Birthdays - A good time to celebrate!

This is my accountability group -- celebrating Nancy's birthday.

(Nancy is on the left -- behind me)

We call ourselves WWS.  That stands for Women With Shoes.  I'm not sure if I have all of the facts exactly correct, but this is the way I remember it.  Lisa is the blonde -- she is married to Dave.  (Okay, that fact is exactly correct.)  A few years ago, Dave & Lisa were randomly selected as one of the couples for the "Not-So-Newlywed Game" at our annual Valentine's Dinner.  One of the questions to the men was, "How many pairs of shoes does your wife have in her closet?"  Well, I won't go into numbers right now, but Lisa has a lot of shoes.  In fact, we were sure she had at least twice as many shoes as the rest of us do and we spent quite a bit of our time reminding her of that fact.  And then for some reason we all decided to go home and count how many pairs of shoes we have in our closet.  Let's just say that between the four of us, we have ALOT of shoes.  And I guess I better mention right now that Colleen (sitting next to Lisa the Blonde) has the least amount of shoes.  If I didn't mention it, I'm sure she would have reminded me. 
Okay, so anyway, we had been trying to think of a name for our little foursome and after we counted our shoes, we kind of started calling ourselves WWTMS (pronounced whitmas) -- that stands for Women With Too Many Shoes.  We thought it was kind of catchy until we realized that one can never really have TOO MANY shoes -- so we modified it and now call ourselves WMS. 

Last Saturday was Nancy's birthday.  We went to Valencia -- to shop for shoes (among other things).  What a great day we had!  We hit our favorite hot spots -- Home Goods and SteinMart -- and to top it all off, we had a DELICIOUS lunch at a really great little Italian restaurant. 

This was Banana Cheesecake -- YUM!

On Wednesday, I decided to make Nancy an apron for her birthday -- got my inspiration from Kelly and Katie and all their sewing projects.  I thought to myself, "I'll just whip that thing out when I get home from work on Thursday -- no biggie -- a simple little apron."  So I ran to Strawberry Patches on my lunch hour on Wednesday and found the perfect fabric.  They had a nifty little apron on display -- it's adjustable-- and for short people, adjustable is good.  Okay, Nancy isn't short -- but because I am, I wanted to make her an adjustable apron.  Just my luck, they don't have the pattern, but they do convince me that I can do this without a pattern -- it's no big deal. 
So I get home from work on Thursday, ready to crank this thing out -- I'm gonna get 'er done while Survivor is on.  I draw out a pattern and get it all cut out, ready to sew -- and then I get this idea to embroider on the pocket.  I don't know why I thought I should do this -- I'm not an embroiderer -- but sometimes I get these crazy ideas in my head and I act on them.  So I scribble out one of my favorite verses and start embroidering.  I mean, really, how long can it take to stitch a few words...
I'll just say that when I went to bed at 11:30 on Thursday night, I had one emboidered pocket -- period.

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances
(sorry for poor quality pics - good camera in the shop)

Of course, this was not my Friday off.  Do you know how hard it is to go to work when you have a half-baked project sitting at home?  I kept trying to make myself look sick all day at work Friday so that someone might suggest I go home -- didn't happen.  So Friday evening -- same plan as Thursday.  Now that the pocket is ready, I really am gonna get 'er done.  Yep, whipped that baby right on out -- just like that -- in bed by..... midnight. 

  

It's reversible.

So two nights in a row -- up late at night in a quiet house (hubby gave up, went to bed without me) -- doing something you love for someone you love -- doesn't get better than that.

I am so blessed with these friends.  They have encouraged and prayed me through some tough times these past few years -- don't know what I would have done without them.  

Love you, WMS -- my 'sole' sisters.