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My groovy new ARTSY FARTSY Glasses!



Okay, being the great shopper that I am, and being unable to pass up a clearance item I really need, I stumbled upon these specs quite by accident while I was browsing the optical department at my local Target. I was looking for a pair of trendy black plastic rectangled frames with rhinestones on the sides. Target didn’t have what I was looking for, but the huge, red CLEARANCE sign above some select frames caught my attention. There was only one pair of these and I tried them on. When I looked in the mirror, I kind of had the feeling Cinderella must have had when she put that glass slipper on….they felt and fit like magic! They made me feel artsy, which I was going after, yet they were a bit hip and didn’t stand out so much because the black didn’t go all the way around.

I bought them on the spot, assuming I would get an exam on a later date and have my prescription lenses put in. I took them home and now I have to find an optometrist. You see, both Target and Sam’s Club no longer have eye doctors. They are hiring. There must be shortage of them in the world. I immediately came home and told my son Scott, the Senior to major in Optometry next year when he goes to college.

They make me feel artsy, so that’s all I wanted. So, what do you think? Good?
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Checked out Sarah Jessica’s ‘BITTEN’, hmmm….

On Monday, I was on my way home from my friend Cindy’s house and I passed by a large mall on the way home. I noticed the Steve & Barry’s store and pulled in, knowing Sarah Jessica Parker’s new clothing line BITTEN is sold there. I just wanted to go in for a peek to see what the clothes looked like. I was a little excited, and since I’ve never been in this store before it was more of an adventure.

When I walked in, I noticed a small display of tops set up to grab new shoppers and the rest of the collection was in two other larger sections of the store. I browsed through all three places and I can not believe how disappointing these clothes are. They are so simple, boring, and very Old Navy-ish, but not with the fun feeling you get from wearing the clothes from Old Navy. I mean this stuff was ugly! Not to mention, the sizes go up to Women’s size 22, which I wear on the bottom, and the tops in the XXL were very small in size. I didn’t try them on, but they didn’t pass the ‘arm stretch test’ which is a reliable method for me to determine if I will get a blouse or top over my rib cage. They would not have fit me. This was very disappointing, because as a plus size woman, being able to find a line of clothing in larger sizes is always a thrill, but can be a bigger let down when the sizes don’t run true to size.

I was really disappointed in SJP’s clothing line. I expected more fun patterns, colors and designs and for the stuff to just be ‘hipper’. Honestly, the clothes I saw reminded me of the clothes I bought in the late 70’s when I started high school, but very plain and bland. I don’t recommend her clothes at all. I also noticed the fabric wasn’t the greatest quality, either. Don’t get me wrong, I love Sarah as an actress, I adore her in Sex and the City, and her cologne, Lovely is all I wear. In my opinion her attempt at clothing design is a bust. But please, don’t let me sway you. Go check out her clothes for yourself and maybe you’ll like what you see.

Sarah, if you Googled BITTEN to see what kind of opinions are flittering around out on the internet and you are reading this, can I give you some advise? When you design next season’s line, please use happy colors, florals, and bright mod prints. And for God’s sake (and for the sake of larger women everywhere), please make the size 22 large enough for us curvey gals to fit into!

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Just a piece of my mind….what’s with men!

Okay without much detail, I had a pretty bad spat with the hubby this morning, and of course, I didn’t win (and he thinks he did, but really I did, and I’m just gonna let him think he did. Did you get that?), but I’m older now and I’ve invented a mental shield in which his nasty words bounce right off me, never entering my psyche to infect me with bad feelings. Nope, I won’t allow that to happen, I’m too old (happily 44), too confident, and too happy with life to let him get me down. The last thing he asked me for just before our argument started was a cup of coffee, which I don’t understand why, but he just can’t seem to get it for himself. Hey, who gets me a cup of coffee in the morning? Hmmmm…..Well, dear hubby, this graphic is for you.

THIS MAN!
(I’m sorry I dropped the ‘F’ bomb with this photo, but just think to yourself how good it makes me feel to express it!)
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The COUNTRY LIVING crunch!

As most of you probably have heard, I am one of the 9 winners of this years Country Living Women’s Entrepreneurs Contest. The November issue is just around the corner (Beginning of October!) and I am a little nervous about the outcome of this honor, but the butterflies in my belly are happy ones, and are not scared at all, thank goodness!

Just this week, I was contacted by two different editors for a digital photo for the website profiles portion and to send in a written bio about myself and my buisiness. (Thank you CAT MAHONE, my sweet, sweet friend, for helping initially with the bio. I used parts of it, and wrote the rest.) This is so very exciting and a bit overwhelming.

My dear friend Cindy is going to take some digitals of me this week and hopefully I’ll have a good one to send in to the editor. I really need to find something to wear that’s artsy-looking and screams, “EMILY!” It’s got to be perfect!

I’ll let you all know if I survive through it all. Wish me luck!

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A comment on letter ‘N’ words….

I got tagged, (see two posts below this one) and I’m supposed to reveal something about me for every first letter of my middle name. I’m blessed with Ann–2 n’s.

You know what ‘N’ is for? Oh, my gosh…there are so many negative sounding words in the dictionary! Here is a few examples:

nag, naive, naked (could be negative if you’re a prude. Let’s go on.), narcissistic, narcotics, narrow-minded, NASTY, NAUGHTY, nausea, necromancy (eew…gross), nefarious, neglect, nepotism, neurotic, nincompoop, noisome & nosy and more if you look, I’m sure.

Did you ever see such a bunch of negative type words all clumped together in one spot as this poor letter of the alphabet? Just an interesting observation.

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The new addition to our family…

“Animals are such agreeable friends – they ask no questions; they pass no criticisms.– George Eliot

What greater gift than the love of a cat
—Charles Dickens

Long story short…my friend Shelly has taken care of this stray kitten who lived it’s whole life in the storm drain at the end of her driveway. It had a little sibling, but, unfortunately, the kitty got killed. This little guy was all alone and Shelly felt she needed to find him a home. She couldn’t let him live with them because her daughter is really allergic to cats. So, she put an email out to all the girls in our bunko group and guess who got suckered in? Yep, me. I saw him and couldn’t resist letting him stay with us, and my other 4 cats. Chaz, Fletcher, Cosmo and Oliver have all welcomed ‘the baby’ in with open paws. I know, I am turning in to the crazy cat lady. Here is an actual excerpt from an email my oldest son Dave set me from college the other night…

“The cat looks really cute, although seriously mom, you can’t get any more until some die. 5 is definately the limit.” — DAVID

OMG, my kid thinks I’m nuts. I vow from now on there will be no more cats at the Franz household. Five felines are my limit. Hear that animal lovers, felineophiles, animalitarians everywhere? Don’t ask me to adopt another cat….nope my door is closed, there’s no room at the inn–whatever. Cats live a long time. I don’t want to be one of those old ladies living alone that dies in her house and gets eaten by her cats.

Okay, so now I have this cute little guy. He needs a name. I can’t seem to come up with anything. I would love suggestions for really artsty, creative names and post them in the way of comments. Can you all recommend a good name? After 1 week I will pick my favorite three names from your suggestions and put them up in a poll. Everyone can then vote and the most popular will become his name. There will be a special prize for the winner of the suggested name.

Okay, ready. Set. THINK OF A NAME!
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I’ve been tagged for the name game!

I was tagged by both Hazelruthe’s and by Primcreek for this fun little game.
Players, you must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had. When you are tagged you need to write your own blog post containing your own middle name game facts. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose one person for each letter of your middle name to tag. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Okay, here we go! My middle name is Ann. (for this game, I wish I had a name with more letters in it!)

A-is for the Artist in me

N-is for New Yawk City, my favorite place to hang with friends.

N-is for NAUGHTY because I can be that way–sometimes.

Let’s see…I’m gonna tag

Cassie from Mockingbird Hill (Cassie if you read this…you’ve been tagged. Girlfriend, you are very difficult to reach. No email, no contact, no nuttin’. )

Deb from Cucaroo

Mimi from Doll

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Got caught by a bug…

Yep, I have fallen victim-of a cold that is. It started with a very mild sore throat about 5 days ago, and this has been the slowest moving cold virus I think I’ve ever contracted. I just got the full blown cold around late evening last night. I’ve had lots of sneezing–violent sneezing in fact…sneezing that made me have to cross my knees to prevent leaks. Okay, we all know I had 5 kids vaginally. Need I say more?

Just tonight, after a sneeze, I felt this hot rush zip through the veins of my breasts and it was almost painful. My husband said he’s had that too, (not through his breasts!–but through his chest and stomach.) It happened a second and third time and it is scary, painful and quick. It must be blood surging quickly after my vascular muscles contract from the process of sneezing. At least I hope that is what it is!

So, I’m off to get a full nights sleep. My new bed partner is a box of Kleenex. Ugh, do I hate colds. The drippy nose is the worse!
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All wet in Chicagoland…

Geeze, Louise has it been bucketing down. Thunder and lightening are rumbling through gray skies and the rain drops are dancing on my roof at night. I love it! My father in law Ed calls this kind weather, ‘gling-glong’ days. Today as it rained fairly hard, I drove over to the library to return some books. On the way out, the parking lot was so puddled with running water, I just took off my sandals and barefooted it back to my car. The cool rain water felt great splashing between my toes…it was a little simple pleasure I haven’t been able to experience much this summer. We havent’ had a lot of rain, and this last week has been very wet, to say the least.

Last night, when I went to sleep, the thunder and lightening was pretty bad. I woke up to a very scary scene when I came downstairs for my morning coffee. As I sat down to read my emails, that dreaded ‘blue screen’ was glaring back at me and it was telling me, quite ominously that my hard drive had crashed. I suddenly had a pain in the pit of my stomach. All I could think of is how I haven’t backed up my Hootin Annie’s patterns in about 2 years and now I was going to live to regret it.

Long story short, my husband, the software, hardware, IT, computer programmer guy told me to take out the hard drive, plug it into his computer and he would try to boot it up and see if it was salvagable. After about 10 minutes of glitches, scares and sweating at the brow, my hard drive came up! I immediately sat and saved my entire C drive to a DVD and rescued my entire BUSINESS. Just thinking about having to find hard copies of all my patterns, rescan and redo almost all 90 of them was enough to make me want to throw in the towel. And now that I have my feature in Country Living Magazine this November, this is not the time to lose my livelihood.
All I can say is THANK YOU JESUS!

As if that wasn’t bad enough, I find out last night that my digital camera is broken! I accidentally dropped it one foot from the floor, but I suppose that was enough to break the LCD inside it. I can’t be without my camera. It’s something I use almost daily for personal, blog and business use. I went to Staples today and picked up a new model Kodak 8.0 megapixel camera. I can’t wait to open the box up tonight and try it out. I had to sneak this purchase…the hubby doesn’t know, and I hope he’ll never find out. He’s not too observant, so odds are good he won’t notice a bit. This time, when I purchased it, I also bought the insurance for 3 years that protects me against damages to the camera from, you guessed it–drops! Yes, If I drop my camera any time in the next 3 years and it breaks, Staples will replace my camera for free. I’m sure I’ll be using this insurance policy! No doubt.

It’s been like three days and the thunder is still rumbling in the skies and the rain continues. I’m off to lie in bed and listen to the rain hit my rooftop once again. While you’re reading this, why don’t you do yourself a favor and back up your hard drive. I wouldn’t want you to wake up to that dreaded blue screen someday and wish someone would have reminded you to backup all of your precious computer stuff. After you’re done, you might wish you had a copy of the movie Evan Almighty to curl up on the couch to. If this rain continues, I might just start looking for an ark to rescue me.