Do you like my orchids? Bill stood in the long Valentine’s Day line at the flower shop in the Amish Market to get these for me. They are my preferred cut flowers because they generally last at least three weeks if you change the water and trim the stems. Normally I would keep them in the living room, but I never sit in the living room. Most of my time is spent in my bedroom so that’s where I’m keeping them. I have also been known to carry my flowers from room to room with me for maximum enjoyment. At any rate, I am enjoying them in my bedroom.

Bill went to Costco to pick up a few things that I needed. I even had two Costco $2 coupons for extra savings! As I was looking at the receipt, I got curious to see how much the items would cost me at the grocery store (Giant) and Target. Our membership expires at the end of the month and Bill assumed we would renew it, but decided to hold off pending the outcome of my experiment.

A couple of things to note. These are things that I use regularly so buying in bulk is worthwhile. I am also trying to compare similar quantities/amounts so we’re looking at apples to apples. The experiment does NOT take into account my coupons which would have lowered the Costco price by $4. This is also pre-tax. Here’s the results:

I feel like I have to make a note on the cereal. The Costco box is 70 ounces. A regular box of cereal at the Target and Giant is 18 ounces. I went with buying three boxes or regular cereal (54 ounces) because when I was doing this in my head late last night I came up with the comparison being three and a half boxes of cereal. In hindsight I should have done the calculation on 4 boxes of regular cereal (72 ounces). Which would have shown even more savings. I digress.

So the verdict is that Costco is the best option for me. This might not be the case if you are a great sale shopper. My dad shops the sales and can often beat the Costco price. But he’s retired and generally has a little more free time than I do. And again, I reiterate that these were things that I needed (ok, I didn’t actually NEED vitamin water, but I do drink it and I was out so it was going to get purchased anyway) and that I use/eat a lot.

It was a fun experiment. I’m curious to try it for a few other things like chicken breast, ground beef, orange juice, toilet paper and possibly soy milk. Oh, and M&Ms and chocolate covered raisens. Yeah, I so need those last two things…

Things have been kinda rough the last few weeks with Bill on the West Coast and me being on the East Coast. And things don’t look like they will be changing very soon. Plus, he has CJ and Sabrina and the orange tree and I have…the big screen tv? It’s really annoying when people tell you to “count your blessings”. What you really want to hear is “you’re right, it sucks, treat yourself to a mani/pedi” or “you know what helps when you’re feeling crappy, Cold Stone strawberry ice cream with double graham cracker crust in a chocolate covered waffle bowl.” But in the spirit of being positive, I will count my blessings:

1. I am lucky to have a job so that I can afford to treat myself to a mani/pedi.
2. And some new articles of clothing.
3. And shoes.
4. And fabric.
5. And yarn.
6. Bill was visiting this weekend so I didn’t have to get my own Starbucks.
7. I have good, patient friends and a slightly irritating but well-intentioned, loving, healthy family.
8. I’ve confirmed that I really, really love my husband and don’t want to trade him in for a newer model.
9. I have more free time on my hands to work on projects, read, relax and chill.
10. This is only a temporary situation.

Okay so maybe I didn’t take this too seriously, but at the moment it’s all I got.

I have been working on some new pillows for my living room. Here they are in progress. The finished product looks a little more interesting and hopefully I’ll finish them up this weekend. I’ve had a hard time picking out fabric to go with my chairs; I’m a little concerned that the cotton fabric is too casual for the chairs, but I think the green works well.

I also casted on a new project, Peony Knits’ circular shrug. I’m going to knit it in Sundara’s fingering silky merino. The yarn feels amazing and I LOVE the color (caramel apple), but I’ve been stressing that it is going to take me forever to knit up the vest in fingering weight yarn. I’ve been telling myself to enjoy the process and not focus on the result. If you see someone rocking back and forth chanting “knitting is supposed to be fun”, it’s probably me.

My mom and Jacob are visiting this weekend and I have brunch scheduled with the girls on Sunday.

Yes, I do have a lot to be thankful for.

So this post started out with my using the word “artistic” instead of drawing in the title of my post. And while I think it is a stretch to call me an artist, I do feel that I’m creative and someone told me if you create you are an artist. So I changed my title and am going with “drawing”. And I really struggle with drawing. Maybe if I practiced more. It’s just not something that comes naturally to me.

Anyhoo, I am obsessed with bed linens and furniture layout for my house in California. (Still don’t know when I’ll be going out there; fingers crossed that it will be soon.) If I had my druthers I would go with a new look (same furniture, different color scheme) but with the economy the way it is, it doesn’t seem responsible. And I really do like the linens I have. But it doesn’t stop me from wanting something new.

So what does this have to do with my drawing ability? I decided that I would be happy if I had a new pillow for my bed. Something pink to break up the black and white. Pink is my accent color, after all. But what kind of pillow do I want? Hmmmm… And then I remembered this post from ages ago and that sent the wheels a turnin’. I looked on-line to buy some patterns but couldn’t find anything that did anything for me. I did see some cute ones, but not for my bed. And then I decided to draw my own. (A scary thought.)

This gave me the perfect opportunity to try out my birthday present. Bill got me this pen because he remember that I had mentioned wanting one over a year ago. I certainly don’t need it, but birthday gifts are meant to be stuff you wouldn’t normally get yourself, right? What I was hoping the pen would let me do is easily upload my sketch to the computer and then I could manipulate it in photoshop. And yay! That’s exactly what I was able to do (after a bunch of practice sketches that I eventually ended up tracing with my pen).

So my little picture is part of the design for my new pillow. I know it’s not much, but I think when you see the whole thing, you will be more impressed (I hope). I will give you a hint though, those are love birds…

Have I mentioned that this is my first foray into embroidery? I do lots of other needlework, but never straight embroidery. This will be very interesting.