Should be an interesting day

With all the activities of summer grinding down, the day has come for me to take Karrington for her birthday shopping and lunch.  She can be a little spit-fire - jazzed to the max, and just as quickly become moody.  When they came in Monday morning, the rest of the family was dragging.  Not Karrington.  She was a ball of fire - bouncing off the walls.  Apparently SHE slept on the plane - head in Katie's lap, feet in Reagan's.

But today I take her out.  I asked Krissi this morning where she thought Karrington wanted to shop.  She didn't know, but said probably Ta*get.  I hope so.  I am afraid she will say Wally World, and I will have to tell her I don't go there.  I am, quite honestly, afraid of all those stores in this area.  There have been so many crimes in their parking lots it's unbelievable.  These range from simple thefts to kidnappings.  So....

Wherever we go, I really hope she can choose her gift fairly quickly.  This week has been a bad one for my arthritis.  I have had a really hard time preparing dinner this week because my back hurts so much I can hardly stand.   Walking and standing (especially) is really tough.

I have been using my birthday present that came on Saturday.  It is (and really this is the name) a Ninja cooking system.  What that means is it is a jazzed up crock pot.  It will brown in the device, so it has a "cook top" feature.  It will cook like a small oven - which is great because we are eating a lot of baked chicken and fish (post Gout diagnosis), it will be a steam cooker with the oven setting, and it will be a regular crock pot - but you don't have to brown on the stove and then put the food in the crock pot.  I love it.  I did a whole chicken night before last in the steam oven setting, and it was cooked in a little over an hour.  Last night was fish.  It doesn't heat up the entire kitchen, and here is Swampland that is really important!

Today I am going to try to stitch out a design I made for Christina (daughter in law).  She and her mom's sometime boyfriend (and long time friend when he's not the other) have started a business of making and selling kettle corn.  They will be doing several shows in the area, and in fact already made a batch for a baby shower.  Bill has had several businesses that go to craft shows, and he has been successful at them, so I know they will do well - until Christina gets tired of it all.  She has found it is a lot of work.

I got their logo off Facebook yesterday and I digitized it using an easy program, but it looks like there were a lot of skipped stitches.  I have another very expensive program that I really don't know how to use, but I guess I will give it a try if the one I have doesn't do well on a trial piece of muslin.  But I would like to make them aprons to wear at the shows. 

So that's my day!