Needledom Novack

When we got married I had recently graduated from "grad" school and I had to find out what my hobbies are. Since my life up until marriage consisted of school and my "hobbies" or "extra curricular activities" consisted of studying, I really had to discover what my "hidden talents" are.

I played with knitting, but since I live in the South... having a ball of yarn on my lap in the warm months weren't all that thrilling. Not to mention all the monotony and not getting anywhere quickly...

My mother-in-law gave me a cross stitching kit for our first Christmas. I didn't mind cross stitching, but it would cramp up my hands...

Along the lines of knitting, I did partake in crocheting. A much better fit for me. Easy to correct mistakes, fast results, and cool designs to stitch.

One project I crocheted for the front door made out of old jersey knit shirts:

Finally, I toyed with the hobby of sewing! I LOVE sewing! Quick, easy, fun, and versatile. I have sewn a bunch of napkins, placemats, table runner, and table cloth.

Here's some pictures:

I took an Heirloom Sewing class back in March. I didn't really know what I signed up for until I purchased the material! Holy crap, Heirloom Sewing is expensive. Considering the delicacy and intricacy that goes into to sewing it, I now have a new appreciation for fancy dresses and Baptismal gowns! If you have an Heirloom dress or Baptismal gown it is well worth it to ask who made it and give them a HUGE hug and thank you for their time and hard work, those gowns were made with LOVE!!

Nurture Novack

I couldn't find a better word for housework or home improvement that began with the letter N. So I found nurture, which isn't that what you are doing when you clean or fix things around the house?

Back in February, yea yea yea, it's been a while since I blogged. On an unusually warm February day Bryan and I decided to "nurture" our mailbox. The mailbox had, over the years it had cracked and and the door was broken. We never thought we would actually ever replace it, but the time had come... with the post broken (well we did E6000 it so it wasn't going anywhere). We decided to go to Home Depot and get a new one. Luckily, since we don't have a Home Owner's Association controlling every aspect of our home improvements we could pick whatever we wanted.

Some before pictures:

The crack was deep enough that when it was windy the mailbox would twist to a 90 degree angle. No worries, nothing E6000 can't fix.

The door didn't have a lip that would catch to the top... so many times when we went to check the mail we would find it looking like this:

After:

We originally wanted a different post, but the wooden post underneath was too big. So we had to get the same one we had before. Good thing they still make it!

We went with a gray mailbox just to break up the white color.

Name that Novack blog

So I am already off to a bad start... oh well at least I remembered.

When we (by we I really mean me) were trying to come up with a name for the blog, I was trying to be creative and use an 'N' adjective to go along with Novack. Pretty hard to find a creative 'N' adjective, and since the only word to pop into my head was... well I'll leave it at that. I wanted to find a word that would describe our family. Sarcastic is really the best word to describe us, but it begins with an S. I thought maybe I could play with the word and use Narcastic, but I didn't want people to be confused with narcotics, so it wasn't going to work. I don't want this blog to be specific towards any aspect of our lives I want it to be fully encompassing of every activity, hobby, thought, etc of our little family of 2. To find a word (that begins with an N) that would portray that... is down near impossible. I did take a gander with the word Random, but again it starts with R, not N. The dictionary's thesaurus didn't help either, under random, the only N word listed is 'nonspecific.' How boring and since we are not boring people^^/ it just wouldn't do.

So off to google I went. I *googled 'adjectives beginning with N.' The first website I came across was http://phrontistery.info/n.html which is a rather strange website, but it worked for me. As I read through the list of unusual words (some of which I would not be able to pronounce) I came across the word Needledom which means 'the world of sewing.' As I previously mentioned I didn't want this blog to be specific toward one aspect. But since I have a hobby of sewing & crafts I figured I could use that word from time to time to describe the latest sewing or crafting project I am working on.

Another word I played with was Nonsense. Again to try and find a word equivalent to random. But the word Nonsense refers to language. Think Dr. Seuss with words that aren't actually words at all, but are rather fun to pronounce and when you string them together to other words that sound similar, but have no relation nor meaning to each other whatsoever, you get Nonsense. I figured if I have a thought that is off topic (not off color) I can call it Nonsense Novack. Speaking of which...

Nonsense Novack

*Don't you love how google has become a word in our vocabulary. I googled, I went to google, the google company, etc. It's a well rounded word that can be used as a noun, verb, adjective, pronoun, etc. Well maybe not in all of those descriptive manners, but it's pretty close.

^^/ Don't you just hate that there is not a font for sarcasm! They have emotion icons, I do believe they are called emoticons (again a word that has been added to our vocabulary). There's 'chiller' font that looks like blood dripping from the letters. 'Handwriting' font, 'felt marker' font, 'chalkboard' font, and what the crap is 'wingdings' I mean really, why is that a font, does anyone actually use it? Maybe if I were a pre-teen again and wanted to have a secret code language, but then I would have to have a key printout just to decipher the message! Not to mention there are 2 'wingdings' to choose from!

Anyway, back to my point of sarcasm font. Since B-No and I are sarcastic, I figured whenever we [I] write something sarcastic, I will use the icon ^^/ so that you know I am being sarcastic, not mean, just plain funny.

Name that Novack blog

In the end I decided to go with The Novack Family. I just couldn't find a creative enough word to use for the main blog name. And since Novack is a pretty cool last name, as you can tell from the other hundred Novack Family blogs out there ^^/, I'll use it too. So enjoy discovering who we are and what we like to do, assuming you have found the correct Novack Family blog ^^/!

Snow!

With all the hype the news stations built... we actually had 8-9 inches of SNOW!

Since we live in the South, most businesses were shut down for the day. Except of course the grocery stores. So what did we do with our snow day??

Played in the snow! We made snow angels, went for a walk in the street, shoveled the driveway, and made snowcream! We attempted to make a snowman, but the snow was too fluffy and not able to pack correctly. We took a picture, but with everything being white, it didn't turn out so well. So imagine a big white ball, that's our snowman!

A few pictures of the house in the snow:

After playing in the snow in the morning we didn't know what to do with the rest of our day... so BNo decided to go work. The main roads had been plowed so he attempted, successfully, to go to work.

With BNo out of the house I was then able to finish my rag rug (more on that to come):

Happy New Year 1.1.11

A new year, a new blogger! I figured by writing a blog our mundane life might be seen a little bit more exciting. So here goes...