Crochet Me Crazy

What have I been doing besides crocheting? Well...kids, kids, kids....my house is grand central station from 3:30 when the school bus arrives. On any given day, their is a minimum of 3 extra kids at my house besides my two. I spend a lot of time chasing the messes. My house is not very quiet!!

Alison got a pet mouse last week at the pet store. Pretty sweet little thing, actually. Very tame and seems really content to run on its wheel all day! The kids across the street decided they had to have one too so they quickly went out and got 3 mice at a different pet store! Well, their mice had not been handled and were mean and hyper. They haven't gotten a cage yet so their mice have been house guests in our cage for the past week. One managed to escape and is now a fugitive in our house! We haven't seen it since! Last night, we had a trauma when another one of theirs got loose and our dog, Brindy got it! The mouse died and Alison proceeded to cry hysterically for about an hour. Michael took on the duty of pet grave officiator since Daddy is out of town. We have added another pet grave to our back yard!

Another new thing we are dealing with is my 9 year old daughter is attracting the neighborhood boys! Sigh....here we go! We knew this would happen eventually. So far, the only boys she likes is her daddy, brother, and the guitarist from the Newboys Band! Thank God! The neighbor boy gave her a box of chocolate for Valentines Day and I think another boy has since decided to take back his admission that he liked her since she doesn't like him back! LOL! One boy told Alison's older brother, Michael, he would pay him if he would get Alison to go out on a "date" with him! LOL! I've got news for him! She won't be going out on a "date" with anyone no matter how much he pays!! LOL! She's 9 and he's 8!! The only thing that amazes me about the whole thing is that when I was that age, we liked each other but we certainly didn't let them know that!!! Geez, I liked the same boy from 2nd to 5th grade and never spoke a word to him!! LOL Well, at least I KNOW what my kids are doing since they are always here for me to keep an eye on.

Watermelon doll outfit 

I am slowly but surely getting my completed projects posted. I just finished this outfit tonight...I'm pretty proud of this one...turned out real cute! It was pretty quick and easy to make, too!

chenille doll dress 

Here is a picture of a doll dress I finished awhile back. I AM still crocheting every day but I have really been falling down on the job with taking pictures and posting. There is just so much going on right now. The public school has been on spring break this past week so my house has been a "buzzing" with kids all day. I actually took 9 kids (including my 2) at a kid's play place called Jumping Jaks. Took 4 kids (including my 2) to the park and McDonald's last Friday and the same group, I took to the skating rink on Thursday night. I think there was at least one trip to Cici's Pizza in there somewhere where we had 5 kids with us. Tonight, Alison's little "boyfriend" went with us to eat chinese food. Sometimes I wonder if I'm insane! LOL! But in all honesty, I really don't mind. I would rather my kids have there friends here because I know what they are doing. I'm really glad they all like to be here.

We just bought a Legacy soft sided pool today and hopefully it will be here in the next week. It is 17x29x52 and is really huge. We have had a 12" round above ground pool for the past 2 summers that the kids have really enjoyed, however, it got a little bit crowded when friends were over. I decided we needed to get something bigger so the kids could have all their friends over to swim. I don't want to be taking all those kids to the neighborhood pool everyday so this will solve that proble. Jeff is going to build a deck around it. It should be a fun summer! The kids are VERY excited to be getting such a big pool. We decided on the soft sided pool because the liners don't need to be replaced and we can take it with us when we eventually move.

Yesterday and today, we spent the whole day raking and doing spring cleaning in the back yard. Jeff cut tons of limbs to get the yard ready for the pool. I was VERY impressed with Alison's little boy "friend" who lives next door. I offered to pay kids $5 an hour to help and of course, they all said they wanted to. All of them quit after a very short time but Santiago worked solid for 2 hours. He was actually a very big help to us! He raked and hauled literally mountains of leaves to the forest. Then he went around dragging the tree branches to the forest and stacking the bigger peices up against the fence for firewood. I'm just not used to a kid being that diligent and perserverent. The rest of the kids were jumping on the trampoline, screaming and having fun and little Santiago was just working his tail off! We paid him $20 for his work and he definately earned it! He is a real good kid.

Well, how about a few snap shots of life at the Ritz!

Mini Apple Doily 

Find the free pattern for this here: Ravelry: Apples for the Teacher Doily pattern by Denise (Augostine) Owens

Fish Pouch 

crochet teddy jumper 


plastic canvas 

Just a couple of projects I'm behind on posting here. I have a another doll dress and a rug I've made to post pictures of. We have been traveling a bit! We just got home this evening from a week long trip. We went camping at Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose, TX. We went to hear a lecture by Dr. Kent Hovind at the Creation Evidence Museum which is right up the road from the state park. Dr. Hovind is an awesome speaker who gives incredibly credible scientific evidence of the fallacy of the evolution theory. Here is his website: Creation Science Evangelism - Creation, Evolution, Dinosaurs, and the Bible.


Dr. Kent Hovind 


Dr. Carl Baugh, Creation Evidence Museum 

We drove on from there to Shreveport, LA where we spent the next 3 nights. Jeff had some business there. We had a few rough spots along the way....another flat on the camper again! This time it shot part of our rim up into the camper and put a hole in the water heater! No warm showers on that camping trip! LOL! Also, in Lousiana the radiator fan was going out on the truck and we had to get that fixed there. The good news is that Jeff just found out this week that he has gotten a nice little promotion at his job!

Well, hopefully I'll get more posted later this week!