I changed out the picture of the girls to the left for a higher quality one. When I was originally making the site the better picture was on my laptop. I was too lazy to get it, so I settled for the low quality one. Please take a few seconds to notice it. Thank you very much!

As I suspected, the feeds for my old format are not automatically working for the new design. So I had to make a brand new feed which is located here: http://feeds.feedburner.com/hawleyfocus. By clicking the link it will take you to a new page that gives you the option to choose your reader (Google Reader is one of the choices). If you’re using Google Reader, then you can just put www.hawleyfocus.com as the subscription address. I tried it, and it does work. Sorry to those who have to do this a second time, but I know no other way. I’ll also try to figure out how to put a link on the left so that people can subscribe directly from there in order to avoid future confusion.

In the meantime, check out my kiddos all decked out in snow gear. I have a video to post of Annie searching for eggs. Sara, Dylan, and Lucy, play small roles, I hope they don’t mind.

Wow…what a difference, huh? Don’t worry…you are where you are supposed to be. After seeing how easy it has been to update my snappy chic designs blog I decided it was time to move this website out of the dark ages and over to Wordpress. I will no longer have to manually insert permalinks, archive each month, update/upload the rss feed, and so much more. Hopefully, with all this release of responsibility I will feel inclined to post more often.

One of the biggest problems with switching over is that it will be nearly impossible to get all the content from my original site over here. Hence, I’ve decided to only go back to the beginning of this year (thank goodness it’s only April) and move those posts over here. Anything before that will be linked back to my original website. Also the memories, pets, projects, and other original pages will remain on the old format. I suppose this is one way to hold onto my beloved design that has been with me since the beginning. I will, however, an archive page posted here for each month prior to 2008. Eventually.

You may notice little things change around here and there because I’m not completely done with all the tweaking to this design. Since I’m not completely familiar with Wordpress and its workings, I had to use a free template that someone else made. Of course, me being the control freak that I am could not leave it as is and had to make this new layout fit my style. So don’t scroll down to the bottom of the page and notice that the footer doesn’t match up with the rest of the page. And certainly don’t make note of the comments section not being formatted yet to match this color scheme.

The only thing I’m nervous about with the big switch is that I now have comments available on each post. With my original design I used to have a guestbook that visitors could sign, but I started getting a lot of wierdos posting there and even a few stalkerish folks who decided that I was their “friend” on a way too personal and creepy level. So I eventually disabled the guestbook. Fortunately, I have the option of moderating the comments here, and I intend to before they will be posted to my site. Sorry to be so paranoid, but my husband likes me that way (::wink::).

Keep in mind that with this switchover I don’t know how this will effect the RSS feed. I hope it won’t at all:/

First off, Happy Leap Year! It only happens every four years, so I thought I better make note of this special day. Did you do anything fun to celebrate?

Meet Franklin.

He’s quite lazy and refuses to sit up most of the time. But how anyone resist those sparkling, aquamarine eyes?

During this slow time of year for photography I’ve been getting back to my crafting roots. While collecting materials for a couple of baby blankets for baby shower gifts I spied quite a cute book. On its cover were crocheted bears. Years ago I had come across that made similar creatures, and I always wanted one. Without hesitation I grabbed the book, found a project I wanted to make, and gathered all the supplies I would need to do that project. Now, keep in mind that I’ve never crocheted before. Well, almost never if you count the time my attempted to teach me. I quickly gave up though because I was trying to learn left-handed from a right-handed person. However, this time I realized that I would just have learn right-handed and get over my my lame right hand. I stupidly thought that I’d be able to teach myself via book diagrams. Ha! Fortunately, You Tube provides quite an adequate amount of instructional videos on crocheting. That was almost enough, but I was getting stuck on a couple of moves. So I finally headed over to the local yarn store to have someone help me finish my crocheting lessons. It took a bit of practice, but I’m now quite comfortable with the basic stiches (single, increase, and decrease) and was able to complete Franklin this afternoon.

As you can see, Mimi was immediately smitten.

Can’t you feel the love?

She was very relunctant to let Annie visit with Franklin, but did allow me this one picture. And, no, I didn’t dress the girls up to match Franklin. I swear. Mike didn’t believe me either, but I promise those outfits were the first thing I grabbed out of the unfolded clean clothes this morning.

Anatomy of a crocheted teddy bear.

f course, I’ll have to make one for Annie, too. However, my plan is to just use the same yarns but switch up the colors–maybe a purple bear with orange pants and blue stripes. Hmm! If anyone is curious, this is the book I used to learn how to make Franklin: Kyuuto! Japanese Crafts!: Amigurumi. The technique is called amigurumi which is Japanese and supposedly translates to knitted stuff toy.

P.S. You don’t need to point out Franklin’s boo, boos. I’m well aware of his shortcomings (no pun intended since one of his legs is shorter than the other). Most of the mistakes were made on his head since that was the first part I started with. By the time I got this trunk, I had gotten the hang of it. Sewing those limbs on though was not a pretty picture. Poor Franklin got thrown across the room several times. Do you think he’ll ever forgive me?

P.P.S. In case you’re wondering how those baby blankets turned out. I don’t actually have pictures yet because I’m still waiting to give it to the parentsr. But I did make one similar a couple weeks before, girl themed instead of boy themed. I’ll definitely post those pictures as soon as the parents receive them. I also made matching burp cloths. The back of the blanket is a very soft, ribbed fabric. So yummy!

Apparently, I reached my maximum disk space on my webhost account. That was why anything new that I uploaded (including my home page) just got recorded as 0KB. That was why when some of you tried to visit yesterday were shown a blank page. Sorry for the confusion. Evidently, my webhost allowed me to go over my disk usage by 180MB but didn’t warn me until yesterday. So I had to delete 180MB+ of space from my various websites. In turn, you may notice some picture galleries from way back when are no longer available. I’m assuming though that people aren’t looking regularly at pictures of me or my children as far back as 3 years ago. Sorry if you were:( Fortunately, I discovered 30MB of space was spam email that my webhost was filtering into my spam account. Yes, I had 3,585 emails of junk that I knew nothing about, 1,000 of those emails were promises of a certain body part being enlarged–a body part in which I don’t possess. I think when my account expires come Octoberish I may have to search for a new webhost that offers tons more disk space for the same price. I know they exist, but I’ve remained loyal for over 4 years. Sorry, Modhost!

Per Mike’s request, I am posting a song that I had never heard until a few days ago. He wanted a certain sister of his to hear it. Enjoy!