Miscellaneous stuff.

I'm the first one to admit that I'm a less than enthusiastic housekeeper. Ok, I consider dust bunnies my friends. So, in an attempt to "pull up my socks" I've done lots of things - Flylady (too many emails, too frantic !!!!!), posting notes (too easy to ignore), setting out the cleaning stuff (I'm able to leap over the vacuum cleaner in a single bound), so I had to find something else that would work for me.
Enter the Blackberry.
For quite a while now, as many smartphone users know, the calendar on my Blackberry is the right side of my brain. If an appointment isn't in the Blackberry, it doesn't happen. So, I got this idea. Schedule my housework on the Blackberry! Kitchen on Monday, Laundry on Tuesday, Family Room on Wednesday etc. It's sort of working, I am doing more. Only one little problem. It's too easy to go into the menu and change the day lol .
So anyway, It is getting better.

Then there is the little (ahem) problem of the dog. She's getting just a tad too aggressive in sharing her love. She's not mean, she just thinks everyone that comes within her sight should come right over and pet, cuddle, feed or otherwise pay attention to her. So, she lets them know by barking furiously and lunging in their direction - which is funny because you'd think she'd know how long her leash is by now. But no, she charges at full speed until "yank" , she's at the end and almost does a back flip. It's the terrier brain - she just doesn't 'get' things.
Enter the battery operated dog trainer. I've tried the sonic collars before but there were too many false alarms - it would go off every time she shook her head or scratched. So this one is hand held - for me - and all I have to do is hit the button when she starts to do something wrong. Like bark at everything that goes past the window, or tackling the cat, or mooching whatever I'm eating, or grazing on anything my son leaves out for more than a nanosecond. I'm sure all the dog lovers out there understand completely :)
So far, so good. She immediately stops when she hears the unltrasonic beep, and looks around with a puzzled look as if to say "where the heck did that come from?"
Bottom line: it's working. Nothing else matters.

In the fabric department, the next project is to make a banner (2) for our church. I finally got out to the fabric store and found the right fabrics, even the right colours (woohoot) for the project. Now I just have to blow up the pdf picture large enough that I can use it as a pattern. I'm going to see if reverse applique will work for this. That way, I'll be able to use the same background thread colour around each piece. I'll keep you posted.