25th Wedding Anniversary!

It’s been 25 years since I officially said I do. How did that creep up on me? I’ve known my husband since I was 15. What’s worked for us? That he’s my friend and I still like him after all these years. Yes, yes, I love him too, but I still LIKE him. I like being around him and going out with him. I get excited when we have a day planned together. Doesn’t really matter what the plan is, just that we’ll be doing it together. We still talk each other’s ears off but can enjoy the silence too. He’s still my friend and I like doing things with my friends. 🙂

Friends in high school (really, we were just friends)

Were we ever that young? 

His prom and Grad Night (still just friends)

Dating in college

Wedding Day!

Married Life and Family

Married with children. 🙂

25th Anniversary Celebration!

My Backyard Makeover with Succulents

When I’m not working on my book because my eyes have gone cross-eyed and I need a break, I work on beautifying my backyard with succulents. I use succulents because I have a better chance of plant survival with them. One of my co-workers has a beautiful backyard with a variety of succulents and she has generously shared cuttings with me.

I previously shared some photos of what I had started and I wanted to share some new photos of how some of those plants have grown. There were some casualties of course, which was expected, either from my black thumb or from my kiddo’s dog. Surprisingly though, not as many losses as I expected from either my black thumb or the dog. More surprisingly, some are actually thriving and not just merely surviving my hostile backyard.

These are pics of when I first planted some of the cuttings. I fully expected at least half of them to fly away to plant heaven.

But then this happened, even though the dog tromps through there on a daily basis chasing lizards.

Look how tall some of them got!

And then these went from this

to this!

Liebster Award

 

Many thanks to Linda from https://kelleysdiy.com for nominating me for the Liebster Award! I am very honored. Linda has a fabulous website that’s all about diy. I use many of her fun ideas with my students at work. She is very inspiring. 🙂

The questions asked

1) What is your favorite color?

Purple! Purple! Purple!

Yolanda means violet flower. My birth stone is an amethyst. My month’s flower is a violet. My favorite color could only be purple. It was destined.

2) Cats or Dogs?

I guess if I had to pick, I’d say cats, even though I haven’t had one for a very long time. Although I love the dogs I’ve owned and those of family,  I don’t go all goo goo for other peoples’ dogs. Cats though, there’s just something about them. If I weren’t allergic, I would probably have some cats.

Two Kitties I’ve owned in the past.

Look at those eyes! This was a very naughty kitty but he was beautiful.

Comic Con Revolution Ontario 2018

For Mother’s Day, family got me tickets to a new Comic Con that’s practically in our own backyard. As some of you may have guessed from my save Lucifer post, I’m a bit of a geek, or is it a nerd?, in my tv viewing tastes. I’ve loved going to the San Diego Comic Con in the past. And by past, I mean 10 years ago! The first time I went in 2004, it was a  manageable convention. Then I went a couple of more times and by 2008, it had become a monster of a thing where it was almost impossible to get tickets. If you magically got them, it was impossible to make it into the panels without camping out for hours waiting to get in, which meant you missed out on other panels. Even then, you didn’t always get in. It was a gamble with the more popular panels. I tried for a few years to get tickets and then I just gave up.

Since then, I’ve been wanting to go to some of the smaller, local ones, but never got around to it. So it was such a nice surprise to get tickets to a convention that was only a few miles away. It was way smaller than the San Diego con without all the big panels you would see there, but it was still a lot of fun. This was only it’s second year in that venue and it was small but intimate. The panels were informative and easy to get into, no camping out necessary. They had a costume contest like you would expect. I didn’t participate this time around but I plan to next year. I wanted to see what it was like first.

The show floor was more manageable too, since it was smaller in scale. I bought a few art pieces but was tempted by so many things.

Because I love mermaids

#SaveLucifer #PickupLucifer

Rant about a recently cancelled show: Lucifer

I don’t usually get involved in trying to save a TV show. Honest. I’ve been pretty upset over some cancellations over the years (Firefly, The Dresden Chronicles, Reaper and many more) but hey, it’s TV. It happens. We don’t even have cable anymore. I mainly watch on the streaming sites and  I got hooked on Lucifer. I anxiously awaited each episode. Then, Tom Welling (from Smallville) joined the cast and I loved the show even more. Right before the season finale, my son asked me if I was sad they cancelled the show. Huh? What? Canceled? What’s canceled?

Queue the disbelief as I went through the grieving process. NOOOOOOOO!!!! I looked it up and indeed, it had been canceled. After I dried up all my tears (just kidding, I’m not that crazy), I saw that there was a #savelucifer and #pickuplucifer campaign. I almost didn’t bother but decided to join in and hashtag the heck out of the thing wherever I could. The ending was soooo good. I want to see what happens, even if it’s just one more season to tidy things up. Heck, I’d settle for a few episodes or even a movie just to get closure.

So far, I’ve only used the hashtag on Instagram and made one tweet but I’ve gone to the actors’ feeds and left the hashtags there as well. Next, I plan to appeal to the streaming sites like Hulu, Netfix, and Amazon Prime in the hopes they pick it up. Then I’ll just cross my fingers and hope for the best.

I think I just might crochet something that represents the show for me.

My tiny little contribution probably won’t make a difference in the end but it makes me feel better that I tried.

Attempting to Grow Succulents

There’s this plant that I love. I love it because no matter how much I neglect it, no matter how much I don’t water it, no matter where I plant it, it survives! It is the weed of the succulent world but I love it all the same. I finally know it’s name: Jade plant (Crassula).

Look how lovely we are!

I’ve written about this plant in my home before. This plant makes me feel like I’m not a complete plant killer. This plant can be propagated from any of its parts and it’s soooo easy! I can take any stem piece or any fallen leaf, stick it in the ground or in some container with the worst soil, and it grows.

Recently, we’ve been in the process of beautifying our home. We had considered moving but had a change of heart and decided to put our money into our home instead. We started with the outside by painting the house, replacing our dilapidated fence, and the nicest of all, properly landscaping the front yard. I made sure there would be hardy, waterwise plants out front that could survive my black thumb. I was assured that there was little I would need to do to keep them alive.

Gifts, Gifts, Gifts!

Now that Christmas and my Birthday are over, I’m sharing my bounty. Let’s start with Christmas. I love mermaids. Everyone knows I love mermaids. And my gifts for Christmas reflected my love of mermaids. I don’t normally brag about the gifts I get but I couldn’t resist showing off the beautiful mermaids I recieved.

Christmas

First up is a BEAUTIFUL art piece my daughter created for me. It is so wonderful, I thought it would be a shame to keep it to myself.

This doesn’t do it justice. You can get lost staring at all it’s details in the hair and tail. There are all these little shapes that she does free hand. It’s gorgeous. 

My hubby surprised me with a stunning mermaid print that he had framed. I’m shooting through glass so there’s glare and the colors aren’t as vibrant but just trust me, it’s soooo pretty.

I can’t wait until we put her up on a wall!

My son gave me this adorable jewelry box. I don’t have anything in it yet but I’m trying to decide what’s a worthy enough treasure to go in there. 🙂

This one speaks for itself.

Birthday

Once again, my family knows me well. My daughter got me delicious caramel covered apples and chocolate covered strawberries. Yum!

My son got me this:

I want to take this with me to Ren Faire in March. I just have to be super careful not to break it!

The one that got my attention the most was from my hubby. He gave me this:

That’s right! They’re stamps! Legitimate postage! I can’t wait to use them. It’s one of my dolls with a picture I took and it even says yochet.com on the side! I can’t wait to mail something out!

Best presents ever!

Most Popular Posts

Friday was the  last day to enter my first ever Giveaway. I will post the winner on Monday, Jan. 22, 2018. Good Luck!

Looking back over my three years blogging, I was curious to see which were my most popular posts. I quickly realized I didn’t know what that meant. There are different analytics to look at and I wasn’t sure which one to use to measure what a ‘popular’ post was.

For example, I was going to write about my most popular post on Instagram based on likes. The problem was that the current posts are the ones with the most likes because I have more followers. I realized that I wasn’t really getting any real information there so I’m going to skip Instagram.

It can be kind of the same thing on the blog in terms of likes. The newer posts would have more likes because I have more followers now. However, I think the ‘likes’ on the blog do give a better indication of what my more popular posts are with my followers. I also looked at how many views each post had and think that is a broader measure of its popularity in general. My posts on Pinterest are all grabbed from my blog posts and I wanted to see which ones were saved the most and if there was any overlap.

So here goes:

My Blog: Most LIKED

1. Student Corner-Crochet Heart Key Chain with 31 likes.

Hearts!

If I had to guess, I would not have thought this post would have received the most likes but it turns out my ‘Student Corner’ posts are well received and that makes me happy. 🙂

2. Crochet hook cases and holders with 30 likes.

My favorite hook case.

This was more expected. I could totally see this post being more popular since we can all use cases for something.

Three Years Blogging!

Have a Fun New Year’s Eve Everyone!

I’m ready to ring in the new year!

I never do reviews or anniversaries on this blog. Not because I don’t like them but because I never think of doing them. Then I see all these posts with monthly reviews, and then yearly reviews, and tell myself I’ll do one too and then I don’t. Then there’s the blog anniversary ones and it gets me thinking about how I don’t even know when my blog’s anniversary is! Blasphemy. 🙂

This post is my attempt at playing catch up. I admit that I had to go back and check when I started blogging and it was on Dec. 18th, 2014. So I’ve been at this for three years! Seems like just yesterday. Even though the 18th has passed already, I’m going to look at it as my blogaversary month (it’s still December!). 

Holiday Organizing

I get three weeks off from work this year and normally, I’d be crocheting like crazy but I actually wasn’t this year. Right before our break, I was crocheting like crazy for the kids at work, and even brought some projects home, but once vacation started, nada, zilch, nothing.

What was I doing with all my free time I hear you ask? Cleaning, decluttering, organizing and reorganizing! As I  mentioned in a previous post, my adult daughter was moving back home and we (and by we I mean me)  needed to make room for her. The room she would be occupying is actually not a room but a formal dining room off the kitchen that has been used for everything but actual dining. In its present incarnation, it was serving as my library and general catch-all. I had bought cabinets to house my vacuums, brooms, and photography equipment. All that stuff had to go! Somewhere else! She wanted to keep the cabinets so I had to find these things new hidey holes.

She was moving in a week before Christmas and we host a family gathering so the house