Things have been pretty quiet … or mostly quiet. Jessie’s mother is on vacation, so she’s spending the week with her. I miss her terribly, but I’ve had time to devote to a couple projects that I’ve been wanting to give attention to, so it works out for that.

Sew, sew, sew…

When I was younger, I loved to sew. I used to cross-stitch, make stuffed animals and various clothing items for myself and friends. I haven’t stitched anything in years, with the exception of a couple of costumes that Jessie needed for school about 3-4 years back. I had been wanting to start it up again, but wasn’t sure how or if I would have enough time.

A post on the Soldiers’ Angels blog yesterday has really kicked this need into high-gear. There are several sewing projects on the Soldiers’ Angels site, and several of them are various Blanket teams/projects — the newest being Blankets of Belief.

Now, I know I don’t have the time to commit to quilting or sewing blankets and such by hand, but there was a link on the Blankets of Belief page on how to make a “no-sew” blanket. These are basically fleece blankets that are constructed in such a way that no sewing is involved — if you can tie a knot, you can make one of these!

Sounds perfect!

As soon as I’m able, I’ll be stocking up on materials to make one of these. If it turns out well (read: pretty!), I’ll post pics on here.

Bama Angeling

I’ve been doing a lot of work on the Bama Angels site and have started expanding my “pimpage” to a few social networking sites. So far, it’s up on MySpace, Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, and FriendFeed. I’ve had a LOT of positive response from area Angels and now I need to work on finding information to post to Bama Angels.

I usually get announcements via word of mouth or The Birmingham News, but it would be nice to get all that other Alabama and military related news that gets missed!

If you know of anything, please feel free to send it my way!

Car Update

It’s in the body shop and I was told yesterday that they’ve ordered parts and will begin taking it apart and working on it hopefully today or tomorrow. Realistically speaking, I’ll be lucky if I get it back before the end of this month.

Not thrilled with that, but what can I do? ;P Have otherwise been going back and forth with the insurance company regarding other stuff that’s still unsettled and may need legal handling, but can’t really post about that yet. (will update when able)

I know I’m lucky that we don’t have to pay for all this stuff out of our own pockets (or rather, out of our savings accounts), but honestly, this whole process is enough to drive anyone bonkers!

Someone told me last week, “You always find the neatest stuff!” Then I’m asked how I find these things. My response was something along the lines of a laugh and, “I have neat friends.”

Usually when I get something neat — a site, story, video, etc. — I bookmark it. Most often, I run across stuff by emails from friends or my feeds. Sometimes I surf and will just meander from one site to the next, bookmarking stuff as I go. Occasionally I will tweet something I find, or post it to my blog, but most often than not, it just sits in my bookmarks file. For a while I’ve thought about how to most effectively go about sharing the wealth. I’ve looked into a few things and have started sharing, little by little.

I’ve most recently started sharing items via Google Reader. I’ve also switched to a very awesome Twitter client, Twhirl, which makes make re-tweeting much easier. Something that I’ve seen done before, but haven’t attempted yet, perhaps start posting re-tweets on my blog.

Now, I’m left with the 500+ bookmarks I have right now. I may go the route of del.icio.us or something along those lines (Lord knows there are a million different franchises of bookmarking services out there), but I haven’t decided yet. I’m most familiar with del.icio.us, and if I’m able to seamlessly integrate it into one of my personal bookmarking services, I may start posting things there.

Time will tell … but for now, Google Reader and Twitter are my current carriers of goodies.

EDIT: Oh! I almost forgot about Friend Feed … this pretty much covers anything/anyone I’ve bookmarked, friended, shared, favorited, etc. recently. It rocks.