and other important things
On a complete fluke I decided to try to upload a photo.
Here is our newest baby. She is part Nigerian and yes, those ARE blue eyes!
I am going to post this and then rush to upload the other photos that have been languishing in the photo bin.
Even if I don’t get to posting about them all right away, they will still be here in the media library if I have trouble uploading again!
Did anyone see where January went?
I know there was a month between December and February. I am sure of it. I did some pretty neat things and saw some long nearly-lost family. It just didn’t seem to make it here.
I have photos for the blog. I just can’t seem to get everyone to play nice so I can share them. It also seems that I can’t find/make the time to drag the images to someone else’s computer to drag them here. It kind of takes the fun out of things.
We are still here and getting things done, even if you can’t see them!
Why do I do this?
I am up trying to figure out how to convert a white shirt in to a Lab Coat. My precious Little Miss finally decided what she wants for Christmas. She wants to be like Doc McStuffins. (Totally cool new Disney character, and I hear she’s bumping Dora for the most popular!)
I do believe Santa is going to be bringing her the items one would need to be a good stuffed animal doctor. Now she will need a medical bag, the afore mentioned lab coat, and a Big Book of Boo-Boos to record all of her findings.
At least I was smart enough to hit the thrift shop for a pre-made shirt! Lord love a duck and a quack like me!
Here is to a Merry Christmas!
Now where is that eggnog and an 18 inch zipper???
Well, I’m having some technical issues with WordPress & my blog. It seems to think the operating system on the iMacasaurus is a bit antiquated. It will still let me post words, but it’s not wanting to upload photos.
I’ll see if I can get some photos to load from Mom’s computer and work them in from there. Until then, I hope you all enjoy Christmas break and have a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!
Who says quilt tools are only good for fabric? Alton Brown always says your kitchen gadgets should be multi-taskers. I’m not sure this is what he had in mind.
I needed to cut the bread dough for the FanTan dinner rolls in fairly symmetrical bits for the construction of these Thanksgiving favorites. Last year’s batch tasted fine, but looked atrocious. Enter the acrylic ruler and a pizza cutter. Perfect 1.5″x 1″ squares!
This year’s batch looks much better and they taste just fine.
Happy Thanksgiving!
A bit late, but I just downloaded the camera to get the pictures.
Our own pumpkins were still green, so we went to the local pumpkin patch. It was pouring rain and the pumpkins were pretty well picked over, but we found one that would work.
Little Miss picked the face. Dad cut out the top and started the gut scraping. Em got to fish out the guts. Yum!
Here is the finished face. He was officially named Happy Happy Happy. He certainly appears to be. He is even now making the chickens extremely happy.
Em decided she wanted to be a dinosaur for Halloween. The pattern looked simple enough. I even read through the directions before I agreed to make it. How wrong I was. This pattern was, hands down, THE worst pattern I have ever tried to make. The directions were horrible. Who decides to make & stuff a four foot long tail and then have you construct the costume around it? I finally smartened up, used my common sense and unstuffed it to finish the construction. When I did finish the tail I added an elastic strap at the end of the tail so she could keep it from dragging in the mud. I didn’t stuff the tail to the same fullness they wanted either. There was no way she was going to be able to sit in a chair or the car with that monstrosity.
That being said, I think the costume turned out well for all of the problems I had. More importantly, she loved it! It looks pretty stylish with the polka dot rain boots too! You know all of the trendy dinos will be wearing them now!
We went to the local Trunk or Treat at the Improvement Club. A nice way for the kids to get to see each other’s costumes and not be out on the back roads in our area trying to trick or treat. We did stop in at the neighbor’s house as she really loves to see the neighborhood kids in their costumes. We also followed that up by donning the costume again on Thursday for a Trick or Treat trip to Nana & Grandpa’s after our speech appointment. Fun was had by all.
Thankfully that costume is big enough for next year too! Whooo Hoo!
My daughter prefers to play on the floor, so the knees of her pants take a beating. It seems the that the left knee is the first to wear out leaving the rest of the pants in fine condition. I can’t send her to school in pants with holes in the knees. I am sure that the school does not care, but I just can’t do it. Blame the Grandmothers, all of them, on both sides of the family, as many as I can remember personally, and possibly more than that. I can just imagine those disapproving glares if I even thought about it.
So, in an effort to make a knee patch look like something fun to wear, I came up with this solution. I’ll share it with you in case you need to patch some things up.
Wash the article of clothing before you begin. For the knees of jeans I have found it easier to undo the side seam of the pant leg for access to the tear. Getting to the spot to be patched is often the hardest part.
I find a shape that will cover the tear and give some good jeans material around the edges. In this case a heart and a star. I have some quilting templates here, but cookie cutters or any other easy shape will work.
For fun I picked a couple of cotton prints to make the shape stand out. I use a scrap of polar fleece as the actual patch material. It is soft on the knees when playing for hours on the floor. I put the cotton facing out the tear and then the polar fleece behind. I have the patch cover the entire width of the front pant leg piece. This makes it less likely that another blow out will occur in nearly the same spot.
Pin the patch on and stitch around the design. On the star I stitched with a tight zig-zag. With the heart, I did a couple of passes around the shape with a shortened straight stitch and a zig-zag row a bit farther out. Two rows of stitching seem to keep the patch from shifting and make it look more decorative. I then stitched the outside edge of the patch to the pants leg to keep it from flopping around inside the pant leg. Again, the large sized patch helps reenforce the weakened fibers at the worn through knee. Once the shape has been stitched, I trimmed the torn denim back to the design edge to make it look less like a repair and more like fashion.
While I was at it, I lengthened the pant legs. When I un-stitched the cuffs there were obvious wear marks and color differences in the denim. To help disguise this I added a couple rows of decorative ribbon. Again, not difficult, but I do suggest stitching down both sides of the ribbon for a more finished look. If you need even more length, a row of cotton eyelet lace could be added, but adding lace should probably fit the personality of the girl. I did see some cool dinosaur, race car, and dump truck trims if you are going to try this for a boy. Remember to stitch up the bottom edge for a narrow hem.
When re-stitching the side seams a serger certainly comes in handy, but a wide zig-zag with one or two rows of straight stitching along the seam line will do just fine.
These pants now have a few more months of school wear before being relegated to farm pants when the other knee goes. She actually looks for these pants to wear first during the week. I guess the patch job was a success then!
OK, I’m not sure how they ended up in Missouri, but here are a few that have been missing.
One of my quilty sisters, Sandy, from Missouri apparently found a few of my marbles at her place. Thank you so much for sending them back!
The package actually was a bright point in my day. I had received a call that morning that my grandfather had been admitted in to the hospital. He is battling Parkinson’s disease. As a man who has been in control of his life for as long as I can remember, this is probably the hardest thing for him to have. He is fighting, but it is a loosing battle.
Thankfully after all of the tests, it is just the progression of the disease that caused his problems, and not a stroke or a heart attack. While it hard to be thankful for a continued diagnosis of a disease that slowly debilitates a loved one until they can no longer function, at least there are not other, more imminent, threats to his life as well.
So thank you Sandy for sending me a few of my missing marbles on a day when I needed them.
Now, most of us would not look at this Costco pack of toilet paper as anything but something to put away under the cabinet.
So far it has been an iceberg, a diving board, an Olympic medal podium, a raft for several stranded stuffed friends, and now finally, when coupled with an inflatable foot stool from IKEA, a chaise lounge of the finest redneck fashion. All of this creativity occurred before 10 AM.
These are the things that happen so often in my daily life with the Little Miss, that I don’t think to photograph them. Daddy, however, about busted a gut trying not to laugh when he came in and saw this. He wanted to get a picture of it, probably to torture her with later as a teenager. While I didn’t get the full effect of her lounging captured on film, you can see the intent.
Welcome to the funny farm!
We have come to the end of haying season here. In the past I have been left really short on hay if I waited until September to get all we need. So now I get enough during the main hay season to ensure that I have plenty to get through the winter. This year we were able to get a third cutting in before it rained! Bonus!
My husband was off with the guys that Saturday, so I invited Mom to come along for the trip. She got to drive the truck and trailer through the field while Em, Vincente (hay-farm helper), and I loaded the trailer with last 100 bales of the season.
Eric helped Em & I unload the trailer Sunday morning. I’m not sure the hay girl was really awake yet, but we weren’t moving hay without her supervision!
This stuff is soft and green and the girls eat it like cotton candy! I am going to have to mix it in with the second cutting to keep them from wolfing it down about as fast as I put it in the feeder. There wasn’t a blade left in this feeder by morning.
