I get you!

Oh....did I have fun at the fabric store the other day! Let me show you some of the projects I am going to be making.

The first one is this little pile of loveliness. I bought a charm pack that Mary Engelbreit designed. Can not remember the name of it now for anything. Oh well. I am going to make a quilted table runner from it. I have only tried quilting a couple things. I love doing it...but I get so frustrated with myself. A dear lady from our church is a very talented quilter and she has offered to teach me several times. I think I can get it all done but the binding. That is where I get into trouble...lots of trouble. It has all my most favorite colors in it. Yup....there is pink in there! Imagine that??!!??!!?!

The next one is a little flannel blanket for one of the little boy babies that have recently made their way into our world at church. I am learning how to crochet to (that will be another post another day.) I am going to crochet a little trim around this little blanket. I had my lesson last week and I am excited to try it. If I get it mastered, I will make another one for the other baby boy I know. :)

Lastly, I am making a couple more fleece scarfs. One is for my father in law. He is a cardinal fan like my hubby. The flowers are for my mother in law. She loves purple, flowers and her winter coat is olive green. So, I think this will go nicely for her. I am sending these as their Valentines Day gift from me. I hope they like them!

Well, that is it for my trip to the fabric store and my list of projects. I am really excited to get started and especially to get them finished. This is one of the neat things about blogging. I don't have any friends who enjoy sewing and making things like I do. I don't have any friends who enjoy doing things to their homes and re-painting and re-doing things like I do. I don't have friends who like to cook and experiment with recipes like I do. I do, however, have a sister who likes to do these things with me. And for that, I am very thankful. It seems like my friends just think I am nuts and there is something wrong with me that I like to do these things. They think I am old fashioned and obviously born in the wrong era. Maybe I should get some new friends. But you guys get me, right? It is a good thing this blogging. I have no idea if anyone read the words I put out here....but if you do.....hello from me to you. And if you are like me....I get you! :)

Tag....You're It!!

My sister is a paper-holic. She LOVES playing with paper. I love playing with fabric. She and my darling nephew came over last night and she brought some "toys" with her. She had circle cutters and these little scallop cutters and paper and ink pads and little rhinestone bling flowers. (I am sure that they have an official name, but since paper is not my passion, I don't know what else to call them!) She also has a little toy called a Cuttle Bug. It does some cool stuff! We used it to make some of these little Valentines Day tags for gifts for our friends and teachers.

We had so much fun playing. The kids went to the back of the house to play and she and I cracked open the diet 7-Up and played at the front of the house. A good time was had by all!!! I don't know if she is trying to drag me over to the "other side" and be a paper lover or what....but I must say....it sure was a lot of fun. And, at the end of the evening we had popcorn....what could be better than that? ;)

What A Gal!

This lovely gal turned 97 years old today! She is my Grandma Ginny. She lives in a nursing home now and she has a very difficult time hearing but she is still sweet as ever. She has lead a very interesting life. Can you imagine all that she has seen in her 97 years on this earth? She has lived in a home with no running water, she has ridden in horse and buggy to get around because there were no cars. She has seen men land on the moon and she has just recently seen an African American Man become our President. That is just a few things. My kids think it is so neat that she was born before television and cell phones and ipods. HA! They think her life must of been boring as a child....but I bet it was fun! She has told me so many stories about her life. I wish I had recorded them all to play over and over when she is gone from this earth. My grandma was one of eleven children. Only two are left....she and her sister. I love seeing the two of them together. They talk and say a lot of "remember when......."

My grandma married a man who was 25 years older than she. She has been a widow since she was in her 50's. That is a long time to miss your husband! She is longing for the day when she can go "home." We talk about that sometimes and I tell her that God must not be finished with her here on earth. She can not wait to see her husband again and of course, live with Jesus.

So today was a celebration of her life and her time with us. We usually have several other family members here with us to celebrate. This year, we were alone. One of my grandma's daughters lives in Colorado and the other daughter lives in Texas now. So, my mom is the only one left here. I know her other daughters wanted to be here today with us to. We missed them! We had plenty of yummy cake and ice-cream at the party as well.

So, Happy Birthday Grandma-O-Mine! I love you more that I can say!!!! XOXOXOXOXOXO

I Spy

Last night my hubby and I got a very special treat. My youngest daughter went to hang out with her Nana and Papa for the evening. My eldest daughter went to her Nanny's house (her aunt) and stayed the evening. So, hubs and I went on a date! It has been months and months and months since we have done this. I have an excellent memory. Ask any one I know and they will tell you that. But, even my memory can not recall the last time we went to see a movie and dinner and had the night to ourselves with NO children.

We started at a very gourmet dining establishment. Le' Taco Bell. :) We decided we wanted a light dinner so we could eat popcorn at the movie. Then, we went to the closest book store and looked at all the magazines they offered. I found some lovely ones from the U.K. (That began my night of wanting to pack my bags and move there.) After the book store, we went to the theatre. We had gift certificates from family from our anniversary in October that we had not used yet, so the movie was free! Yeah! So was the snacks. Even better! Diet Pepsi and popcorn with extra butter is the best thing in the world to me! Any one who knows me would tell you that little fact too! We saw this movie. Oh....was it good! I love seeing movies that make you feel good after watching them. This one does just that! And even better, there is no nudity or extreme foul language or violence or blood shed in this. My cup of tea! My husband liked it to. Emma and Dustin did an excellent job! The movie takes place in London. Second time of the evening that I decided I wanted to live there! The taxi cabs were so cute and the red double decker buses and the buildings there and the sweet way they speak.....ahhhhhhh! I won't spoil it for you. But, I recommend it highly.

Anyway, while we were getting ready for our date, I was closing the closet doors before leaving for the night. I thought something seemed amiss but was not sure what. Until I took a closer look. Do you see what I see???

Besides a messy closet? Have a closer look.

I about closed him up in the closet for the evening! I have not seen him do this before. Little sneak! My husband said it is no wonder he finds cat hair all over his clothes and he takes his hair with him where ever he travels. Silly cat!

Sounds like a good evening was had by all parties involved. Girls both said they had a good time. Everyone said they behaved. Mommy and daddy had a wonderful time out. And, Simon the cat did not get trapped in a closet for the entire evening! :) And thanks Nana and Nanny for keeping the girls so we could be husband and wife instead of mommy and daddy. It was very, very much appreciated!!!!

Lovin in the neighborhood

Here are the pictures of the outside of my house I promised you. Not many people in my neighborhood decorate for anything other than Christmas and this past Christmas, not many did anything. Kind of sad that our lives are either to busy or people just don't want to do decorating anymore. Who knows.

Anyway, here are some pictures from my little house. This one is my front door decor. That little pink heart has glitter all over it! Bling Bling! :)

Of course there would be something Mary also....a pink flag that is so sweet in person. Notice the little blue love birds on the top right corner. Too cute!!

Here are some window clings that I put up in my kitchen windows. I love the gel clings they are making now. They really stay put, unlike the vinyl ones. Cupcakes and hearts...Yum!

Lastly, my girls and I put up heart lace doilys in the rest of the windows and the french doors in the back. They are cheap and come in different colors. This year we got white and pink. We stick them up with scotch tape and voila! Instant love in the windows for cheap!

What about you? What kinds of Valentines decorations do you do, if any? I would love to know.

Won't You Be My Valentine?

Today I decorated for Valentines Day. I have this little wire "tree" that a girlfriend and I made some paper ornaments for a few years ago. I also have a little vintage ornament that was my grandma's on there as well. I made the little table runner last year that it is sitting on.

Remember the post in October where I told you about this weird piece of wood in my kitchen above my sink that I like to decorate for the holidays (because what the heck else is it good for?) Here it is all decked out in red glitter love letters and little red heart lights. It looks so much cuter in person.

And lastly, here is my new Annie that came to my house this week. Isn't she darling? I got her from this talented lady. She is sporting her little red heart dress all cute like. :) I sat her next to my Mary Engelbreit pillow cause she looks so cute and the pillow is too! (hey...I just got done with the 7th grade project...my mind was mush at this point...what can I say? hee hee!)

So, tomorrow I will get some pictures of what the outside of my house looks like for Valentines Day. Just spreading some love around the neighborhood. Someone has to do it! :)

7th Grade again

Can you tell what this is? If you guessed a diagram of a plant cell, you are correct!! :) Tonight my 7th grader and her mama had this to do. The only directions we had were to follow the picture in the book. So, we started with a sheet of Styrofoam for the base. Then we used green watercolor paint to paint the Styrofoam. Who knew that would stick....but it did! Then we used a little cat toy, the wiffle ball, for the nucleus and colored it purple. Hope Simon does not mind that we used something of his for this little project. Hee hee!

The blue balloon in the middle is the "Vacuole." We used a sandwich baggie for the "cell membrane" and we thought we were Albert Einstein for coming up with that one! HA! The rest was just construction paper and she used a pencil to "chisel" out some indentations and colored them with marker. We used green construction paper for the "cell wall" and called it good!

Phew! I don't have a lot of memory from my Jr high years. A very wise friend of mine, who just happens to be a children's minister, told me why. She said that those years are very difficult for kids/girls and I probably blocked them out. I believe she is right. I do not remember doing these kinds of projects when I was in school. (Did we mom?) It was a fun evening for the two of us. Little sister stood close by watching and coming up with ideas. She was our little "gopher." She would run around and get things for us when we needed them. She was a lot of help to! And a big surprise of the evening was the 13 year old big sister actually told her thank you WITHOUT being asked. Yeah! All the correcting I do around here actually worked tonight. And this mama is happy about that!

Burr!!!

With this terrible Arctic weather the Midwest is having right now...and yet ANOTHER snow day for the kids....what was I supposed to do today but try and stay warm and crochet a little white dish rag? I don't really know how to crochet anything but these. They are nothing fancy at all. Through trial and error I have learned that I have to make them bigger than regular dish cloths because when you wash and dry them, they shrink up quite a bit! My first few are about the size of a kitchen sponge. ;) Whoops! So, now I know to make them just a tad bigger for shrinkage. My grandma Ginny used to crochet. She would make blankets for us and blankets for our baby dolls too. She also made hundreds and hundreds of crocheted hangers for clothes. I still have TONS of them. She made the little ones for kids/baby clothes and she made big ones for us adults. I love them. If I have a crochet hanger or a plain plastic hanger to choose from when I am hanging up laundry...I will ALWAYS choose the one she made. They are lovely!

Anyway, just wanted to share a little something I made today while sitting on the couch trying to stay warm. My mom said her thermometer said it was -15 degrees this morning and it was -30 degrees with the wind chill. Yikes! Tomorrow it is supposed to be even colder when we wake up. My poor furnace is working so hard. I hope she keeps it up! Although when the bill comes next month, I hope I don't faint!

In my next life.....

In my next life, I am going to come back as a cat or a dog. Especially an indoor cat or indoor dog. I would not want to be an old alley cat or junkyard dog. Nope...I want to come back as one of these guys. This would be my daily schedule....


1. Get up off the nice, warm, comfy, king sized down comforter in the morning.
2. Stroll down the hallway to the kitchen where I will find a nice clean bowl of chilled water waiting for me and a completely full bowl of food in case I need a nibble.
3. If I am a cat, I would go into the laundry room to my fresh clean litter box and use that. If I were the dog, I would go out the back door into my fenced in back yard to use the potty. Then, bark at the door where I will be quickly escorted back into the nice warm house. Then, I would trot into the kitchen where the nice lady of the house would get under the kitchen sink and offer me a nice doggie biscuit, which by the way, I always take.
4. Then, it is onto the couch where I will take my first nap of the day. I will sleep until lunch time where my routine basically begins again.
5. I will repeat these steps off and on all day until bedtime where I will find that nice, warm, comfy down comforter and slip off into dream land where I will chase a mouse or a rabbit until I wake up again and begin with step number one. ;)


This picture is my two furry babies asleep on the over sized chair. I found both of them like this today. They lead a really "ruff" life.

To bad I don't believe in reincarnation. But I'm just saying....if I did....I would be one of these guys. ;)

Favorites

This is some of what I did today besides laundry. And, who wants to see that stuff when I know you all have some of that yourselves. :)

My husband and daughter were watching the new American Girl movie, Carissa, on tv. My oldest daugter was visiting with her Nana today. My doggie was asleep on the couch and my kitty was asleep on the floor beside me. And, here I was. I put the fire on, brewed some yummy strong coffee, pulled up my magazine basket with all of my favorites, turned Big Band Swing music on to listen to and parked myself in my husbands desk chair in front of the fire. Ahhhhhhhhhh. I, for a moment, forgot about all the worlds troubles and stresses and just sat. I don't do this very often for some reason. Not sure why. But when I do, I enjoy it so much. It was a very nice hour or so to myself.

I hope that you found some time today to do something nice for yourself.

A daughter who knows her mama well

My youngest daughter took a trip last week to a childrens museum by our small town. Her sitter took her on their last day of Christmas break that they spent together. There was a little arts and crafts area at the museum. That is one of her favorite places to spend time. She seems to of been bitten by the "craft bug" to, or have that "craft gene" I have spoken of.

Anyhoo...this is what she made for her mama. A snow lady. She pointed out to me that she put a necklace on her, since I always wear a necklace and she put an apron on her to, since I wear aprons around here.

Thanks sweetie!

Mad I say....completly mad!

Remember me mentioning in one of my last posts that I made a fleece scarf for my nephew's birthday? Well, it seems that the other members of my family want one now to. So, after a trip to Hobby Lobby yesterday and everyone had a chance to pick out their fabric, I made four scarfs today. My husbands is almost like my nephews, Illini with basketballs and footballs. My eldest daughters is pink and white Illini fabric with just "I's" all over. My youngest daughters is black with fuschia pink and turquoise and lighter pink shades with kitty's all over and words that say "kitty and meow." Liked hers so much, I made myself one just like it. :)

With the extra fabric that I had cut off the end piece, I tied it around my kitties neck just to see if he would like a scarf. This is him modeling it for you. What do you think? Doesn't the pink match so nicely with his chocolate brown fur?






HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! I can hardly contain myself. I sent the picture to my sister and this is what she had to say back to me........


"YOU need to get out of the HOUSE! You're going mad! I can't believe the cat tolerated that."

Well................. we have had a lot of no school days due to the holiday and due to the snow days before the Christmas break. It probably is a good thing that the kids go back to school tomorrow and I go back to work. I need to get out of this house. HA!

Have a lovely week! ;)

And then he was 10!

My nephew turned 10 years old today! It does not seem like ten years ago he came into our lives. Boy, did he make a grand entrance too! You see, he was born in a blizzard. I don't believe there has been that bad of one since either around here. My sister gave me the privilege of being in the room with she and her hubby when he came into this world. My sister went into labor on New Years eve. Just started. As new years day went on....things progressed more and more. When the snow began to really fly, we headed to the hospital, which was 40 minutes or so away from our house. It was difficult to get there, to say the least. As I recall, 16 inches of snow fell that night! He came in hardly no time at all when she began to push. I remember being so proud of her! She worked hard and quick to get him out. She knew how bad I wanted to see this little fella! I guess she wanted to see him pretty bad too. :)

So fast forward ten years. We had his birthday party tonight at my mom and dad's house. As tradition has it, the birthday person gets to pick the dinner. He chose a fish fry with all the fixings. YUM OH!! And for dessert, he picked homemade apple pie. Gotta love that kid!!!!

His auntie made him this cute Illini scarf for keeping the winter chills out. I think he liked it!

And his most favorite gift of all was this train set from Nana and Papa. Let's just say that his mama was a tad less than thrilled with this idea.....but hey.....this kid loves it....so being the good mama she is......he's keeping it. :)

So there you have it. A wonderful day with some of my most favorite people celebrating a darling nephews very special 10 year old birthday! Love you buddy, from your most favorite and wonderful Aunt. :)

Happy 2009

Well...I hope that 2009 has been good to you so far. It has already been a busy one for me. My daughters wanted to swap bedrooms. They asked me about two or so months ago if we could do it. My husband, who hates to move furniture - let alone two entire rooms of it, said that he would help us. Well, today was the day we were all here with nothing to do and we tackled the big move. WOW! It was a lot of work....but I think they are pleased with the results. Both rooms now need to be painted and a couple things need to be bought like another closet organizer and a new light fixture and a new shelf. Just to name a few. Isn't that the way that projects go though....one thing turns to another to another to another....... Or is it just me?

One of the gifts my youngest daughter got for Christmas, because I knew that she was going to have big sissy's room and it is a tad cooler than hers, was an electric mattress pad. I thought it might be a bit nicer than a blanket. I turned it on about 20 minutes before bedtime so it would have a chance to warm up a bit. Tonight is the first night that she has used it and when she crawled into her bed she said "Ahhhhhhhh mama!" So, I guess she likes it! :) When we walked into her room for her to get in bed, this is what I found.....




It appears that someone else in the family likes the warm bed too! HA! He had his little furry head resting on her blankie and he was zonked! I just love it when I find him doing something so silly and cute like this. Puts a smile on my face every time.

Another thing I did today was sew a little birthday gift for my nephews birthday tomorrow. I hope he likes it. I will show you a picture of it tomorrow. It did turn out cute!

And, one more thing I did today was make some soup. My husband loves to hunt and he had a opportunity to go hunting with a gentleman from church yesterday. He went bird hunting and got five quail. They are sure little birds. He brought them home and cleaned them for me (because that is really yucky to me.) I roasted them in the oven this evening and we turned them into quail soup! It actually was my chicken noodle soup but made with the quail instead. It turned out pretty good. I was very thankful that he had the opportunity to go hunting and spend the day with a Godly man from church whom I respect very much. He is a very kind gentleman and his family is just the same. It is good for my husband to spend time with people like that. :)

So today I started my new year with things I love to do.....moving furniture, cooking, sewing and smiling at my kitty. So far so good 2009.