No way!

I so did not expect that...at all! First AND judge's choice! I think that was my best and biggest surprise of my prizes.

I got three judge's choice ribbons in all, that, my Lord's Prayer cross-stitch (which I didn't expect, I wouldn't have picked it!), and my lemon bars in the adult section.

The rest of the results:

1st:
Spice pound cake-youth
Biscuits-y
Rolls-y
Ribbon yarn scarf-y
Cross-stitch-y
Woven ribbon pillow-y
B&W photo-y
Lemon bars-adult

2nd:
Chocolate cookies-y
White bread-y
Strawberry jam-y (I also won the prize from Ball canning company, because it looked nice, and I used their jars)
Cape-y
Crocheted dishcloth-y
Beaver cross-stitch-a
Crocheted shrug-a
Rolls-a

3rd:
Muffins-y
Knitted sweater-y
Pillow sham-y
Knitted article-a
White bread-a
Muffins-a

So I'm pretty happy!

Mom did well on her things too, especially cross-stitch and layer cakes. She also got a first on a depression glass pitcher that she entered, my depression glass bowl didn't get anything!

Dad got first on his b&w photo, and third on his color photo...which was really cool, and he should have gotten higher...

Poor little Colin didn't get anything on either his drawing or lego construction. His lego really should have gotten something, the thing that won third wasn't anywhere near as good as his! But luckily he's not old enough yet to really care about whether he won anything or not, so he was just happy to see his things displayed at the fair!

Next year though, I need to work on more craft things throughout the year, you get more on those because they take more time, and very few people take the time to do anything like that anymore. Next year's my last year to compete in the youth section, where I'm competing with the half-dozen other teenagers in W-S that still do "un-cool" things like baking and crafts! :-) (Including one guy who keeps beating me in the baking...I mean, what does he think he's doing?) In the adult category I'll be competing with the older ladies who have tons of time on their hands! And I'm actually not feeling too faired-out this year, so it shouldn't be too hard to get back to working on stuff. Usually I'm sick of crafts and baking for six months or so, and busy the other five, and don't get anything much done early. I do need to work on school, I would like to finish sometime!

There's a special chocolate cake contest tomorrow that Mom and I are entering, so we'll be working on that tomorrow. The special contests are sponsored by various companies, and this one's sponsored by local attorneys, and the prizes are $300, $125, $75...so I'm not sure how many people might be entering! And we're might have trouble finding a place to park, Wake Forest University's homecoming game is tomorrow and the stadium's right across from the fairgrounds...so that might be a bit of a headache. And speaking of headaches, I'll have one tomorrow if I don't get to bed...and I've already got a nice sunburn on my face from being outside today...

I'm excited!

Although I don't know why, I didn't have high expectations of any of the stuff I entered in the fair this year! We're going to the fair in about...an hour.

Wednesday was busy, Dad took one load of things with him when he left for work and then dropped them off on his way home. Meanwhile Mom and I were baking frantically! Dad took Mom's cross-stitch and his photos, and he was supposed to take my craft stuff too, but I hadn't gotten it rounded up and sorted out properly, and I wasn't done with some of it, so that just had to wait until our second trip when Dad got back.

My plexiglass never got here, they were supposed to get it here by Wednesday, at the latest, but it hasn't gotten here yet! I bet they didn't ever even get it shipped. The order probably didn't make it back to shipping, or glass cutting, or whoever would be in charge of that. Dad got a piece of glass from work though, and we used that instead, and ended up putting the flawed plexi on the back of the piece, to fill in the frame. Our usual method is, plexi (with little plastic spacers around the edge, to hold the c-stitch off the surface), piece (wrapped around foamcore), and matboard on the back, held in by either turnbuttons (little metal tabs you screw to the frame) or offsets, depending on whether the piece is flush with, or over the frame. Well, even with the matboard it wasn't thick enough to be flush with the frame, so we stuck the plexi, then the matboard on the back. So it's extremely heavy, 9x30 anyway, with heavy glass, then an extra weight from the plexi...I hope they found a sturdy enough way to hang it at the fair!

Then yesterday I cleaned the house. We hadn't had time to do much cleaning, so it needed it! And I got my room clean, so it no longer looks like a craft store and Goodwill exploded in it! And it really did...now you can actually see the floor. Craft store, because I had all my knitting/crocheting/sewing stuff everywhere, and Goodwill, because I hadn't time, or hadn't taken the time to put my laundry away! Anyway, it's clean now, and it looks so nice!

Here's the two photos I entered in the fair. I don't expect them to get anything, even when Dad picks them out for me, I think the judges have different taste in photos than he does. And the guitar one wasn't a big enough exposure, so when it was printed at 8x10 it turned out a little bit fuzzy...hopefully they'll think it was supposed to be that way!
And on the guitar one, I realized after Dad had printed it for me, that I must not have actually been playing the guitar when I took the picture, because my fingernails are too long! And I know that every guitar player who sees that will notice... it was bugging me too! I can just hope that none of the photography judges play guitar...

Three days!

Three days to finish fair stuff...well, 2 1/2. We have to drop stuff off on Wednesday. Then the judging is on Thursday (while we sit at home wondering how our things did) and we're going to the fair on Friday, which is the first day.

It feels weird to be blogging in the morning, I don't think I have before... we're getting going kind of slow today. But that's okay, because I'm going to be busy the rest of the day probably! I need to put the tags on my finished things, and on the cardboard and plates for the baked goods. I need to sew a zipper into my sweater, and if the plexiglass for my cross-stitch gets here, I need to put it together. I got the beaver framed Saturday night. Dad found a frame for it at the dollar store, and it was a real dollar store, so the frame was only a dollar!!!! There is something to be said for stitching things that fit in standard-size frames! I haven't taken a picture of it yet, or I would post it. If get a chance between now and Wednesday, I'll take a picture and post it.

I went to a birthday sleepover at my friend Laura's house on Friday night. It was really fun...there were thirteen girls, but three of them didn't spend the night. We stayed up until probably one or two playing games and giggling. Her two brothers who were there played too, but they weren't giggling! :-) Then all the girls went downstairs and made even more noise and we didn't get to sleep until six in the morning! We slept till ten, so I only got four hours of sleep... needless to say, I took a nap! Five hours of sleep is about the least I can by on, any less than that, and I crash at some point. One year at camp, I only got three hours of sleep the last night, and I was walking around the rest of the day, struggling to keep my eyes open! I'm an extremely sleep-dependent person! Anyway, the sleepover was awesome and I really had fun!

Last night after church, we were looking through...okay, this isn't going to make sense unless I give some explanation! The church building we meet at in the evening is a church that has very few members, mostly older people, and they don't have a service in the evening, so they let us use it (we don't have our own building yet). Anyway, they had been planning on having a yard sale and they never got around to it, so there is a bunch of stuff spread all over the rooms in the back. They finally decided that they would just send it all to Goodwill, and that we could look through and see if there was anything we wanted. There, I hope that made sense! (and that's really only for the few people who read this that don't go to our church!) Anyway, I found a skirt that turned out to be about 5 inches too big, but I should be able to do something with it, and a really cool green scarf (light, silky kind, not winter...and actually it's nylon) that's exactly my green color! The only problem being that I don't have any clothes that color! It looks like it needs to go with some sort of retro, white, tennis dress! It's cute anyway! :-)

I got my last freezable baked thing done yesterday. Everything else will have to be made either Tuesday or Wednesday...mostly Wednesday! And this isn't done, but it's all ready to go, and I'll bake it Wednesday morning, along with all the other things! And now I really need to get going, because I have other work as well as all this fair stuff!

Oh, one note, for some reason the spellchecker is catching plexiglass, and saying it's supposed to be plexiglas....one 's'... I suppose maybe it is, I don't think I've ever seen it spelled before, and that the sort of thing they would do, since it's not really glass (with two s's)!

It's done!

I got the beaver done! Not last night... he took more time than I thought, but I finished him this afternoon. Here's how he looked last night:





And here's how he looks now:

Last night when I was filling in the brown on the body, he looked like a guinea pig, then a woodchuck, but I guess stitching the tail fixed that. I love how the fur on his back is sticking out, like he's having a bad hair day, or he's some sort of punk beaver with spiky hair!

Dad is stopping by a local framing shop on the way home, and he's going to pick out a frame for this. So I have another thing to enter in the fair! If Dad can find a frame, they can have it ready to be picked up by Monday, and if I get the piece all ready to go over the weekend (yeah, right) I can just put it all together Monday night or Tuesday...hopefully Monday. We have to drop stuff off at the fair on Wednesday, so I'm going to be busy Tuesday on as many things as I can get done ahead of time.

I'm going to be so busy too, I'm going to a sleepover tonight, and it lasts till noon tomorrow, so there goes half my Saturday...the other half will be usual Saturday work (plus sleeping, because we won't really do that much sleeping at the sleepover). And I need to remember to bring Apples to Apples... and don't mind me, I'm think I'm talking to myself now... And I still need to throw some stuff in a bag for tonight, and get my list of chores done! Adios!...till...Sunday maybe...

Am I crazy?!!

Probably! :-) I finished my knitting project today, it just needs to be washed...and I decided to start another cross-stitch piece! I was thinking about crocheting a baby afghan, because I signed up for that as well, but it's only crochet, I don't have enough yarn to crochet, and I can't crochet a blanket with no holes. I can knit a blanket without holes, and with the amount of yarn I have. It can't have holes in it, because I was going to give it to a charity for newborns, and they say no afghans with holes so that the babies don't get their fingers stuck... so, so much for the crocheting. I'll knit an afghan when I'm done with the fair. So I started a cross-stitch beaver instead...this one:

I just started him this afternoon, and if I hurry up and get done here, I might be able to finish him tonight.


When I posted yesterday, the dividing lines I put in messed up my page. I went back and fixed them, but when I type, it shows more space in the window than I actually have. I've had that happen with pictures before, putting them side by side, then when I post, finding them stacked instead. But for some reason the lines didn't wrap properly, so they just stuck out into the sidebar and looked uneven! And that's technical terms, you know? :-)

Speaking of technical terms, I looked up what RSS stands for... I knew I'd seen it somewhere, but I couldn't remember what it was, or where I saw it. Fortunately, Wikipedia has everything:
RSS . It can stand for several things, but I like "Real Simple Syndication" best, it's ...simple.

It's starting to get too cold for me. It's not even officially fall yet, and the temperature is only in the 50's (about) at the lowest (like at night), but I'm freezing! Of course, I wore jeans, not shorts most of the summer, and froze last winter (which was mild), so I'm not sure what I expected. I've decided I better stock up on thermal and turtleneck shirts... it's going to be a long winter... :-)

And now I need to get back to stitching!!!

Random Wednesday

I've got nine of my fair things done, and 4-5 more to do...that's just the sewing stuff. I still have several baked goods to do, but only two more that I can do ahead of time. Dad made me make a schedule for when I'm going to get everything done....I'm not fond of wasting time on making a schedule, but I think it will be helpful.
I'm baking cookies right now...some will go in the freezer for the fair, some I will take to church tonight, and the rest we will eat...actually, with all the sugar around here, I'll freeze all but the ones I'm taking tonight!
Last year after the fair, we had all been eating so much sugar, from all the testing and baking of sweets, that we were all tired, and I got a cold and cough that lasted forever... I did some research on it, and found that if your immune system wasn't very good, you would end up with your cough lasting forever, and that you should be taking vitamins and eating well. Well duh! No wonder I was coughing and couldn't shake the cold... probably about half my diet had been sugar the past month! So I'm not doing that again...all extras are going in the freezer, to be eaten at decent intervals!
________________________________________________
I was planning on framing my cross-stitch piece today... I finished it and washed, ironed, and stretched it on Monday, and the frame came on Tuesday, but when I was getting the plexi-glass ready to go in the frame, I found that it had marks and smudges on the inside of it! Lovely! It's not the frame shop's fault, they just cut it, and it's wrapped in paper so they wouldn't be able to see it anyway....but it should have been made better by the manufacturer. It was a different brand than what we usually get. Mom ordered frames and glass too, and hers was the other kind and they were all fine. Dad called the frame company, and they said they'd get another piece shipped out...hopefully it will be okay!
________________________________________________
I've almost got my knitting finished, and now I'm trying to decide if I should start a crochet project now. I had one going, but I decided I couldn't get it done, and I didn't think it would do very well at the fair. So I'm not sure if I should start another project that I might be able to get done in time, or if I should just forget about it for right now and work on the things I've got going...
________________________________________________
Our pastor posted this on his blog: The Armoury. The video is really weird...and somewhat scary... I did find the one girl's statement rather interesting "It's like they're training us to be warriors, but in a funner way"...nice... that's real nice that they get the idea...and it's fun! That group obviously has lots of underlying problems, one of them being the woman pastor, but the Jesus camp thing is just weird... especially the worshiping the cardboard cut-out of George Bush...
________________________________________________
A conversation yesterday between my mom and little brother Colin:
Colin comes out pushing stuffed animals (rabbits, I think) in the back of a dump truck:

C. "These bunnies are looking for a church to go to."

M. "Why don't you tell them to go to Pilgrim Bible Church?" (our church)

C. "Well, they just can't go to that church."

M. "Why not?"

C. "Well, they just can't go to that kind of church... they're Baptist bunnies!"

Yes, conversations with Colin can be interesting!

Like just now... I just looked up to see that I hadn't set a timer on the tray of cookies in the oven. "Oh," I said, "well, I don't know when those will be done, I didn't set the timer!"
Colin: (sarcastically) "Oh that's okay, I like burnt cookies."

I really don't know where he comes up with these things!

Well, that's pretty close...

You Are an Espresso

At your best, you are: straight shooting, ambitious, and energetic At your worst, you are: anxious and high strung You drink coffee when: anytime you're not sleeping Your caffeine addiction level: high

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

...except that I don't drink coffee all the time...otherwise it's pretty accurate! I never even had an espresso though... I like frappacinos! And the picture for the frappacino is a Starbucks cup... *sniffle* I want Starbucks! :-)

Fair related, right?

This came up last week when my science module involved centripetal force...now, when I first read it, I thought I had just been mishearing people and thinking they were saying "centrifugal". Then as I read further, the author proceeded to say that centrifugal force doesn't exist, and all that you're feeling is Newton's First Law of Motion in action... ok, I thought, so I have been hearing centrifugal force, but like the book said, people are getting it mixed up.
So, when my mom graded my science study guide, she was surprised to read that. Apparently, when she was in school they taught all about centrifugal force, so I guess this idea is somewhat new. Then she asked what I was wondering about as well, "how do the rides at the fair work, the ones that supposedly work with centrifugal force?" Since I was having trouble understanding my science book anyway, I decided to do some online research, and see if I could find something that made more sense. I found quite a few things, and apparently it's quite a debated subject! I found several boards with people arguing that "how can you tell someone that centrifugal force doesn't exist, when they can feel themselves being flattened against the wall?" I'm still not altogether sure what exactly is true, but I found one website here that finally made some sense (if they're right). According to them, centrifugal force is the absence of centripetal force, and the object or person being forced against the wall is feeling 'centrifugal' force, but what's pushing them into the wall is 'centripetal' force. Now, if they're right, that makes sense to me. Here's their explanation of centripetal force.
And here's an article that explains how all this works in relation to the amusement park/fair ride, this is a report on a ride that malfunctioned, but it doesn't sound like even then there were too many injuries, and it's dated '95, and in eleven years I'm sure safety inspections have improved.
In the end, I'm not sure if it's just that they renamed the force, because to be exactly accurate centripetal means "center-seeking", while centrifugal means "center fleeing". It may be the exact same thing that my mom learned about in school, but since then they've discovered they were calling it the wrong thing? So I'm still not really sure what's true! That's one thing I'm finding in my science book, I find Physics (and this is only simple Physics) very hard to understand, but fascinating! If anyone know what really is true about centripetal v. centrifugal, please let me know!

And now, for something completely different: I just opened a new tube of toothpaste, and it's slippery toothpaste. And I really don't like slippery toothpaste, the toothpaste with baking soda in it is best, because it had a bit of grit to it(without feeling like sand), plus it tastes more minty. Whereas, you might as well be brushing your teeth with pudding, the way smooth toothpaste feels! Ok, just my personal dislike! :-)

That was cool

Well, my birthday was cool! I got some neat presents, gift cards and checks too. That's nice, because then I can buy something I specifically want or need.

Unfortunately the cake didn't turn out real well. Mom was disappointed because it was a very complicated recipe, and it definitely wasn't worth all the work. It involved mixing four different mixtures of ingredients, and the frosting was supposed to be a certain temperature, then whipped. Mom figured out thermometer must be off and it wasn't the right temperature, because the frosting kind of went wrong. I don't know if you can tell in the picture or not, but it was sort of deflating while she spread it...well, we won't use that recipe again! It didn't taste too bad, except that the icing had an odd texture and flavor. I think it was supposed to have a bit of a caramel flavor with chocolate...which maybe it did, but we didn't much care for that flavor!





I started school today, and it went pretty well. This month at least (because of working on fair stuff), I'm just doing math, science, and history. I'm doing consumer math, and an algebra book, and I only got two problems wrong in each of those today, so that's nice. And I got a bunch of science done as well. So that's not too bad for the first day, and it should go even better tomorrow. For one thing, this morning my sinuses seemed to have decided to empty, and I was blowing my nose non-stop. Mom asked me how I got my schoolwork done, and I told her that my nose had stopped long enough for me to do my math, and that I could read my science and blow my nose at the same time!

It's my birthday!

I'm excited! My mom's in the middle of baking the cake...she has the cake baked, but she hasn't made the icing yet. It looks and smells really good! Chocolate, of course. :-)

My grandparents are coming over this evening, and we're going to order pizza, and then I get to open presents.

It's really cloudy here today, which isn't real nice for my birthday, but oh well. We're not doing anything outside anyway.

And my nose is still running *sniffle, sniff*, but my birthday's going to be cool anyway!

It's Friday!

Hurray, hurrah! This week seemed like it went by pretty fast, but I'm glad it's Friday. Tomorrow's the beginning of a three-day weekend, and my birthday's on Monday. The only thing that could be better is that my nose could be not running. I feel like I'm blowing my nose every ten seconds, and it hurts! I don't like being sick... :(
I tried to take a nap this afternoon, but I didn't get to sleep until I came out and slept on the couch. And even then I didn't sleep for more than maybe ten minutes. I'm not feeling too tired right now though, which is good because I'm baby-sitting Colin tonight. In fact, right now there's a frozen pizza in the oven, and Colin's getting dressed after his bath, so it's about time to eat. It's a "Grilled Chicken Caesar" pizza, and it smells so good! I mean really good! I didn't think I was hungry, but my stomach's growling...well the timer's about to go off, and I need to get out some napkins and stuff. I'll try to post something this weekend, and I'll definitely post on my birthday.