a contributing factor but so was my aching head.  Even though this one is blurry I still kind of like it.

"Z" is for zamboni 188/365

In honor of the hockey playoffs that are currently taking place I give you "Z" is for zamboni.  Please ignore the team logo as they did not make the playoffs and it was given to me because I used to live in Atlanta and that was where I really started watching hockey.  Now I am a Washington Capitals fan and they are making me crazy that they didn't just wrap up their series against Montreal and are headed into game 7.  Good luck Caps!

Y is for yarn 187/365

My friend, Kathy, is teaching me to knit.  Here is the yarn I am using and one of the socks I have started and hope to finish soon.  

W is for woven 185/365

First, I want to say that I passed the halfway mark in my 365 this week!  Woo-hoo!!  The alphabet challenge that several of us are doing has really inspired and motivated me.  I hope that you will scroll over to my sidebar on the right and take a few moment to check out the other players blogs.  They are doing great stuff!! 

Today's photo is not the best but is special to me because my mini-group, The Patchwork Posse, took a class together on how to make a woven panel and then the 5 of us got back together to finish them off.  This weekend is our guild's quilt show and we decided to enter all of them so they could hang as a group.  As you can see three of us decided to make tote bags and two decided to make wall hangings.  I think they all came out great and wish the photo did them justice but our quilt show takes place inside a fairground building with not the best light so you will have to use your imaginations.
Left top: bag by Mary Arthur
Left center: bag by Lizzy (me)
Left bottom: bag by Martha Lisle
Right top: wall hanging by June Hubley
Right bottom:  wall hanging by Kathy Barton

V is for violation 184/365

For "v" I had a plan to use the character Venom from Superman that was on loan to me, however, I walked out of work today to see this SUV booted with a note on the windshield that said DO NOT MOVE THIS VEHICLE and after laughing I said "Oh wait I can use this for violation".  I have figured out during this challenge that what I expected a letter to be definitely did not always happen but I have enjoyed that part of the challenge.

U is for Union Station 183/365

Of course, I picked Union Station as my "U" word as I love the architecture of the building.  I was not really happy about any of the pictures I took there today but this one was interesting enough to post.

T is for tickle 182/365

As I talked about in this post our commute is made enjoyable by the friends we sit with and two of those are a father and son.  The son is the boy I made the cupcakes and candies for and here he is being tickled by his dad.  Too cute.

S is for Skillet Lasagna 181/365

With the large fluctuations in temperatures here in the mid-atlantic region Arthur wanted to cook skillet lasagna tonight.  It was yummy and of course, it also worked for the alphabet challenge as today is "S".  If you look closely you can see my penguin slippers and our cat, Sylvester in the reflection.  Do I get extra points for getting two more "s" words without even trying? Smile

R is for red fabric 180/365

As I said yesterday I am a quilter and that means fabric.  Here is a portion of my red fabrics.

Q is for quilt 179/365

Some of you know that I am a quilter so "Q" was an easy one for me especially since there was an Imagine, Create, and Enjoy meeting today.  This quilt is the Scrappy Star Quilt from the Remembering Adelia book written by Kathleen Tracy.  The meeting was hosted by Needles and Pins, my local quilt shop and this quilt was pieced by the owner Cindy Powell.  They have an on-line shop as a well as a shop in Frederick, MD.  If you are a quilter you should definitely check them out.

N is for NO 176/365

Tonight my husband and I had to run an errand which brought us into unfamiliar territory and we kept seeing these signs along the way.  So "N" stand for NO and in this case it is No hunting, fishing or trespassing but at least they added please at the end so that makes it all nice and polite, right?

M is for Marc 175/365

I take the MARC (Maryland Area Regional Commuter)  train into D.C. for work.  Here is a picture of the train that I took home today.

L is for locomotive 174/365

There is a group of us that take the train together in the morning and a slightly different group takes it back out in the evening.  These people have become our friends and we enjoy spending our commute together and have also spent time together outside of the train.  One of the morning friends is a little boy who is absolutely adorable and he turns 4 tomorrow so I have spent the day making little chocolate trains to put on cupcakes I baked earlier today.  Now "L" could also be for learning curve as I have never made multiple color candy before.  Whoa, that is work and as you will see from this picture I still have a lot to learn.  I am hoping everyone just enjoys the cupcakes and doesn't look too closely at the trains.  Grin.

K is for Kitchen Aid Mixer 173/365

I really struggled with the letter "K" until I remembered one of my favorite item in the kitchen.  I LOVE my Kitchen Aid mixer.  I will be using it tomorrow to make cupcakes. 

J is for jello 172/365

Tonight we ate at The Shady Maple Restaurant.  Oh my I am still full.  However, it allowed me to get my "J" photo.