Baby Quilt

I used a charm pack to make a quick gift for a cousin's little girl's 3rd birthday.  It was a perfect size for a car quilt.  It was fun

Really

I enjoy writing and blogging .. but why don't I do it?

I enjoy working out .. but why don't I do it?

I like to watercolor .. but why don't I do it?

I like to quilt ... but why don't I do it?

I like to scrapbook .. but why don't I do it?

What DO i DO with my time?   There is only so much time in any given person's life ... so why do I choose to waste my time doing nothing productive?  

Why can I recognize that I'm wasting my time ... but I dont DO anything about it?

Wouldnt the motivating factor be the fact that I've lived through great loss ... great grief ... yet not even that motivates me to DO?

A new year is fast approaching ... and another list of Resolutions.  I think I should make a DO list. 

I should DO it ...

see, even as I talk about it ... I am giving myself an out by saying "should".

I will motivate Me. 

One day at a time.

Quilty Goodness

 

Finally finished my Square Polka Quilt.  Wish I had binded it in black, but I used the red and yellow that was in my stash instead. 

Speaking of binding a quilt… that’s the part I dislike the most.  I finally just zig zagged it on and got finished with it.  It isnt perfect, but its complete!

Time Flies

Time has flown by since I last posted. Our summer and early fall have been full of fun!






Like ... camping ...

And ... county fairs .. (my son and my dad are on the top of the ferris wheel!)

and ... motorcycle bike rally with my hubby...

And more camping ... with great friends in a different state!

Just this week, I've gotten some quilt work done ... and have half of my polka dot quilt quilted one direction. I hope I can finishi this week and post pictures!

I'm eager to see what fall /winter will bring!

Yikes!

Wow, summer is busy and I never blog! Who would have thought that I'd be too busy to write/talk!! ha!

We got a pop up camper at the beginning of summer. We've taken it out on one trip, and then summer got HOT and we just dont enjoy camping in 100 degree weather! So we're planning and anticipating camping a lot in early fall through about November! We love the camper, it's a Starcraft 2108 ... with an air conditioner, bathroom, shower, sink, small refrigerator, and small stove. It's got all that we need! It doesnt have a lot of floor space, but that's okay with just the 3 of us!

I have lots of goals for the summer.

1. I finally worked out how to free motion quilt on my old Singer sewing machine. Having the embrodery or darning foot made all the difference! Now I dont get a nasty mess of thread underneath my quilt sandwich. So I plan on practicing and practicing and practicing free motion quilting so that I can do full size quilts at home!

2. Working on a bed quilt for Happy. I'm using lots of blues, reds, greens, yellows... and also using some of his 100% cotton shirts/shorts. some of them I could cut out the perfect size piece with a shirt pocket in the middle! It will be SO dadgum cute when it's all together. I'm doing Vestibule pattern ... stars for the little star in my life!

3. Quilt the Polka Squares Quilt.

4. Continue to lose weight. I lost about 50 pounds over the past 3 years, but lately I've slacked off and stayed at the same weight. I'm ready to put myself back into gear and lose the next 50! I've gone from wearing 3x shirts to a 1X, and I've recently bought a pair of pants in the regular size department instead of plus size! Wahhooo... now to get down to a nice small, REGULAR size!

Here's some pictures of my sewing room ...

Cutting board, and stacks of white squares for Happy's Quilt.

My sewing table ... complete with a mess!

Swans

I've always wanted to see swans in the wild. I always figured they just didnt look all that natural in a zoo setting. And recently I went with my Mom and Happy to see some swans that migrate each year to a lake north of us. It was a great day with my Mom and Happy, and we saw so many beautiful swans!
I've got a ton of photo's from our day trip. There are several that I'd like to do a watercolor painting of. One of these days, I'll have time!

I have started on Happy's bed quilt. It's going to be a vestibule pattern (or morning star). I'm still in the cutting stage ... lots of rectangles, squares! I'll show picture progress soon.

Pet Peeves

1. Clean your children's finger nails and toe nails. Seriously. If they are under 5 , then chances are that their childcare provider sees the dirty, long nails and it's gross. And it looks unkept. And it's gross.

2. If you have a child that naps at school/day care ... please do not send them there wearing shoes that light up when they stomp. At naptime, they will want to stomp to see the shoes light up. Same thing about the new shirts that light up when they move ... its distracting and gets inthe way of settling down for nap.

3. If you have a child that wears pull-ups ... please only send the kind to school that have the velcro sides. If you send the kind that dont have velco sides, then we have to take off pants, and shoes every time your child needs a pull up changed ... it is annoying!

4. Dont send your child to school carrying loose change, because they think it's cool to have money. It's a choking hazard and it's dirty.

5. If you are a parent dropping off your child to school or day care .... keep it simple, and quick! The longer you stay and comfort, the harder it is when you leave. If you kiss, hug and reassure that you'll be back later .. and leave ... they are almost always better within 5 minutes!

Okay. I feel better.

:)

Long time .. no blog!

I dont know what has happened with my inability to post a new blog. I have lots of ideas ... lots of pictures ... but no time. :) Well, okay .. ... since I last posted I have become addicted to Facebook. Sigh. It's true. And, my son has become enamoured with Lego video games (okay, okay .. me too .. i love Lego Indiana Jones).

So here's some pictures and an update .. and I'm going to cut back my Facebook time!

There's always a tell-tell sign that spring is coming .... when my kitchen window ledge looks like this: A fresh picked daffodil, the "mapple" tree seedling, a violet and a rose root cutting from the early fall.

This is my pitiful little sewing space ... it's messy and unorganized. But I sure love my space. It's a dedicated space for sewing, and I can leave things out and stop and go and not have to worry about my sewing stuff being all over the kitchen table! I'll reorganize and show a picture soon!

Here are some quilts (and tops) that are draped over a headboard that we're not using right now. My goal is to finish the tops this year!

Life is good! I'll start posting more!

First quilt of the year

I'm so excited that I finished my first quilt of the year, on January 1st! I had the top finished for ages and it just layed around folded up. Lately, I'm just freezing cold at night watching TV and I wanted to use THIS quilt as a snuggly couch quilt. So, by golly, I decided I would do what my grandmothers and those before us did ..... if you want a quilt, quilt it! I realized I didnt have to wait to rent time on the longarm to do fancy quilting on this lap quilt. I realized I could do like ages before have done ... just utilitarian quilt it on my machine at home.

My sweet Mom came over and helped me lay out the backing, the quilt batting (bamboo!) and my quilt top. And we spray basted it together. The spray baste worked great! We were able to smooth the quilt, reposition it if necessary and it still stayed basted together. And after I wallered and folded and rolled the quilt to get it through my little 13 year old Singer machine ... it was STILL basted together!

I did a straight divided line pattern for quilting. My seams are all wavy and not straight, but I love it like that. I've washed the quilt and dried it, and it's nice and wrinkly and soft now.

It's the perfect couch, snuggly, throw quilt. Ahhh... Thanks for helping Mom!

:)

And I feel like I can do more like this at home and love them all! I have one more quilt top that is finished that needs quilted ... and then two old quilt tops that were my grandmother's that I want to finish as well. Then I need to work on doing Happy's quilt .. and get one made for my sweet nephew too.

The year has just begun!

Apple Seed

A few weeks ago, Happy and I were eating a Gala apple. When I was cutting it, a small seed fell out. Happy asked what it was. And being the eternal teacher that I am .... told him all about how it is a seed and it could grow into an apple tree. Well, Happy wanted to plant it and see. So I put the seed in between a few layers of moist paper towel, put that into a sandwich baggie and plopped it up on our kitchen window sill. After a week, I looked in there ...and lo and behold... it had rooted!

So then we planted it in a little pot ... and look what's happened in a week! We officially have an apple tree seedling! Happy looks at it each day and says "Look at my Mapple Tree!!!" (i dont know why he puts an m at the front of apple .. but its darn cute and I never correct him!).

I'll try and keep posting pictures of the seedlings and hope it keeps growing!!

Teacher gifts

Ahhhh, I love Christmas being a teacher. It was fun to get some teacher gifts today ..... :) Is that bad to say out loud? I know everyone that's a teacher probably thinks it .... but I never hear anyone say it too often!

And the interesting thing to me, is that I didnt care if I got a gift or not ... and so when I did get something it was just a nice surprise .. and the ones that didnt get me anything, I still love just as much. So for those of you that cant get a teacher gift for your childs teacher ... it's totally okay. :)

We finally got our Christmas tree tonight. It was fun for Happy ... and he loved going through the ornaments and saying "coool!" and "awesome" when he found neat ornaments that looked like toys.

Not too long till Christmas. And I think I'm ready.

I have two weeks off school, but I'm working part time at a retail store during that time. But I sure hope I get enough home time to work on quilting my batik quilt top. I'm going to try and do it on my home machine and just do diagonal lines. I want that quilt for a lap quilt in the living room .. so I'm not to picky on the quilting for it. I kind of feel like my grandmother and those before her probably felt ..... needed a quilt, made it ... and quilt it up and bind it and use it!

M

I'm usually a very late decorator for Christmas. We love having a real tree, but really hate the mess and watering .... so we wait until a week or so before Christmas to get the tree and put it up. Usually I just wait and put any decorations up until we get our tree.

But this year ... I jumped the gun and did it "early". Ha! I know people that have had their stuff out for weeks. i've only put things up on my mantle ... but I love it. The clutter of all the Christmas decorations drives me nuts, but this year if I do it simple ... it wont bother me like in previous years!

We'll have two trees in our house. One will be our real tree that we get the week before Christmas ... the other is our white artificial tree that is a Memorial Tree in memory of my daughter. In 30 more years, maybe my house will be covered in trees at Christmas! :)

Happy Day

This is our Thanksgiving Day lunch. We had 7 people here, and my brother had to work and wasn't able to be here ... but we loaded up a large tupperware container full of food for him when he gets back in!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving day. I cooked the whole spread and I love doing it! I love planning the meal (which, is the same each year..haha) and I love planning out the time frame of when I need to start each dish. I love setting my table with my same old dishes, that dont all match ... and my cute serving dishes that I got at our wedding 13 years ago ... and my new wal-mart red table cloth. It was fun to create a large meal and have my family come over to eat with us.

Happy was sweet, and told me "Man this is good Mom! You did good!" And my nephew, who is 10 tomorrow!, ate more than I've seen him eat in a long while! He praised my cooking too. I love feeding those two boys!

After lunch, the boys played outside and created some art for me....

My nephew created the one above.

My son created the one above ... it says Mom. My nephew said that Happy wrote it himself... but I'm thinking he must have had some help!

I think this sums up how I feel. All done. :)

I'm so thankful for my family. I'm thankful for being able to have a large meal, a home to cook it in and all my old dishes and stuff that I take for granted every day. I'm thankful Happy and my Nephew are healthy and happy and full of energy. I'm thankful that I've got the best group of friends ever. Heck, I'm just thankful to be here!

Terrible Twos and Terrible Threes

A throw size quilt top that's been finished for a while. I have some fancy bamboo batting, and a pretty red batik for the backing..... but no time to quilt it. I may just do an easy diagonal on it using my home machine. I just want to use it in my living room during the winter, so it doesnt have to be fancy!

I've always said that I think that the terrible two's are NOTHING compared to the Three's. As Happy is fast approaching Three, it's becoming more and more evident that my theory holds true for him as well. :)

My preschool class was a mess today. We had 16 two year olds (some are almost 2 and some are almost 3) ... and it's the week before a good long Thanksgiving break. I dont know if they are just tired of the everyday routine and I need to change things up a bit? Or are they just tired, period, and the everyday routine is a good stable thing in their lives? I tend to lean towards keeping things the same each day, but adding some new behavior management techniques.

I feel like I probably need a new behavior management technique for myself sometime. Wouldnt it be nice if we could just decide that we needed a change in our routine, and it is magically accomplished and everyone obliged us and did things a new way? :)

It helps to look back at Happy's baby picture in the post below, and remember that he's still just little ... and he'll only be little for such a short while. And all those little ones in my class, are just special and little for a short while too.

Heck, tomorrow .... we're going to play with Shaving Cream on the tables! :)

Tired

Here's Happy when he was a baby .... look at that chub!! He's skinny now and all grown up ... well, as much as a 2 3/4 can be!

Teacher work days are hard! We had a lot of labeling and rearranging and cleaning to do, to get ready for a consultation for our environmental rating for special accredidation. I dropped Happy off with Grandmama and PawPaw at 7:30, got to work at 8 and finally left work at 4:30 .... picked up Hubby at home, then met everyone for BBQ and a local place that's really good.

So now I'm tired. And Lazy. And all I wanted to do was watch Survivor when we got home. Well, Happy got the living room TV and played a video game (yes, he's almost 3 and loves video games) and Hubby got the bedroom TV and watched football. He offered to turn the channel, but I got busy sorting through my old file's and declined. At least I got some clutter cleared off!

A friend has been talking about cleaning and decluttering on her blog lately. And I think it's rubbing off on me. Thanks, friend! :) I can see more of my bedroom floor than I've seen in weeks! I have tomorrow off work, so hopefully with a 3 day weekend I can get some more cleaning done!

Potlucks and Work Days

I'm not a fan of potlucks. Am I the only one? (well, I know my Mom isn't a fan of them either ... is it inherited! ha! ) Usually I pick at whatever I get at a potluck, and wonder if they are clean cookers .... did they scratch their butt and then knead some dough? Pick their nose, then test the cookies? I should probably get over it, but I won't! :)

Tomorrow is teacher work day. No kids at school! Whoo hoo! But, to be honest, I'm secretly (not such a secret now!) excited about teacher work day! I can't wait to have a whole day to work on my classroom .... clean out the teacher closet, organize our art supplies, label the shelves, clean and sanitize the rooms and toys and cots, and work on next month's curriculum and lesson plans.

But, along with teacher work day .... comes a Potluck. Sigh. I'm bringing green bean cassarole. I'll just cook it in the kitchen tomorrow at school. Least it was cheap to make!

Happy is spending the day with his Grandmama and PawPaw tomorrow. He went to bed tonight asking if he could just go ahead and go now! I know they will have a great time together ... and he's always happy to be there. In fact, he usually asks me to go ahead and leave once we get there!

I'm happy to have a well adjusted, Happy little boy. He sure is sweet.

M

One minute to write

I found this site tonight: http://oneminutewriter.blogspot.com/ and thought it was interesting.

The daily prompt for a minute of writing is, What is your favorite place in your home?

Here goes... start the timer!

My favorite place in my home is either our living room or our kitchen ... and certainly not because of the furniture or the decorating! I love those places in our home, when they are full of Us! I love the rooms because they contain our spirit and love. These rooms are comfortable and warm in the evening. These rooms are Home.

Time's up!

Speaking of decorating ... I bought the cutest red, glittery Merry Christmas sign to go on my mantle. I LOVE that darn sign... well, it's really wooden letters? Anywhooo.. I'm tickled to start decorating for Christmas! And I never decorate for Christmas until the week before!

Hand, foot and mouth disease was in my classroom today. Sigh. We sent the poor boy out as soon as we saw what he had. But I sure hope the damage isn't done and that all my poor 2 yr old's (and Happy in the other class) have gotten it. I'm watching Happy closely, and will be looking at each little one this week to check for signs of it.

The good news is that we're out of school Thurs and Friday for teacher work days! Whoo hoo!

Tonight I made chicken and vegetable stir fry with white steamed rice. It was delish! Tomorrow will either be hot dogs and home made chili or home made taco's and cheese dip (velveeta and rotel).

Later!

Inspired

I love this picture of Happy at the beach. He was so excited to get out there, that he took off down the boardwalk and stopped just as I had my camera ready. I sure did love that vacation with my favorite boys!

I was inspired by a good friend and fellow blogger ... and today I cleaned my room too! I only got the floor at the foot of my bed cleared off ... but the things that were there are now in storage boxes in the garage ready to go in the attic! At least it's progress!

I also created a photobucket account for my preschool class, and thought that I'll take pictures through the year and post it on an account and let the parents have the password so they can see some candid shots of their kids in class!

I'm trying to pack for my girls trip. But all that's in my bag is an extra pair of jeans. I wish I could wear cute clothes ... and afford to buy them! So I'm going to finish packing and get ready for a fun trip ... hey, maybe I'll find some clothes?

Sesame Street

I'm from the Sesame Street generation. But I've never watched Sesame Street quite like I did today! It was rainy during our morning recess time, so we got together with another two year old class and watched some Sesame Street.

Seriously, 20 something 2 year old's all laughed out loud at the words "Bus Stop" All they had to say was Bus Stop and they all laughed. It cracked me up. And I loved to see them smile and laugh and be silly. It was nice to be with the other class too, because that's where Happy is. And during Sesame Street time, he got beside me and asked for "some sugar". I love Mama's Boys.

Because one day, he'll be too big to ask me for 'sugars' when I drop him off at school. So most days, I give him 2 or 3 or more 'sugars'. It's really for both of us. :)

I'm so much better from my 24 hr 10 lb weight loss virus. I'm carrying some immodium on my girls trip just in case, though.

Later!

It is official. I am full of crap.

It's official. I'm full of crap .... exactly 10 pounds. I'm on the tail end of a nasty 24 hr virus, in which stuff was coming out both ends at the same time every hour on the hour through the night last night. When I weighed this morning, I had lost 10 pounds. Wow. Not a diet plan I would want to try again.

Working preschool is tough! Not only is it a fairly high stress job, but now I am getting every little bug and germ that comes through. It's worth it to me though. And I really feel like this is where God wants me to be right now. And that's a good feeling.

We have web-cams in our classrooms. I realized that I was picking my butt the other day in front of the camera, but the class was empty at the time. I had serious panty crawling and had to get it OUT! I'll not make that mistake in front of the camera again ... I know where the camera can't see! hahaha...

Two more days left in this work week .. and then a nice overnight trip with my college girlfriends. It'll be nice to shop, eat, drink and be merry together. We've all had a lot going on in our lives lately, and it's nice to just chill out together and relax.