What's in a Name...

I've seen lots of articles lately with the pros and cons of naming children unique names. It is a measure of respect to be able to pronounce and spell a person's name correctly and to argue or almost lecture someone over the choice of names they have picked for their child is downright disrespectful in my eyes.

For example, my daughter has the name of a movie character who is a vampire queen, although this is not where we first heard it. When family asked where we did get it, I referenced this movie and got negative comments back. One family member was constantly asking us to change it, up until she was born. She named her two children boring/ preppy "traditional" names and had wanted us to do the same. The thing is, my husband and I are not traditional in any way. We had a Gothic wedding, complete with bonding and a private blood ceremony. Some family members were unhappy about this, but we still did it.

My name could be debated. I am named after a character from an mid-80's scifi series that my dad liked at the time. Thankfully, it is also the name of a group of stars that make up the constellation Cassiopeia, though spelled slightly different. My middle name is derived from two cousins my mom helped to raise and one is uniquely spelled. It is fun to challenge people to spell these two names, three names if you use my shortened every-day name. People always want to spell it with every variation when it is simply spelled Cassi. No K's, no e's, and no y's please. Just take that difficult part off the end of my name and there you go. No bells, no whistles.

My family is full of one-of-a-kind names, my sister, my cousins, a few of them that has taken me at least 20 years to be able to both spell and pronounce. My point here is have fun and have some respect for those who have these interesting names. Ask them how their parents came up with the name they were given. Maybe it is a family name that isn't used as much, maybe it's from a book or a television series, maybe they were just creative. Just be respectful about it, you may be hearing that name for years to come.

Summer in Full Swing

This last week officially threw us into summer. With temperatures in the upper 80's to mid-90's, it was HOT! It made for a good weekend at the beach and an afternoon at the Ponds with a little cooling off today. That nice cool breeze we got today isn't going to last for long.

I've been doing a lot of looking around for tutorials and patterns for various things and I am dying to make myself a maxi dress. I found a tutorial on one of my go-to sites, Craftsy, and I found this one: How to Sew a Maxi Dress this Summer. My mom sent me this nice flowy fabric and the only issue I'm having with it is how thin it is. I'm hoping that doubling it will work. I hope I can get it done soon so that I can wear it next week when we go to pick up my baby sister and her hubby from the airport. We haven't seen each other (other than Skype a couple of times) for over 3 years and she's visiting for a whole week! But I digress. I wonder if I can sit down and work on this thing tomorrow morning before it gets too hot and we have to leave for little one's dentist appointment.

On the home front of making friends, I think I'm kind of getting better. I had an OK conversation with a neighbor while our kids were playing at our complex park. We talked about the neighborhood school, my soapbox topic of early education, and a few other things. Eventually, it became silent. What else could I say? She just went back to her Kindle and we stayed in silence... I'll get the hang of it...

As for my dress, I think I'll post my own tutorial on this. As I said before, it's going to need some finagling to make it work. I'm trying to take all my projects in stride and as a learning progress. Stay tuned!


UPDATE: No tutorial. It did take me all day to finish it, but it still needed some things done to it. It turns out that I am not as endowed as others, so a set of straps were made and are awaiting placement, as well as some padding to ensure that headlights are not seen. Other than that, I LOVE IT! I am thinking of making a couple more in different colors and with a pattern technique I've found that entails using elastic thread instead of elastic bands. But as with everything else, it will come with time and funds, of which I am short of.