Speaking of hotels (at least the ones in the Vegas casinos), have you ever wondered where they get all of their unique fixtures, like bathroom vanities and such? When we stayed Caesar’s we had a jacuzzi room, and the jacuzzi was right in our main living space. It looked like a beautiful Roman bath. The bathroom itself was all done in granite and was just gorgeous. This isn’t stuff you can go to Home Depot and pick up, you know? So where do they get them? I could see something like those jacuzzis being custom made, the hotel isn’t full of those rooms, after all, but not the vanities and other things, I’d think that would be fairly standard throughout the hotel.

It’s not as if I’m planning to redo my bathroom in that style or anything, I’m just really curious about things like that at times. I love to watch shows on TV that talk about how buildings are built and things are made, too. I guess I’m just weird that way.

I think part of the reason that we weren’t as thrilled at the Las Vegas renne faire was that we weren’t at our home faire. What that meant for us was that we had to carry everything with us all the time, because we had nowhere to go back to & leave things. At our faire, we have an encampment & we can leave our things there any time we want to. It also gives us a place to go rest and get away from things for a little while. We ended up carving out a little space, in the shade, by a tent & we pretty much stayed there all day off & on. We did look into several Las Vegas hotels before we went down, but they were either already booked for the weekend or too costly because it was the weekend, you know?

If we had an encampment there, life would be a lot easier & we might really have a great time. We did discuss it after we got home, but I seriously don’t see us dragging everything all the way down there for 3 days a years. Its a nice little dream, but it’s just not a reasonable one.

Have you ever been to those little crafts boutiques where they have all of the nifty little signs for sale? We have a couple of them here in town, and the little signs seem to sell really well & I think they’re super cute. I always wonder where they come up with the sayings on them, though. Yeah, some of them are the standard “Families are Forever” and “Home Sweet Home” type of signs, but then you get completely random sayings like, “Folly Beach Homes for Sale” and “Goose Crossing,” you know? Do the sayings just come to them or do they see them somewhere else & think they’d make a cute sign? And what makes a person decide they need to buy one with a random phrase on it? Is it nostalgia, or somewhere they once were or do they have a lot of geese, or what? I always wonder about that, but then I have them that says “Motherhood is not for Sissies” and “So it isn’t Home Sweet Home – Adjust.”

My parents gave Troy & I a Toyota Dolphin that someone had left at their house & abandoned. (it’s an RV, if you aren’t familiar) As a gift to us, they’re redoing it & fixing everything that needs it. I’m starting to wonder if it will be ready to title & register by the time Spring & Summer get here, or if I need to keep our camping gear where we can get to it. I know our daughter will most likely want our big tent to replace her smaller one, but I’m not sure if she’ll want it right away or not. It’s kind of a pain in the butt to put up & all. I know there are things we won’t need anymore, so I’ll check with our friends & see if they want them.

There are going to be different things that we’ll want now, too, so that we can camp where ever we want to. I’m thinking of getting a small folding table, because there are unimproved sites that are free to camp at, and they don’t have tables. I also want some big water containers, those sites don’t have water, either. I’m so excited for the cold weather to be over, we had such a good time camping last year & I’m anxious to do some more this year.

Things have been kind of crazy around here since about the 13th. If I haven’t mentioned it in here, our daughter’s wedding is off. She broke up with him that day, after considering her options over the days prior to it. She had a couple of days before that, where she actually got to spend time without him, and I’m pretty sure she realized that she was having a lot more fun with someone else. We were pretty relieved, because Kris was lazy, disrespectful and fairly controlling of her. I just had a feeling that he would end up abusing her eventually. He never seemed to care much about what she liked or didn’t like, just what his own opinions were (for example, she doesn’t really wear jewelry & hates gold, so he bought her a gold anklet & a gold necklace for Christmas). It was almost like he figured that if he liked it, she had to.

Anyway, my niece, Jaycie, loved her little purse and the things I put in it. She took it to church the next day to show my mom & was so proud of it. Her party was fun, I was happy were able to go this year.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about my booth & how I want to run it in the future & have decided that I have to start being much more competitive. I have started to purchase inventory and have found distributors for handmade things that take me too much time to make to sell at a reasonable price. I figure I can take my income & buy a little bit at a time and Vicki will, too, so that we can have a nice variety by July. I still plan to make my witch’s hats & some other things, and this will give me more time to focus on that.

Do you ever wonder where people you’ve known in the past ended up & what became of them? Back in 1986, when I was pregnant with Garrett, we lived in a small, Colorado town named Salida. It was at the base of Monarch pass and on the Arkansas River. My ex worked at the local nationwide pizza chain & met a guy named Kevin, who was married to a teenage girl named Missy. I was 20, Kevin & Ron were 21 or so & I’m pretty sure that Missy was 16. They had come to Salida from Branson Missouri a few months before we met them, with her family. I guess he got her pregnant when she was 15 or something & then they lost the babies a few months later.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make, is that she was one of those people that was always trying to learn to do the next big craft & she was really good at it, too, especially for being 16. They ended up splitting up, because he was abusive, and we had already moved away and then we split up, too. I’ve always wondered where she ended up, and if she had the babies she wanted so badly, and where she took all of that crafty talent she had. I don’t remember Kevin’s last name, or her maiden name, so I can’t just look her up on MySpace or anything, although I wish I could. I wonder if I wrote any of their names in Garrett’s baby book?

My niece, Jaycie, will be turning 11 on the 15th. Her birthday party is tomorrow & of course, we’re broke. So, I got into my fabric stash and started cutting. I made her this cute purse, in her favorite color:

I appliquéd her initial on with sparkly pink felt & bright pink embroidery floss and lined the whole thing with rainbow flannel:

The Velcro on the flap is cut into a little heart & is pink! I added a pink ID wallet, a pink, flowered wrist cuff & a butterfly hairband to it, and I’ll pop in some lip balm & see what else I have in the boxes of stuff from the booth that I can toss in there. I hope she likes it all, I know she has an appreciation for handmade gifts and won’t feel like I didn’t give her something nice, thankfully.

Recently, I was given an opportunity to review a really nice, reusable sports bottle made by Pure Water 2Go. The really cool thing about this particular, 16 oz bottle is that it has a water filter inside of it, so you can take your own tap water (or water from a drinking fountain if you run out while you’re away from home) and it gets filtered while you drink it. I got mine a few minutes ago and got it ready to go. According to the directions, I rinsed the bottle out really well, snapped the water bottle filter into the top and then I filled the bottle up with cold, tap water. Then I turned the bottle upside down & squeezed all of it through the filter & the opening.

The paper that comes with it tells you that the water may have a black coloration to begin with (because it’s a charcoal filtration system), but mine was only like that for a couple of squeezes, and perfectly clear by the end. When I was finished with that, I refilled it with cold water again, put the lid on & had a taste. One thing I noticed right away was that the smell that my tap water normally has was gone, and the taste was fresh and clean. I filled a cup with some water to compare the two & there was quite a difference. I imagine that the difference will become more apparent to me after a couple more bottles are cycled through the filter. One thing, though, is that the flow of water through the filter & opening in the lid is pretty slow & you have to squeeze pretty good, or suck hard to get it out. I’m thinking it will increase after awhile.

What I love best about this is that it will filter about 80 gallons of water, which is about 200 bottles. During faire, I drink a lot of water every day. We keep a cooler in our booth, full of bottled water, and we refill it pretty often. That’s a lot of water & a lot of money that I won’t have to spend now. I think I’ll be getting a couple more of these for my partners, then we can just keep a few gallon jugs of tap water in the cooler & refill our bottles as needed. For $12.95 each, I can afford to do that!

There are two babies due in our group this year (so far) and it’s so exciting! I mean, who doesn’t like to craft & sew for babies? It’s almost instant gratification, because it takes so little time to make such tiny items. I’ve been thinking about making each couple a bedding set for their baby cribs, with a fitted sheet, a taggie blanket & maybe a set of bumper cushions (if I can figure out how to do that part). I really need to get together with the mommies & see what they have in mind for the nurseries, and if they plan to use particular colors and what have you. I know one couple will find out very soon what they’re having, but the other just barely found out they’re expecting.

After that, we’ll see what they each need in the way of other baby furniture, like a changing table, dresser and so on & see what we can do to help out, as a group. Outfitting babies is pretty pricey these days & I’d like to do what we can to get them all started out. It wasn’t so bad with Morgan, we had Troy & I, Dawn & the paternal grandparents all getting stuff for them. I really didn’t have much help when I was having babies, and I worried a lot about not being able to provide a lot for my kids, but we managed somehow. Things were better when Troy & I got married, but that took awhile, too. I don’t like seeing new parents having to do without needed things for the babies, you know? I also want to borrow Dawn’s pattern for sleep sacks & the little wrap tops and make some of those.

One of my partners, Vicki, has recently started to try to get out of debt & improve her credit rating so that she & her hubby can buy a house before her kids get too much older. She was looking around at things that are in her price range and such the other day, and commented that there are starting to be more than there were. I’m thinking that’s a good sign for buyers around here, anyway. I guess she said she’d have to be able to come up with $1000/month to pay her mortgage, but she can’t be sure until she gets some home insurance quotes and knows what the cost on that will be, too. I can’t even imagine. My rent is less than $500 every month and we still struggle at times, so doubling that is out of the question. It makes me happy that we won’t be buying anything (I’ll inherit my mom & dad’s home), that’s one less stress in my life!

I think I’m going to order the pattern I need to make my witch hats with in the next day or so, so I can get started on my sewing!