E is for Elton John

Sorry if yesterday was depressing.  Today, I want to talk about my favorite musician:  Elton John.

I think part of what draws me to Elton John is the fact that he plays piano.  I'm a child of the 90s, so my introduction to him was probably his work on The Lion King.  They were also playing some of his pop hits on the radio like "The One," "Sacrifice," "Believe," "Blessed," and "Can You Feel the Love Tonight."

As the years dragged on and I decided that I didn't like the current pop music (it all sounds the same), I gravitated toward classic rock.  I started to pick up Elton's older music.  My favorite album of his is still Goodbye Yellow Brick Road with his self titled Elton John, Tumbleweed Collection and Captain Fantasic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy rounding out my favorites.  I also really liked the album he put out awhile back Songs from the West Coast which featured his surprise hit "I Want Love" although my favorite track off of it is "Wasteland."

I've even seen him in concert twice, both in 2003.  I got bad seats to see him and Billy Joel at the Bradley Center for $60.  Four hour concert.  Completely awesome.

Then I went to see him at the 100th anniversary of Harley Davidson concert.  I know lots of people were disappointed....BUT NOT ME!!!! HA HA HA!

If I had money, I would buy the Yamaha limited edition Elton John Red Piano but it's only $50,000 so I don't think I'm getting it any time soon.  Yamaha pianos are like the best pianos ever.  We'll talk more about pianos when we get to "p."

Hooded Scarf

Yesterday, I decided to start a hooded scarf out of the loom book I got a few days ago.  I am making it for my stepdaughter who turns 15 on April 15 (ooh, golden birthday I just realized).  Here are some shots of it.

As you can see, it has fingerless gloves on the hand and then it will wrap around you in the back.  The hood is stitched separately and will be sewn on.  I'm using some tweed striped yarn from Lion Brand.

D is for Dad

Today, I'm going to blog about something that I don't think I've blogged about before:  my Dad.

I know I've mentioned Mom.  A few posts down, you can see her enjoying her granddaughters.  The reason that I don't mention Dad is because he died in 2006.  He was only 56.

Here's a picture that was taken of him with me and Mom at my high school graduation:

My father was born in 1949.  He was born with a congenital heart defect (which means, there was a hole in his heart).  Back then, open heart surgery was not very common.  He had his surgery when he was 13 (I think).  They didn't have IVs even yet so he had to have shots of all his different meds.  He survived the surgery and made a full recovery.. They put a little teflon patch over the hole (yes, the very same stuff that's on your cookie sheets).

He married my Mom in 1974.  I didn't come along until 1984 (I'm their only child). At the time I was born, he worked for a small village in Wisconsin called Pewaukee.  It has a large lake there. 

Dad and I always had fun.  I spent most of my time with Mom so it was kind of a treat to spend time with Dad.  When my Mom decided to go out to lunch with friends or had a church function, I would get to spend the day with him.  We would go out to lunch (Olive Garden!) and sometimes go shopping or go to a movie or go see something special like the museum.  I remember that he had cut out the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic strip from the paper every day and then read it to me like it was a story.

As I got older, he was always very supportive of my music talents.  He was always at my recitals and when I had choir outings very very early on Sunday mornings (if service started at 8 am, call time was 7 or 7:15 and it was generally 30-45 minutes to get there from where we lived), he took me to all of them.  He spent the whole day with me at music competition every year when I had to do my individual solos (piano and voice), my handbell choir piece and then go accompany a whole bunch of other people when they sang. 

In fact, the last time he saw me before he died was on choir tour.  His health had declined and he had to have a pacemaker put in.  He lost his job with Pewaukee after 29 years because of his health and after a year of trying to find a job, he ended up working at KB toys and a gas station making pizza before he finally ended up being a parts driver for Auto Zone.

My college's choir was doing a tour of the west coast.  We flew into Vegas to begin our 2 week tour.  My parents flew out as well and my aunt and uncle came from L.A.  We spend the day at Star Trek The Experience before the concert that night and the next morning, my Dad drove me to the bus so I could drive to Salt Lake City that day.  It was the last time I would see him.

I was in Yakima, WA two days later and my parents had flown home.  Dad wasn't feeling good and called his doctor and made an appointment for the next day.  Mom was making him dinner and he just had a massive heart attack in his chair and died.  This was before I had a cell phone so by chance I happened to call Mom with my calling card and got the news.  I flew out the next morning.  Worst day of my life.  Had to take 3 flights and I spent about 30 hours without sleep.

Hope I haven't depressed you too much.  I loved my Dad a lot.  I still miss him.  But I have the happy memories of him and I'll see him in heaven someday.

C is for Cross Stitching (and, of course, cookies)

Cross Stitching has been my hobby for about 10 years.  It goes back to my grandmother and also to the summer that I had my wisdom teeth out. 

My Grandma was a very gifted stitcher.  Unfortunately, she died when I was 11, so she never taught me how to stitch.  Her favorite thing to stitch was birds.  Here's an example of her work:

I myself started cross stitching when I had my wisdom teeth out when I was 16.  I was laid up for a few days, so my mom picked up one of those Learn-a Craft kits at the local crafty store (which sadly is closed now, the non big box stores don't stand much of a chance anymore).  Here is the completed project:

Empowered by my newfound hobby, I went back to my local non-big-box-craft-store and picked up this kit:

I picked it up at the beginning of December, thinking I could stitch it by Christmas (ha ha ha ha ha).  By Christmas, I think I had stitched the order around the words in the bottom middle and that was it.   Oh, and I should point out that this is definitely counted cross stitch so I jumped in the deep end coming from a printed kit.  I finished it the next summer and framed it (with help from my dad) and gave it to Mom who I had been hiding it from and stitching in my room where she couldn't see it so she was surprised.  Amazing Grace is her favorite hymn.

If you look at my Finished album you'll see that I've cross stitched a wide variety of stuff over the years.  I'm missing a lot of pictures of stuff since I didn't start taking pictures of my finished stuff until shortly before I started this blog.  Here's the album:

Finished Projects

Oh, and I'm not a snob.  I do embrace all needleworks including needlepoint and embroidery.  You'll see some needlepoint stockings in the album (here's a secret:  they take less time!).

And now for something completely different, a monster that eats cookies!

Review: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest and a Loom book in the mail

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


You have to take the Millennium series in two sections.  The first book The Girl With the Dragon Tatoo is easily a stand-a-lone book and although Salander is a main character, Blomkvist is more the main character.



Books 2 and 3 are a pair.  The Girl Who Played with Fire ends on a sharp cliffhanger.  This book picks up with Salander having emergency surgery to remove a bullet from her head.  We also find out that a special section of the secret police is responsible for handling Salander's father and they are trying to clean up his mess yet again.  Blomkvist is working on how to defend Salander in court and he drags his sister in to be her lawyer.



I liked the book.  It kept moving and I liked where he ended it. 



View all my reviews





Another book I got today in the mail:

Brenda over at Loom Lore had two of these and she sent me her spare!  I think I might make the one in the middle on the cover for Emily's upcoming 15th birthday.  Just need to find some cool looking yarn for it. :)

B is for Books

If you haven't guessed from the sidebar, I'm a bit of a bookworm.  Or at least I used to be until I had kids and was working full time.  My husband reads a lot more than me.  He reads old mysteries in ebook format on his phone or his tablet while he watches the girls.  I've read some stuff on ebook but I prefer to hold the actual paper book in my hand.  At least until I get a Kindle Fire or something.  Someday.  And soon I won't be working (for those of you joining me for A to Z, my T-Mobile call center is closing in June).

I read a lot of books when I was younger.  I always hated the ones they assigned us in school.  I did the summer library reading and the MS Readathon (my kind of marathon since I don't have an athletic bone in my body).  When I was in 3rd grade, I got bored with the kids section and wandered downstairs to the adult section where all the Star Trek books were.  Now, I generally read young adult stuff.  It's generally more engaging and better written.  I don't touch romance books (not with a 10 foot pole). 

I generally do scifi and fantasy as my genre of choice.  I find as I grow older, it appeals less.  Probably losing my innocence or something.

Here are some of my favorites:

The Looking Glass Wars (Frank Beddor).  I picked this book up because a) it looked kinda cool and b) it was on clearance.  I have all three books in the series.  It's a very interesting take on Alice in Wonderland.

Star Trek New Frontier (Peter David).  This is the only Star Trek series that I still read.  Peter David was always my favorite author in the Star Trek universe and this is a novel-only series with his twisted sense of humor.  There are even a few comic books in the set too.  Getting the latest book of Amazon once my gift cards come in.

Dragonriders of Pern (Anne McCaffrey). I haven't read all the outlying books, just the main books of the series and I do like them a lot.

Tales of the Frog Princess (E.D. Baker). A interesting take on the frog prince story where the princess is wearing a charm-reversal bracelet...which turns her into a frog when she kisses the frog.  The other books introduce more magical characters.  I just realized there are another 2 books that I don't have.  Oh, well.  I guess I'll collect them later.


I've also done the other "extremely popular" series like Twlight, Hunger Games,  and  Inheritance.  They were ok.  I do really like  Harry Potter though.

You can see the rest of the books that I've read along with reviews if you click on the Goodreads widget in the sidebar.

A is for Adèle

A is for Adèle.  Her full name is Adèle-Aimée Soleil.  We decided to do a French name to match our last name.  She is my little poof of sunshine.

She loves taking baths and giraffes and her new toddler bed.