project 52: week 7: digital photos, redux

This week we bent the rules about repeat dates and tried again to edit photos and put together a Facebook album, and...

Success!

Not much to report about the date, except that there were more sandwiches, salads, and cold drinks and this time all the technology worked like a charm.

If it helps our date tally at all, the next evening we went out for drinks with our friends Roman and Michele. I think we're counting that as a supplement to the photo editing date.

I promise a better post for Week 8!

project 52: week 6: good idea, uncooperative technology

(Whoops. I meant to post this one a while ago.)

Bill had a great plan for Week 6. Since we were home from our Hawaii vacation, and we had some ridiculous number of unedited digital photos from the trip, he decided we would go to Panera (with their free wi-fi), get dinner, edit and sort photos, and make a big Facebook post about the trip. Great idea -- no cooking and we'd end the evening with a finished album that would make our Facebook friends think we are super cool.

Soup, salad, sandwiches, cold drinks -- check. One camera's worth of photos transferred onto USB drive -- check. Insert photo card from second camera directly into card reader on laptop -- twirling rainbow wheel of death. For 45 minutes. Being impatient, I wanted to immediately force-quit iPhoto and start over, but Bill thought it was just working through the ridiculous number of files and would snap out of it eventually. We'll never know, because when we got home, I restarted the computer and we quickly loaded the photos another way.

It didn't seem so date-like any more, but I did get some of the photos edited in the end. We may decide to lift the Project 52-No Repeat Date rule next week and give this another try -- it's such a good idea. And I want my Facebook friends to think I'm cool.

pattern binge

Did anyone else happen in on the big sale at JoAnn? (No, they're not paying me for the shout-out. I wish.) I was on a research trip to check the prices on some different fabrics. Ok, I did end up buying some stuff, but really just so as not to hurt anyone's feelings. Just a little pile of quarter yards and some pretty plaid oxford-cloth that will make a nice quilt back or binding. But I digress.

McCalls patterns at JoAnn were 70 cents. As in $0.70. Each. If you're not a pattern sewist, you're missing the regular opportunity to be appalled at the notion of paying $19.95 for a pattern for a dress when you could buy the whole dress for $14.99 at H & M. But every once in a while cheapskate sewists like me get a break and they practically give the patterns away. I'm thinking the mark-up on patterns must be like 1000%.

I didn't have a huge amount of time, but I sat down with the pattern book and started listing everything that looked interesting. When I hit the 10-pattern limit I checked out. But I went back on the last day with adjusted standards and found some more.

I found some dresses:

And some tops:

And some other stuff:

This ought to keep me busy for a while! But, wait! Now I need to go fabric shopping...

project 52: week 5: brennecke's

Since it was August Bill took over date planning. We were still on vacation on Kauai. He really went all out -- he gave Frances and Allison some cash and scouted out a place they could walk to at the shopping center across the street for burgers and gelato. Then he took me to Brennecke's Beach Broiler, a restaurant we had fond memories of from two Hawaii trips ago in 1990. It was still a great place to eat with a friendly atmosphere. And it was really nice for the two of us to have a date night alone after a lot of family time on vacation. The food was good too! Fun vacation date!

project 52: week 4: groceries in paradise

Week 4 fell in July so it was still my turn to be in charge of date night. Problem was that Bill was in Hawaii for his conference in Honolulu for most of the week. Frances and I and Frances's friend Allison met him on Kauai on Saturday night to begin our 12-day vacation. We only had Sunday night left but it would have been awkward to ditch the teens on our first full night there, so we had to make do with a morning grocery store run while the girls played at the pool. (One good thing about older children -- you can send them to the pool by themselves with simple instructions. Wear sunscreen. Don't drown.)

It may not have been the most exciting date, but it did give us a chance to catch up after Bill had been gone all the previous week. We were also able to appreciate our relatively inexpensive grocery prices at home and scout the fabric section in the Lihue Walmart. While contemplating the snorkeling gear we got acquainted with a nice couple from Chicago who appeared to be living the dream of vacationing without their children. We bumped into them twice more during our trip!