Hi world, how are you doing today?

I’m doing pretty well. Kind of been tired lately. And there is a lingering headache I’ve had for the past three weeks. Thank God for Ibuprofen.

The song you hear playing is one that I’ve had stuck in my head for the past week. Now it’s your turn to have it stuck in yours. It’s “maps” by Yeah yeah yeahs. They are a band that I’m only slightly familiar with and am looking to get more into them. In fact, I’m at a point in life right now where I’m starving for new music. The bands that I want to look into in the next few months include:

1) Yeah Yeah Yeahs

2) Stars

3) The Bird and The Bee

4) Beirut

5) The Decemberists

6) Rufus Wainwright

There’s more, but that’s all I’ll work on for now. If any of you have something to contribute or other band suggestions, I’ll be more than willing to listen.

Here’s the music video to the current song for those who live in other countries that don’t allow playlist.com playlists to play (achem, dass bedeutet dich, Katja. sag mir, ob es für dich funktioniert! Du auch Onkel Herbert…)

Anyways. Life.

I’m settling well into my new job. It’s still a lot of stress and I have a lot to learn, but every day I become more and more confident. The more independent I am without having to ask for help, the happier of a worker I am. I soon get to start working on improving the clinic’s website, which currently is a little bit on the sad and unprofessional side right now…

http://partneroncology.com/ is my new baby. Watch it grow!

I also joined a gym, and really need to start working out better. My marathon dreams are still continuing as I am now setting my sight on the seattle marathon at the end of November.

Also, I am starting to paint again! Thanks to getting paid again, I was able to buy some simple art supplies. I am so eager to get painting, it’s been too long since my last painting… about 8 months ago. *gasp!* Bad art major, bad!

I have been having a pretty good social life, which is amazing considering it’s been 6 years since I’ve last lived in Washington.

I got to meet my friends Luc and Sarah’s dog, Watson:

And have been hanging around my buddy Michaele a fair bit, drinking coffee and shopping. What else do we know how to do? Well, besides be absolute weirdos. (look how long my hair is getting! yay!) :

The wonderful shirt you see me wearing in this picture was from Anne Taylor Loft and costed me merely $3. Yes, What a steal.

Yup.

John is doing well.

This is us on superbowl sunday – he had a small get together with a lot of his navy friends and it was TONS of fun. I never enjoyed the superbowl nearly as much as I did this year. He’s truly a wonderful boyfriend to me.

John has also gotten me into rugby. He plays for a team based out of Bellingham, WA, and I’ve been coming to his games to support him and watch how manly  he is. He’s been doing such a great job… I’m one very proud girlfriend. And I am learning all about rugby… it’s such a funny sport to watch. I have to constrain myself from giggling half the time, but it’s intense.

Here’s the only picture I have of John playing rugby currently (all the other ones I took are on John’s camera…) He’s kicking a field goal in the third half of a rugby game (he made it!)

Yaaaay John!

Us before a Rugby Game. Yaaaaay.

Also we celebrated Valentine’s day! Well, we celebrated it the day before valentine’s day. After the ruby game that you see above (haha he was really dirty and had to wash himself under a hose) he took me out to my favorite kind of food…. GREEK. *droooooooool*. Also I receive a dozen gorgeous roses and chocolate (*siiiigh* ) that I feel a need to brag about.

I’m such a spoiled little brat.

Valentine’s day itself was actually kind of hilarious, as my night included me, john and all these things (yeah, we’re different)…

In our defense, the buffalo wings and orange julius were home-made. Yup.

Anyways, not much else to report. I’ve been doing well… Working hard, playing hard. Life is full of variety, which is good. Keeps me entertained.

Oh yeah. I’ve started drinking my daily value of water every day. It’s not easy. You should try it.

Anyways. Exciting things too look forward to… Michaele’s Birthday (I’m taking her out for a girl’s night!), St. Patrick’s Day, MUSE concert (John got me tickets! *Shrieeeeek!!!*) and a whole lot more… I’m sure I’ll be posting in the near future with all this excitement around me!

I wish all of you a wonderful week!

The Deeds

]]> http://www.dianefeucht.com/2010/02/28/my-kinds-your-kind-ill-stay-the-same/feed/ 1 http://www.dianefeucht.com/2010/01/29/wait-for-the-stone-on-your-window/ http://www.dianefeucht.com/2010/01/29/wait-for-the-stone-on-your-window/#comments Sat, 30 Jan 2010 05:36:37 +0000 Diane Feucht http://www.dianefeucht.com/?p=1896 Hello world. How are you today?

The song playing (O Valencia! by The Decemberists) is one that John gave me. It’s great and makes me smile. You should listen to it.

I’m doing quite well actually. My unsettled and unsure life is slowly making more and more sense.

Lots has happened since my last post. Oh so much.

There was christmas. Which… honestly i don’t think I have any pictures of. Hum.

However, since the last post had no pictures, I shall over compensate with this one. Hooray.

I did get to spend quite some time with my absolutely delightful cousins, Dave and Trina.

They got me possibly my favorite present this year, my new best friend Poppy:

Yup. I do love a good cow every now and then.

I was very lucky to be able to join the Andersens, my brother and a few other church friends to go skiing at Crystal one day! It was an incredible day of exploring the slopes! Nothing compares to the freedom of slipping down hills on two thin boards. It’s been way too long since I’ve last been on the slopes, and I must thank the Andersens so much for arranging such a great day…

Haa haa.

I spent Christmas and the following week in Puyallup with my family. It was the week before Rachel’s wedding, and I spent most of my time being Rache’ls chauffeur. I had the pleasure of showing many of our out-of-town guests around Seattle while Rachel was busy finishing up her wedding plans.

Then was Rachel’s wedding. Hooray for Rachel! I’m very happy that she has found the love of her life and had a beautiful wedding! I’ll let the photos stand as testimony to that!(the photographer was Natasha Reed, she did a wonderful job!)

Our family is expanding so rapidly!

Ok so enough of that.

Shortly after Rachel’s wedding I spent more time trying to search for jobs, and I finally found one!

YAY EMPLOYMENT! This has taken quite a burden off my shoulders to finally have a job.

I am working in an Oncology Clinic and will have a few different roles there, but will be doing mainly general office work. I will also be able to dabble a little bit in graphic design/website design, but for now I have to learn all the fun roles of being a receptionist. After a few weeks I will learn other roles in the office as well, but only one thing at a time. It’s coming along, but I always hate the start of a job when I have no clue what I am doing.

Which also means I moved, once again, back to Puyallup. Have I mentioned how sick I am of moving? BAH! BEH! BOO! Only one more move this year left, when I am able to afford an apartment on my own!

Anyways. Not much else going on.

Oh yeah, I am now dating a handsome, wonderful, generous, strong and affectionate young man who spoils me to death. I suppose I should mention him as well. His name’s John. I like him.

Anyways, I am out of things to say. I have so much to look forward to in the next few months.

Anyways, I’m exhausted and I’m watching my first rugby game tomorrow. Weekends have never seemed so sweet to me as they are now. If only there were more weekends.

Have a lovely week, world! I’ll try to be a better poster from now on, especially now that my life is a lot more stable!

Much Love, The Deeds

No pictures with this post. Sorry. Just boring talking. But hey – have a song, it’s a good one.

So.

Diane’s ever-changing life has changed.

Again.

Very dramatically.

I moved to Portland.

I currently am living with my absolutely wonderful cousin, Dave, and his beautiful and incredible wife, Trina.
God must have extra special rewards for these two in heaven. They are absolutely incredible.

I’m currently in a major job search (which is going well), and hope to soon be up on my own feet.

My decision was kind of sudden, but the reasons were plenty:
This is where I want to go to grad school.
This is where I’ve been wanting to live for so many years now. This city is incredible.
It’s close to family, yet not too close.
Portland has so many opportunities for artists.
And also, if I’m going to start out from scratch anyways, it might as well be in Portland – a city with more of my personality and a much larger job market than I was finding in Puyallup.

I am sad that I am further away from my parents, my sister, my brother, my brother-in-law, my best friend, my nephews, a certain boy and many of my high school friends, but I must continue reciting to myself,
“Puyallup is only 2 hours away. That is nothing.”

I’ve spent the last 6 years of my life being a 7-14 hour plane flight away from home. A 2 hour drive is much nicer.

Thank you to everybody who has supported me.

I have been shown such an out-flowing of love and generosity.

It’s incredible, I don’t remember a time that I’ve felt this loved.

I will be home in Puyallup for Christmas and Rachel’s wedding.
I’m absolutely excited to see all of my family again.
I’m so excited to see Rachel get married to a good man.
I’m excited to watch my nephews have that child-like excitement for Christmas.

I believe this year is going to end with me very much at peace.

My heart feels good about this decision.

I’m feeling uncomfortably optimistic.

2010… I’m ready.

So much Love,
The Deeds

I had an absolutely wonderful week this week, and I hope all of you can say the same. There has been so much going on that I have a feeling that this will be a freakishly long post!

First of all the most exciting news….. there is a reason that I chose another Muse song for the song of the week…

I AM FRIGGEN GOING TO SEE MUSE!!!!!!!! AHHHHH! AHHHH!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

*SQEAAKKKK!!!!*

Believe me, every time I think about going to this concert I break out into a small happy dance.

HOLY CRAP, I AM GOING TO SEE MUSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

***Insert image of Diane hyperventilating here****

I found out that Muse was chosen to be the Headliner for this year’s Deck the Hall Ball in Seattle…

Wow I am going to attempt to be close enough to Matt Bellamy so that I can smell him… or touch him… or get a restraining order…

My absolutely wonderful and amazing brother-in-law, Andrew, presented me and my buddy Michaele with tickets. I could never be happier with a gift. Michaele and I were planning on robbing a bank (not really, don’t arrest me!) in order to get enough money to go. BUT I’M GOING! I CANNOT WAIT!!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just understand… I’ve been fascinated with this band since 2003. It’s on my list of 25 things to do before I die to see them in concert. I am convinced that Matt Bellamy secretly wrote the song “Map of the Problematique” for me. I am literally shaking with anticipation.

Ok enough boring my general crowd of people who don’t really care about Muse and my obsession with Matt Bellamy.

On to other things:

My marathon training has been going swimmingly well! I LOVE running. Here is my Nike+ running schedule for this month so far!

Yes, an easy 9 miles on Wednesday… I’ve still got it!

I’ve chosen the marathon that I’m going to shoot for next year, granted it doesn’t sell out before I have the money to pay for registration…

The cool thing about this marathon is that every mile they have a live band playing! And on their main page they have a picture of Death Cab for Cutie… so if that possibly means that DCFC is one of the bands… then I’m sure my running average will jump up a few seconds faster per mile!

It’s June 26, 2010 and is a run between Tukwila and Seattle! It is a marathon that gets sold out quite quickly, so hopefully I have a job soon and the registration fee ready before it fills up!!!! But I’m pretty psyched out to be running again! Yay!

And by the way… I’m absolutely enamoured with these shoes:

Also, in hopes of staying injury-free running this time around, I decided to read and take on the practices of ChiRunning… and so far it’s been doing very well for me! There is a lot of good advice on running technique.

With every other sport you have training with technique, but runners tend to just… run. This tells you the best way to run without putting excess strain on your body… which for me is Hooray!

Also on Tuesday this week, Sarah had me go on a special mission. I stopped by Lacey to pick up Michaeley Farfalley…

isn’t she lovely?

and we went on a nice long drive.

We stopped at a house that had a cow. Moo.

And we picked up an absolutely adorable new member of the family!

World, meet Mr. John Chrysostom… more commonly known as Jack 2.0. He is a 2-month old pure-bred Golden Retriever. He’s kind of a fatty and likes to lay down funny:

But he is such a snuggler. The moment I saw him I picked him up and he immediately started cuddling with me. He loves taking naps with me… here is us this morning:

He’s soooo cute to sleep with. I love this dog.

Yup. There is the new happy family.

On Thursday I got to teach a high school class! A friend from church is the teacher to Tacoma Baptist School, and he invited me to talk to his class about Acrylic painting / contemporary art. It was pretty exciting… and I loved doing it. The students were a lot more curious and interactive than I thought they would be, and I really enjoyed teaching them.

And on Saturday, of course, was my 4th Annual Pumpkinfest!!!

On the menu this year was:

Pumpkin Beer

Pumpkin Gingerbread Trifle

Pumpkin Mousse Cheesecake

Pumpkin baked Ziti with Italian Sausage

Pumpkin Hummus with Baked Pita Chips

Pumpkin Cookies

Pumpkin Bread

Pumpkin Cupcakes

An Orange-Chocolate cake for Pumpkin Haters (aka Sarah)

Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Pumpkin Spice Coffee

we also had a real pumpkin in there. We had fun “carving” it. Here is Sarah making anal-retentive holes into a pumpkin. Andrew was a little skeptical:

Here is me making holes for the fun of it in Sarah’s pumpkin:

If you look closely at my shorts, by the way, Sarah embroidered the awesomest thing ever on to them:

Yes, this is love. She got the pattern from urbanthreads.com which has a lot of designs that I’m crazy about.

Back to Pumpkinfest… Michaele was very gracious to come help me out with the baking. She made some absolutely lovely pumpkin cupcakes, and spent many hours working as a functioning jungle gym for my nephews.

Thanks Michaele!!!

Sammy also tried to be a big help, but ended up looking more like a lobster instead.

Then the guests that came were Michaele and several people from my high school class! We had a blast that evening.

We played one of the best games in the world… I think it’s called Pictonary Telephone. How it works is everybody has a stack of papers. The first person writes a sentence, and then passes the stack. The next person draws a picture on the next piece of paper that describes the sentence. The next person only gets to see the drawing and writes down a sentence they think the drawing is trying to show…. the next person does another drawing, then another sentence.

Here is one of my favorite examples from the game last night:

Michaele started this brilliant round with the sentence:

My friend David then drew this lovely picture:

Charissa interpreted this picture to mean:

Autumn then drew this lovely photo, which is freakishly similar to David’s:

Which Sarah translated to say:

Andrew then drew this lovely picture:

Which  I translated to say:

So I hope that makes sense to the world. It’s the best game to play when you have a large group of people. My favorite drawing of the night was this one:

so yeah, life has been good to me! Except I’m starting to feel threatened in this house. Every time I look at the “to-do” list on the refrigerator, I see a new idea like these three:

Hmm… should I be worried?

Also, Sarah and I made a collaborative bundle to sell. Her cloth diaper embroidery skills and my new yarn dyeing skills:

Cute, no? Currently I am entertaining the idea of starting my own online yarn-dyeing business. We’d call it “Deedle Dye”. I just have to make an inventory of dyed yarns before I could really figure it all out! So that is an exciting possibility!

OH and ONE MORE AMAZING THING!!! ELFYOURSELF IS BACK!!!! WOO HOOO!!!
Here is my lovely family :

Anyways, I think I’ve talked long enough! I hope you all have a lovely week!

Love DeedleDee

I have to admit that the hardest part of writing this blog is picking out the song of the week. I just sat here for the past half hour dinking around my music collection.

The sad thing is that I know that half of you either A) can’t even hear my music in some countries (like Germany) and B) even more of you shut your sound off the moment you reach my website.

Oh well. Turn your music off. See if I care.

Well anyways, what you are (or aren’t hearing) right now is a song from Muse’s new CD, “The Resistance”.

Many of you have heard me gush about Muse as my favorite band, and over and over again have I praised the genius and absolute-incredibleness of my dearest love of loves, Matthew James Bellamy, lead vocalist, guitarist, pianist and songwriter  for this marvelous band:

However… this CD is… different. If I didn’t love and respect Matt Bellamy’s musical genius as much as I do, I might just give up on him. Unfortunately this CD sounds a little bit of a weird mix of Queen / U2 / System of a Down / and Indian/Arab music. I never thought I’d have all those words in the same sentence! Generally: If you don’t know MUSE very well, please don’t start with this CD. Start with Absolution or Origins of Symmetry… those two were flawless.

The most redeemable point of this CD is the last three tracks, which you are currently listening (or not listening) to. Muse wrote a Symphony! Hooray! It’s called “Exogenesis” and I believe they did brilliantly, though I am waiting for my classical geeky family to tear this statement down. *and now I’m holding my breath for negative comments*.

And to make matters MUCH MUCH WORSE (believe me, I’ve cried over this already), MUSE SOLD THEMSELVES OUT… to none other but the horrifying vampire-crazed teeny boppy series of Twilight! *gaaaaaasp!*

Which I know even more about because I actually watched it this week. I almost choked on the sappiness. My sister Sarah, however decided to marathon it through reading all four books this week… and yes, she managed to read the entire series in 9 days.

So I’m threatening to buy Sarah a Edward cut-out for Christmas, though I wouldn’t want Andrew to get jealous.

Anyways… I have exciting news!  After one painful month-long hiatus from running, I am back on the road again!!! Hooray that Washington weather is temperate for me to run outside most of the year, and that the Washington terrain is a lot more interesting than in Iowa. Unfortunately, more hills makes my mile average slag a little bit… I’ll be a much stronger runner overall because of the terrain.

Here is my stats for my Friday run!

So yes, it’s a bit slower than usual, but what’s to be expected?

And my new Nike LunarGlides?  I’m in love! My feet have never felt so cushioned and so light at the same time! So hooray for that!

Wow, I really missed my endorphines.

Anyways, I’ve been primarily living at the Flanagan home lately. I absolutely love the atmosphere here… it’s just rediculous.

I mean, this morning I woke up to Sarah saying, “DeeDee, get out here. You HAVE to see this.”

Dragging myself out of bed, I walk into the bathroom to see this lovely scene:

That wasn’t even all of it… there was a lot of foam lining the hallways. I guess they just wanted to help me clean the bathroom, right?

Like when they did this to the back window two weeks ago:

They were just trying to be artistic.

I love being with the nephews. Today me and three of the boys had an impromptu dance party to “ABBA” when their parents left me to babysit them. The boys love ABBA. Good job raising them, Sarah and Andrew!

And yes, the boys do like to run around mostly naked most of the time. I don’t care how many times you try to put clothes on them, they just keep coming off. So it’s not that we don’t clothe them, I promise!

Sarah and I decided to try a new hobby today… we were dyeing OBV fabric with shaving cream. Although the results quite literally went down the drain (there is a lot of tweaking to be done before we get this dyeing thing right!) we had a lot of fun in the process!

Maybe too much fun:

(Yes! I remembered to wear gloves this time! I can’t go to church tomorrow with green hands now, could I?)

So… yup. I don’t feel much like explaining what we are doing, because we failed miserably and the less you know the better. Just look at the purty colors!

So yes, my day started…. and ended, in foam. That’s the life of living with the Flanagan Clan.

Ok. So that’s all there is. I’m still jobless. It’s kind of nice. Sarah and I took our blood pressure in the mall the other day and mine read 76/50. Though I know it’s most definitely that the machine was broken (we had the kids with us for goodness sakes! Just seeing the four little monsters together adds about 70 points to my diastolic number), I feel like I’ve been a lot more at ease and healthier than when I was working myself to death in Iowa. I hope never to do that again… Diane will not do crazy hours anymore.  Diane will find a less-stressful job. It’s a promise.

ANYWAYS::: Next week is my fourth annual PUMPKINFEST!!! (hooray!) So look out for a post in a week. If you live in Washington and are my friend and haven’t been invited yet, then let me know and I’ll invite you.

I hope all of you are having fabulous weeks.

Much Love, Deedles Marie

So it’s been forever since I”ve  used one of my top three bands as the song of the day. So, have some Postal Service Good Washington band for my first post from living in Washington again!

So I’m really really really sore right now… I worked out yesterday and got my butt kicked. I feel like such a weakling! So currently I am being lazy on sarah’s tempur-pedic mattress.

Wow, I want to steal this mattress.

No really, it’s amazing. Anyone who has a whole lot of extra money to spare should buy me a tempur-pedic mattress.

Anyways, lots has been going on. I’ve been getting used to living here in Washington. I have been mostly staying at my sister’s house to help out with crowd control and help out around the house.

A few days after arriving, we had Ethan and Patrick’s joint birthday party. As fun as having 9 kids wreaking havoc in a small house can be, the adults were soooo exhausted after this small ordeal.

The theme was star wars.

Yup that was a darth vader piñata. Amazing, I know.

Here’s all four kids in their star-wars related outfit:

And if it isn’t obvious, this is Darth Vader, R2D2, Yoda and an Ewok. I love them.

Anyways, since Sarah now has season passes to the Point Defiance Park Zoo, one day we decided to escape the house and play in the zoo with the little ones.

Here is Spider-Sam.

And Spider-Pat

Little Liam got to just chill the entire time. Isn’t he cute?

Patrick attacked the artwork. It’s kind of tradition to do so.

Sammy the snail.

Sammy the anemone.

Ahh! The Flanagan clan is being eaten by a shark!

Me, Ethan and Patrick riding the merry-g0-round

I wanted to have some fun too! So I did.

Well I’m loving it in Washington. There are some things in life going on that is making life extra happy. I especially love being closer to my nephews

They make life so wonderful for me… most of the time.

Also I’ve been working very hard on my graduate school applications. It’s a pain that they make you pay in order to most likely be rejected. Bah! But I feel like I have a very strong portfolio this year, and I’m very excited and proud to show it to the five schools I am applying to!

Yup, I’m really hoping that this will be my year to get noticed. Despite what happens, I am feeling more confident than usual. Hooray!

I was also the recipient of some absolutely beautiful flowers this week. Just thought I’d share.  They are so pretty!!! And make me smile every time I see them

I have some other pictures on my phone that I wanted to share, but the computer I”m using doesn’t seem to want to cooperate! Sooo… that’s all folks!

Life is going great! All I really need now is to finish grad application and get a job finalized! Besides that, life should be running rather smoothly!

Well I hope you all are having a fantabulous week!

Soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

I’m now in….

WASHINGTON!!!

Yup!

It was three days of driving, and I was not about to do it by myself.

So I enlisted this little munchkin to help me out. Doesn’t the corn make her look good? She should consider moving to Iowa. Yes?

I made a few improvements on my own looks as well. I think the country bumpkin life is brilliant on me:

We were at pumpkinland… a wonderful land of pumpkins and corn. And a huge corn maze… it took us about an hour to get in and out of it.

Look Ma! I’m tall! And I didn’t cheat at all! It’s not like I’m wearing 2.5 inch boots at alL!

Anyways our roadtrip started on a Tuesday after I showed Michaele around the wonderful world of Iowa. Here is what our trip looked like:

We decided to do it in three days.

On day one we saw the missouri river in South Dakota. I’m sure Michaele and I have actual pictures of the river, but I think that this sign was much more fun. Uh oh… there are snakes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We then took a nice little detour to Mount Rushmore. Once again I am more fascinated by the signs than the amazing scenery… um.. Yeah.

It was a little chilly. Poor Michaele’s ears. Poop.

But we did help out Jefferson a little bit… I bet that booger has been bugging him for ages. Thanks for your civil service, Michaele.

So yeah… we decided to try a self-portrait at the mountain. We had several attempts.

This was our best one:

This is what happens when you let me try to take a good picture:

And this is what happens when a park ranger takes pity on us and offers to take the picture for us:

We didn’t think it was as cool as what we could do. Our photos are the bestest.

In South Dackotah they speelll reall gud.

On our second day, the most memorable pit stop we made was when I saw a sign for a restaurant called “The Purple Cow”. My father used to always tell me this poem:

“I never saw a purple cow

I never wish to see one

But if I saw a purple cow

I’d rather see than be one!!!”

So I made sure to take full advantage of this kodak moment.

In Montana, my dearest Chimichanga hit 80,000 miles! And we were going 80 at the time! How amazing is that? We even made sure to sing “Happy Birthday” to little Chimi. I’ll buy him new Washington License plates in honor of this event.

On the last day of our trip, we stopped at a scenic outlook somewhere in eastern washington.

I wasn’t really paying attention to it though… I think I was really sick of just being in a car by now.

And I think Chimichanga was sick of traveling too.

The only way to cure this problem? Ummm…..

I claim insanity.

I got home to finding out that I have no clue how to turn off my parent’s home security system, and it ended up in me having to explain to a pair of cops what I was doing in a house that doesn’t belong to me. Eeek.

I politely asked them not to arrest me. Hooray that they didn’t!

Anyways, it’s late, and we need to sleep! This is our first night in a long time that we don’t have to wake up early!!! Woopeeeeeeeee! And I still have to unpack the car tomorrow. Rar.

Have a wonderful week everybody!!!!

The Deedles

(and Michaele )

Just a quick update on one small thing:

I’ve been continuing with my new hobby… yarn dying, and I thought I’d show my last three attempts!

Attempt #1: Wanted to make a “fall” theme yarn. Used red, brown, yellow and gold dyes. Everything went well… except that the “brown” dye really was a deep olive green. Poo! here are the photos for that one!

These yarns were kettle dyed, which means I put the yarn into a pot and poured the dyes strategically over the yarn.

Result? Something rather amazing. I named this one “scarecrow”

I gave this one to a resident in my nursing home who is learning how to knit.

Attempt #2: David Lammers, a friend from college, decided to come by and see how my yarn dyeing goes. Being under the stress of being closely supervised, I kind of fumbled through a second attempt of dyeing.

Color choice: Yellow, blue turquoise. I made a bad mistake though, and threw it into hot water when finished, turning the entire skein…

green. Wah wah wah.

And being dumb and not using gloves, my fingers turned…

green. Poo.

And then I got it tangled, and david got to spend a few hours being unsucessful with untangling it

Yeah…so it’s still tangled so there aren’t very good pictures of it.

Wanting to have some kind of success today, I did attempt #3…

Sarah chose out the colors: red, gold and yellow. Instead of using a pot this time, I thought that this kind of dyeing would be better in a skillet.

I was absolutely amazed with how beautiful this yarn turned out!

looks kind of like a nectarine! Now i’m craving peaches, darn it!

Anyways, i’m so tired. I had to work 3am-2pm today, and I’m still really wiped out from it! Have a wondeful week, folks, I’ll update again soon!

Love, the deedles

so I realized in the past month that a lot more people read this blog than I thought.

so this is me updating.

Hello.

The song is Glee’s version of “Take a bow” by Rhianna.  Glee is a new show.. that’s awesome. It’s the funniest show I’ve seen in a long time.

So… wow. Was July 10th really my last time updating? I don’t even know where to begin with my life since then.

Like I started a really fun vitamin regime:

Yup. Those are all my happy pills. They are supposed to keep me healthy. I’m so tired of getting sick.

Most impressive thing, though? I can now take all these pills in one gulp:

I know, be impressed.

I also have temporarily stopped running. This makes me somewhat depressed… I miss my endorphines. Really.

How did this happen?

Well, I was stupid. While I was already experiencing severe shin splints, I decided to run my first road race – a 10k. Though I managed to finish in only medium pain and a sub-hour finishing time, the next day a severe pain started in my lower calf / front ankle area.

So I’ve been doing lots of tape, ice and heating pads… but I’m saddened to announce that I am most definitely out of the marathon this year, and am having to put it off for next fall.

To cheer me up though, and as an investment into my recovery, I now own one of the most amazing shoes ever created: the Nike Lunarglide+.

I have never seen a shoe get as many good reviews as these babies… so I’m so excited to start a new relationship with them .  I ran a mile in them the other day, and was impressed with how stable yet how lightweight they are.

Not much going on in Iowa. I work a lot. And I hang out with some coworkers.

Random thought I had the other day: While packing to come home to visit Washington, I was amazed at how many products I’d have to pack with me to look like I normally do. This is what it takes:

Yes, my teenager au-naturale self would be dissappointed.

Anyways.

I suppose this would be the appropriate time to make this announcement:

I’m moving.

To Washington.

At the end of October.

And I’m scared.

With my sister getting married off and me no longer having any real ties to the corny state of Iowa, I figure it’s time to get serious about life and move back where I might actually have potential to thrive.

I’m really really sick of moving. I’m ready to just stay in one place for a while… the past 5 years of my life has been me jumping from one place to another. I forgot what it’s like to have a hometown.

So I’m moving back in with my parents until my life stabilizes a little. It’s gonna be a struggle because I’ve become very strongly individualistic since moving out. And having to figure out life

I could use prayers. Lots of them. Long ones. Feel free to throw in several flowery adjectives and pronouns.

To prepare for my move, and in order to prevent very inevitable burn out at work, I decided to take a 10-day vacation back to Puyallup to enjoy what little summer I have left.

I’ve been staying at my sister’s house and have been enjoying being surrounded by the wonderful things that are my nephews:

(that’s them in birth order – patrick, samuel, ethan and liam)

Tonight I found my old “Mr. Yuck” stickers, and passed them out.

The results were entertaining to say the least:

Besides having silly times with those little guys, I’ve had one of the busiest vacations ever. I did manage to get in sometime to go out to coffee with a few good high school friends, Hilary and Charissa:

And got to go to the fair with family and friends:

And a trip down to Portland, OR with my dad and brother, where Jonny bought an Organ, my dad did some bounce research at the Nike Store, and I survived the world largest canker sore. *ouch!*:

I even had a little time to pick up a new hobby: Yarn dyeing!

My sister, Sarah is quite the hand-crafty guru… and she often buys yarn that has been hand-dyed. We decided to give this process a try, and my very first attempt turned out brilliantly! I wasn’t expecting such beautiful, rich results on my first try!!!

This is something I would love to continue doing, so hopefully I’ll start making even nicer yarn in the future.

I guess the next step is learning how to crochet, but the idea of knitting or crocheting doesn’t sound very appeasing to me.

I’d rather dye.

Hahaa.

Anyways. There is so much going on in life… work, figuring out this moving thing, figuring out grad school applications, trying to manage money to afford the both, apply for new jobs… and my brain hurts and I’m exhausted and stressed out.

Hopefully things will be going well in the next few weeks…. I will be moving home the week of October 17th. I’ll make sure to post again before that. Going 2.5 months without a post is pretty bad. I guess I’ve just not been in the mood.

If  you still aren’t convinced, the second song (“Another Saturday Night”) is per my sister Sarah’s request, because all she listens to is oldies and celtic music. Now you have something to listen to. I sing this song to the old folks all the time… usually met with the response “Ohhh… it’s not good.” Yep. I definitely don’t have the vocal skills of my mother and two oldest siblings. Darn. I have a feeling that I’ll survive.

Anyways, it’s been quite an eventful few weeks!

Let’s start with the painful part: I got a really really bad sinus infection. I had to run 6 miles anyways, and felt like I was going to die the entire time. Yeah, it was that bad. I became quite fond of Sudafed.

I went to work the next day, and I felt my eye growing redder and redder and pus-filled. It was nasty. Yes, ladies and gents, I contracted a wonderful case of pink eye. Wanna see?

And this picture was after it had healed for two days, so this is really REALLY  good compared to what it used to be!

Here, have another picture!

The nice thing though is that the redder my eyes are, the greener the iris looked! So hooray, I had extra green eyes this week!

Well I was dying from pink eye, I decided to take a day off from work, so that I wouldn’t infect my elderly friends. Then I got this crazy idea to cook a really nice meal for myself, my sister Rachel and her fiancé, Alex.

I made… Beef Stroganoff (I found a really good recipe if anyone wants it! And I made it without mushrooms, per the request of Rachel. And me too, I guess! Yukkus!):

a delicious cucumber, onion and tomato salad with homemade dill vinagarette (this is an actual picture of it! Be proud!):

And a great Blueberry, peach and blackberry fruit salad with lime juice (also a real live photo! Woopie!):

So yup, I’m all being gourmet and everything. I was spoiled growing up with a wonderful cook for a mother, I only hope to be half as wonderful as she is!

The marathon training has been going really well! I love to run, and I look forward to my runs everyday! This Thursday my Nike+ came in the mail and I got to try it out for the first time!

I finally bought some new running shoes!!! Meet my new friend: The Air Max Moto+ 7, Livestrong editions! Aren’t they PRETTY??

Nike claims that they were made specifically to “take a beating” and feel something like running on a cloud! In the 24 hours after buying them I ran a total of 16 miles, and had no more knee pain, my arches were no longer swelling, my mile times were speedier, and I stopped a whole lot less often. They are amazing. I’m in love.

And plus, 100% of the profits went to the Livestrong foundation (go Lance!), so I can feel like I did something good for the world.

Also, this Thursday my Nike+ came in the mail! I tried it out for the first time, and I am absolutely in love with it as well.

My first run with it was a 6 mile run. Here are my stats for that run, according to the nike+:

Yup yup! If I’m running 8:41 minute miles like it says, I’m standing pretty good for a pace… in fact in marathon terms I need to slow down a bit so I don’t die by the end of the race! So that’s happy stuff.

Anyways, the Nike+ has an option where you have a “power song” – a song that when you are having trouble being motivated during your run  you push a certain button, it will play your “powersong” to help you be motivated. I’m still deciding on my own “powersong” but here is a list of possiblities. Anyone want to add to the list?

Also what happened in the past few days is the 4th of July weekend! (dang you are all getting spoiled…)

There was a cookout at Dave’s house. He had fun blowing up bottles with fireworks. Here’s Dave:

Here’s a video of Dave trying to kill everybody:

Yeah. It was great. Kind of scary, though… here’s Jeremy hiding behing his blast shield aka the garage door:

And then another friend who has keys to Dordt’s science building got us on the roof, and we watched fireworks from one of the highest points of sioux center.

And then we went back to my place and lit up Rachel and My bonfire pit:

Yup. So it was a sucessfully fun 4th of July weekend.

Anyways, I plan to finally choose and register for the marathon next week! I was for a while deciding between the Sioux City and Des Moines marathon, but I think I ultimately chose to run the Des Moines Marathon. It’s a much higher quality and organized event, and even though it’s 4 hours away, and… I now have a new motivation!

And that is… I have someone who wants to go and support me! Dave called me up and told me that he’d take the days off of work, drive with me to Des Moines, and be there at the finish line for me! I am so excited to run now that I know there will be someone who loves me at the other end!

Hooray for having such a wonderful friend! I can’t wait to road trip with him!

He’s been really supportive to me the past few weeks as I’m coping with a few personal issues. I feel like I’ve grown a lot (emotionally and spiritually) the past few weeks, and I hope that the growth continues.

ALSO a huge shout out to my BFF Michaele! Who I don’t have any pictures together with! Which is really sad! If my phone bill is really high this month, she’s the one to blame!

I bought this book on her suggestion:

Apparently she thinks my problem is that I’m too nice when it comes to relationships. So I have to learn how to be more of a …. *achem*…

Oh and I also bought this book while I’m at it:

So I’m excited to get reading. I’ll let ya’ll know how good they were once I’m done with them.

Finally (yes I’ll wrap up this post, finally)… I rearranged the decorations in my room. Yes, this is a big deal to me. But I realized I hadn’t posted any pictures of the inside of Rachel and my new house, so here are a few for those who haven’t visited us!

In the living room looking into the kitchen (I love my table. And you should too):

In the kitchen looking into the Living room:

My room from Rachel’s Room:

and from the other direction:

My germany paintings look really nice all framed and positioned together. I’m so glad that I made them:

Anyways, I officially feel like I’ve been talking for two years. I feel like there are enough pictures that some of you just might have made it this far. Congratulations if you are one of them!

So yes, life is good. I feel great.

Or as my brother would put it:

Honestly there aren’t too many things I would change about life right now. I think all the running I am doing is pumping in a very high level of endorphins into my system. So that is good. I like it.

I hope all of you are having good weeks… I’d love to hear about them if you have the time!

Much love, The Deedles