Little bit of this and that

Yesterday both the kids went to their friends houses .... Josh was picked up around 3 and I took Charlotte over to her friends house , she went trick or treating and then spent the night there - they (the two girls) are both homeschooled and were planning on doing up some sewing today (Charlotte has been wanting to learn how to use her sewing machine for a while now .... I've just never got around to sitting down with her to do it).  Josh and his buddy hung out, watched a movie and played games - sounds like a great evening to me.  ˚Ü˚

After we picked Josh up we headed in to Wal-Mart, we needed to get a couple of things for Josh's birthday party (which is quickly approaching) - while we were there I found this little item:

I used to have one similar to this and I wore it out - so, when I saw this one last night, I snagged it right away and when we got home I set it up.  Sometimes there are just to many "noises" coming from all the electric gadgets we have (TV, DVD player, digital clocks, stereos, etc.) and I just need to block them out .... ear plugs tend to hurt my ears after a while so I save those for nights that I need to block out all noise so I can get some much needed sleep.



A few months ago I bought myself a portable stereo to play a sleep CD - the CD works great but the noise that comes from the stereo (even when it is turned off) was enough to drive me insane .... so, I was really excited to see this Conair sound spa.  When we went to bed last night, I turned it on to Tropical Forest, but had to change it because those birds were not helping me sleep, lol.  I switched it to Rainfall and quickly fell asleep - this morning when our lovely neighbours let the dogs out at 6:30 in the morning, and they started barking like crazy, I closed the window and turned the machine back on ... promptly fell back asleep.  I'm really liking the timer feature that it has, too .... you can turn that on and in 60 minutes it will automatically shut itself off - it also runs on batteries or a supplied power cord.  ˚Ü˚

A couple of weeks ago, I started doing a KAL (Knit Along) with some fellow shawl makers .... so far, it is turning out really great (it's called a Celtic Cable Cross shawl).  Here's how it looks after completing the second chart for it:

I'm making another one in a different colour because I want to keep one for myself, lol.