This Little Piggy Went to Market

There they are….the mad dash into Sample Spree!!!

(Photo from Integrated Fitness)

I’m a little Piggy off to market in the morning. I’ll try to post a few pictures to Instagram along the way.

Thanks for all the graduation love — you guys are fabulous. Market reports when I return.

Have a great weekend!
XOXO,
Anna

{Almost} Friday Five

Hello Hello.  I’m popping in with five quickies — it’s shaping up to be a busy month around here.

1.  I’ve started working on a new quilt.  Blues, grays and red.  It should be fun if I can get a little more sewing time in.  (Oh, and can we please have a moment of silence for that DS gray fabric?  It was so hard for me to cut into it.  I might have to sacrifice and go find more of it.)

2.  I’m sure there must be a quicker way to make this block.  (I’ll bet Sherri knows — she makes it a lot!)  I couldn’t stand the thought of all the wasted fabric from the corner pieces, so I’m making half-square triangles at the same time.  Maybe I’ll use them on the back.  Maybe not.  I’m enjoying the process though.  And I sure do Love that sewline pencil!

3.  All the crabapple trees around here are in bloom this week.  It’s one of the prettiest weeks of the year (I love intense fall colors too.)  Here’s our pretty tree in the back.  The heavenly smell almost knocks you over when you step outside.  I love it!

4.  Here’s a picture of the same tree in 2010.  Can you tell me why there was so much more pink in 2010???  I felt like a pink tree then.  This year it feels like a white tree.  (And boy, look at the difference the light makes in a photo.  It was sprinkling and cloudy when I took this year’s picture.  The 2010 picture was taken on a sunny, early evening.  Such pretty light!)

5. I’m betting you’ve seen THIS commercial. I Loooove it. It’s easily in my top five commercials ever. I wonder if those guys who invented the camera phone even came close to imagining the impact it would have on our lives.

Have a great weekend!
XOXO,
Anna

Empty Nest

Thank you SO much for all your comments about the YoYo quilt.  I have the sweetest readers!  I would suggest a yoyo-along, but that would take too long LOL.

I thought I’d catch you up on the story of Mother Goose.  If you follow my instagram account, you know that we’ve had a fun few days.   The internet was SO helpful to let us know what to expect with Mother Goose.  It said that the eggs will hatch anywhere from 24 – 30 days, so on day 24 (last Thursday) we kept an extra close watch over Mother Goose.  We even checked on her on the weekend.  And, right on schedule, Day 28 (this past Monday) we saw some action.  When we arrived at work, this was the scene at the nest.

What the heck!  Mother Goose kicked out two of the eggs.  She really confused us and we were guessing that maybe she could sense dud eggs or something?  Then, around 9:30 or so, our admin came running over to tell us that we had a baby.  We all flocked (ha — definitely obsessed) to the window and look looky — a baby indeed!

Awwww, isn’t he cute?  By 1 p.m. or so, there were three babies.   It was hard to tell what was going on as we didn’t happen to catch Mother Goose standing up very often.  (I know it’s hard to believe, but we didn’t stand at the window ALL day long!)  So, by the time we left work Monday, we thought maybe there were four little ones.  (And let me add here, Mother Goose and her babies picked the PERFECT days to hatch out — these past few days have been our prettiest spring days this year.)  After the first baby or two, Father Goose appeared on the scene.  (Finally!)  Every time someone would walk down the handicap ramp, he would hiss at them.  Finally, security put some orange cones up to keep people off of the ramp.

On Tuesday morning, Mother Goose was still on the nest but she stood up for just a minute as I was coming in to work, and I thought I counted 5 goslings. We compared notes and someone thought they saw 6. Very fun.  The internet said that the geese would leave the nest within 24 hours, so we waited. My desk is on the second floor and I have a friend who sits just below me on the first floor (people who sit on the first floor had a birds-eye view of the action), so she was on high-alert for a goose family exodus. Around 10 a.m, she texted and said “They’re here!”. (She sits around the corner from the nest.) So, us second floor girls zipped to the window, but we couldn’t see all the geese. Father Goose decided to head across the parking lot with four of the babies and Mother Goose was up under our windows where we couldn’t see her. (Sorry for the awful cell phone photo, but I want to remember what those little guys looked like trying to hop up on the curb. They all made it — so cute!)

My first floor friend texted to say that Mother Goose was headed back to the nesting area.  ???  We were worried about some sort of custody battle, but after Father Goose got all the way across the parking lot, he decided to turn around and come back.  Yay!   They went back to the nesting area, and we went downstairs for about 10 minutes to get a better view.  You know, break time and all LOL.   Here they are, very close to the original nest.  Sadly, this is the only picture I got of all seven of the little goslings together.  And it’s through a very dirty window (which is part of the reason that all of these pictures aren’t the greatest — our windows are filthy!).  If you look real closely, you can count seven — there’s one behind that tallest little peeper and one to the left of Mother Goose.

After our little break, we all went back to work.  And by lunchtime, when we went to check on them, they were gone.  Poof!  No trace of a little goose family of nine anywhere.  They apparently had a very stealthy walk across the parking lot.  We didn’t even get to say goodbye!   I did catch this little cutie below spreading his wings.  They were so sweet stumbling around in the grass.  It’s amazing that they can walk long distances and follow their parents.

So, that’s the story of our little goose family.  We’ll never really know if we see them again.  There’s another family of 8 in our industrial park, and a few more geese still on their nests, so it would be impossible to identify “our” geese.  I wish we could have put a spot on Mama’s head or something! ;-D   Here’s the scene on Tuesday afternoon.  Hard to believe those shells stayed intact as much as they did with that big Mother sitting on them.

Now, it’s a little depressing at work. We’re all suffering Empty Nest Syndrome. ;-(

XOXO,
Anna

Mother Goose

Hi There. I thought maybe I should let you know I’m on baby watch. Not the human kind, but it’s sort of exciting anyway. We have a nesting Canada Goose at work. I call her Mother Goose.

She built her nest right in front of our building and right next to the handicap ramp. At first we thought she was crazy — that nest seems to be totally unprotected. But, in doing a little research, it seems that Canada Geese prefer to have their nests completely out in the open. It gives them a clear view of any pending danger.  (Awww, look, she’s resting her head on the wall.)

Talk about being a devoted mother.  I see her several times a day when I’m in the stairwell and she’s never off of that nest.  The gestation period for goose eggs is between 24 and 30 days, depending on which source you read.  We’re going on week three and she’s faithfully tended that nest through all kinds of crappy weather.  I read somewhere that the mother will frequently turn the eggs so that they will properly develop.  And sure enough, I hung around by the window one day and caught her turning the eggs.  She’s ever so gentle while she turns her head completely upside down to carefully roll the egg.  It’s really fun to watch.  I zoomed in on one of my pictures and it looks like there might be eight eggs in the nest.  Eight!  Supposedly they leave the nest within the first 24 hours — I so hope we’ll be able to see them before they’re gone.

Life is precarious for those little goslings though.  The first week Mother Goose was on the nest, we saw a hawk flying in circles above her.  Probably scoping out a future meal.  When her nest was first discovered, rumor had it that the DNR had been called to move her.  I think it was just a rumor though, as it’s illegal to disturb nesting migratory birds.  Her biggest threat might be those pesky engineers.  They’re all too lazy to take the stairs — everyone uses the handicap ramp.  She seems to be used to them by now, although, it’s been said that if you stop to look at her she’ll hiss at you.  You don’t want to mess with a mother goose.  (There goes a smart engineer now — look down, don’t make eye contact.)

And where, you might ask, is the father?  We rarely see him.  I’m guessing (well, hoping) he might spend a lot of time on the roof (where we can’t see him) watching over her.  Occasionally, we spot him patrolling the parking lot.  We’ve never seen him up on the grass next to her.  Slacker. I always wonder how she eats or goes to the bathroom.  It’s really pretty amazing.  (Did you notice Father Goose in the parking lot picture?  Here, I’ll point him out.)

So, that’s the excitement around here.  I know I’ve been fairly absent, but I’ve been plugging away at the Yoyos. Yoyo Count: Yoyos: 135 Me: 733.  Netflix, as always, is my yoyo companion.  When Upstairs Downstairs ended, I watched Daniel Deronda (fun to see Downton’s Hugh Bonneville in a different role) and then decided I’ll take a BBC break.  There seemed to be some blog excitement over the return of Don Draper, so I checked it out and I’m now officially hooked.

Yum-Yum!  Off to yoyo now –Yipee — it’s almost the weekend!

XOXO,
Anna

Easter Candy

Ooops! I sort of had a little blog break there, but to tell you the truth, there’s not much going on around here. Winter will. not. die. and I spend my days holed up sewing yoyos when I’m not at work.

I did manage to order a little Easter candy for MeMum. She saw an ad in her Martha Stewart magazine and mentioned to me several times how much she loved these toy candies when she was a little girl.

Do any of you remember these little candies? The ones I remember were Christmas figures and even when I was a little girl, they were considered old-fashioned candies. They were definitely from MeMum’s era and before.

If I had it to do over again, I would order differently. The candies above are so tiny, they’re hardly worth it. (I placed the thimble in the picture for reference.) And the bunny below is just too big. They do have mid-sized candies and that’s what I would order next time. They’re still really cute though, and I hope MeMum will like them.

Ok, our little chitchat is over. Back to the yoyos. I’ve been having a great time watching Upstairs Downstairs while I sew. It was a happy day when realized that I could watch on my laptop while TheManoftheHouse is watching ManDrivel on the tv. I only have about 8 of the 68 episodes left and I’ll be really sad to see the end of the series.

I’ll be finding a new series to watch (oh how I love Netflix), as I still have a LOT of yoyos to go. I’m making good progress though. Yoyo Count: Yoyos: 443, Me: 425. Almost half-way!

XOXO,
Anna