Pizza, auto updates, and the finished HOME blocks!

First some fun stuff: We made Chicago-style deep dish pizzas and they were wonderful! I took pics throughout the process, but you probably don't care about all that. Basically, dough, a bit of sauce, TONS of cheese (and pepperoni in Bob's), then LOTS of sauce and parmesan on top. YUM. They were delicious.

Before

After--I forgot to take a pic til we'd already cut into them. :)

Now for the bad... Bob's car got crunched. He was driving down the street and an SUV of teenagers flipped a U-turn on the street perpendicular to him that he was crossing, and pulled out in front of him even though they had a stop sign, so he couldn't stop in time and crunched into them. Both insurances ruled it all their fault, so his car is getting fixed up and he has a rental car on their dime. Thankfully everyone was fine, and although it's now up to an estimated $3500 to fix it, they didn't total it out, which we're grateful for because the Neon only has 60k miles on it and we've had it since it was brand new and it's been good to us, so it'd be a shame to lose it.

Just the hood and passenger quarter panel and the bumper really got munched... and it's leaking fluid, and a million other small things. Hopefully they'll get it fixed in the next week.

Could be worse, right?

Now for the good news! We'd been looking at Ford Escape Hybrids for the last 3 years, but haven't done it since both cars are paid for and we love having no car payment and didn't really need another car. However, now that we live in Utah, winters will be snowier, so 4 wheel drive would definitely be nice, so we've continued looking. Bob found this sweet Mercury Mariner Hybrid online at a dealership nearby for about $10,000 less than everywhere else we'd looked! they find cars that were in wrecks and rebuild them and resell them, but because it's a rebuilt title, they can't sell them for retail, hence the deep discounts. We testdrove it on Sat and loved it and bought it! Thanks to USAA we were pre-approved for 2.99% in 5-10 minutes on the USAA app on our iphones and emailed it to the dealer and did everything in an hour. I feel like buying a car always takes forever but this was great. We traded in the civic and bought the warranty for not too much extra since it's a rebuild and you never know, and we are so excited! It drives great and has heated seats, navigation, the SYNC system so you can bluetooth your phone through the car's speakers and voice control almost everything. We are so spoiled now! It gets 30 mpg freeway and 35 in town, although not quite so good when the AC is on, so winter will be even better. I filled it up today for the first time and it was about the same as the Civic, which is awesome. This is going to make winter here a lot more fun!

I took this at the dealer's right after I signed the final papers!

Now onto more fun! I've finished the rest of the pieces for my home letters! They're so cute! Now I need to find a good place to store them where I won't forget to get them out for each season! :)

Cute heart for Valentines

This cupcake was so much fun--lots of glitter! It's for birthdays

I got pretty glitter happy, but I think it made this ladybug so cute!

The hat is actually green glitter scrapbooking paper and then I put yellow glitter on the buckle. :)

Ok, don't laugh at this sad bunny! I did my best! I am NOT a good whisker painter. I will not be quitting my day job any time soon

Cute flower for Spring

Do you like the fluff on the edge? This was my first time playing with the flocking but it was fun.

Present for Christmas

I think the turkey's one of my faves-the glitter striped paper is a bit crazy but so fun!

I probably should have left the stripes just red and blue so you could see the stars better, but oh well. :)

Witch hat for Halloween

The acorn for fall

Crafting and a wedding

I got these wooden letters in Feb at a place here with Jen, Bob's sister. I covered them with scrapbooking paper and added some embellishments and here they are! There's a different shape for each season and so I have a lot more to paint/cover, but here's the mitten and sun! I'm thinking I want to put white fur/fluff or something on the cuff of the mitten though. At least the sun is done so this season is up! I have 6 more to do, and there's another set they were out of that I still need to get, which includes a cute turkey.

Our friends Kate and Kirk got married yesterday and it was beautiful! We were so glad we could be there! Here they are right after being pronounced man and wife!

Getting ready to dance!

They were sweet cake feeders--no smashing on their watch!

Kate and I share an unfortunate ability to fall... She had a big bike wreck resulting from a flat tire and a downhill ride home from work and got pretty scraped up on her palms and legs, but you could not see any of it during the ceremony so it all worked out. Here she is showing her wounds!

The legs weren't that bad...

Bob and I--graciously taken by Kate, because on your wedding day, you should really be photographing all your guests, right? :)

We really should have got one with Kirk too, but here's Kate and I

Here is the card I made them. I don't know if you can see, but those little metal swirls each have a K for Kate and Kirk. :)

And the inside

This is a lovely video of some dancing and Patrick's best moves as a lady's man... :)

Have a great week!

Hard Core

Mandy gets credit for the title of this post. :) She's been rooting for this one for a while, so here it is.

It starts off with a bit of typical Cathy clumsiness. We'd just moved in here and I was running up the stairs from putting something in the mailbox just before we left to run some errands. Somehow, without really recalling any major obstacle which caused me to trip, I just biffed it hard and landed with my knee right into the corner of the concrete stair, which had a lovely metal edge perfect for the slicing. Unfortunately it was pretty deep, definitely not going to close on its own. Bob started googling where our nearest ER might be, and I remembered I'd brought home some supplies a few months ago when Bob cut his arm at work. We didn't need it then and ended up just steri-stripping his wound, so I thought I'd give it a go. I had some lidocaine which was expired and an irrigation kit so I copiously irrigated, numbed it up, and started stitching! (Conveniently, I had suture kit and a few packs of sutures, all absorbable)

I figured I'd make less mess in the bathtub... you can see my concentration!

I had to do 2 layers, so here's the deep layer done!

Almost done!

Not too shabby! The classiest part is that you can see the lovely scars above and below this new one. Of course I was never headed towards a career of knee-modeling, but this seals the deal!

Now it's been about 6 weeks since this disaster and I'm mostly healed up, but it still hurts when I kneel on it and it gets achy throughout the day and I have to stretch it out a lot, but it's WAY better than when I first did it.

I was glad I had the lidocaine, but it was worn off by the time I did the superficial layer and my knee skin was so thick it took a lot of pressure to get the needle through so it sure did not feel good as I felt every suture. I'm no Jack Bauer for sure, but I was still impressed with myself that I did it. Hopefully I never have to stitch myself again, but it led to lots of great stories! Both of my grandmas are nurses, and Mom mentioned that her mom used to stitch up their pets all the time when they were growing up, which is funny. Hopefully Lilo will never get a gash that I need to stitch! Her attack by the cat a while ago was scary enough!

We had a fun weekend and enjoyed Kate and Kirk's wedding and I have lots more pics to post, but now the gross knee wound post is over with!