It's a little early, but Valentine's Day is coming soon and love is in the air. So I thought I'd share a project I did a couple years ago, for our 7th wedding anniversary. The gift theme was wool. I used and old wool jacket to make a boy scout themed gift, badges and all.

I created the "badges" on fabric squares using a stamp set. I attached them with fabric glue - no sewing involved!

The special part was the "key" I added to the inside, explaining what he's done to earn each badge. In other words, all the symbols represented something special about him. I attached the key to cardboard and there you go. I'd like to think he liked it as much as I hoped he would. If nothing else, I thought it was original.

I was given a good size trunk like many of us probably have. I know I used to have one when I was younger. This one was blue with a gold frame and had stickers all over it. I scraped those off and gave it a coat of black.

I knew I wanted it to be like a pirate chest so I decided to do a treasure map with the X being the X in my son's name.
I just free handed all the painting and lettering. I figured it was fine if it looked really rough. I don't think pirates were known for their art skills.
My husband had bought these wooden cutouts and so I decided to work around them.

I know some Christmas lovers might fall dead from disbelief, but Halloween is officially my favorite holiday. For me, Christmas has just become some sort of commercial nightmare.

I'll just say it, just because you slap a Santa hat on something doesn’t mean it’s for Christmas.
Same goes for Harley ridin' Santas



Not to mention John Deere Santas.


It's ridiculous and it's got to stop. I saw a commercial today with the misfit toys, one of my favorite Christmas things and it was advertising some phone or something ridiculous and I just wanted to hurl. I don't want my childhood memories associated with these things; and I especially don't want my son to think Santa rides a Harley. Is nothing off limits?

Posts may be sparse this month due to the fact that I'm participating in National Novel Writing Month. I had participated once a few years ago but didn't make the goal of writing 50,000 words in 30 days. I doubt very seriously that this year will be any different, especially since I got started late. However, I obviously like writing and thought it might be fun to try.

I'm up to 2430 words, which is a little discouraging but, again, it's just for fun. If, by some small chance, I were to make the goal, one of their sponsors, CreateSpace, "is offering all NaNoWriMo 2009 winners a free proof copy of your manuscript in paperback book form. They'll even cover basic postage!". Something to think about if you had a book idea rattling around in your head. Sometimes competition can be a great motivator.

My husband is taking part of Movember, where men grow their mustaches for the month of November in order to raise money for the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LIVESTRONG). My husband is part of Team Mo Bicless.

If you can't afford to give yourself, you can join the team to help support and to help raise money for the cause. You do not have to grow a mustache to be part of the team, so ladies you can join too as a MO Sista "A woman who loves a mustache".

After losing my father to cancer, I've heard so many people's stories that I don't believe there's anyone who hasn't been affected by cancer.

I am selling sets of mustache magnets and stickers here. A portion will go towards the charity.

I've just been informed that Patrick Swayze has lost his battle with cancer. I say battle, but really cancer is a bigger adversary than most of us can take on.

Much like with Michael Jackson, when I was a young kid, too young to like someone so much older, I had a huge crush on Patrick Swayze. No, not from Dirty Dancing or even Ghost, but I started liking him after I saw North and South. I remember pasting my head over his wife's in pictures and telling kids at school he was my boyfriend. That's how young I was, so young I didn't even realize how stupid that was.

He just always struck me as a genuinely good person. He was one of only a handful of gentleman left in Hollywood. He will be missed.

Staying on the art theme for a minute, I thought I'd share some of my pics from our last visit to the Nelson-Atkins Museum and my favorite, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art here in Kansas City, MO.

I found this new site I love. It's called 43 Things and it's just a list of things you'd like to do. The site helps you mark progress and gives you a little taste of others with the same goals. I like this idea a lot, especially after reading The Amazing Race's host Phil Keoghan's book, "No Opportunity Wasted". In it, he talks about making such a list and I've been keeping a rough sketch ever since.

My first goal:

I’m wanting to get tattoos to represent the elements. So far I have a dragon breathing fire. I have a memorial tat in mind to represent earth. I’m not sure about water and air just yet though I do have ideas. I think I’ve found who I want to do the rest, but she has a long waiting list. So I guess the next step would be to get on the list.

Of course, that's just fresh on my mind, but I have much grander ones to come.

A couple weeks ago my husband and I decided to go to Savannah on vacation. We had been to Georgia before but not that far east. It was a part of the country unexplored by us in the past and so it was appealing.

Typically, when we go places we like to do the things that the place is known for. So with Savannah we thought ghosts and food. Now, I'm not big into the whole ghost hunter thing. Still, it was fun going around to all the supposed haunted sites.

I recently wrote a post On My Lists about my favorite sport, boxing. I know a lot of people have opinions about boxing being barbaric and violent. I used to be one of those people myself, but then I started actually watching it and not just assuming I knew what it was all about. It changed my mind...obviously.

Ah, but that's not why I'm writing. I actually wanted to share how matches are scored, because not everyone knows.

The Ten Point Must System
Each judge scores each round using the following criteria:

Clean Punching (25%)
Effective Aggression (25%)
Ring Generalship (25%)
Defense (25%)

Clean punches are above the waist, on the front or sides of the body or head, and with the knuckle of the glove. The judge must determine if one boxer is landing more clean punches than the other.

Effective Aggression means landing punches while moving forward. If a fighter is aggressive but not landing punches, that does not count as effective aggression.

Ring Generalship means who is controlling the action in the ring, using strategy and skills beyond straight punching power. Is one fighter using agility and feinting to throw his opponent off guard? Or setting up his opponent for effective combinations? When one fighter moves the other around the ring at will, that fighter is displaying ring generalship.

Defense refers to a fighter's success at avoiding blows. This can be accomplished by blocking, bobbing, weaving, good footwork, and/or good movement.

Additional Ten-Point Calculations:
Apart from the four judging criteria mentioned above, there are several ways a boxer can lose points.

The referee can deduct points from a boxer for a foul. In that case each judge must subtract the points from that boxer's score for that round. This means, for example, that if the leading fighter is penalized for a 1 point foul, the resulting score (which would have been 10-9) becomes 9-9. Only the referee determines point deductions for a foul.

If a boxer is knocked down, a point is deducted from the boxer's score. For example, if the leading fighter (who is rewarded with ten points)knocks down the other fighter, the resulting score would be 10-8 (i.e., the leading boxer was already ahead, and now, with the knock down, he is an additional point ahead).

A standing eight count is scored the same as a knockdown, deducting one point from the score of the fighter who took the standing eight count.

Thanks to Ring Of Dreams.

I'm sure a lot of you watched the Barbara Walters interview with Patrick Swayze. The story hits too close to home for me. For those who don't read my other blogs, I lost my father to cancer 2 1/2 years ago. His was a 9 month battle. By the time he realized he had lung cancer, it had spread throughout his body and the doctors didn't leave us with any hope. They didn't even advise going through chemo. Now that's hard to swallow that, not only do you have cancer, but the doctors don't even suggest medical help.

Still, I was in major denial. Nothing could ever happen to my daddy. He's invincible. Well, he certainly was the strongest person I'd ever known but the reality is that we're all susceptible to death. Cancer though, that's a hard way to go.

My dad had lost his brother and his sister to cancer when he was younger so he knew, and he'd even told me about it, but I could never have imagined.

Don't get me wrong, I've been around death. I've lost friends, all my grand-parents, my half brother, aunts, uncles, and the list goes on. Nothing prepared me for this.

My heart goes out to Patrick Swayze, his family and everyone else who's been touched by cancer.