Baby Santa Christmas cocoon photo prop

Well, finally my new knitting needles came in the mail and I got to make this photo prop this weekend. I think it will work out okay but I will try and make some adjustments on my next set. It usually takes one or two tries to figure out exactly how you want to make something...or at least it does for me anyway. Here are the pics:

Now I just need to borrow a baby to take pics in for official posting on my website later. Maybe Katie will lend me Olivia for a bit!!!

GET TO THE CHOPPAH!!!

Interpret this however you want :)

Coolest Competition Ever

Check this out! This could be me some day if I run out of every other possible hobby:

He got 1st place in the World Beard and Moustache Championships!

check out the rest of the results here:

http://www.worldbeardchampionships.com

Matt's long lost buddy has returned.

His yellow hat! I am not really sure how long it has been missing but I think over a year now and I have been receiving the blame for it too. This was Matt's trademark clothing at OC. He wore this thing everyday even in the summer just to bug people. When I first met Katie and told her that Matt was my husband, she said, "I didnt know his name in college, just that he wore a yellow hat every day."

He thought I threw his beloved yellow hat away along with his super nasty duct tape sandals. BUT GUESS WHAT? I didnt dispose of either item (no matter how much I would have liked to (and almost did) throw away his sick sandals)!! While looking for some other stuff in the garage, he found his sandals and apparently his yellow buddy has been lost in the black hole of his trunk. But alas, all is right in the world now....yellow hat is back!

knitting attack!

Well this weekend I was at it again with the knitting needles. Last weekend, I bought some knitting patterns for baby cocoon photo props and ordered some needles so I have been super-stoked about learning how to make some new things. I still havent received my new needles in the mail so I have only been able to make these hanging cocoons. But here is a sneak preview:

I dont have a hanging picture of this first one but you get the idea. A lot of people these days are getting these artsy, super-cute pictures of their newborns and often use pod/cocoon props like these. My friend Courtney suggested I learn how to make these and I am glad she did because they are fun and really easy to make.

I made this one also this weekend. Our first test subject will be baby Olivia later this week. I will be sure to post pics if they turn out well. Also, later this week I am going to make a Christmas/Santa themed cocoon and baby hat that would make super cute holiday pics or photographs. And you can bet I will be posting pics of those too!! I am so excited to make them :)

And in case you were looking for a more multipurpose craft, not only are they baby photo props, they can also be homemade mullets. For those occasions when you dont have time to grow a proper mullet and need one in a hurry. Maybe I should make a whole bunch and sell them at the fair! Just kidding...that was a cheap joke!

If your sitting at your computer with nothing to do,

then check out this website...its pretty funny and a little unbelievable! It is a website devoted to the crazy characters that you come in contact with at Wal-mart. At the top of page 2 we have some stars from Oklahoma. Also, note the not-so-happy Wal-mart smiley face. I will add it to my website list in case you would like to re-visit this website at a later date to check up on what you have been missing out on.

Tis the season for scarves and beanies

It is almost upon us, winter that is, and I am trying to get a jump start on my scarf and beanie stock. Whilst I was at Shay's house being one of her nurses, I was able to knit a couple of beanies. I found this great website with tons of knitting patterns for all kinds of projects and luckily I got to try a couple of them out.I am pleased with the way they turned out, even though it doesnt appear that way in the pics. They yellow/green hat is a roll brim hat with some cabling at the bottom and the red/blue hat is a cable at the bottom with a button flap on the side. It is kind of hard to tell the detail in these pics. These beanies go with the scarf I made about a month ago. Maybe they might be finding their way to you sometime soon!

funny video

Shay showed me this video last night and i thought i would share it because it is pretty funny. We were talking about Depends and it came up.

update on everyone

Well as you can see from Ryan and Katie's blog, they are doing just great as can be (aside from minimal sleep). Thursday evening, I began my Oklahoma hospital tour with a sneak peak of the baby Olivia since I was going to be in Tulsa the whole weekend! She is so precious!

Then after I got to spend some time visiting with Ryan and Katie, I headed to T-town to see my sister following her surgery. The surgery went "perfectly" the doctor said. I got to stay with Shay at the hospital and then she came home the next day. She is really sore and sometimes a bit nausiated but doing well other than that. She has a couple of weeks to go for recovery and is supposed to take it easy for the next few months along with physical therapy. I am glad we have been able to be here and help this weekend.
Please keep both the Isenberg's and Shay in your prayers in the coming weeks.

things to pray about

1. My sister (25 years young mind you) is having back surgery early in the morning on Thursday to repair a herniated disc and a bulging disc. They also said she has the beginning of disc degeneration!! She has had back issues on and off for a long time so I am glad that this might fix them forever.

2. Ryan and Katie are having their first child sometime in the wee hours of the morning or late tonight!! I am so excited for them and I know they are ready to meet Olivia Ryan!

So please keep these two things in your prayers the next few days and I will update later.

randomness of sorts

Since i am still behind on all the updating, here is a compilation of our lives the last couple of weeks that would make for very short blog posts individually:

On our way home from Waltonia, we stopped at a great outlet mall in Roundrock, TX. We spent a couple of hours there and didnt even see half the mall. Matt really hit the goldmine at the Adidas store though. He bought a plethora of normally very expensive Houston Rockets and other brightly orange colored gear at a steal of a price.

As you know, orange is Matt's second favorite color...only to yellow:

The best part of the whole outfit is that Matt got this awesome jacket that says Space City (one of Houston's nicknames) on the front, with a Rockets logo on the back and besides that it is yellow, the inside lining is "the space". Its pretty cheesy but awesome too!

Then, 2 weeks ago, I surprise Matt with a secret date when he got back from DC to go see Earth Wind and Fire and Chicago. We had talked about going before I got laid off then decided not to spend extra money until I got another job. And to my surprise, they still had tickets a few days before. It was a funktastic concert, as Matt called it but also interesting because it was at the Zoo Ampitheatre which we have never been to before. It is like the fair, it brings out a lot of crazies wearing lots of crazy clothes with lots of crazy haircuts!!

Unfortunately, we couldnt take our camera in so these are the only 2 pics we got. I made Matt wear a blindfold and everything but I think he kind of knew.

And then, last weekend was our 7th Annual Fantasy Football draft into the Leaugue of Ultimate Destruction! Shay got the good end of the deal but our team is not too shabby. It was a good time had by all and I finally got to try and make this guacomole football field. I thought I was going to have all this room to make every yard line, hash marks, logos, etc. But as it turns out, there wasnt even enough room to use the correct amout of football players (tomatoes) on the field. But it turned out pretty well anyway...and yes the white piping is sour cream. It kind of grossed me out to pipe sour cream instead of icing!

The destruction has already begun!!


And then this last weekend, Matt's parents came down to visit us and we had a grand ol' time just hanging out and relaxing. We didnt do a whole lot but play with the animals, go for walks, cook, and eat at Sophabella's.

Lucy being really weird. She never lays like this long than about 15 seconds.

And Oreo and Lucy never get this close but never say never I guess.

And by Matt's special request, I made him a chocolate cheesecake. It was supposed to be the Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory but it wasnt quite that. It was more like a Ghiradelli Chocolate Stumpy cheesecake that was really confusing and slightly difficult to make. But he liked it a lot so that is all that matters. And in the end, it looked pretty!

Finally, here is a shot of Matt, Derek, and I dressed up as bible characters from the book of Genesis as a celebration to the last day of our 1.5 year long study in Genesis. Can you guess who we are:

So this is actually a "guest" appearance by the other half of the Chemistry of Clutch blog. I took a trip to our nations capitol a couple weeks ago for a chemistry conference so I figured I had better tell you guys about it and show you some pictures. It was a spur of the moment trip so Shannon didn't get to go, but my sister went and got a free hotel room out of it. Most of my time there was spent at the conference listening to talks, looking at posters, and talking to other scientists about research stuff. I also had a few job opportunities pop up in the form of interviews at the career fair there. One was with Roche and the other was with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. I also had a possible opportunity pop up that could lead to a job at Michigan State. I had some productive discussions about biofuel cells with some of the top researchers in that area, so the meeting was very productive. That's a basic summary of the meeting, and here's some pictures of the first day that we got there and I actually got to go see some of the sights.

The washington monument

The capitol building


The WWII memorial

The Lincoln memorial as seen from the Washington monument


It looked really big up close....

Honest Abe

The Washington monument and reflecting pool seen from the Lincoln memorial

At the Natural Science Museum, this furry guy was not alive

But this guy was! Some stupid lady held out her hand to hold it after I did and then jerked it back a the last second and it fell on the floor. Poor hissing cockroach....
And of course, what trip to DC would be complete without a mention of the Obamanator. This was a whole store with just Obama stuff in it, including this cardboard cut-out of him! I think I learned more about the national healthcare plan by talking to cardboard Obama than from the real thing on CNN!