debor026

Well, the office is not quite ready to show you so, until it is, here is a slightly amusing story to tide you over. As many of you use Facebook I'm sure you're aware that they are constantly breaking everything tweaking their site. In this latest revision our posts and comments are visible to friends of friends even more than ever before and this can have some amusing consequences. Husband was recently commenting with a friend about a new video game they are both enjoying (as are several million others according to the record breaking sales numbers) and he got some fun hatemail in his Facebook inbox this morning. He decided to not respond and encourage the random internet person but I thought it would be more fun to yank his (her?) chain. The Facebook message Husband recieved looked like this (some minor language): you have a kids and your playing games? are you fucken kidding me? put the toys away little boy and take your kid to the park or spend some time with it. .i swea...

I do not have a project to post today as we went out on the town instead of creating this weekend. I went to the Fantasies in Chocolate gala with Husband and several of our neighbors. It was my first time there and it's definitely going to be repeated. Great friends, dinner, wine, chocolate everywhere , and dancing. It was really lovely. My friend Zoe took the above picture and, since I didn't take my camera with me, I'll have to ask a couple other friends if I can share a few other shots with you because the place really looked amazing! I hope you had a great weekend too and I'll tomorrow I'll post the winner for Saturday's giveaway!

Turning Stones is now on Facebook! Want to know what is going on in between the posts? Are you interested in seeing sneak peeks of upcoming projects? I realized that a lot of my personal Facebook posts are related to my blog and it seemed like the right time to graduate my blog to its very own page. So come join in the fun and see what we're doing!

What was your worst trip EVER? For some reason this story popped into my head today and now, many years later, I can see how it's a little funny. A little. Do you have a trip like that? So bad at the time but later you can start to at least laugh about how bad? I was living in Oregon and we made a trip to see extended family in Boise (about a 9 hour drive). I was pregnant and cranky and really would have rathered be home. My car had a loose belt and squealed something awful (we had tried the soap trick to shut it up but it never worked very well). I had tried to tighten it myself but it's really a 3-man job in that car and the shop wanted $150 just to do that and nothing else. They told me the worst that was going to happen if I left it the way it was is that it would sound bad. And it did. But sounds bad was cheaper so sounds bad it did. On the way to Boise a deer hit my car (no, not the other way around). We had slowed down when we saw a few deer crossing the road a...

Okay, I'm going to bring up the subject of money because, quite frankly, American tax laws suck. Somehow it feels like a very touchy thing to talk about on a blog but I'm so frustrated with our system and I really have to idea what to do about it. We now have W2s in hand and have begun the process of figuring out how much money is Uncle Sams and how much is ours. Along the way it occured to us to wonder about the "marriage penalty" seeing as we are planning on getting married this year. So, just for idle curiosity, I did a "what if we were married" and we calculated the taxes. And, WOW. Assuming that our incomes don't change we could expect to be penalized a LOT of money for being married, and we're talking thousands of dollars. Part of that is a change in tax brackets and part of that is the losses of several deductions. It would turn our refunds into a gigantic neon sign saying "money owed". I could cry right now. Of course, that ...

Okay, well, my family is unconventional. But we all knew that, yes? Due to conflicts in timing this year (the downside of a very large family) it looks like I will be having Christmas with the kids and Eric's family on Christmas day and then Christmas with my sisters and everyone else on Valentine's day. My little sister jokingly combined the names into Valentristmas (though maybe Valentmas is easier to say?). Anyway, so if we do that then I think I need to put up a tree for this but decorate it for Valentine's instead of Christmas and put a big heart on the top of the tree. What do you think? Here are a couple trees and an ornament I found online for ideas. I think it could work. Pictures from here , here and here .

Normally I am not a sports fan. I am, however, an Oregon Ducks fan. Today is the Civil War game with Oregon State Losers Beavers and which ever team wins gets the Rose Bowl. Go Ducks! To give you some family history, one of my brother-in-laws was the Oregon Duck. Yup, my sister married the duck. Another sister married a Beaver's fan traitor so we get some pretty good rivalry as evidenced above. It'll be a good game.

This morning I was reading Beth over on Be Yourself...Everyone Else is Taken and she is talking about the meaning of her blog title along with many people over at Synch-ro-ni-zing . It occurs to me that I've never really explained my blog, either the URL or the title, so this seems like the perfect opportunity. indigoamethyst came first. This has been my handle for some time starting with MySpace (yes, I have one of those) and then here and also on Facebook and Twitter. The amethyst is my birthstone but I'm not very fond of the very pale watery amethyst. I am in love, though, with the really deep amethyst. Indigo is a very deep shade for an amethyst and my favorite. And although it doesn't always come out in my blog there are deep facets to me too (somewhere), much like an amethyst which is reflective and doesn't always show the hidden depths, or at least I like to think so. Turning Stones came later. I love stones and rocks and, much like the ocean, feel a pull...