Back to the Beach!

So last monday Dereck and I packed up a rental SUV to the brim with our stuff and I was sent down to Corpus Christi Texas to move into our new condo. Dereck had his checkride to finish up in Little Rock and then he'd start the drive down too. My mom had a ticket booked for a few months to come visit me in Texas so I had to make sure I was down there to meet her! The drive went very well, and thanks to the "On Broadway" channel on Sirius sattelite radio, the trip went really well. I stayed in Dallas one night with my old friend Michaela, which was fantastic, since it had been over 6 years since I saw her! It was great to catch up and it put a little fun into my roadtrip.

On tuesday I got into Corpus Christi and it was a beautiful day. The loaded up SUV and the 3 flights of stairs to get into our new place was a bit of a challenge but I got everything upstairs by myself! I'm still impressed a week later! The picture shows our place, wayyyy up on the 3rd floor.

My mom came on Wednesday and we had a great visit. We got to go for many nice walks on the beach, being that our condo is only about 2 blocks away from the seashore! Nothing can match going shopping with my mom, since we always seem to find cute things and get great deals. We enjoyed a lot of good food and just had a great time together. Dereck was finally able to move down on Saturday so he even got to spend some time with Mom as well. It was a good time! We were sad to drop her off on Monday, but hopefully we'll be in Minnesota soon so visit again.

So far we are really happy to be back in Corpus Christi. As annoying as it has been to try to find a new place to live for a few months and load up cars and drive for 12 hours and everything else that comes with moving, if we have to be sent someplace for the winter months it might as well be Corpus. Its so pretty here and we love the beach. The dog has so much fun bounding through the surf chasing birds.

Hopefully we'll know something soon about when we can book tickets for Christmas... I can't wait to get back and see my family and spend some time in the north!

Fairwell October, Hello November!!

We had a fun time saying fairwell to October here in Little Rock. Intially we were hoping to be moving down to Corpus during Halloween weekend, but after the cloudy and stormy weather all last week, Dereck couldn't get all his flights in so we got to prepare for Halloween night! We carved a Jack-o-latern and set it out to entice some trick-or-treaters. We bought our big bag of candy and sat and waited.... and waited....and waited... between 5:30pm and 8:30pm we had only one trick-or-treater! We were bummed that more didn't come, but at least we made the little Power Rangers night by giving him a giant handfull of candy :-)

After we shut off the porch light, we got ready to go out for Halloween. Our costumes this year were from the movie Shaun of the Dead. For those of you who haven't seen the movie, its a dark brittish comedy about killing Zombies. Not everybody knew who we were, but for those who are familiar with the movie, they said we did a great job with our costumes! I posted pictures of Dereck and I all dressed up, a well as pictures from the movie so you can see how we measured up!

We met up with our friends and went downtown to a Halloween party, and then to a piano bar. Our friends won the costume contest at the bar dressed as the Sesame Street characters. There were a lot of fun costumes everywhere and it seemed like everybody got dressed up! It was a great Halloween!

I was also pretty busy this week starting and finishing up some more sewing projects. I finished this purse a while ago but finally got around to taking pictures of it. I took apart an old purse I had that had some stains on it and followed the cuts and seams to make this new purse out of scraps of fabric. I think it turned out really well!

I also started working on some aprons my mother asked me to make for her to give as gifts. I know that neither recipient will be on my blog so I'm safe posting pictures! I only got one done so far, the other is about 75% finished. This one is going to a lady who used to be a music teacher so I went with some cute music note fabric and found this great purple floral that matched really well!

I'll post pictures of the other apron when it's finished. I just have to attach the straps and wasteband to it. I wish I could post some pictures of the other holiday projects I've been working on (since they are some of my favorites!) but I'll have to wait til after my recipients open them up!

I hope to get a few more things finished before we pack up and head out of Little Rock. The forecast this week is clear and sunny so hopefully Dereck will be able to get his flights in so we can leave this weekend/early next week. I'll keep everybody posted :-)

Jane