My big box of wood plaques made it yesterday & I’m so excited to get started on some signs. I have my first two picked out & the edges of the plaques have been sanded and are ready for me, too. I just need to finish up a few things on my computer & I’m going in the other room to get started. I also just barely figured out that since I’m not actually painting using the stencils, that I can cut them out of heavy paper & save time & money that way, too. That’s even more exciting to me, because they take me so long to cut out of the plastic & I’d really love to be able to pick & choose from everything I have on my computer instead of just what I already have made into a stencil.

I want to make one for my mom’s garden as a Mother’s Day gift, too. I plan to do one that says “Fairies Gather Here” because I know she’ll really love that. After I get started on the two I’m painting today, I’ll probably print that one onto heavy paper & get it cut out & ready to go. So, I guess I’ll finish up & get started!

I haven’t done a lot of faire prep lately, because almost 2 weeks ago, I ordered some unfinished wooden plaques & I’m still waiting for them to get here. I did go & pick out paint colors for the thrones & the bench that Dawn always sits on, I think they’ll be gorgeous when we get them done. Right now, they’re a pinkish beige color & the only trim that’s painted on them at all is done in burgundy & gold and they just don’t look great. I want to do them in a deep, chocolate brown, and the trim on each will be different. The big one will be trimmed with green & silver, the other will be purple & silver & the bench with have all of the fancy work done in green & blue (mostly likely with some silver in there, too). I’m excited to get started on them.

I’m so not great at waiting, I get so impatient, then I get excited about things and disappointed when they don’t show up that day. It’s a daily cycle when I’m waiting for things to come in the mail. I hate it, but I do it to myself every time. I was a wreck when we were waiting for our computers last fall, I’m glad I found ways to keep myself occupied, or I might have ended up in alcohol rehab, I swear!

I was looking at the pictures from the wedding Troy & I officiated last April, and I’ve lost so much weight since then! I didn’t really notice how big I was back then & of course, hadn’t really seen how much I’ve lost since then, either. Some friends of mine have noticed & commented on it, so I guess that what I’m doing is working & I won’t need to start taking leptovox any time in the near future. I’m actually starting to feel good about myself again & managed to climb up & down some fairly treacherous rocks on Saturday night while we were at the circle, without getting hurt or too badly winded. I haven’t weighed myself in quite awhile, because I’m trying really hard to break my dependence on the scale & to start basing what I feel on my actual mood & health & not a number on a scale, you know?

The important thing, is that I honestly feel like I’m making progress & doing the right thing for the first time in a very long while. I feel like I can do this and lose this excess weight and be healthy again. I haven’t been this hopeful about my weight loss in a very, very long time. I really like being able to believe in myself again, it’s a great feeling!

It’s Sunday morning & it already feels like we’ve been running since the moment Troy got off of work on Friday. That’s probably because we have. I met him over at Dawn’s house Friday night, because we had gone in together to buy & cook dinner for all of us. We all ate and then sat around & visited for awhile before we were all too tired to do it anymore & we went home. Yesterday, I went over there at around 11:30, after I dropped Rhi off at her friend’s house, so that I could put a pork roast in my crock pot & bake a dump cake. After that, I came back home, changed clothes, put my hair back in a pony tail & we headed back over there, to meet everyone else, because were heading out to Mark & Sarah’s baby blessing for little Cerridwyn.

We loaded up the 4-wheel drive vehicles and followed her out to the area that they had everything set up. Some of us sat around and talked and some of us helped get the area ready for the ritual, mostly we sat around and waited. We had to be there early because none of us knew how to get there, so we had to go when Sarah was ready. The ritual was touching and beautiful, and was followed by a Circle Re-birthing rite, which was also very spiritual. We left shortly after that, but did manage to stay for a couple of songs.

We managed to find our way out with only a mishap or two & were back at Dawn’s withing 15 minutes. That’s one of the things that I love about living here, you can be in the wilderness in 15 minutes in any direction, really, but civilization is close by when you need it. We all settled in to get kids fed & Melissa’s birthday celebrated after that. I think we were all really way too tired to do her much justice, but we did try. She had wanted to go to the liquor store before it closed and get herself a bottle of wine, but we didn’t make it (I sure wish I had joined that wine club I thought about earlier this year!). I’m pretty sure she had a fun time, or at least I hope so, it had to be better than playing bingo, at any rate!

It seems like every house I go to these days is getting something new installed in it, or has features that make me so jealous. My mom & dad are getting ready to pour a new concrete patio in the side yard (and yes, it’ll be my house someday, I still wish I had a patio) and just redid their counter tops in the kitchen & the bathroom, and it all looks so pretty. My brother just planted a bunch of new bedding plants and roses, that I’d love to have, even though my mom just gave me a whole bucket full of iris bulbs that I need to get planted.

Dawn & Jason just got one of those beautiful new kitchen faucets that has the sprayer built in to the actual faucet part instead of to the side – and I’m pretty sure my parents just got one of those, too. I don’t even have a sprayer, let alone a nice one like that. It’s bad enough to have to do my dishes by hand! I have promised myself that when I get my own home, it will have all of the things that I love & have wanted in a home for all of these years. I’ve waited for so long to have them, I feel like I deserve them at this point.

Volunteering at our renaissance faire has allowed me the opportunity to get to know quite a few faire folk. A lot of them just do the two Utah faires, and a few do those and the Las Vegas faire, then you get the vendors that go to all of those & the smaller Colorado faires, too. We have had a few that travel from further places across this country, making a summer long trip, stopping in each faire that’s on their route. I’ve known a few that treat this like a vacation, more than a job, and take some time to stop at places like the Branson resorts, or Steamboat Springs and relax before moving to the next faire or festival.

There are times when I think that would be a fun life, because I really do love to travel and of course, I love renaissance faires & festivals, too, but then I realize that it would be very tiring & I don’t think I’d enjoy that very much, I know ours pretty much wears me out & I was pretty much exhausted just visiting the Vegas faire for one day, I know I couldn’t run a booth there!

It’s hard for me to believe that it’s only been 4 days since I last posted in here, it really feels like it’s been about a month. Last week was a terrible week for us & I’m really, really hoping this one will be a lot better. I’m fairly certain it can’t be much worse, honestly.

It’s already started out not that great, especially since I feel terrible, like something washed back out of a couple of Franke sinks, but I imagine that I’ll survive. Rhi has already yelled at me once this morning, just out of nowhere, really. I found out some disturbing things about my god-daughter this morning, things that won’t make her mother happy and her husband will be even less happy. That girl is going to mess around & really screw her life up if she isn’t careful.

Troy & I need to head out in a few minutes to get his old phone switched over to Rhi’s number, so that she actually has a phone again & then we need to pick people up to go & clean some storage trailers out for faire.

I just found out a few days ago that one of my best friends, Ryan, is moving to Las Vegas at the end of the month. He really hasn’t spent a lot of time with us lately, but that hasn’t diminished our friendship at all, he’s just been trying to figure out who he is again. He spent a year in Iraq & came back with a different outlook on life and I think he’s been trying to figure out where that fits in his life now. He’s been trying to find & keep a girlfriend, too, and he can’t do that within the group, so that’s takes him away from us. Hopefully he’ll find someone there, he really is a great guy that deserves a great girl. I will miss him, a lot, he’s one of the only friends I have that shares my love for electronics and other gadgets. We have the same taste in music, too, and I’ll miss that. I guess we’ll just have to go to Vegas more often, now, especially since we have an excuse to!

It seems like I spend a lot of time on the internet these days, time when I ought to be doing something, or at least, it feels that way. I’m always trying to find the best buy for my money on things that I can get to sell in the booth, sometimes I succeed, and sometimes I don’t. It’s all a learning experience for me, I had never sold anything before I had a craft booth. If I’m not hunting down stock to purchase, then I’m searching for ideas on things I can make to sell in the booth, or actually crafting those items, or things to make them with (as in the case of cutting out all of those stencils this week).

What I need to do is finish the chemise I started, find some fabric for an overskirt & sew that & get this house cleaned up for a change. Not that stocking the booth is unimportant, it is, but so are other things & I feel like I really need to get my priorities in order, or set up a schedule for myself so that I manage to get everything that needs doing in a day done. I’d love to have a clean house all the time & not just when I manage to get around to it, you know?

I’ve been busily cutting out stencils for the signs I’m making & I can barely feel the tip of my left index finger. Part of that thumb is also sore, I’m hoping that I don’t end up with a blister there. I’m pretty sure I’ll get a callus on the finger & that I really need one there. Who knew it would be so much work? I’ve finished two of the larger signs, and they turned out really nice:

Yeah, sorry, they’re a little big for the layout, but I don’t want to change the size. Those are the largest that I’ll be painting, and I probably won’t do a lot of those, they take me about 3 days, total & I can’t devote that much time to stuff like this, not this close to faire. I’ll be ordering the wood I need this Friday, so that I can make the other sizes that I want to do. I’m excited about it!