My New (ish) Office

This is my newish office. It is located in Spare Oom. I think that Lantern Waste would probably get lost in this mess (like those 4 kids got lost in that wardrobe), which is just the way I like it. Make a mess - something nice pops up out of, just like that!

<3

Some luck lies in not getting what you thought you wanted but getting what you have, which once you have got it you may be smart enough to see is what you would have wanted had you known.
Garrison Keillor

A couple of things. . .

Two night ago we had a huge dust/wind storm, it was intense! The electricity went out for a bit. This picture only kinda captures what was going on. I tried to open the front door to take a picture and I was literally thrown back by the wind and had to slam my entire body into the door just to shut it. Bad idea.

Good idea. . . Garment labels! I was visiting my aunt Chara's etsy page and saw that she had some really cute garment labels. . . I asked her where she got them and she hooked me up!

My old office

This is my old office. This is what you saw when you walked into the Macy's By Appointment personal shopping office. This was not actually my desk. But I would sit here on occasion if I had a new client and wanted to familiarize them with the service.
Every quarter a different vendor would pay us to merchandise these two forms. We would change out the clothes about every three weeks. . . except with Calvin Klein. . . which is what you see below. Our store didn't really carry Calvin Klein so it was tough to find new merchandise. We did carry a few dresses so we had to make do with them for 3 months. I would change out the shoes and handbags though. BTW - Calvin Klein shoes, especially anything that has a platform, are the most comfortable shoes out there. I could wear 5" heels for 12 hours if I needed to and my feet would still feel fine! I have 4 pairs of the same pair of shoe. . . which I have no occasion to wear anymore.

This is the hallway going from the main office back to my office. There are two large fitting rooms along the way.
This is what you would see once you walked down the hallway. . . this was my office and the area where we did gift wrap, held customer goods and ran up sales. It's not quite as glamorous. You also didn't get walk in sales when you were stuck in the back. This room seems like it was always a mess despite all my efforts to keep it clean. It's funny, at work I was the opposite of how I am at home. . . I cleaned all the time.

History of Phoenix

People always ask me why other people decide to move to and stay in Phoenix. People seem to get hung up on the fact that over the summer months the average temperature is 100 degrees. To which I say, "Yay, but it's beautiful for the remaining 9 months."
Here is an overview copied and pasted out of wikipedia. . .

For more than 1,000 years, the Hohokam peoples occupied the land that would become Phoenix.^[7] The Hohokam created roughly 135 miles (217 km) of irrigation canals, making the desert land arable. Paths of these canals would later become used for the modern Arizona Canal, Central Arizona Project Canal, and the Hayden-Rhodes Aqueduct. The Hohokam also carried out extensive trade with nearby Anasazi, Mogollon, and other Mesoamerican tribes.

It is believed that, between 1300 and 1450, periods of drought and severe floods led to the Hohokam’s abandonment of the area.

American and European "Mountain Men" likely came through the area while exploring what is now central Arizona during the early 19th century. They obtained valuable American Beaver and North American River Otter pelts; these animals, as well as deer and Mexican Wolves, often lived in the Salt River Valley when water supplies and temperatures allowed.

The US Army created Fort McDowell on the Verde River in 1865 to quell Native American uprisings. Hispanic workers serving the fort established a camp on the south side of the Salt River by 1866 that was the first permanent settlement in the valley after the decline of the Hohokam.

The history of Phoenix as a city begins with Jack Swilling, an American Civil War veteran who had come west to seek wealth in the 1850s and worked primarily in Wickenburg. On an outing in 1867, he stopped to rest at the foot of the White Tank Mountains. Swilling observed the abandoned river valley and considered its potential for farming, much like that already cultivated by the military further east near Fort McDowell. The terrain and climate were optimal; only a regular source of water was necessary. The existence of the old Hohokam ruins, showing clear paths for canals, made Swilling imagine new possibilities.

Lord Darrell Duppa suggested the name "Phoenix," as it described a city born from the ruins of a former civilization.

During World War II, Phoenix's economy shifted to that of a distribution center, rapidly turning into an embryonic industrial city with mass production of military supplies. Luke Field, Williams Field, and Falcon Field, coupled with the giant ground-training center at Hyder, west of Phoenix, brought thousands of new people into Phoenix

During World War II, Phoenix's economy shifted to that of a distribution center, rapidly turning into an embryonic industrial city with mass production of military supplies. Luke Field, Williams Field, and Falcon Field, coupled with the giant ground-training center at Hyder,

A Prisoner of War Camp was established at the site of what is now Papago Park and Phoenix Zoo for the internment of German soldiers captured in Europe.^[19] In 1944, dozens of prisoners had devised a plan to escape from the camp and use boats to go down the nearby Salt River to reach Mexico. However, they were unaware that the river was mostly dry had not been navigable for decades, and were thus easily apprehended near the camp.

A fire in October 1947 destroyed most of the streetcar fleet, making the city choose between implementing a new street railway system or using buses. The latter were selected, and automobiles remained the city’s preferred method of transportation.

This part makes me really sad. It would have been so nice to have a streetcar system set up all over this sprawling metropolis.

By 1950, over 100,000 people lived within the city and thousands more in surrounding communities. There were 148 miles (238 km) of paved streets and 163 miles (262 km) of unpaved streets.

Apparently between 1950 and today over 1,000,000 people moved to the city of Phoenix alone and no one seems to know why . . . I couldn't find anything about the last 60 years. My guess is tourism brought people here and created a demand for jobs. The climate allowed for the play and training of sports year round and the winters are fabulous!

Skyharbor airport in 1934

Hot hot hot!

It is ten minutes till 11pm and it is 102 degrees outside still. All of my hydrangea are burning.

Fantastic

I already ditched cell phones and went back to a land line. Maybe I'll go back to a typewriter. . .

Project 15 of many. . .

The need for this project developed as I realized that I could not finish project 13 without it. One of the bridesmaids that I am making a dress for is itty-bitty and I could not for the life of me figure out if her dress was going to fit her without having her try it on. Unfortunately she lives in Hong Kong. I spent the day trying to create what I imagine her upper torso must look like given the measurements I have.

I started out with a piece of cardboard for her shoulders.
Using modge podge and a scoring tool (knife) I began to give the piece of cardboard as much shape as I could. This picture also gives you an idea of how small the form is - I "draped" it over a size 3t child's form.

Inside of the form (that's the magic of Macy's)

Unfinished torso and skirt

More shaping

Once I had the basic shape that I wanted I covered everything in about 10 layers of brown paper. I wanted a sturdy and thick structure.

I over-stuffed the inside of the form with polyfil and put a 10lb bag of beans in the bottom of the form to help keep it upright (This form will sit on a table instead of resting on a pole). Then I closed up the bottom, the neck and the armholes with more cardboard, duct tape, glue and brown paper.

Next I sprayed the form with carpet adhesive and covered the form with batting.

To finish everything up I made a knit cover to put over the form. I stapled the fabric to the bottom of the form and put a piece of cardboard over the bottom to cover up the staples.
I would like to do this project again sometime with different measurements. I would extend the project over a period of about a week. I needed to finish this today, so I did not allow the glue to dry all the way which led to the form warping when I took the stays out from the inside and stuffed it with polyfil. As a result one of the shoulders appears higher and the waist doesn't seem to go in as far on one side. All in all I'm not too upset with the results from my first attempt.

"Thirty to forty years ago you were a lot younger. . .

maybe not even born. Sometimes you probably wish you could go back. . . "

That is about all that I remember of my speech on Y2K that landed me a spot at the state 4-H speech contest back in 1999.

When I later told Kyle about how I had done a speech on preparing for Y2K, he laughed and me - when I told him about all the cans of food that my family had stockpiled in the basement, he laughed even more. I guess that Kyle never thought that Y2K would turn out to be a big deal. . . and he might have been right until last night. . . I had just taken a shower and was putting on some deodorant when I noticed that the bottom of the bottle said that my deodorant had expired in August of 1953! Now, if I hadn't known or cared to remember about Y2K I might have thought that my deodorant was extremely expired (okay, I probably wouldn't have thought that), but thanks to my knowledge of the computer glitch I knew that some people over at Unilever just decided not to fix one of their computers.