Snow, Little Black Dresses and Karmic Phrases

 Sorry this post is a bit long!

So yeah, not even 2 weeks after this area was hard hit by Hurricane Sandi, we got slammed with a lovely (NOT) Nor'easter! Yep, our kids got sent home early on Wednesday and by 1pm the big fat fluffy flakes were falling...within an hour we had a light dusting of snow.  

An hour later, that amount had doubled with no signs that it was slowing down!

As you can see from these shots of my grill, the snow was coming down rather quickly and heavily.

While I think snow is gorgeous and love to see it outside...knowing my husband was still at work and would need to drive home through the mountains, did indeed leave me feeling very uncomfortable.  I was just VERY glad that we got our brand new all weather/all terrain tires put on the truck last week!

Just a short half an hour later this was what it looked like outside the front of the house.   There IS a mountain range behind that tree line, but between the snow and the amazingly fierce winds you couldn't see it!  And oh my goodness, was it ever cold!!!  I went out for just a few minutes to grab some pics of my boys (who were happily running around playing at the park) and grab the mail, and nearly froze my tush off!

After being outside for about an hour I called the boys in and made them some hot cocoa!

The wind died down a little so I grabbed my Abbey Bominable and took her out for some snowy pics.  As the daughter of the Yeti...well she was very excited to see the snow!

This pic was taken about 2 and a half hours after the snow started...this is on my grill cover...it's almost an inch thick!

Abbey had fun making a snow angel! =D

Scruffy didn't seem to mind being outside, although he did bark at the snow quite a bit! LOL

I tried to toss him a snowball, but he watched it hit the patio and looked at me like I was stupid! lol 

The snow was still coming down pretty heavily here, but you can see the accumulation in my garden pots.

(I am actually rather surprised as when I checked my strawberry plants, they actually seem to be rather happy right now.)  I've never had strawberry plants do this well so I'm not sure how to protect them over the winter!  (If you have any tips I am all ears!)  I think I read somewhere to cover them with straw for the duration of the winter...Must read up on this, a I'd love to be able to keep them alive so we have fresh strawberries next year!

Ok on to the Little Black Dresses... The third dress I made for my trade was supposed to use a black sateen crinkle fabric I have similar to the crinkle ribbon...but when I went looking for it, it seems to have disappeared.  So I chose to use some lovely black crepe satin instead.  Since the other dresses are made with ribbon and don't really use a pattern I figured I could just trace half of the dress and it would sew together pretty quickly.  Yeah, well not so much! -_-  That silly dress was literally 2 pieces of fabric and took me almost 3 days to get it to where I was happy with it!

Oddly enough it only looks vaguely like the original dress, which I suppose is a good thing.  As soon as I finished it, I emailed my friend to confirm her address so I could ship them out the next day.  She was thrilled and then asked if I could make her a little black bolero jacket/long sleeved shrug.  She even included a cute picture of what she was looking for.

And here is where the Karmic Phrases come in.  There are some words when arranged in a certain way are really just taunts to the Universe.  What words you might ask?  Well words put into phrases such as: "How bad can it be?" and "What could go wrong?" .  Any time these phrases are uttered bad things seem to follow shortly there after!

Well I think for crafters there are Karmic Phrases as well, and I uttered every one of them in response to the jacket request.  "Sure, that doesn't look to hard!"  "I should be able to whip that up really quickly." and "I have the perfect pattern for that!"  The only Crafty KP I didn't use was, "I have just enough (insert whatever supply here) for ONE!" 

So needless to say 2 days later I am still fighting with this stupid lovely bolero jacket.  I'm on my 4th revision of the original pattern and I think this one is going to work out the way I want it too!  On the plus side I will have 2 other different jackets in addition to the bolero.  I think I'll send them as part of my trade too.  I am determined to finish them tonight so I can get this package shipped out tomorrow!  I will try to remember to take pics of the jackets before they get 'locked' away for transit!