Computer Expert

This so needs to be sent to my Father In Law, I totally cracked up when I saw it.  He's forever having difficulty with computers and calling me and the hubby to fix it:

Have a great weekend!

Nano News

Welcome DragonMount readers!  It's nice to have you visit.  For those that don't know, DragonMount is the official site for Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series.  My book review has been linked to the site and I'm just tickled about it.

In Nanowrimo news:

• I'm still chugging along and gradually making up the deficit in my word count. 
• I wrote myself into a wall with my story, mainly because of some of my secondary characters that need to be more prominent.
• I need help with dialogue.  Seriously, that is not my forte.  I can be descriptive, have great action scenes, but my characters are having a difficult time talking to each other.  I can only hope it gets better as I go along.

I've been using Google Docs to write my story, mainly because I can access it anywhere and because it has a word count.  The word count tool is nice, but I really wish they'd take the stupid readability index off of it.  I realize that this is a first draft and that it will need a crap load of revision, but how depressing is it when you've written something and then check your word count and find that the readability is around the fifth grade level, that the average eleven year old would be able to read it just fine?  

I did get all down about it.  I'm college educated, I should be writing better than this!  What a stupid thing to get all hung up on.  When this happened was around the time that I had written myself into a wall yesterday and that didn't help my sense of humor either.  I took a couple of hours to think about things and then tackled it again.  Story got back on pace and grade level went up.  Much better.

How's everybody else doing on their Nano novel?

Burlap Curtain Progress

The curtains are coming along.  I'm almost finished.  I still need to add the trim and then hot glue my hems down.  I refuse to sew the burlap.  I've already got a mountain of fuzz and lint from it in my dryer, I don't want it in my sewing machine as well.   It already needs a tune up, the last thing it needs is burlap abuse.  Here's how they look currently:

Look at how the sunlight shines through the burlap.  I love the texture it's bringing to the kitchen.  The burlap panels will never be moved.  Only the sheers will open and close.  The burlap is only there for color and texture.  I have a ton of the burlap left over.  I'm planning on using that to make a valance for the window over the sink.   If I get around to it, I'll put the trim on tomorrow and will give you a finished project pic then with details on how I did the whole thing.  This would be a piece of cake if it was just on a straight rod.  I'm already over the whole bay window thing, trust me.

Oh and yes, those are Halloween decorations in November.  Why do you ask?

On the writing front, I'm still about 800 words behind on my goal.  The night's not over yet of course.  I've written  over 1,000 words so far today and I'll have more time to write this evening.  I'm already doing better than I did last year, and I'm only three days into nanowrimo.  Cool!

The Cost of My Curtains

I am now officially a day behind on my nanowrimo challenge.  I had an unexpected guest to spend the night and forgot all about my writing until around 11pm.  I got 923 words out of 1667 written.  I now get to do my regular 1667 for the day plus the deficit from yesterday once the kids finally go to bed tonight.

In other news, I finally got all my curtain stuff straighted out.  Yeah! 

I got all the rods and clips at IKEA.  The rods were $6.99 each and I bought three.  However, I am only using two of them, so I will put the other one away for another window project later.

Here's the cool part about my curtain project.  I bought 10 yards of burlap at JoAnn's yesterday and used a 40% off coupon for it.  It was regular $2.99/yd.  Then, there was a sale for this really pretty beaded trim that normally went for $12.99/yd.  It was also 40% off.  Then, I used two gift cards that had been given to me for my *ahem* anniversary.  Wanna know what the total cost of my kitchen curtains (fabric and trim only) came out to be?

$9.44!  How cool is that?  Add the hardware and it comes to a total of $23.44 for everything!  I'm so excited about this.

At the moment it looks like this:

You wouldn't believe the trouble we've had with the corner connection pieces.  Let's just say that a blow torch was involved, okay?  Oh, and let us not forget to mention the pipe cutter that I learned to use today, very fun.

Here's the mess of clips I still have to deal with.

I'm going to add the clips and sheers tonight if I get a chance.  I will begin working on the burlap part tomorrow sometime.


For now, here's a pic of the Jack 'O Lantern that I carved out on Saturday:

Ooh, Scary!