Sew Many Days

Home Alone

2011-10-20T08:22:00.000-07:00

"Home Alone" was youngest son's favorite movie for the longest time. Grandma had a video and he would always ask to watch it about 5 minutes after he walked in the door. It's one of those movies that on the surface doesn't have a lot of redeeming value and I remember when it came out people thought it might encourage kids to trash their house. However, since I also have watched it many times, I've found that it has pretty good message to share, especially now that I'm "Home Alone".

Youngest son left for college last month and my husband is still working out of town Monday through Friday, so I often find myself alone in our big house. So like the kid in the movie, I've learned to appreciate my family even more. Like him, I think a little about what I might have done to deserve this and my regrets for when I haven't been the best wife or mother. I've learned that there are things I can do on my own that I always relied on someone else to do (at least to take a turn at it). Silly things like always being the one to take out the garbage, emptying the cat box, doing the dishes, and paying the bills remind me that I'm "it", no one else is around to help with chores. I've found that doing what I want, eating when I want, staying up late, etc. isn't really that fun after awhile. I've learned to consider what it's like for people who are always alone in their homes, because they're single or have lost a family member. I've got to admit that I haven't tried to befriend my "hermit" neighbor like in the movie, but I do have more of an appreciation for what life might be like for him.

I'm thankful that this won't be forever. This last weekend everyone was home for a visit and it was nice to once again have someone to talk and laugh with and have the kids friends in and out of the house. At some point my husband will be working from home again and we will have the opportunity to reconnect. I'll be a little different though. I think I've learned to cherish my family more and learned a little more empathy for the lonely people in my life.

A Nice Window

2011-08-30T21:15:00.000-07:00

Isn't this a cool window. It's in the landing of the front stairs at college daughter's new house. She's renting a house with 5 other kids for the upcoming school year. I helped her get the rest of her stuff moved in a couple of weeks ago and then she was back home for awhile. I took her back up to stay last Friday. They found a pretty nice house with 6 bedrooms and a nice kitchen, living room, dining room, etc. It's an older house, but in pretty good repair for a college rental.

I really envy her at this great time in her life. So many opportunities await, lots of interesting classes to take, an orchestra to perform in, and a new boyfriend...etc. I sometimes wish I could do it all over again, and get it right this time, but of course there's some downsides to going to college too. The poverty and stress for example, but I hope she appreciates the good parts.

I take my youngest son, TB, to college on Saturday. The town is only about an hour drive away, but it feels like he'll be a long ways away. It will be quite an adjustment I think, especially considering I'll be home alone with DH working out of town during the week. I'll have no excuses for not having a clean house and keeping up on my projects. I hope it will go okay and I won't be too sad. Another blogger had a great quote the other day and it really made me think about my upcoming circumstances. It is pretty easy to wallow in misery, not so easy to focus outward and accomplish something.

“Generally speaking, the most miserable people I know are those who are obsessed with themselves; the happiest people I know are those who lose themselves in the service of others…By and large, I have come to see that if we complain about life, it is because we are thinking only of ourselves.”

Japanese Garden at Como Park

2011-08-13T08:19:00.001-07:00

On the same trip to St. Paul we visited the Japanese Garden that is just outside the conservatory. It was a nice break from sitting outside in the heat at baseball games. I didn't remember ever walking through there before, but when we told our son that we stopped, he remembered a trip there when he must have been very young. At one point on the trail through the garden you can step on stones to cross the water. He remembered that and thinking it was so cool. I'm sure I was stressed out worrying that he would fall in the water. I was reminded again that I just don't remember things as well as I used to. My husband and I had our 25th anniversary the weekend after this, so we had someone take our picture. If we look like a couple of fat, tired, worn out old-married folks, that's because that's what we are. Ha

After visiting the conservatory, garden, and zoo we went over to our son's house to meet him when he got home from work. We walked from there to Five Guys where we had a delicious hamburger and homemade fries and also peanuts in the shell while we were waiting. It was nice to go out with him and hear about his new job and catch up a little.

The Conservatory

2011-08-11T05:26:00.000-07:00

Earlier in the summer we visited the Como Conservatory in St. Paul while we were in town for the State Baseball Tournament. It was beautiful as usual and since we were visiting mid-week it wasn't as crowded. We also walked through the Japanese garden and the zoo, but I'll save those pictures for another day. This hibiscus and the star gazer lily below were simply huge. I have a neighbor with a perennial hibiscus that is blooming right now; a very beautiful red one and the whole bush is covered with flowers. I have my own lilies too, it's just that the deer like to eat the buds. I had a few that bloomed before the deer got to them.

Good Times

2011-07-21T14:35:00.000-07:00

I just spent a few minutes this afternoon reading back through some of my old blog entries. What a fun way to remember some of the joys and challenges of the past few years. I've gotta say, I impressed myself with some of the entries...nice pictures, thoughts and remembrances....as least that's the way I felt today.

I feel obligated to report that everything is actually going really well with the family right at this moment. It was kind of a rough year or so and 2010 in particular will probably go down as one of the worst years ever, but things seem to be on the right track.

Here's a bit of an update and a few things I've learned to be thankful about-

DH started a new job this week, a regular job where he will get paid and have some benefits. We will never take that for granted after spending several years in under employment with no benefits to speak of. It doesn't mean we weren't working hard, but hard work does not always translate to a steady paycheck and benefits, something I'll always remember before judging others. He'll be doing most of his training out of town, so that will be different, but he will still be home every weekend, so we will make the most of that.

CS (college son), is college son no more having graduated in May. He found a job right away and started work after Memorial Day. There again, feel very happy that he graduated in four years and found a job, with benefits no less. In this economy, that's not a sure thing for new grads and we are really proud of him.

CD (college daughter) finished her sophomore year with flying colors and got a great summer internship that provides a generous stipend, room and board. We've missed having her around, but she has been having a wonderful summer. A new boyfriend in the mix has helped her happiness level a lot, can't wait to meet him. He's a farm boy, so I already have a good impression.

TB (tall beast) is even taller and more beastly and now a high school graduate. He's going to a liberal arts college sponsored by our church denomination that is nearby. He's had a great summer filled with baseball, work, and lots of rest and food. I feel a little like I'm grabbing at his heels as he grows up and will go away to college in such a short time. I'm not looking forward to him leaving, but I know he will do well and it's the best for him.

All of the changes and challenges of the last few months have been stressful, but I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel and feel like we will get through it all just fine. All of it gives me a bit of perspective and helps me to remember that life has it's highs and lows and even at what seems like the lowest, there are those a lot worse off, and always lessons to be learned that obviously aren't easy or quickly learned.

A Few Quilt Projects

2011-03-29T10:42:00.000-07:00

I finally had a quilting frenzy to finish some projects for three different silent auctions. One was for our church youth, one for the high school band, and one for a benefit our school's athletic trainer who is battling cancer.

I'm on Spring Break this week and trying to enjoy it, but a cold and cold weather are hampering it a little. I'm also so jealous of several families who are taking fabulous vacations during break. It is nice to have some extra time though and I've gotten a few little projects done around the house despite not feeling the greatest.

Where has the time gone?

2011-01-30T17:34:00.000-08:00

I had a busy, but good weekend and I've spent a little time tonight catching up on reading some of my favorite blogs. I'm happy to see that I'm still listed on a couple of blogrolls despite the fact that I haven't blogged for 4 MONTHS!

Our college kids were home this weekend and it was nice to spend some time with them. We watched a movie at home Friday night and did some shopping and went out to a movie on Saturday. The girls went to "The King's Speech", which we really liked. The guys went to "True Grit", which they enjoyed as well.

Today we had our annual meeting a church, so I was busy with serving the lunch and DH presided at the meeting. He has finished his term as church president, so whoo-hoo for that! A few less meetings for him to attend.

I don't have any quilt pictures to post although I have been doing a little block making. I haven't completed anything for months with the exception of my block of the month blocks, so I'm a little ashamed of that. It seems like its easy to waste time in the winter and days go by without a lot of productivity going on.

We've had an incredible amount of snow this year and many cold and gray days, so Spring will be very welcome. I hope the next four months go by quickly as well, and no promises, but perhaps a quilt picture will appear in this space. Blessings to you all!!

5 days down, 175 to go

2010-09-13T20:24:00.000-07:00

I made it through the first week of school unscathed. The first week is always good, the kids are nice, the teachers too frazzled to really pay much attention to some of the details that drive me crazy, the principal still on "politician running for office" mode. We will see where it goes from here. I've actually applied for a couple of other positions, not sure whether I really want either of them, but it would be more money. DH has another interview next week, so I'm hoping for the best there too.

On the quilting front, I joined another block of the month group with my girlfriends. So the first Friday or Saturday of the month will have us making the rounds of the two shops to get our blocks. It keeps me sewing any way and it's quite cheap if you can avoid the temptation to buy something each month, something I've gotten really good at. I'll try to post some pictures soon.

TB's football season has gotten off to a good start and they've won their first two games. This last Friday, the game was called for lightning right before the first half and they had to continue on Saturday night. It was the cross town rival, so it was a good win.

That's about all that's new, I'll try to post some quilty pictures soon.

Moving along

2010-09-02T11:44:00.000-07:00

Where has the summer gone?? I guess I've kind of lost interest in the whole blogging thing, hence my lack of posts, although I do still keep up with reading my favorites. We spent the last few days helping our two older kids get moved to the apartments they're going to have for this year in college. I told our daughter that it would be nice if she stayed there for the next three years, especially since I plan on taking another load of heavy things up in a few days. Our son is living in the worst house imaginable. I can't believe what it's like for the rent he has to pay! You'd have to pay me that much to stay in that house, so I told him he didn't have to worry about us wanting to stay overnight or anything.
It has been a summer with many transitions relating to our children, aging parents, job and financial situations, and just life in general. Also a summer of highs and (mostly) lows, but I guess that is what life is like. When I was younger I guess I didn't view things as "big picture" as I do now. "Big picture" we're doing great...we have our health, kids doing okay, nice home, etc. Get out the microscope though and things aren't so hot. It's funny how many things come down to finances, especially when you don't have a lot, but it's true. I still have the hope that things will turn around for us though, so I guess you never know. I also know I'm not alone with this, but in our little circle that doesn't help. Okay, I'm starting to ramble, so I'll wind this up with one of the highs of our summer, a new great-nephew. I made him this little quilt.

Sweet Summertime

2010-07-12T12:24:00.000-07:00

It feels like summer is really here for me. I worked my last day at the garden center on Friday and had a nice weekend culminating in the first free concert of the summer last night. Today I've been catching up on house things, laundry and such, and next on my list is a visit to my neglected sewing room. I have many projects to complete, so that is on my agenda for the rest of the summer. I probably should be looking for another job, but I think I'll just keep an eye on the postings for the school district to see if there's anything there I'd like to switch too. The nice thing about my school job is that I continue to get paid monthly throughout the summer whether I'm working or not. One of my coworkers retired this spring so that she could spend more time with her grandkids. I hope that will be me someday; retirement won't come a day too soon for me. Unfortunately, I think I'm looking at many more years before that happens. Anyway, I made her this little quilt and had everyone at school sign the back. She seemed to really like it and I thought it was pretty summery and a little retro too.

Bleeding Hearts

2010-05-16T18:05:00.001-07:00

I took these pictures of some of the bleeding hearts in my garden on a rainy morning awhile back. I really like how they turned out and I enjoy the many places that the bleeding hearts turn up in my yard. The purple flowers in the background are a variety of lamium, also known as dead nettle. I think dead nettle is a terrible name for a flower, so I prefer lamium. I'm learning the names of lots of flowers here lately since I've started working at a local nursery and garden center. It has been a very busy time. Between that and my job at school, I just worked a 19 day stretch, had yesterday off and now have a 12 day stretch in front of me. It's not seeming like the greatest idea at this point, but I do get paid tomorrow, so we'll see how I feel then. I don't want to get into a long complaint about our financial woes, but suffice it to say that we need the money and then some. ha We got our college kids moved around this weekend, so that is the other reason for my complete exhaustion. CS moved into an apartment so that he can continue working at his internship this summer and CG moved home and will work here. TB keeps busy with baseball, school, taking naps, and mowing lawns. It has been a beautiful day here and I'm really looking forward to more of the same.

I have been sewing!

2010-04-07T07:38:00.000-07:00

Despite the title of my blog, I don't sew many days, only some days. I'm known for going in spurts where I sew like crazy and then take a break and not get any sewing done for quite some time. Recently there were a couple of silent auctions that I wanted to donate quilts for, so I was really busy for awhile working on projects. I made this guitar themed quilt for TB's marching band silent auction. One of my good friends, also a quilter, won the bid. I told her I was happy it went to a good home. The other auction was to raise funds for the kid's summer trips at church. I donated a wall quilt, a table runner, and a fleece blanket. I knew all of the people that got those projects also, so that made me feel good. I'm kicking myself for not taking pictures of them before I dropped them off. I really loved the wall quilt I made, it was hard to part with. I'm a sucker for those bags of scraps from the quilt shop I frequent. I really hit the jackpot with one of the bags, it contained a few partially made blocks and lots of additional scraps from the same fabrics. I finished off four blocks for the wall quilt and also got a miniature quilt for myself. It was mostly Kansas Troubles fabric which I have a new appreciation for now. Here's the guitar quilt and I'll take a picture of the mini and get it up another day. Incidentally, the colors didn't photograph especially well, I think it looked a lot better in person.

Happy Easter!

2010-04-03T14:04:00.000-07:00

It's finally spring here in Minnesota with a few flowers here and there. ( in all honesty this picture is from last year since we're just at the bud stage) I has been wonderful to see the greening grass, robins hopping around, spring rain, etc. We have a family dinner planned for tomorrow after church with a big ham and all the trimmings. CS can't make it however, he's busy working at his new internship job and had to stay back to catch up on school work. We'll see him tomorrow when we bring CG back up to school. TB has started baseball practice, so that keeps him busy these days. DH still has little business, so it's been a long dry spell for him. Hopefully things will turn around soon. I've had a week off from school for spring break, so that has been a much needed break for me. I will find out Monday, but it looks like I might have a job in a garden center for the spring and summer. I think that will be a nice change from the usual, so I 'm looking forward to finding out more about that. Have a Happy Easter Day and enjoy the fine spring weather!!

Frost and Snow

2010-02-13T19:05:00.001-08:00

It's been a cold and snowy winter here in SE Minnesota. It has been nice to see the sun the last couple of days and have the temps get into the mid 20's. Feel like a regular heat wave when the sun is actually melting a little of the snow on the streets. I still haven't felt much like blogging, but I thought it was embarrassing to have a "Merry Christmas" post still up. Enjoy some pictures of the snow and frost seen around my house this week. I'm glad the days are getting longer...at least it's no longer dark when I leave work like it was for awhile. I'll be looking for signs of spring soon, I'm soooo ready!!

Merry Christmas!!

2009-12-24T10:55:00.000-08:00

A Merry Christmas to all of my blog friends! We'll be staying home except for venturing out to church tonight. If the weather permits we'll be making a trip to see family over the weekend. The weather is pretty frightful right now with alternating snow, freezing rain, and sleet so hopefully it will improve. Obviously I've been taking a bit of a break from blogging, perhaps I'll have time for an update now that I'm on vacation from school. It won't happen today as I'm busy with all of the last minute preparations for Christmas. Just passing along best wishes for everyone to have happy holidays with family and friends and to stay warm and safe!!

Hope You're Hungry!!

2009-12-01T08:14:00.000-08:00

I make a pretty fabulous pizza if I don't say so myself. I'm venturing out of my non-blogging atmosphere to try to resurrect my poor blog and what better way than with some food pictures. Pizza number one is Margherita pizza on whole wheat crust. The summer version with fresh basil, tomatoes, and mozzarella is better, but this is still TB's favorite. Pizza number two is Teriaki chicken also on whole wheat. The sauce on this one is half a jar of Ragu alfredo sauce, actually very tasty. I have to leave the good stuff, ie. mushrooms and green peppers, off of part of it since TB doesn't like them. We make homemade pizza almost every week and with just the three of us, we always have some leftovers. Yum!

Fall Happenings

2009-11-14T08:57:00.000-08:00

Although I titled this post "Fall Happenings", there really hasn't been a lot happening worth blogging about. I've just put up a few picture from the past few weeks. Her's the pumpkin College Girl carved when she was home for the weekend. She's had a good transition to college so far, has made friends and seems to be doing okay, so that's a relief.
TB's football team got to play their last game of the season on a stadium with artificial turf, so that was kinda cool and not nearly so messy. Unfortunately they got walloped, TB didn't even get to play, so it was kind of a sad end to the season. He had a good time playing football even though he didn't see a lot of playing time in games due to an injury and inexperience. He was sick again this past week with an H1N1 type thing, but he was over it in about 4 days, so it may have been something else.

One last fall picture from the yard. This bush surprises me with its color every year, waiting til most of the other leaves have fallen. I've done pretty well with the yard work this year hauling many bags of leaves out. Now I just hope it waits awhile longer before we have any more snow.

Next week will be a busy one. Besides the usual activities, DH is making a trip to his parents to tour apartments with them, trying to convince them to down-size before winter. Over the weekend we will go to my mother's to move her out of her house. She wants to go to an apartment, but unfortunately her house has sold and none are available in her small town right now, so she'll move in with my brother temporarily. That's about it for now, I'm hoping for a nice evening by the fire watching my favorite hockey team play. Go Gophers!

Early Snow

2009-10-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

We had an (another) early snow on Friday of about 4 inches. It snowed in big feathery flakes for most of the afternoon. By the time school let out, the roads were pretty bad. I was filling in for the secretary and had to deal with a lot of calls from parents, late buses, etc. A little hectic, but it felt nice to be needed. Saturday brought sunshine and some cool winds, but most of the snow is gone by now. Thought I'd share a few of the pictures I took on Saturday, it was so good to see the sun. Today we had church, spent most of the afternoon with friends celebrating their son's confirmation, and came home to watch last night's hockey game by the fire. So relaxing!

More Quilts

2009-10-14T08:48:00.000-07:00

Here's some more of the beautiful quilts from the show I went to on Saturday. By the way, none of these are mine, I just thought they were worth sharing. The first one below is the same pattern from the block of the month group I just finished (without using the blocks). She did an excellent job on the center applique piece. It is for a child's bed, not something I would do, but it's beautiful. I still haven't gotten any quilting of my own done, but we have a little break from school coming up, so I'll have to then. This is the last day of school we have this week, it will be so nice to have Thursday and Friday off. The weather is STILL supposed to be snowy and cold on Thurs. and Fri. , so perfect days to be in the sewing room. It's supposed to be nice on the weekend, so DH is taking the weekend off from work so we can get some projects done around the house. Mostly outside actually, a few loads of leaves I'm sure, some repairs, etc. I hope it will happen. I've really been feeling in need of a few days off, it hasn't been the best of weeks. One of those where I need a money tree to shake!By the way, can you believe this spiral pieced quilt. It was amazing to look at the planning that must have gone into it. Notice that the fabric matches from the center to the outside despite all of the piecing around it. Wow!

Quilts, Snow, and more

2009-10-12T18:43:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been almost two weeks since my last blog entry. More of the same old, same old around here for the most part. Over the weekend I took in our local quilt show and had a nice lunch with my girlfriends afterward. It was either that or drive and hour to sit in a 30 degree wind and maybe watch TB play football. I felt a little guilty about not going to his game, but he said he didn't care and it was nice to get out with the girls. He ended up playing a lot and having his only reception of the season, so I was sorry to miss that. He also got tackled hard and hit in the helmet so hard he was dizzy, so it's good I wasn't there for that. I might have embarrassed him by asking if he was okay or something. I woke up this morning to see the ground white with snow. It was very depressing to me, I certainly hope some nice fall days return or it's going to be a very long winter. Thought I'd post some of the quilts from the show, it was very inspiring. I hope to make a fall themed wall hanging for over the fireplace soon. I'm thinking about a version of one of the leaf quilts I saw. I took a lot of pictures, so I'll put up some more in a day or so.

An Addiction to Confess

2009-09-29T22:10:00.000-07:00

I confess, I've become addicted to Facebook. Neglecting my blog is just one of the symptoms. I might have to go into treatment of some kind if the symptoms don't start to subside. It all started innocently enough, but now I'm on there way too many times in a day. It has its pluses, chatting with my kids at college is one, but the downside is getting sucked into playing these stupid and addictive games for hours on end. I need to find a balance for sure.

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Things have basically been okay lately, but it's been kind of a roller coaster. Some of the lows: DH getting his hand cut at the shop he works at very part time thereby losing a week of income, TB straining his foot, worries about money, kids, parents, etc. Some of the highs: Kids off to a great start at school, winning the grand prize for my Block of the Month group (free quilting on my quilt), a winning football season, fun times with friends, good health, etc. Pretty much like everyone else I guess, life has it's highs and lows. I'm thankful my roller coaster is an easy one right now with no extreme highs, powerful drops to a valley, or twisty upside down turns!

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Before said injury, DH completed our new kitchen table. He had worked on it on and off for about 8 or 9 years I think. The wood was from a big pine tree that was in the back yard of the house I grew up in on the family farm. The tree we always had our picture taken in front of. It had to be taken down when the old house was moved so that my brother could build a new one on the same site. The wood was rough cut into 2 inch planks and DH did the rest all by himself. It think it turned out great and it will be a nice memory for me- both of the tree and DH's work on the table.

Asters, etc.

2009-09-18T12:03:00.000-07:00

It's been kind of a weird day today. I woke up in the middle of the night not feeling well and attributed it to all of the stuff I had eaten over the course of the evening. I'm too embarrassed to even say what I ate, let's just say it was quite a combination. Anyway, I'm not surprised it woke me up. Then when I got up for real in the morning, I had a bad eye- red and goopy. So I took care of that and it seemed to get a little better. When it was time to go to work, I realized I had locked my keys in the van. About the time I was going to walk to work, DH said "Why don't you take the little car?" Duh, I hadn't even thought of it. So I make it to work, do lunch and recess duty and then realize "I really don't feel well, kinda feverish". So I took my temperature in the nurse's office, and sure enough, I've running a fever. Great. So they sent me home so that I don't infect the whole school with H1N1 or something. Now I'm really aware of just how crappy I feel, so I was happy to go home. Thinking about it now, I really didn't feel well yesterday either. Sooo, what else would I do once I got home but practice taking close up shots of flowers- with bees on them. Umm yeah, that's smart. I think I'll go take a nap now. Happy Friday though!!

Fall Flowers

2009-09-13T16:37:00.000-07:00

It's been a good year for my flowers out in front by the street too. I wish I had more mums, but the phlox, black-eyed susans, and autumn sedum are having a good year. I have some asters for the first time this year. They are nearly ready to open, so I'm anxious to see what they look like. After an early morning at church, it was nice to watch a little football and take a nap this afternoon. Then we went back to church for a book group about "The Shack", a book many in the congregation read this summer. It is always interesting to hear the different perspectives people have on something they've read. Tonight we took a nice walk around the lake. It sure gets dark a lot earlier these days. I wish I had brought my camera along, it was quite picturesque as the sun went down over the lake.

Friday Night

2009-09-12T13:35:00.000-07:00

It turned out to be a really nice day yesterday. I met some friends for some sewing in the morning. I made it through the first week of school and it went well overall. After school, I went out with a few friends from work, came home to some homemade fettuccine alfredo that DH had ready for me, and we headed off to the football game. We always sit with a large group of friends from church, share some candy, and cheer on the band and the football team. All of us have kids in the marching band. I mentioned the budget cuts another time and the fact that the band wouldn't be marching on the field this year. It was part of the reason TB decided to give football a try for the first time. At 6'6'' and 165, he's not exactly built like a football player, but he has grown some muscles and probably improved his speed some. His real goal is to make the varsity baseball team in the spring, so he'll have to keep in shapefor that. I went to a tiny school in Iowa, so the city atmosphere of a cross-town rivalry, fancy band, and danceline are all new to me. It's a lot of fun to watch though and we won the game 32-6. TB watched the action from the sidelines; he would have played in the JV game this morning, but it was canceled, so we'll have to wait to see him play. After the game, we went to one of the friends home for munchies and drinks and ended up visiting until 12:15.

Flowers

2009-09-11T06:10:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of pictures of the flowers on my patio. We have a concrete patio out the back of our house with this brick wall all the way around. It makes for a nice place for flower boxes and pots. They have really done well this summer. Usually by now they are looking pretty dead. I guess starting out with some better fertilized soil and the right amount of rain and sunshine has made the difference. I've just never had geraniums that looked like these-kinda cool. I planted more impatiens this year since they do better in the shade than the petunias, but both are doing well, so it was a surprise.

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It will be kind of a busy day today. I'm getting together with my friends to do some sewing this morning. Haven't decided if I'll actually sew or just bring along some cutting and handwork projects. I have to be to work at noon and everyone else has the whole day, so by the time I get there I won't have a ton of time. My new machine is great, but it's heavy and not very portable, so I don't know if I want to drag it along. TB has his first home football game tonight, so I hope the weather will hold. It's been really nice so far this week and seems nice this morning. After the game we'll get together at a friends house, mostly the same group from this morning plus husbands. It's great to have friends. It will also be nice to have the first week of school done. It's had it's ups and downs, but overall been okay.

Harvest Time

2009-09-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

Well, it's almost harvest time around here. The crops haven't done so well this year though and the produce will be enough to garnish approximately one side salad. Oh for a sunny spot in which to have a real garden. It hasn't been a good year for the food plants on the patio. I've only had enough basil to make pesto once and my regular tomatoes (all two of them) are still green and show no promise of supplying enough for even a BLT. On of these years maybe I'll go back to having a garden plot in the country. I did that many years ago when the kids were little and it was a disaster. The deer ate all of my beets at the moment they were ready to be harvested. The kids ran wild resulting in one really bloody accident involving one hitting the other over the head with a glass bottle. The weeds had a heyday and very little produce of any kind was harvested. One funny memory was that there was a port-a-potty at the garden. Little TB thought it was the coolest thing ever and needed to visit it every time we were there. I'll have to remind him of that. Ah, those were the days. File under "what was I thinking?!!".

Block of the Month and Etc.

2009-09-07T10:44:00.001-07:00

Here's the block of the month for August. You don't have to look at it very hard to see that I didn't do a great job on this one. I got busy trying to finish some other projects for birthday presents for my friends and lost track of time. I put this block together super fast so I could get to the class and get next month's block for free. The deal is that if you show up at class with the previous months block done, you get the next one for free and only pay for the first block. So for both years I've done this I've gotten the entire quilt top for free. I'm cheap that way. Of course many months I've also bought additional fabric, paid for the completer kit, etc., so it's really not all that free. By the way, I didn't get the birthday projects finished either and what I did get done doesn't look the way I wanted. I'm going to sew some button tabs for hanging on the top of these little things and call them good I guess. I loved this "Fruits of the Spirit" fabric and cut the inside block with the sayings from the panel I got. I don't remember the exact name of the fabric line. I tried quilting these with the "hand look" stitch on my machine. I also tried using fusible batting, but it didn't stick for some reason, so I think that's why I have all the puckering. Rats. Hopefully I'll be able to press them out.

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I'm back at work at school tomorrow, so I've been really trying to get caught up on my housework and cleaning before that. I've even cleaned some areas that never get done like under the washer and dryer and under the cushions on the couch. DH just shakes his head and says he should look for an alien pod because it certainly isn't my usual mode. My desk top is even pretty good. I still didn't get that painting project done and haven't done any yard work either. I can't believe how well my flower boxes have done this year. They still look great which is so rare for September. I think it helped that I took out about half of the old dirt when I planted and also planted more of a variety in each box, including impatiens, which have done well. I'll try to get a picture posted of them before it frosts.

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CG and CS seem to be settled in well at college and they start class tomorrow too. TB is doing okay with being the only one left at home, but it is kinda strange to just be the three of us at meals. He's been gone quite a bit for football, so it's been pretty quiet around here. I'm looking forward to the first home game this Friday night and I think we will host the first after the game get together that night. We have a tradition with 4 other couples of getting together after all of the home games.

Still in a slump

2009-09-03T09:11:00.000-07:00

I'm obviously still in a bit of a blogging slump. It's not that there hasn't been anything going on, just that I haven't been able to put into words or pictures anything that seems remotely interesting even to me, my most faithful reader. In the past week we've moved our kids around, gotten the older two settled at college. SD (senior daughter) is now officially CG (college girl). I like that better than college daughter, it has a bit of a super hero ring to it. I'm sure she'll be fine and do great, but there's still that part of me that's sad. I've gotten used to it with CS, but it's hard to have one leave the nest. I'll miss our chats in her room, having a shopping buddy, and hearing about all the everyday things of her life. I told DH that I'd try not to dwell on the sadness, feeling like I've been a terrible parent, and if it weren't for the fact that they're turning out so great, that would be hard to do. Thank goodness for Facebook chat, something I'd recommend for any parent of a college student. Even when they don't have time for a regular phone conversation, we can chat a few sentences, and get by until we can talk.

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We've had our back to school meetings at work and I helped at meet the teacher at school last night. It was great to see the kids and their parents. There are always some older siblings there too and it's fun to see how they've changed. I did find last night though, that it's getting harder to remember names after a 3 month break. It was so irritating to see kids that I know so well and not to be able to think of their names immediately. Yet another sign that I'm getting older and the brain isn't working as well I guess.

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After the busyness with getting things ready for college kids, I haven't accomplished much around the house. Painting projects left unfinished, quilting projects untouched, yard work not done, etc. How depressing! I'm looking at the start of the school year as a time for a new start in a lot of ways. Better sleep habits, more accomplished at home, eating better and exercising, Bible study and devotions, etc. Hopefully I'll do better than I did on the New Year's resolutions.

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I promise better posts to come, I have quilt work that I have to do for my class, TB's football games to attend, flowers ready to bloom, etc. so check back for some pictures and more cheery postings. TTFN!

Writer's Block

2009-08-23T20:40:00.000-07:00

I've been in a bit of a blogging slump lately. Now that I think about it, just a plain old slump all the way around. I haven't been sleeping well for whatever reason, getting a late start on the day, and not accomplishing a whole lot. I guess that means its time to go back to work pretty soon. We have a pretty busy week coming up.....moving CS to his dorm and bringing some stuff back home. Starting up with some of the fall/school activities. Getting SD ready to go off to college. The usual stuff like laundry, cleaning, extras like painting and various household tasks. Anyway, I'm not sure if I'll be posting much for awhile. In the meanwhile, I think I'll try to think of some interesting and blog-worthy topics since my day-to-day stuff just isn't cutting it. Stay tuned!!

What's in a name?

2009-08-17T18:07:00.000-07:00

I just found out there's a blog called Sew Many Ways. She's having a fabric giveaway that I entered my name in. I guess there are probably a lot of sewing/quilting blogs with the play on the "Sew", but I'd never seen one this close. Anyway, if I mention the giveaway here, I get another entry, so go ahead and follow the link. If you don't sew (I just about said "if you're not a sewer" but that didn't sound good-lol) you can give me the fabric. :)

A Couple of Movie Recommendations

2009-08-17T16:28:00.000-07:00

It's been a beautiful day today in Minnesota. Over the weekend we had Iowa-like humidity, wind, and rain. We needed the rain, but it sure made things sticky. I celebrated my birthday on Friday. DH and SD made me homemade beignets (French fried pastries) and chocolate flavored coffee for breakfast. They got the mix for them when they were in New Orleans and had the real thing at Cafe' DuMond. They were pretty tasty, but the deep frying sure made the house stinky for awhile. Then later in the day, DH and I went to a matinee and over to some friends for supper. The girls went and saw "Julie and Julia" and the boys went to "G. I. Joe". My friend and I loved "Julie and Julia" and I would highly recommend it. It was a real feel good movie...a few sad parts, but also a lot of humor and it made me want to go out and get a Julia Child cookbook. I learned a lot about her life; she was quite an interesting lady, and she had a real peach of a husband also.

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The other movie I saw recently on DVD was "Marley and Me". Another good movie, but I'm glad I didn't see it in public because I was practically sobbing by the time it was over. I'm not a big cryer, but this one really got to me. A great story and I don't think you'd have to be a dog owner to appreciate it.

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School is starting in many places, but we're lucky here to not have to go back for three more weeks. My kids and I all start the same day, Sept. 8th, although the college kids have to be on campus sooner than that. The big move in day for them is the 1st, so we'll see how I deal with having two kids in college. Poor TB will be the only one left at home for me to pick on. The poor thing is so tired from football and mowing lawns he probably won't even notice.

Skywatch from Iowa

2009-08-14T07:45:00.001-07:00

Here are a couple of shots I took with my cell phone on my trip to Iowa earlier in the week. I live in Minnesota now, but I grew up on a farm in Iowa. It's nice to get down there this time of year when the crops are at their peak. This summer there has been plenty of rain, so the corn and soybeans are thriving and all of the grass is still green with wildflowers blooming in the ditches. Unfortunately though, a bad hail storm went through about 10 miles to the north of where I was driving causing a total loss in some fields. The weather can be friend or enemy to a farmer. These clouds looked like something was brewing and it was interesting to see the formations change as I drove across the countryside for about an hour. I live in town with a lot of trees in my yard, so sometimes I miss the open spaces, seeing the sunsets and being able to see for miles in any direction. Check out the other Skywatch posts for many varying scenery options!

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In other news, TB is at school getting his football gear today. We were surprised at his decision to play football this year and I hope he will continue to enjoy it once two-a-day practices start next week. Budget cuts in our school district forced a down-sizing of the marching band program in our school to the point that he did not want to participate any more. Too bad, but I hope he will continue to play in the concert band.

Block(s) of the Month

2009-08-13T13:54:00.000-07:00

I've been a really neglectful blogger lately, for good reasons mostly. Anyway, before starting with the obligatory excuse list, here's my blocks for this month. I had to do two this month since the quilt needs 14 instead of just 12. I've also started on the applique portion that goes in the middle of the quilt. It is a large bunch of flowers tied with a bow. Up until last week, I had only done 2 stems, but I got busy and got the rest of the stems put on and also worked on some of the flowers. I was going to do all turned applique, but after doing the stems that way, I decided to just do the easiest way....iron on fusible web, cut out pattern, iron onto quilt, machine applique. It's still pretty time consuming, but it's turning out okay.

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DH and I just got back from a brief trip to Iowa to check on our parents. They have been in the nursing home this summer and now all but his mom are back home. Hopefully she will be well enough to go home in a week or so. The previous week I had a house guest from Monday afternoon until Thurs. afternoon. Then various other things including another trip to the cities, repeated carpet cleaning, insurance and financial wrangling, and then this trip this week. It all has made August fly by and before I know it, it will be time to move the kids to college and go back to work. Yuk. All in all it has been a pretty stressful summer and I hope things will start to turn around a bit for the fall. I guess I shouldn't complain though as things can always be worse. I'm very thankful lately that my back/sciatica pain has completely gone away after three months. I was starting to think I'd be in pain for the rest of my life, it was no fun, but made me more sympathetic to others that have chronic pain.

Thanks!!

2009-08-01T20:18:00.001-07:00

Thanks for visiting my blog! As I mentioned, it's my one year blog anniversary today. I feel like my bulleted posts are very boring and self indulgent, so here's some recent shots of what's blooming in my yard right now to make up for it. First, my Jasmine plant. The little white flowers are so interesting in their design...nature's pin-wheel. Their fragrance on these nice summer days is heavenly.

Then one of my Asian lilies. I got the bulbs from a teacher friend a couple years ago and they have really come up nicely this year. I have several varieties and they all bloom at slightly different times.
Lastly, I think this might be Culver's Root or a variety of Speedwell. Jeanelle had pictures along with a lot of information about something very similar in her blog the other day. Her's were a wildflower and seemed shorter. These grow in a shady part of my yard and are probably close to 5 feet tall. They have quite a nice smell and attract a lot of bees.

Here's a close up, aren't those little balls on the tips cool?

One Year Ago...

2009-08-01T19:55:00.000-07:00

I started my blog. I guess that means it's my blogiversary today. I'm sure it's only a matter of time before that word ends up in the dictionary along with frenemy, staycation, and vlog. As an aside, I wonder if the current definition of "sick" includes the way TB uses it- meaning something that is good in a very cool, surprising, or awesome way. Ha When I was watching golf for a while today, the commentator even described Tiger Woods' 33 foot putt as "sick", so I guess it's catching on or the commentator is actually 16. Anyway, I've had fun with my blog and it's been a bit of a creative outlet which is good for everyone to have. It's been a rather eventful week around here; time for the always loved bullets...
*SD left for a pre-college camp called Nature of Life, a requirement for freshmen majoring in Biology. She had a good time up at Lake Itasca. I told her that she has traveled from the beginning to the end of the Mississippi in less than a week and she said she'd already had that thought.
*My mom was finally able to move home from the nursing home and seems to be doing well now that her neck is healed.
*DH's parents had a bit of a set-back when his mom was admitted to the hospital today with pneumonia. His dad is doing real well, but I'm sure this will prevent them from moving home from their nursing home for awhile. DH is down there visiting this weekend.
*TB started football camp. He's never played football, but wanted to give it a try to keep up his conditioning and try to put on some muscle. At 6'6" he only weighs 165, so he'd like to gain some weight. He has been so happy this week that DH and I can't decide if it's the endorphins or if there's a girl he likes. Ha
*I finished summer school on Thursday. It wasn't too bad, but I'm glad it's over since it started so early in the morning. I deleted my rant about getting a new job since I thought it seemed so lame, but I'm still thinking about it nonetheless.
That's about it, thanks for listening!

New Orleans...vicariously

2009-07-28T09:41:00.000-07:00

DH and my younger two kids got home from New Orleans yesterday. They had a great time, but were very tired. They got in a little sight seeing, attending a lot of large group gatherings, did a lot of walking, and did a service project in the lower 9th Ward in New Orleans. DH was very proud of the group of kids that they worked so hard and cleared 9 lots where other groups cleaned only a couple and quit before lunch time. It's hard to believe that nearly 5 years after Katrina that there is still so much work to be done. This convention, the ELCA Youth Gathering, was the largest convention group to attend in New Orleans since Katrina and numbered around 37,000 people. I'm sure it was a much needed influx of money to the area and each group attending did community service as well, so a lot of work got done. I'm sure a lot of the attendees will be inspired to return and continue helping if possible. A big emphasis of the Gathering was for each person to work for justice in their own community serving the needy, helping others, etc. so I hope that will happen. Anyway, I enjoyed my week at home but didn't quite catch up on all of my work. I've just got two more days of summer school left and then my schedule will be pretty free for completing projects.

Little Sister Quilt

2009-07-23T10:11:00.000-07:00

I finally got some quilting done. This little wall hanging had been practically done since March when my thread ran out when I was quilting it and I never got around to finishing it up. It was supposed to be an Easter/Spring quilt, but as usual that didn't quite happen. I've had the basket of artificial lilacs waiting on the mantle all that time. Ha. I guess I'll enjoy looking at it for awhile and then hopefully get something more summery put up. My basket is really a geranium basket and has a special liner and a bunch of geraniums that look nice in it, so I should do something red to match. This quilt is the little sister of one I made for a friends birthday back in March. I kind of like the bigger one better, but it wouldn't have fit in this spot anyway. The flash on the camera made the purple border look really bright, it's really much more subdued and blends better than it looks in the picture.

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Another week of summer school is over! Only one more to go and then I'll have the rest of the summer free. I have enjoyed working with the little special needs kids, they are certainly nicer and better behaved than some of the 5th grade boys were by the end of the school year. This afternoon I'm taking tickets at a playoff baseball game for the level above my son's team. His season was over last Sunday, so he didn't have to miss any games for his trip. Then I'm invited over to some friends for supper, so I won't have to eat leftovers for the third night in a row!

Home Alone!

2009-07-20T19:14:00.000-07:00

The rest of the family (except for CS who's still at work in "the cities") is heading to New Orleans tomorrow and will be gone for a whole week. That leaves me at home completely alone! All of you Moms out there know that time alone is a precious commodity, so I'll enjoy every minute of it, start to miss them by the end of the week, and be ready to welcome them home when they get here. I don't have a lot of plans, probably a lunch out with the girls and maybe an evening outing. My main plans when I'm not at work in the morning are to catch up on the housework and yard work and finally get some quilting done. I hope at some point to be able to get some things done to sell and perhaps make a little money. I've often thought that my dream job would be to create things and sell them (earning Lots of money in the process), but that's another story. Anyway, I hope the week turns out as great as I've hoped. A few years ago I probably would have felt guilty about enjoying being away from my family, but no more, sorry. :)

Eeeek a Bat!!

2009-07-17T08:36:00.000-07:00

DH and I finally did get out for our anniversary last night. We went to the Harry Potter movie; it was okay for me, but not great and has a very unresolved ending, something I hate. Then we used a gift certificate for Outback Steakhouse and had a great (and huge) meal. Anyway, with that huge meal I didn't sleep the greatest. One of the times I was up I heard this scritchy scratchy noise in the window. I got up to look and here's a bat crawling around in the window!! I'm not a big fan of bats, I mean look at their teeth in that photo above!! So, I wake up DH and he goes over and slams down the window. The only problem, he catches the bats toe (or whatever they have that resembles a toe) under the window. Now just because I don't like bats doesn't mean I want his little toe crushed in my window. So I raise up the window just a smidgeon so he can get it out. Then I went back to bed and had dreams about giant furry bats caught between my windows. This morning he has scrunched himself between the window glass and screen up in a distant corner leaving a little smear of bat blood in the window sill. DH will have to take the window out of it's frame from the outside so he can get away I think. The entire time I'm thinking about those poor girls at camp that all had to have rabies shots because a bat got in their cabin. I guess the current directive is to get the shots if you've had a bat in a room you're sleeping in, but I think I'm okay. On the other hand, rabies is about 99.9% FATAL!! It would be easier if he looked more like this other picture I found:

Misc. and Etc.

2009-07-14T12:55:00.001-07:00

Don't you hate those days where it seems like everything is either broken, breaking, won't work, runs out of batteries, etc? That was my evening last night. SD's car broke down (twice), I was trying to trim bushes with clippers that wouldn't work right, discovered that odor has not left our basement carpet, the dog left 11!!!! little pieces of poop on the family room carpet, the cat barfed, and to top it all off, DH's paycheck was significantly less than expected. I'm sure there were other things I can't think of right now, but I was not a happy camper and feeling very PMSey. Today is going better despite all of the issues above, I guess a good night sleep helped. Thanks for listening.

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I added a few new blogs to my blogroll on the right. Some I've been reading a long time, some are quite new, some quite funny, irreverent, some family life stuff, quite a variety really. People that know me know I have kind of a different sense of humor, a wide variety of tastes, and some curiousity about lives very different than my own. That being said, I do not necessarily endorse everything about each blog, but I've found something I like at each one, so that's why they are there. Enjoy!

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It sounds like DH and I are finally going to go out for our anniversary on Thursday night. We'll probably take in a matinee of the new Harry Potter movie and then use a gift certificate we've had for Outback Steakhouse. I'm looking forward to a night out! The kids are going to the midnight showing of the movie tonight. They like to go to the midnight showings of the big releases to see all of the people in costumes and enjoy the big crowd of teenagers I guess.

Finally Something Quilty

2009-07-13T11:53:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned, I went to several quilt shops on Friday. I didn't get much in the way of new things, but I did find a couple of pieces of fabric and a new book. I went with my friends to our Block of the Month club first, so I thought I'd put a picture of this month's block and some of the other things I found.
Here's this month's block, it's from a book called "Wildflower Sampler". The fabrics this year are all batiks and I'm really enjoying the colors. The quilt has a large appliqued piece of a bunch of flowers in the center. I haven't done much with that yet. Here are the rest of the blocks on my design wall in my sewing room. After my experience with last year's BOM, I swore I wouldn't make any mistakes on the blocks, but that went out the window the first month. This month the center block is put together wrong ( the greens should all line up) and I cut the blue blocks with the wrong angle. Oh well, it will all look okay when it's put together.

I found a neat pattern book at the shop in Decorah. It's for making quilts with hexagon blocks. I used the ruler making the block above, but it will be right for these blocks. I got my first Jellyroll (roll of 2 1/2 in. fabric strips) last summer and I'm going to use a pattern from this book to make something from it. I love the look of the 30's style fabrics, so I can't wait to get started on it.By the way I was inspired to post my block of the month by Mrs. Quilty, who has a new blog and happened by to leave some comments for me the other day. Stop over an see her blog if you have a chance.

Skywatch Friday

2009-07-10T05:50:00.000-07:00

I haven't done a Skywatch post for quite awhile, but when I saw this sky I thought it would be great. The picture doesn't do justice to how blue the sky was that day, how white and fluffy the clouds were. We live in Southeastern Minnesota and have some summer days that are the most beautiful you can imagine. No humidity, mid 70's, no bugs or wind, simply perfect. Of course not every day is like that; today it's muggy, gray, and feels like rain. We seem to have enough of those kind of days to make us forget that last winter the temperature reached nearly 40 below zero F. Incidentally, this picture was taken at Oxbow Park's Zollman Zoo near Byron, Minnesota. You can look back a couple days to see when I blogged about my trip there.

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Today I'm off for a trip with my girlfriends. I don't have summer school on Fridays, so we're going to quilt class, visit some other quilt shops, and go out for lunch. We hope to make it down to the new shop in Decorah, Iowa. I'll honk so you know I'm there.

It's 7-8-9

2009-07-08T11:48:00.000-07:00

Technically, it's 7-8-09, but who cares? The month of July is sure flying by. I started working at summer school on Monday and it's going okay so far. It is a special ed. classroom, so there are 4 adults and 9 kids, so pretty good odds. The kids definitely have challenges, but they are all nice kids and very well behaved so far. Communication is kind of difficult for some of them, but I'm sure that will get better as we all get used to each other. The only bad thing is having to be there by 7:40 when I'm not a morning person. I've been on time so far, three whole days, so I'll have to try to keep that up. I'm done by 11:15, so it all goes pretty fast.

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We're off to Northfield to a baseball game this afternoon. It's about an hours drive. We used to go through there all the time when we lived farther North, but I haven't been there for years. I'll take my camera along and see what I find. Who knows, I might find another little treasure like I did last week. I hope the rain will hold off. Last night the double header got canceled for heavy rain, so it was nice to have the evening off. I had a terrible tension headache all day, so it was nice to just stay home and rest. I feel a lot better today.

Oxbow Park

2009-07-06T12:11:00.000-07:00

DH and I had most of the afternoon free yesterday, so we made a little excursion to Oxbow Park. It's a nice county park with hiking trails, a campground, and a little zoo also. I had taken the kids there a few times in the past, but DH had never been there as he informed me on the drive over. It was a beautiful day for such a trip and we enjoyed looking at the animals at the zoo, the log cabin, and doing the little hiking loop by the river. I'm sure Jeanelle over at Midlife by Farmlight will get a chuckle out of the calf being a zoo exhibit. Where else can we citified folk scratch a calf's ears?? Anyway, my last picture is of a mysterious 8 foot tall week with a red stalk. There were several growing around the river and it was new to me. If anyone knows what it is, let me know. This was kind of the start of DH and I trying to get in the habit of regular exercise. He's chaperoning the kid's youth group trip to New Orleans later this month and will be doing a lot of walking, so he needs to get in shape for that. Both of us have some extra winter poundage to lose, so there's no time like the present to start working on it.

Red, White, and Blue

2009-07-04T10:22:00.001-07:00

Happy Fourth of July!! Here's some red, white and blue from my flowers. From the top: red Asian lily, red dianthus, white goat's beard bush (top) and white hosta flowers, some kind of white volunteer flower, blue clematis, and blue sweet William. You can see the rain drops on the flowers in the pictures I took today. They needed a nice little drink, but I hope it will dry off later today. We are going to a friends house for a BBQ and then downtown to watch the fireworks display. In the mean time I'm catching up on some household chores. Hope you are enjoying your day too!!

Jewel Box Bank

2009-07-03T06:55:00.000-07:00

Here's a few pictures of the Jewel Box bank on the town square in Owatonna Minnesota. I was exploring for a while the other day when TB had a baseball game there and actually had my camera with me for a change. This bank was completed in 1908, had subsequent additions and renovations, and was designed by Louis Sullivan a teacher of Frank Lloyd Wright. These buildings are pretty rare, but coincidentally our bank when we lived in Grinnell Iowa was very similar. Here's a link that shows pictures of both of those and some others too. Here's another one with a slide show and more information that you probably want. Enjoy!

My Trip to "The Cities"

2009-07-01T08:54:00.000-07:00

True Minnesotans usually refer to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area as "The Cities" and that's where I had some summer highlights a couple of weeks ago. SD was doing her freshmen orientation for college and since I've been through it all before with CS, I decided to skip most of the parent stuff and head off on my own. While she was having her orientation, I visited several prime locations, some new for me and some that I had visited in the past. Pictured above is the Weisman Art Museum, a wacky building with some wacky art inside. I don't "get" a lot of it. To me, a picture of a cardboard box with other pictures glued onto it (some upside down) isn't really art. Neither is a Petunia that is supposedly a new life form because some scientist put some of his own DNA in it. (An entire room was devoted to this "Etunia") It has a fun gift shop though where I bought a couple of buttons for my daughter's collection that she puts on her purse. On the right, there is a picture up the river where you can see the wreckage of the 35W bridge laid out and the new bridge in the background. I guess the new bridge lights up in different colors at night, but haven't seen that yet.Here's a picture of the stone arch bridge. "A gently S-curving bridge was built by railway baron James J. Hill in 1883 to speed his trains across the Mississippi River. Now beautifully restored, the bridge provides serene transit for walkers, joggers and anybody who wants the best possible view of St. Anthony Falls, whose churning power first made Minneapolis a milling capital." You can see more of the Falls in the picture looking towards downtown. Lastly here is a picture of the Prospect Part Water Tower. It was referred to as a "witch's hat" water tower and was built in 1913 on the highest natural land area in Minneapolis. My son goes by it on the bus every day on his way to work and wondered what it was, so we ventured by while I was there.

It helped that the weather was perfect while I was there. CS and I went and saw the movie UP and then ate at an outdoor restaurant and walked in the St. Anthony Falls area that evening. I thought while I was there that it might be my only vacation this summer and even though it was only a couple of days, it was a lot of fun and I enjoyed spending the time with my kids too. I almost forgot because I don't have pictures, but I also went to Glad Creations, a famous Minneapolis quilt shop and Engebritson's, a Scandinavian shop of epic proportions. I bought a little something at both shops, but could have spent a lot of money if I had it.

Summer...not lazy or hazy!

2009-06-30T11:36:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's the last day of June and this is one of the first days I haven't had much on my plate. Today is just a regular day of doing laundry, grocery shopping, cooking a meal, and making sure everyone gets where they are supposed to be. I've also had time for reading blogs while the washer's going, looking at Facebook, and paying my bills on-line. A good day, and a nice change compared to the rest of our month. June has definitely been a month of ups and downs, crazy schedules, and a lot of work, little of it paid. When I've been an absent blogger for a week, I tend to do the asterisked checklist of what I've been doing. That might be a little hard for a month, but I'll give it a try (mostly for my own use as a journal) and then I promise to get back to what I hope might stand a chance of being an interesting blog.
*Graduation- SD made it through with flying colors
*Last day of school- I was so ready!
*Baseball games sprinkled throughout the month- Ups and downs there also, but mostly good although I've had to miss a few games.
*College orientation- SD got registered for fall classes and stayed overnight on campus.
*Brief "vacation"- While SD had orientation, I hung out with CS, slept on a cot at his house. We went to see "Up" which I loved, went to eat at an outdoor restaurant, and enjoyed part of the riverwalk in Minneapolis on a perfect MN evening. It was a nice break even though it made preparing for the
*graduation party a little more hectic. The party went well, the weather was still great, and we had a pretty good turn out.
*SD had her 18th birthday the day after her party. We didn't do much, but had a nice dinner and ate leftover graduation cake.
*Our "rent to own gone bad" people moved into another house leaving us with a house and no renter. We were fortunate to find new renters in a short time, but have practically killed ourselves getting the place cleaned and repaired. A learning experience.
*DH's parents both broke their hips in separate incidents on the same day and both had surgery the next day which happened to be their 62nd wedding anniversary. We spent one weekend at the hospital, they've moved to a nursing home now and are slowly recovering.
*My mom is still in a nursing home recovering from her broken neck, hopes to get home soon.
*Nephew's wedding in Iowa- was the shortest wedding in history, but it was nice and all of the cousins were there. On our way home from the wedding, we visited both nursing homes to see our parents.
Now sprinkle in a few car repairs, a sibling relationship that is difficult(mine), a poor financial outlook, I've had just a tiny bit of stress. It's funny how I've just been too busy to notice, but I'm tired and I hope to have some time to recoup before I start working at summer school next week. I'm thankful that my back has been somewhat better and none of us have had any health issues at least. Hopefully July will be a better and easier month and I hope to get back to blogging on a regular basis. Thanks for listening!!

Graduation!!

2009-06-08T08:58:00.000-07:00

It has been quite a whirlwind of activity around here this past week. SD had her graduation on Friday night. They were able to have it outside and it was the only nice night we had all weekend. It got a little chilly towards the end, after 7!! speakers, but not too bad. The rest of the weekend was cold and rainy and windy, so I felt bad for those who were having their grad parties. Ours is next weekend, so I hope the weather will be nice. I feels a little surreal that she has finished high school, it may not sink in for awhile. She and I have a road trip to do her college orientation and get her registered for classes later this week, so it will probably start to feel real then.

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The rest of the week has been/will be filled with baseball games, end of the school year activities, house cleaning, and party preparation. It helped in a way to have the rainy weekend to get some of those inside projects done. I'll be infrequent with my blogging for the next week or so. I hope to spend more time with that this summer and get back to visiting and commenting on my favorite blogs.

A better fox picture

2009-06-01T08:41:00.001-07:00

Here's some better pictures of Mrs. Fox. I did a lot of yard work over the weekend, so I heard her kits arguing again and saw her running around. Another neighbor said that there are 5 of them, so she probably has to spend quite a bit of time hunting food for them. The last picture shows her sauntering away. I didn't have the camera on zoom at all, I was pretty close to her and she didn't seem to mind.

I've got my yard looking pretty good and powerwashed the patio and patio furniture last night. We had a beautiful weekend, so I was able to get a lot done. Tonight we have a baseball game, so not much will happen at home. I spent a long time on the phone with my sister this morning. She had been to Iowa to see our mother and said she seems to be doing okay. Time will tell if she'll be able to return to her home. Today is SD's last day of high school. She graduates Friday night, but her party isn't until the 14th. They have an all night party for the grads, so I think I may have some of my friends over after graduation. I have a feeling I might be a little sad that night, we'll see.

Mrs. Fox

2009-05-30T07:10:00.000-07:00

Here's the fox I called Mr. Fox until last weekend when I saw the four babies arguing over a rabbit in the neighbors yard. The neighbors on the other side had mentioned that they thought they had a fox living under the deck and eating all the chipmunks in the yard. Their house has been vacant since late last summer, so I suppose she felt comfortable over there. I was up to let Sammy out at 3:15 in the morning (note to self: remember to let him out before I go to bed) and saw Mrs. Fox standing in the middle of the street. Sammy saw her too and started barking (sorry neighbors). I wish these pictures were better, so hopefully I'll get another opportunity. The one above is of one or two of the babies and the unfortunate rabbit.

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In other news, TB will be playing baseball on the summer VFW league and has his first game already on Monday night. They had tryouts but everyone ended up making the team. He came home from the last tryout feeling pretty happy. His coach had given him some tips on pitching and batting and he felt like he did pretty well. To play in the summer league the boys have to write a little essay about their strengths and weaknesses as a player. That made for some interesting reading and really made me realize that he thinks of baseball on an entirely different level than I do.

Musings of May

2009-05-27T14:14:00.000-07:00

I think I've mentioned this before, but why does May have to fly by so quickly. The weather can be so perfect, the flowers blooming, birds singing, etc. but everyone is in such a hurry that it's hard to find the time to enjoy it. We did have a nice weekend, but even a long weekend in May isn't long enough to do everything. Here's the highlights:
*We attended "The Phantom of the Opera" at the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis on Saturday afternoon. It was good, but our cheap seats made it difficult to catch some of the nuances of the performances. I enjoyed the music though and the singers were very talented. Afterwards, we picked up CS at his house and went out for an early supper at D'Amicos. It was an Italian deli with lots of great salads and pasta and pizza. It was very quick and fairly reasonably priced.
*On Sunday we went down to Iowa for the day to see DH's family. His dad is turning 90 today, and we couldn't make it for the celebration this weekend, so we went early. We also saw DH's oldest brother and his family at their house. They have a pool, so the boys had fun swimming and CS had his best friend who goes to ISU over to join us for supper. Then we took the Grandparents back to their home, dug a few perennials to take home, and headed back home. SD drove the whole way home since she was anxious to be home.
*On Monday, we did some yard work, then met friends for "Angels and Demons" and went back to our friends home for a pot-luck meal. That was a lot of fun too, we had a Mexican themed meal with some delicious tacos, corn salad, chips and salsa, flan, and margeritas and sangria. Yum.
*SD had her final orchestra concert Tuesday night and we had DH's other brother and family back for dessert afterwards along with some other family friends. The concert was great and a little bittersweet since it's her last one for now. She hopes to be in an orchestra in college too.
*The rest of the week is a blur, but here it is Friday again. Another assembly at school this afternoon, so that will make for an easy day. This weekend will be a rush to do things at home to get ready for graduation next Friday and the party the following weekend. I've got some fun pictures to post of the foxes living in our yard, my flowers, etc, but that will have to wait for another day.

Yaaay, it's Friday!!

2009-05-22T09:37:00.000-07:00

(Warning: Heinz 57 blog post ahead!) I love Fridays! We're more casual than usual at work on Fridays, so I get to wear jeans without feeling like I should be wearing something better. That makes me happy. I got together with some friends for breakfast this morning. It was a real treat. Life certainly doesn't get any easier with age and around the table we were dealing with some serious issues, but it is so great to be able to commiserate with friends. It helps to know that we can be resilient and strong no matter what the circumstances. Planting flowers also makes me happy. I planted a bunch last night and hope to plant some more today. DH was kind enough to help with moving around some of the pots and washing them off as well as spraying the stinky deer spray and fixing the refrigerator. What a guy! We have our school variety show this afternoon, so an easy day at work. That makes me happy. Tomorrow we are taking SD to the Cities to see Phantom of the Opera, go out to dinner, and pick up CS to come home for a few days. That makes me happy. SD got several awards at her two awards nights this week. This is a kid who struggled in school in early elementary, so I'm so proud to see her doing so well. She is one of the hardest working people I know. We're alike in a lot of ways, but she is so hard working, non-procrastinatin', early risin', etc. that it's hard to believe she's my child. We're heading to Iowa on Sunday to celebrate DH's dad's birthday a little early. He'll be 90 in a week or so! We'll make it a quick trip as that is best for everyone involved and then have dinner plans on Memorial Day with some of our crew here. I know that this has been all over the place, but since I've had my moments in the dumps this week I felt I needed to give voice to all the good in my life, all that I have to be thankful for, so I don't forget. If you read this far, and have been thinking too much of the bad stuff in your life, your assignment is as follows: Replace all of the sorrow with joy and be thankful no matter what your circumstances. If you can't do that, find someone in worse shape than you and have them help you.

Pictures of St. Paul....not!

2009-05-18T08:46:00.000-07:00

We had a busy weekend with baseball, church, and moving CS to his summer living arrangements. He's staying in an apt. in St. Paul and continuing to work at his campus job, only full time. It took two trips to get all of his stuff from his dorm room to the house he's sharing this summer, partly because we had the van loaded with a bed and dresser also. The house seems nice and so do the roommates we met, so I hope it will work out well. I'm sad that he won't be at home, but it will be a good experience for him to learn to cook, etc. and these days you have to go where the jobs are. He loves his campus job doing tech support, so I think he'll have a great summer. He's living in quite a nice city neighborhood with lots of cool shops and close enough to some "big box" stores to do his shopping. Looking for a restaurant Sat. night was a little difficult, we ended up in front of the capital bldg. before deciding to turn around and go back. I got out for a photo op. since I had remembered my camera. Took a nice shot of the capital and got the message "no card". I had left my memory card at home on my desk! RATS!! I'll have to get some good city pics another time.

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Tonight is Senior Awards night for SD. They have a separate night to present all of the scholarships and certificates since there are way to many to do it at graduation like they used to do at my tiny school. She's not too excited about going, recognition isn't really her thing, but she got a letter from school saying that she was expected to be there, so we're going. So there will probably be some bragging in a future post.

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Speaking of bragging, TB got the game winning hit in his game on Saturday afternoon. It was really cold and windy and I had to bring out the winter coat and gloves along with a blanket to stay warm. His season has been less than stellar, but they're down to just a couple of games, so it was nice to see him have success at the plate. He went 2-2 since he didn't get in until later in the game. We have the last two games tonight and tomorrow night and that will be it until his summer league starts. I'm hoping for a little break to get through graduation.

Mother's Day Etc.

2009-05-12T08:29:00.000-07:00

Here's a somewhat belated Mother's Day report. It turned out to be a really nice day, long, but nice. SD and I play in our church bell choir. We play at church only about once a month, so we play at both services that Sunday. That meant trying to be at church by 7:30, which for me means 7:35. The first service performance was somewhat of a disaster and included a page turning mistake of epic proportions. Oh well. We did a lot better the second time around, but I was more focused on the earlier failure. It was nice that we had a little volunteer appreciation coffee between services, so with all of the down time we got to enjoy some treats and some good Fair Trade coffee.

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In the afternoon we went to a concert by a local choral group in conjunction with Monroe Crossing, a Twin Cities Bluegrass group. (There is a link on the lower right of the page to hear some of their newest music) It was a wonderful concert, but the room was pretty warm and I was very tired, so I nearly dozed off a time or two. Fortunately, more coffee and some cookies at intermission perked me up. Part of the concert was a "Bluegrass Mass" and had all the elements of a worship service, very interesting. After the concert, we returned home with the two couples we went to the concert with and their families joined us for dinner at our house. We provided the main dish and everyone else brought something. DH made Key Lime chicken on the grill and homemade asparagus pasta with a yummy alfredo sauce with asparagus in it. It was very delicious, I wish I'd taken pictures. The others brought a salad, bread, cheese and crackers, and strawberry shortcake for dessert.

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I'm feeling a little down about the state of our school system. We had a meeting at work yesterday. There was more of the same-"no news yet" -where my hours for next year are concerned, but I'm becoming pretty sure I'll lose some time. They've raised class sizes to the point that there will be as many as 32 in each third grade class next year and even more in 5th grade. Just two sections of each. Each will, I'm sure, have some challenging kids, so when you throw in some para cuts, etc., that will (in my opinion) make for a disastrous situation. We've got some great teachers, but it is going to be really tough and not fair for the kids. Think about that when you hear someone talking about how great teachers have it with "three months vacation" and all. We have a parent meeting tonight for band parents to hear about the "enhancements" for next year. Our new superintendent (once again IMO) wants to get rid of music in the schools so those areas are seeing lots of cuts as well. It will be interesting to see how they are going to sell it as an enhancement. It's discouraging and I feel bad that I've been taking my kids quality education for granted up to now.

*****

I almost forgot to mention that TB provided me with my only Mother's Day gift this year. He had been shopping with a friend the night before and picked me up a copy of Dream Girls. I thought it was very sweet. In all fairness, SD has promised to help me with some of the yard work I can't do because of my back. DH allowed me to buy tickets for a play in the cities in a couple weeks as a special outing as well. CS remembered to call, so that was nice. He has finals this week, so he's super busy.

Days flying by.

2009-05-08T07:11:00.000-07:00

Why is it that February seems to last forever and May is flying by so fast? I'm especially loving Spring this year after what seemed like a long and icky winter. The flowers are starting to bloom in my yard and I've been able to get quite a bit of yard clean-up done, so I'm feeling good about that. Here are some daffodils blooming in a shady side yard. Last year they came up, but not a single one bloomed, so I was happy to see them blooming this year. Then there is a clump of creeping phlox that grows a little each year. Next there is something I think is called Lamb's ear with the pink flowers. Then another patch of daffodils that are blooming like crazy this year. Somewhere here there is a picture of my daughter and her date at prom last weekend. It was a beautiful night and they had a good time. Sorry, but I'm forbidden to show her face here. Lastly a picture of some purple flowers and a variety of other things popping up around them.

I had a lot of trouble getting my pictures where I wanted them today, but it will have to do as I'm running out of time. We have a lot of baseball this weekend, bells Sunday morning, a concert on Sunday afternoon, and friends over for the evening after the concert. I'm going to have to fit in some housework here and there and hopefully get TB to mow the lawn again. I've still been having a little back trouble, but it has felt a little better the last couple of days. My mom is settling in to the nursing home well and seems to be doing better also. I hope all of you moms have a nice Mother's Day with your families!!

I'm Baaack!

2009-04-30T15:09:00.000-07:00

I returned from my nearly 6 day sojourn to Iowa at 11 pm last night after driving for several hours in rain. I was totally exhausted, mentally and physically. My mother fell and broke her neck. Really! I've heard the warning several times, but I think she is about the only person I know of that actually "fell and broke her neck". So the next time you're warned, listen, it could happen. She fell getting out of the shower. Anyway, she had been having a lot of pain, had to wear a cumbersome brace and remember a complicated series of medications and instructions, so my sister and I had been helping her for several days. As it neared time for me to come home, I could see that she would be needing additional help for quite some time, so we checked her into a nursing home yesterday. It was hard to leave her there also, but not as hard as it would have been to leave her alone at her home. Hopefully it will be a temporary arrangement and she will continue to heal. I'll come up with more of a cheery blogging topic soon. I've got flowers in my yard, a daughter going to prom, green grass and leaves, and DH made it possible for me to return to a clean house and completed laundry so I've got a lot to choose from!!

Off to Iowa

2009-04-23T09:26:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to say I'm going to Iowa tomorrow to stay with my mom for a few days. She had another fall on the Saturday before Easter and needs someone to be with her for now. My sister has been with her all week, so I'm going down to stay until next Wednesday probably. We hope that she will be doing better by then and will be able to continue just having help a few days a week, but we're looking into different options. I might be checking blogs while I'm there, but I'm not sure since she has dial-up. She also hasn't gotten her tv box hooked up yet for digital, so I may have to try to do that while I'm there. It's like pioneer living-ha. It looks like it will be a beautiful day today, so I've got work, then a baseball game, then bell practice, then packing, so it will be a busy day!

What a difference!

2009-04-20T20:02:00.000-07:00

TB has his 2nd double header tonight and wow was it cold! I think the wind was 40 miles an hour at some points, so with the temps in the 40's it was pretty frigid. I was thankful for my reheatable seat cushion. It's called a LavaBuns. :) You warm up the inside in the microwave for a few minutes and put it back in the cushion and it stays warm for a long time. That and many layers of blankets and clothing kept me reasonable warm. I was happy when the 2nd game was called for darkness about the same time it started raining again. They won both games, but didn't play that great and made some silly mistakes. I'm sure the weather was a big issue. I know if I were out there I would only be thinking about how cold it was.

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I'm finally going to the chiropractor tomorrow to see if I can get some relief from this sciatica I've been having for a few weeks. I kept thinking it would get better, but it hasn't, so I decided to go in. If that doesn't work, I guess I'll have to go to the dr., but I'd really rather not spend the money. There are so many things in my life that need money right now that I don't know where to begin. I hope business will pick for DH sometime soon! I'm hoping to find out what my hours for next year will be soon. Many teachers and some other staff are getting laid off and I'm sure para hours will be cut too, but I'm not sure if it will affect me or not. I'm keeping my eye out for another job, having benefits would be so helpful when things like this sciatica flare up.

Goodbye Picture

2009-04-19T20:32:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I removed my picture from my profile again. Thanks for the nice comment about my neck, Janelle. :) I was somewhat horrified to realize that my picture shows up when I make a comment on someone else's blog, so I decided to take it off again. Occasionally my comments might seem a little snarky, so the thought of my picture sitting there beside what I said was just too much. Recently someone actually called me a bully in response to one of my comments. I had dared to say that this previous commentor appeared to have "major issues". It's true that you come across all types if you're on the internet long enough. However, the blogs I read regularly seem to be written by lovely people with lots of great ideas, beautiful pictures, thoughtful commentary, or all of the above. No signs of "major issues". Thanks!

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We got some much needed rain last night and today. It seems like everything is greening up over night. TB has another double header tomorrow afternoon and its predicted to be cool, but not rainy by then. We hauled another load of leaves, etc. to the dump yesterday before it started to rain. I can't remember doing so much yard work so early other years, but like I told DH, other years I've been a lot busier driving people around. All of the kids driving themselves where they need to go frees up a lot of my time.

Baseball

2009-04-18T21:27:00.000-07:00

I've had kind of a baseball filled day and it was great. TB had a double header today, so I spent about 5 hours at the baseball field and it turned out to be a great day. We had temps in the 70's and a light breeze and it was just wonderful to be sitting at the ball field on a nice warm day again. It helped that they won both games and TB got to play his favorite positions including pitching a few innings. He did a good job pitching for the first time this year and got a few hits too. He was in a great mood after the game. Here's a picture of what I call "the look".

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I haven't followed the Twins as closely this year, but Jason Kuble hit for the cycle last night. In case you don't know, that's where you get a single, double, triple, and home run in the same game. His homer was a game winning grand slam, so I'm sorry I missed it. I hope we'll be able to get to a game this summer, but with all of TB's games and the expense, it might not happen.

100th Post- Weather, etc.

2009-04-16T07:24:00.000-07:00

Well, today's my 100th post. After much thought, I've decided not to do "100 things about me". I hope no one is too disappointed. Maybe I'll save that for the 200th. Anyway, I've enjoyed the blogging thing more than I thought I would and I plan to keep plugging along at it. I appreciated everyone who visits my blog and if you're a lurker, today would be a great day to say "hello". I think I flatter myself that I have any lurkers. I'll also solicit any constructive comments for my blog such as "no one cares about the weather, so quit talking about it all the time" or "quit referring to your family by those stupid initials". I promise I can take it. As an aside, I actually deleted a blog I visited quite frequently when the person went to a new format to be more private and started calling her kids and husband by the stupidest names I'd ever heard. I'm shallow that way. :) I also decided to post a picture of myself for my profile that I don't hate, at least for a few days. I had just finished my diet, was tan, and happy because I cropped Joshua Bell out of the picture. Actually maybe I should just put the picture of Joshua Bell. We went to his concert last summer and it was fabulous by the way. Have a great day and enjoy the weather!!!

PS. Here's week two or three of the greenhouse.

Spring Cleaning

2009-04-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

The weather has been great the last couple of days so I've been hitting the yard work hard. After three trips to the yard waste dump and I feel like things are starting to look a little better. I'd like to get a little more raking done before it rains because I know that with the warm weather we've been having, a little rain would make everything shoot up like crazy. We're starting to see a little green in the grass and some of my perennials are starting to grow. Oddly enough though, when I was raking yesterday I uncovered some areas still frozen with ice. That's Minnesota for ya I guess.

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Today is College Son's 20th birthday. Have those years ever gone fast! The weird thing is when he tells me about some of his college experiences, it seems like just yesterday that I was doing some of the same things. I really envy the new parents today that are able to document their kids lives so completely and easily with blogs, facebook, etc. To think about that when my son was a baby I had to take a photo with a film camera, get the film developed, then remember to mail the photos out to people so they could see him. A friend just got a new grandson the other day and immediately had a picture of him sent to her on her phone. Pretty amazing. Anyway I hope he won't kill me for this, but here's a picture of him from when we dropped him off at school in the fall.

A lovely Easter and other musings

2009-04-13T09:02:00.000-07:00

It was a nice weekend and today I'm feeling very thankful in many ways.
*We got together with good friends Saturday night to celebrate our oldest sons' mutual birthday. They'll both be 20 on Wednesday. Our middle children are dating each other as well as the fact that we as parents are friends also. I appreciate how all of this works and that our boys are growing up to be nice young men.
*SD and I went shopping on Saturday afternoon and had a lot of fun together. We don't have a lot of money to spend, so we hit some of the second hand and discount stores and split the cost of her clothes. I appreciate that she is willing to shop with her mom, at used clothing places and has sense about what to buy and what looks good on her. My only purchase was a scarf to dress up an old pants suit for Easter, but I was okay with that.
*We had a delightful Easter Sunday. We attended the two later Easter services at our church where we played in the bell choir (SD and I) and sang with the vocal choir (DH and I). TB helped with the continental breakfast between services. Our musical pieces turned out well for the most part and we had a nice thank you e-mail from our director this morning saying how many nice comments he had as well as how it was a blessing for people in the congregation to hear our music. I thought it was really nice of him to pass along that thanks. It was one of those times that it was good to hear the sermon twice as I think I got more out of it.
*After we got home we had a late lunch of an egg roll recipe I love and I watched part of the Master's golf tournament. DH made supper of beef kabobs and homemade pasta before we had to take CS back to college. I made some cupcakes while DH was grilling the kabobs for CS to share with his friends once he gets back to school.

I thought I would share this recipe-it's quite easy, but yet kind of fancy and I've served it several times for brunch along with fruit and pastries.

Yummy Egg Roll

4oz. Cream Cheese, softened

¾ c. Milk

2T. Flour

Salt

Beat above in a small bowl

Add to 12 eggs beaten

Grease a jelly roll pan, line with parchment. Spray or grease parchment, pour in egg mixture. Bake at 375 for 20-30 minutes until puffy and golden. Remove, spread center with 2 T. or more of Dijon mustard, 2 c. minced ham, 1c. cheddar cheese (shredded), ½ c. chopped green onions, chives, or finely chopped onions; cover with 1 more cup cheddar. Roll up by lifting one side of the parchment and then the other and turn it seam side down, remove parchment, sprinkle with ¼ c. cheddar. Bake a little longer till cheese is melted and center has had time to warm- anywhere from 5-15 minutes.

A busy Saturday

2009-04-11T08:49:00.000-07:00

It's one of those days where I need to pack a lot in and here I am sitting at the computer. I need to get to the baking, shopping, and cleaning for the day really soon. We had a nice afternoon and evening yesterday. TB's team won their first game. He didn't get in until the 6th inning, but ended up getting a hit in his one at bat. He was pretty happy to be batting 1.000! Then we rushed to the Good Friday service at church. It was a nice service and rather different than I remember in other years. Anyway, it was meaningful and beautiful. The only detriment was the cell phone going off during the sermon. An older gentleman that let it continue to ring while he walked out, took the call, and then walked back in later in the sermon. Of course all heads turned to watch. There were cell phones going off 3 times the night before. A friendly reminder: Turn off or silence your phone when you're in church! Later in the evening we got together with family friends, so it was kind of a late night.

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By the way, I'm approaching 100 posts! How shall I commemorate the occasion? I'd welcome any suggestions. Perhaps I'm supposed to wait until my official blogiversary to celebrate?

Skywatch Friday!

2009-04-10T08:29:00.000-07:00

I haven't participated in Skywatch Friday for awhile, but when I was outside earlier in the week and saw this beautiful shade of blue and such white puffy clouds, I thought I had to share this. I can't wait until we get a few leaves on these trees! I hope to have the time to check out some other Skywatch entries also. We've had a lot of wind this week with temps in the 50's, so it is finally starting to feel more like Spring. Green grass and flowers can't be far behind, right? The in-laws down in Iowa got a foot of snow last week; I'm glad the storm missed us. Looking at any more snow would be cruel.

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It's going to be a very busy weekend for us with all of the activities at church. We've had extra music practices and I still have to bake several dozen rolls for the youth breakfast on Sunday. CS was able to get a ride home from college today, so that really helped. TB has his first baseball game this afternoon. I'm glad the weather will be nice and I hope he will get some playing time and it will all go well for him. We will most likely need to head to church before the game is over for the Good Friday service. I hope everyone will have a nice Easter weekend!

Identity Theft-Easter Version

2009-04-07T14:35:00.000-07:00

I realize that this could be considered cuteness overload, but I just had to share these pictures from an e-mail I got at work. Aren't they cute? I get a lot of fun e-mails at work, but they are hard to forward as pictures like these come through as attachments rather that in the body of the e-mail. Usually I don't take the time to save each attachment, but I thought this was too cute to pass up.

My Professional Greenhouse

2009-04-07T08:13:00.000-07:00

Well finally I have a profession; I'm a professional gardener as is shown by the fact that I own a professional greenhouse. Don't worry, I'm not starting out with too much overhead. My business sense tells me I should start small and grow from there. (Pun intended) Seriously, I can't believe it was only a few days since I planted these seeds and they've already started to grow. I talked to a gardening coworker and he tells me his petunias already have four leaves, so I'm a little behind, but I think I'll catch up by planting time. I have petunias, impatiens, and allysum and I also got some basil and oregano seeds last night to plant. I wish I had room for a real garden, but our yard is much too shady for anything but a few container grown plants. I hope these little ones will make it!

Gratitude Part 2

2009-04-05T14:57:00.000-07:00

I just remembered that I was supposed to post a deep and thought provoking commentary on my gratitude journaling experiment for the week. As usual, I fell a little short in terms of the daily entries, but I did manage to get writing a few times. Overall, I think it's something worth sticking with, although in all honesty, I'm not good at doing anything intentional on a daily basis. I usually would be in bed with the lights off before I would remember that I was supposed to write in my journal, so I would have a few thoughts of gratitude before drifting off to sleep. Throughout the week, I have found that I would occasionally think of some of the things and would feel a bit of happiness or fulfillment for that time. In the grand scheme of things, I think it is always good to have some positive thoughts to fall back on and I can see how documenting them makes them more memorable. In the future when I may be having a rough day, I could pick up my journal and page through it remembering all of the good things in my life. If I could say that I've learned one thing in the last year it would be to not give in to fear. Like everyone, I've had some bad stuff in the last year, some bad stuff that is still going on, but I've been able to get through it better lately by not giving in to being fearful about it. (Most of the time anyway) Fear is a robber- of sleep, health, optimism, confidence, and lots of other attributes- I'm trying hard not to go to that place and I think the gratitude journaling can be a piece of that, so I'm going to try to stick with it and see where it leads me. I don't think there's a need to worry about me turning into a big ol' Pollyanna, so don't worry about that. Have a good week!

Whew!!

2009-04-04T13:37:00.000-07:00

Boy am I ever out of shape from sitting around all winter. Today was fairly nice, and there's a big storm in the forecast for later this weekend, so I thought I 'd better get some yardwork done. I spent about 2 1/2 hours raking the yard and I'm totally pooped! TB helped for a little while, very begrudgingly I might add. 16 year olds just don't see the point in raking the leaves and dead grass up from the yard. I have a ton of work left to do throughout the spring, so I guess it's a good thing I got started. I'm considering focusing on a small area at a time and trying to get a little done each morning before I go to work. That's my intention every year, but it doesn't happen too often since I'm not much of a morning person.

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In my continual quest to save money, I started some flowers from seed this last week. I got a little "professional greenhouse" that holds 72 little seedlings. I planted my seeds, so now I'll just have to wait and see if anything happens. I figure if a few of them actually grow to a point I can use them outside, I'll have saved a lot of money, so we'll see. I'll post a picture when they sprout and you'll see why "professional greenhouse" is a massive exaggeration.

A Lost Art

2009-04-02T09:39:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the pretty doilies and embroidered pieces I was mentioning the other day. I know they are probably a little cutesy for some, but I like them and I always think of all the hours of work that was put into them. It kills me to see pieces like these at garage sales or flea markets for a couple of dollars. These were made by my grandmothers and great aunts, now deceased. I know they would be happy that I am enjoying them all these years after they were made. I hope someone will still be enjoying and using the quilts I've made 50 or 100 years from now!

By the way, I realize this is not a totally lost art. There are some people out there still embroidering and crocheting. But, not many would create a piece like this lady below. Lots of fine detail embroidery, crocheted lace around the outside, some kind of open work on the dress that I have no idea how they did. All on something that measures 7 x 10 inches, and there's another mirror image one that you can see in my previous post, Wow!

Purging Junk!

2009-03-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

Since I'm on Spring break, I've been inspired to do a little spring cleaning this week. I'm also getting the house clean and getting out the few Easter/Spring decorations I have. I started going through some cupboards I have in my living room that have become a catch-all for a lot of various junk. I'm a first class saver, but when I get in a mood like this I don't have trouble pitching things that really need to go. A few of the precious things I've been throwing out- Christmas cards from people I no longer remember, pamplets from various vacation destinations, boy scout paperwork, old notes etc. etc. Seriously, why this stuff has been taking up space for years is beyond me.

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Looking at Jeanelle's old books a few days ago inspired me to get some of mine out for part of my spring decor. I have some old books I get out for Christmas, Halloween, and the 4th of July also. These kind of go with my Easter theme, so I'll leave them up for awhile. I also have a lot of embroidered dresser scarves, table clothes, etc. that look rather springy, so I ironed several of them today and put them out. I'll do some close up shots of some of them another day.

Gratitude

2009-03-29T11:45:00.000-07:00

I was getting tired of looking at those puppies every time I pulled up my blog, so I decided I'd better get busy and get something new posted. I go to my blog first when I'm visiting around to other blogs, so I've been looking at them for several days. I still haven't gotten around to adding any new blogs to my list even though I've got a few in mind. I'm a little hesitant to do anything that will lead anyone I know back to my blog, but maybe I'll have to get over that. I guess I need a little self confidence when it comes to putting my thoughts out there. Of course there isn't usually much in the way of thought on this blog and I guess I intend to keep it that way, so it probably doesn't make much difference. Anyway, back to my topic...gratitude. I was given a gratitude journal in the beginning of Lent and have written in it exactly two times. I need to really buckle down and give it a good try. When I have written, I think about it throughout the day and it makes the bad stuff seem less important. If I can come up with so many things to list in my gratitude journal, things can't be all that bad, right? It also helps me to remember that others have so much more difficult things in their lives. Not all of my gratitude journal entries are "at least I'm not" or "at least that's not happening to me", but I can't help but have some entries like that. If you haven't tried it, think of some things you are grateful for, make a list of at least three at the end of every day and pray about it if you want to. Try it for at least a week and see if it makes a difference in your everyday life. I'm on Spring break this week, so I should have no excuses about giving this a try. You should try it to! It will be an automatic blog topic for next Sunday afternoon. I'll try to write some kind of a deep and thoughtful commentary on my findings at that time.

Puppies

2009-03-24T07:17:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this is going to be kind of a weird post, but here goes...I know I'm not the only one to write about dreams they've had. Anyway, the other morning I had this dream that our dog Sammy, who happens to be a boy, had four puppies. They looked very much like the ones in the top picture. It made me remember how cute Sammy was when he was a puppy. We got him when he was about 8 weeks old and looked like the other two puppies in the picture above. Let me tell you, there is no window shopping when you go looking at puppies with three little kids. How could anyone resist such a cute little puppy? We've had Sammy for more than 11 years now and although he's showing signs of age, he's basically doing okay. What made me think he would have puppies is beyond me and I know my Biology enough to know it's impossible. DH said I hope you're not thinking about getting a puppy to which I replied "No Way!". Sammy will be our one and only dog I think and when he's gone that will be that.

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I had to get up early this morning to take TB to take his driving test. He passed and now is a licensed driver! I'm happy he passed on the first try and he will be able to drive himself to some of his baseball practices.

Three Days and Counting.

2009-03-23T14:10:00.000-07:00

Three more school days left until Spring break!! Today was a pretty low key day with an assembly to chew up a lot of time this afternoon. Tomorrow I'm covering in the office most of the afternoon and we don't have school on Friday or the entire next week, so I think I'll survive. I really like parts of my job. I like getting to know the kids and working with them one on one, reading with small groups, even correcting papers, but there are parts I really detest at times. I don't like disrespectful kids, naughty ones who make life miserable for anyone who has to work with them. Fortunately we only have a few at our school, but enough to make recess and lunch duty miserable this time of year when we are tired of it anyway. I wonder if their parents realize that their children are the ones that most of staff dislikes. I know I'd feel horrible if that were the case, unfortunately with most of these kids their parents are the source of the problem. Of course their are some kids with rotten parents who turn out okay, so who knows? Anyway, I'm in need of a break. Working at school you get used to the pattern of periodic breaks, weekends off, etc. Sometimes I think about getting a different job, but I'd really miss those breaks and having the same days off as the kids has always worked out well. In a few years, fewer than I care to think about, all of my kids will be out of school. Then I guess it would make a lot of sense to get a different job. I've been thinking a little lately of a career change, but I don't really know what I'd do. Hmmm, something to think about. The thought always comes back to feeling like I'm too old to do something really new. It would have been smart to do that 10 years ago or even 20 before my poor brain shriveled up too much. I heard the other day that the human brain starts to decline starting at age 27. Great, huh?

What I've been doing...

2009-03-21T12:21:00.000-07:00

Here's a wall hanging quilt I made for one of my friends for her 40th birthday. She has also been my kids' piano teacher, so it was partly for that reason also. Several of us got together for dinner at a nice restaurant last night and then went to another friends home afterward for cake and ice cream. It was a fun evening and she liked the quilt despite it's flaws. I have some leftover pieces I'm going to try to work into something for myself today. I used the same pattern basically that I used for this runner. It's called disappearing nine-patch and it's really easy. Then I added the half square triangles around the edge. If you're not a quilter, you would be surprised to know that I didn't cut out a single triangle or a single rectangle or a single square smaller than 4" for this quilt. It's all in the magic of planned seams. I didn't actually have a pattern for this one, just a picture to go by, so not everything turned out perfect and since I finished it 45 minutes before the party, that's how it had to be.

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It's been nice to have some good weather this week and we're down to just a few piles of snow in the yard. TB apparently has made the baseball team, there were no cuts at his level since there were a few boys that didn't go out this year. CS has been on break all week, not doing a whole lot but catching up on rest and relaxation. Now that I can see the yard again I've been thinking about what a lot of yard work I'll have to do before SD's graduation party. Her 18th birthday is June 15th, so I've been thinking about combining the two into one party. We only have 4 days of school before our spring break, so I'm anxiously awaiting that and I hope I can catch up on some things then.

A Nice Weekend

2009-03-15T14:25:00.000-07:00

It's been nice to have a weekend with some beautiful weather and schedule that's not as jam packed as usual. I stayed home from work on Friday with a nasty headache that miraculously cured itself after a 2 hour nap. I think I had wrenched my back a little on Thursday resulting in some back pain and the eventual tension headache. After I was feeling better I slowly accomplished some things around the house. The kids had an early release from school and TB wanted to have some friends over in the evening. Some of these friends turned out to be girls, so I did a little more in the way of cleaning since they notice these things. All went well with his little gathering and I was able to watch the hockey game that evening. Saturday I went and picked up CS for his spring break. DH was working, so I went alone. CS and I went out for lunch after I picked him up and chatted most of the way home, so it was nice to catch up on what he had been doing. Today we had to sing in the choir at the early service, so we were out of the house early. It's a beautiful day here, in the 50's and sunny and I saw some robins hopping around in the back yard. I'm considering a walk later this afternoon. Tomorrow is a sure sign of spring, TB starts baseball try-outs. Our high school is so big that they usually have to cut some kids that try out for the team, so I hope it will all go well for him. More later if I get that walk in.

Paper Route Comes to an End!

2009-03-12T08:28:00.000-07:00

This week marks the first time in nearly 8 years that one of my kids has not had a paper route. CS started when he was about 12, then the other two followed and we had two and a half routes at one time when they were about 11,13, and 15. TB will be starting baseball again next week, so he decided to give the route up this year as his sister didn't want to sub for him again and I don't blame her. She has a job of her own for one thing. I can't say enough about what a good thing having a route has been for my kids. On the one hand, it has been a grind, 6 days a week for 8 years is no small responsibility. But other that a few times when DH or I have filled in and drop off help on Saturdays, it has been their responsibility. As a result, I think they've learned a good work ethic, some problem solving skills, as well as how to earn and handle money. We've never given them an allowance and I can honestly say never restricted how they spent their paper route money. As a result, they are really very frugal and spend very little of what they have. They've used part of their money for the trips they have gone on every summer with scouts or church youth group, many of which we wouldn't have been able to afford otherwise. TB will be without a job for awhile, but he'll go back to his lawn mowing this summer which has worked well with his baseball schedule and is really pretty good money. SD has a couple of choices for summer jobs and CS has his job at school to fall back on if nothing else works out. Now if things were just as certain for DH and I.

Got It!!

2009-03-11T07:51:00.001-07:00

Here's Wilbur checking out the squirrel we caught from the fireplace. We caught him shortly after yesterday's post when I changed the bait to dry roasted peanuts. Surprisingly, both were very calm and after awhile, Wilbur even started rubbing his chin on the cage. We took the squirrel for a ride and dropped him off by a farm on the edge of town. He ran away and seemed no worse for wear. I hope he'll be happy there and not return to my fireplace. The animal control lady said that their range is 16 miles when DH went to borrow the cage. I really don't believe he could find his way back though.

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I'm paring down my blog list a little, in case anyone notices. I'm grouping some in a different place in my computer, so not deleting entirely. I'm probably kidding myself that anyone will notice or care, but I'm always worried about offending someone. I'm going to try adding in some new blogs that I've been looking at recently, and maybe some with a little more local flavor. I've been looking for some local blogs that I like and I've found an interesting phenomenon. There are several where their entire group of friends and family must have blogs since there are so many in their sidebar. It would be a fun way to keep in touch. I still haven't told any of my friends or family about my blog. I kind of enjoy keeping it personal and anonymous and let's be honest, I'm always worried about what people will think. Hopefully I'll get over it someday!! Incidentally, I am on Facebook and have a grand total of about 13 friends!

Squirrel on the Loose

2009-03-10T14:08:00.000-07:00

Finally something blogworthy; a squirrel has taken up residency in our basement fireplace for the last few days. I hope that it is not making itself too much at home or planning on raising a family within the walls of my home. I'm a little nervous about the amount of insulation that is showing up in the fire box. I'm envisioning the thing burrowing around within the walls of our house. Anyway, DH went to animal control today and borrowed a live trap so we can do a catch and release. This has happened about 4-5 other times since we lived in the house, so we've been through it before. We had a chimney sweep come, but even he wouldn't go up to put a screen on our abnormally high chimney. The first two times we actually had an animal control officer come to the house to take out the squirrel. The guy we had the second time wasn't too bright and got bit in the process nearly releasing the little offender into the house. Apparently they keep a record of these things, so lately we've been taking care of it ourselves. I hope to post a picture of the captured squirrel very very soon!!!

Back on the Grid

2009-03-06T09:41:00.000-08:00

I admit to falling off the blogging band wagon for the last couple of weeks. It seems like when I've had time to sit down at the computer, I've been doing "work" related things, reading a few blogs without commenting, and going on my way. I've also been very busy, as most bloggers are, but I haven't felt an urge to post about any of the goings on. Anyway, here's a brief update on the good, the bad, and the ugly that has been my last two weeks:

*CS home from college for the weekend (two trips to "the cities" to get him)
*Youth silent auction fundraiser at church (frantic sewing, staining, and varnishing to finish projects)
*A new temp. job (coordinating soup suppers at church to serve roughly 200 each Weds. night)
*Pets (Cleaning up a variety of things expelled from a variety of places-YUK)
*Quilting (several projects finished, a class attended, some corners that matched)
*Work (Mud, cold, naughty children, a few hugs, some perfect spelling papers, sweet 3rd graders)
*Money (Actual the lack of it due to the economic situation and its affect on our finances)
*Family (Sicknesses, wellness, science fair, basketball, rock climbing, movies, friends, card club, choir and bell practice, pep band, piano lessons, paper route, driving practice, etc.)
*Church (meetings, phone calls, services, etc.)

I'm sure there's more, but I've got to get to work now. Check back for (hopefully) some more interesting posts, pictures, commentary, etc.

Random Recommendations

2009-02-22T12:46:00.000-08:00

Here's a few recommendations for a Sunday afternoon. This is going to have to be one of those quick posts since we are going to someone's house for dinner tonight and I have to bring bread and an appetizer, neither of which I've started.
1. Slum Dog Millionaire- We went to see it last night as an outing for DH's birthday which was yesterday. We really enjoyed it, it was eye-opening, had a little humor, and really a great story with a feel-good ending. I saw a little bit of a piece on CBS Sunday Morning that said that is the type of movie that will be successful when times are hard. Everyone wants to see the poor and down-trodden triumph over adversity and maybe bring the high and mighty down a peg in the process.
2. Google Maps Streetview- If you haven't tried it, check it out. I've been using the birds-eye maps for quite awhile, but this is really something. You put in the address of the place you want to see and you are instantly on the street looking at an actual view of the house or building or whatever. I tried it out for the couple's house we are going to tonight. I know that they live on the south side of the street in a dark brown rambler and have a two story next door. I looked up and down the street in both directions, so I will know exactly where I am when I get there. I also checked out my house and my son's college dorm. It's a little creepy in a way, but cool too. Incidentally, it's not available for everywhere.
3. Brownie Pizza- A great substitute for birthday cake and something I make for DH every year. You bake a brownie mix on a pizza pan, when its done sprinkle on mini marshmallows and M&M's and put it back in the oven for a few more minutes. Then drizzle with caramel syrup. You could also add nuts or coconut or other candies, but this is the way we like it best. Yum!
Enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Quilt Rack

2009-02-19T09:16:00.000-08:00

Here's a couple of shots of the quilt rack DH made for me. It's kind of a prototype for the ones he's making for the silent auction at church. I really like how it turned out. It has a notch in the shelf on top, so I could put some plates or what-not up there to display. I've asked my friends for dimensions of quilt racks they might like to bid on. If they wanted one anyway, I thought the money just as well go for a good cause. Several of the kids from church, mine included are raising fund for a trip to a national youth gathering for our church that will be held in New Orleans in July. DH is going along as a chaperone, so that will leave me home alone. Providing of course that CS finds himself a summer job. It's a rather expensive trip, so I hope that this auction will be a success. Looking at this picture, it reminds me that you should sew a straight seam when attaching borders!

Iowa...it's flat and brown

2009-02-17T07:52:00.000-08:00

I made a trip to Iowa over the weekend to visit my mother in the hospital. She was doing a lot better and was able to come home on Monday while my sister and I were still there. We got her medications set up, made some calls to her doctor, and have her set up to receive visits from a Home Health nurse, so I hope she will continue to do well. She was definitely anxious to get out of the hospital after 10 days. On my trip down, I went directly to the hospital using a road I hadn't been on before. It was little traveled and not near any towns. Every time I return to the area where I grew up, I am astounded by it's flatness. You can see for miles in every direction, seeing water towers and grain elevators for towns that are 10 or 15 miles away. I snapped this picture in the direction of my hometown; it's out there somewhere. This time of year, everything looks pretty bleak; fields of various shades of brown and black, bare trees, dirty snow in the ditches. I wish I had taken the time to get some better pictures, but I wasn't very inspired I guess. Interestingly enough, before I left Minnesota, I saw a flock of robins in my neighborhood. It's nice and sunny today, so I'll tell myself that Spring is just around the corner.

Tide Stemmed and Quilt Finished!

2009-02-11T09:30:00.000-08:00

The stream of water in the basement has mostly stopped. DH tore apart the wall yesterday to reveal a large floor to ceiling crack. Why we never did this before is a good question, but it's done now. He plans to chisel out the crack and fill it with a special cement patch and hopefully that will remedy the situation without having to dig up my bushes and the sidewalk outside. He assures me that he won't cause the entire wall to cave in!

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I finished the wall hanging that I'm planning to donate to the silent auction for this Friday night. I'm making another one just like it to have for myself, but I still have all of the quilting and binding to do on that one. I still hope to have it done by Valentine's day. This auction is to support some walkers for a breast cancer event. Then in March there are silent auctions for our church youth and the marching band, so I'll be busy with projects. DH has also made one quilt rack and plans to make some more, so I'll post a picture of that too.

Not the Best Week Ever.

2009-02-10T08:33:00.000-08:00

This week is getting off to a bad start. My mom is back in the hospital for a couple of problems, one of which may require surgery if it doesn't resolve. She had just started driving again after her broken hip last year and drove herself to the hospital on Saturday. It's sad to see this happen when she was doing so well.

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It's been great to have some warmer weather and we're getting rid of a lot of snow, unfortunately some of it is coming into our basement. DH and I took turns getting up all night to sop up the water so it wouldn't get into the carpet. This happens every so often when we have a lot of rain, but usually not so early in the season. DH is going to tear into the wall this afternoon to see what's going on. I have this dream of having the problem resolved and new carpet before SD's graduation this spring, but that would take money.

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Money...enough said!

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We're having a meeting after school today to find out how the school board is going to cut about 9 million from the budget for next year. I don't think my job is too much in danger, but I could lose hours which would hardly make it worth keeping.

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If all this weren't enough for one week I also have a cold that's leaving me feeling pretty miserable. On a brighter note, I have some fun quilt projects going. I'm on a deadline for one of them so I hope to get a picture posted of it tomorrow.

Strip Twist Quilt

2009-02-05T16:48:00.000-08:00

Here's the Strip Twist quilt I have been working on. I got the pattern from Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville site. She mentioned this quilt on her blog (Jan. 29th) as a Superbowl project. I watched the Superbowl, but worked on it earlier in the week and I had it about finished by game time. It went together really easily and it was fun to play around with the squares to get them in a way I liked. It was a little outside the box for me, but I really like how it turned out. I stayed away from colors I don't usually like in quilts-yellow, orange, and purple-and concentrated on the reds, blues, and greens I have the most of. By the end I ran out of light prints to use, so I could use some more of that in my stash. I was thinking about donating it to the silent auction at church, but when I got done it had so many pieces from quilts I've made in the past that I don't think I can part with it. It will be kind of a memory quilt. Tomorrow when we have our block of the month class, I'm going to pick out something for a strip of border about 5 inches all the way around. I'm thinking about a dark Kansas Troubles print. I still haven't gotten the outside border done on last year's block of the month, so I should get going on that too.

My Attention Span

2009-02-04T09:48:00.000-08:00

I've been having a few issues with my attention span lately, usually while blogging. The other night while perusing some of my favorite blogs, I smelled popcorn. "Mmmm, popcorn" I was thinking, "I'd like to have some". About that time my brain kicked in and I remembered that I had just put a bag in the microwave. A snack sized bag at that! That puts my current attention span at less than 1 minute and 45 seconds.

Belated Happy Groundhog Day!

2009-02-03T19:04:00.000-08:00

There's something I like about Groundhog Day. It's a little strange I know, but I get a little excited about it. DH and I watched the "Groundhog Day" movie last night, it's one of my favorites too. Maybe it has something to do with the feeling that even though we will always have at least 6 more weeks of winter, at least it seems like Spring is getting closer. We had some nicer weather this last weekend with sunshine and temps above freezing for the first time this year. Today, however, it was back to the deep freeze with windchills in the -20 range. Anyway, I'm starting to feel like the worst is over where winter is concerned. I know I've been dwelling on the weather a bit lately, but it has been soooo bad this year that I can't help it.

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I decided that it's New Year's resolution update time. I admit that I've failed in all or in part in all of my resolutions. Why do I even bother? Looking back I realized that sewing more wasn't even one of my resolutions. That I've been doing a lot better on. I completed another quilt top this week and just have to add the outer sashing. I promise to post a picture soon.

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It was a pretty busy day today with a training at work this morning, my regular hours this afternoon, a school board input session after work and an orchestra concert tonight. At work this afternoon, a little guy I often work with told me I looked sick and asked if I slept well the night before. I admitted I wasn't feeling the greatest and went to check my temp in the nurse's office out of curiosity. I was 100.5, so I took some ibuprofen and I hope I'll be able to fight off whatever it was. I must have looked pretty bad today for a third grader to notice, I'll have to spend a little more time on hair and make-up tomorrow. :)

Finished projects

2009-01-26T07:57:00.001-08:00

Like I mentioned last week, I spent most of the day on Friday at a sewing get-together with a couple of friends. We take our sewing machines and supplies over to our church where we can spread out, work part of the day, go for lunch, and come back and finish up without having to worry about leaving everything out. I worked on what I'm calling the Cardinal Quilt the entire day. I had worked on it a lot before Christmas, but it took me the whole day to cut and sew the last two rows of blocks and the dark purple border. On Saturday I finished up the borders and pieced the back, so it's ready to be quilted once I get it put together with the batting. Last night I made the table runner. It was a fun pattern I saw online. I used a charm square pack, sewed into two nine patch blocks and then cut in half from top to bottom and side to side. I ended up with 8 smaller blocks to randomly sew together. I was complaining Friday that I'm not good at "random". My cardinal quilt was supposed to have the printed blocks in a random pattern, but I ended up with three in a row down the middle, but I'm hoping no one but me will notice. The cardinal quilt is for CS, so his bed looks nice when he's not home. Ha. It turned out pretty large for a twin bed, so I think he'll be able to use it for a larger bed too. Hopefully he'll appreciate it some day. The runner is for a silent auction we're having at church. It's to raise funds for the summer youth trip my younger two and my husband are going on in July. My idea with naming my blog "Sew Many Days" was that I would have projects like this to show quite often. Hopefully it won't be so long before the next one.

Mid-Winter Nothingness

2009-01-22T16:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a few random thoughts, not a lot different from most of my posts, but at least you're forewarned. I keep thinking I need to work on being able to do a 5-minute post. I think too much about what I'm writing, processing as I go along, which is great sometimes, but sometimes I just need to get it out there and move on. I like it when my posts are pretty, well thought out, and perhaps even meaningful, but like they say about quilting, "done is better than perfect". I don't think I'm alone in feeling that my blog posts are like my journal. I've been known to look back to check on dates things happened to reinforce my poor memory. Perhaps that's why I feel that I should be posting more frequently, it's certainly not the public clamoring for my every word. I do really appreciate my readers and the comments I get however.

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I really enjoyed watching so much of the inauguration festivities on Tuesday. I'm not a very political person, so it's not that, but there are several reasons I liked it. Seeing so many people gathered peacefully in one place and thinking about those gathered in many, many other places around the country and the world really meant something to me. I realize there are a lot of dissenters, but I think the majority of those watching felt hope and pride in our country for the first time in a long time, the first time ever for some. It was profound to think of the dream of Martin Luther King coming true in one aspect anyway. I admit that I liked the pageantry also; the words, the music, the parade, the coming together of past leaders and their families, our new and past leaders showing respect towards one another. The other thing is the feeling that despite obvious differences, the Obamas are more like me than any other first family in the past. We're practically contemporaries age-wise, we're parents of school age children, we're not from a background of privilege and wealth. I think others identify with them also. I'm going to give them a chance anyway, something not everyone is willing to do unfortunately. I definitely have the hope that my family will be better off in four years than we are now, but I'm willing to accept that it will probably get worse before it gets better.

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Speaking of getting worse, I'm not going to be at all surprised if I lose my job at the end of this school year. My school district is planning to cut nearly 15 million dollars from the budget in the next year. It's really unfortunate and I know many will lose jobs, many necessary programs will be cut, and the educational quality for the students can't help but be adversely affected. I hate to say it, but I'm glad my kids are nearly done with high school if this is going to be what it's like.

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Today was the last day of the semester for school, we're halfway done. We have the day off tomorrow. The kids have a ski trip with the church youth and I'm getting together with a bunch of friends to sew all day. Yeah!! Poor DH is working all day, but he found out unexpectedly that he has Saturday off, so that will be nice.

My Long Weekend

2009-01-19T09:20:00.000-08:00

The weekend sure flew by and here it is Monday already. We don't have school today for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, so I'll be trying to tie up the loose ends from my weekend as I do most Mondays. Do you ever notice how so many things never get done because of all the mundane things that we feel must be done first? I don't think I ever really get done with the house cleaning, dishes, laundry, etc. and I have the mind-set that I need to before I do the fun stuff like sewing and going through photographs. It's funny how I find time for blogging and drinking coffee.

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One of the highlights of the weekend was going out with friends to see Gran Torino and have dinner out afterward. It was a great movie, both funny and touching, really the kind of movie where you laugh and cry. Clint Eastwood played the lead, a recently widowed retired Detroit autoworker who still lives in the old neighborhood. The neighborhood has vastly changed, becoming home to many immigrants, mostly Hmong, and the movie follows his relationship with the family next door. Their son, Thao is the other main character. He's a young man trying to find his way without a lot of opportunity except for the local gang trying to recruit and initiate him. It had a lot of themes, but mostly had to do with the racism of Clint's character and his enlightenment as the movie went on. I think most people can relate to it and probably know older people in their family very similar to him. Even without all of the racial epithets, there are a lot of people out there with the same kind of racism born from ignorance and lack of opportunity to experience diversity. Of course there are plenty of others who are taught to be racist and pursue it with a vengeance. Naming their child Adolf Hitler comes to mind. It will be an exciting day tomorrow with the inauguration. I believe that it's a great sign, but there is still a long way to go where racism is concerned in this country. In reading blogs before the election, I was appalled at some of the anti-Obama entries. Not all of them were coming from a racist perspective, but many were. Sweet little ladies who suddenly had this voracious interest in politics and would never have admitted that it had anything to do with racism. Anyway, I would highly recommend this movie, there was complete silence and many people in tears when it was over, attesting to its' powerful message.(Edited: I decided that I had better put in a cautionary note that this movie is rated "R", has a significant amount of foul language, violence, and racial epithets. I know that it is not everyone's cup of tea, however, I saw many older folks in the audience, really a cross section of (white) society.)

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The rest of the weekend was quickly consumed by painting the basement floor (pictures another day), taking CS back to college, bringing Quicken up to date, laundry, cleaning, etc. Oh yeah, and watching the Gopher hockey team sweep St. Cloud. I hope to get some sewing done today, but first I have to clean up the cat barf on the carpet and wash the dishes.

Super Weekend!!!

2009-01-15T16:12:00.000-08:00

Who'd have expected that my weekend would begin at 4:00 pm on Wednesday? A benefit of the ridiculously cold weather we've been having is that school was canceled today and they've already canceled it for tomorrow. Monday is Martin Luther King Day, so there you have it...a super long weekend!! I finally got my Christmas tree put away on Tuesday, so I've been gradually cleaning the house, doing and redoing laundry, cooking meals, etc. as usual. I think a couple of extra days calls for something out of the ordinary. I haven't been down in my sewing room for well over a week. Our basement floor project is still half done. I haven't started on my photo organizing project yet. No excuses now, I'll have to get to each of those. We've also got plans to get together with friends for a matinee of "Grand Torino" and dinner on Saturday. We'll be taking CS back to school on Sunday. I think he's ready to go back and get away from me bugging him about getting a summer job.

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We got a new load of firewood this afternoon, so we're staying snug and warm despite the bitter cold outside. The actual temp this morning was -24 with a windchill of -49. I helped TB with his route yesterday and just about froze my fingers; I made CS help him today. Hope you're keeping warm wherever you are, be glad you're not here!

Phone Flashback

2009-01-13T09:18:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned on Saturday, it was TB's 16th birthday on Saturday and like any 16 yr. old, his own cell phone was his fondest wish. We're able to add him on to our plan for $9.99 a month, so that's what we did and told him he could pick from any of the "free" phones they are offering right now. As it turned out, DH and I both decided to upgrade our phones at the same time as it was "free"and we had both been having a couple of issues with the ones we had. We paid for insurance on all three phones so if they get dropped in the toilet or left at a baseball field somewhere we can get them replaced hence the "not really free" part. I wrapped the phone above, one DH had back in the 90's, to give him as his birthday present. All three of the kids laughed about it and DH's story about how he had chosen it because it was so small and how he wore it on his belt at work. I'll say one thing for it, it was sturdy. That old phone was simply a phone, but seemed quite amazing at the time. Our new one is also a camera, MP3 player, radio, calculator, alarm clock, and can synch with my computer to carry my calendar with all of my appointments intact and can also transfer pictures and music quite easily. I took the picture above with it. It's surprising how much the technology has advanced in just a few years. I guess there's a lot of money driving it. It shows that with enough money amazing innovations, those thought unbelievable a few years ago, are possible. I guess there has been innovation everywhere, but it's too bad we don't see a similar advancement in fuel economy or cancer treatment. That is advancements that are affordable for everyone to access.

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I can't stop myself from mentioning the weather again. Our actual temp. this morning was -18, not fit for man nor beast. Another big storm is on the way for tonight, it would be nice to get a snow day out of the deal, but I doubt it.

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I've joined my first group blog called A Place for Everything. It's topic is conquering clutter and each of us will blog about a particular area, things we're working on, etc. My main area is photographs. Check it out when you have a chance.

Minnesota Heat Wave

2009-01-10T11:52:00.000-08:00

The sun is finally shining brightly here today and when the sun is out and the temps get into the high teens, it really is like a heat wave here in Minnesota. I was out this morning and helped TB with his paper route. It was so nice to be out in the sun, but it really was slippery in many places. Now the ice on the streets is melting thanks to salt and sand the city has spread out. Later I went to get groceries and a couple of sights prompted my post. A man in the parking lot on his way to go shopping had left his coat behind and was wearing a T-shirt. Later when I drove alongside a park on my way home, there was a group of about 20 young men out in the snow playing Ultimate Football or some such game without coats. I suspect they were members of our local amateur hockey team. Yesterday I saw a couple of high school kids jogging wearing shorts. I still stay bundled up myself, but it sure is nice to see the sun.

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We have a birthday at our house tomorrow. TB, the baby of the family, will be 16. The fact that the baby is 6'5" and will soon be driving on his own makes me feel a little old. My kids will be 16,17, and 19 for a few months and it always makes me remember how busy I was when they were little. Teenagers have a few challenges also, but for the most part, mine give me very little trouble, so I'm very thankful for that. TB has no interest in being mentioned in my blog and has forbidden pictures, but maybe I'll ask again tomorrow.

The Miraculous Heating Pad

2009-01-07T14:31:00.000-08:00

My week has been going along pretty well despite my misgivings on Sunday night. I think I had a little case of PMS going there. I've been substituting for the secretary at school all week, so I've been working full days. It's kind of drag getting going so early in the morning, but the extra money on this month's check will be nice. An extra benefit is that I haven't had to do recess duty all week. The other benefit, hence the title of my post, is that she keeps a heating pad plugged in under her desk. There is often a cold draft from the door, so she holds it on her lap to keep warm. I have kept it on the back of my chair all week and it has done wonders for my sore back. I can finally take a deep breath or sneeze without sharp stabs of pain. Nice!!

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My diet has been going pretty well for the most part. My only cheating was on a birthday treat from one of my favorite little guys. His dad is a pastry chef and had made cream puffs in the shape of a swan for everyone. They looked a lot like this picture I found online. I let it sit on my desk for awhile and finally succumbed and ate it. It was pretty tasty, but it looked prettier. I don't think I'll post much about my diet here. I know I kind of find it boring to read about someone's weight loss when I don't know them or what they look like. I'll make it a rule to only mention it when I have crossed a 10 lb. line. If you are interested, we're doing a version of the South Beach diet where you cut out all of the bad carbs but can still have vegetables, fruit, etc. Oh yeah and the occasional glass of red wine. :)

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It looks like we're getting closer on the Clutter Blog. I'll be posting a link in my side-bar when it is up and running.

The End...Crabbiness Alert!

2009-01-04T14:40:00.000-08:00

I guess this post should be titled "A New Beginning", but today I feel more like "the end". I go back to work at school tomorrow after a 17 day break. It's going to be cold, the kids will be out of any semblance of a routine, the teachers may also be a little crabby and I'm not looking forward to it. DH and I are also planning to start our diet tomorrow. So no eating cookies, chips, candy, bread, etc. for the foreseeable future. Add to it all of the things I didn't accomplish over break and it really puts me in a funk. Oh well, we're having one last big meal, ham and sweet potatoes, etc. and I'll be eating the last of the Christmas cookies and probably a glass of wine later to try to eke some enjoyment out of my last day of freedom.

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We did have a great time at the hockey game last night even though the driving was horrible both ways. We saw several cars in the ditch and dealt with a lot of freezing rain and snow before we made it home safely. Probably not the smartest trip we ever made, but for free tickets, it was totally worth it. We had a nice meal at Applebee's before the game and it was close enough that we could park, eat, and walk to the arena. They won the game in overtime. Our seats were amazing, 4th row behind one of the goals. The only complaint I have is the cheerleaders who stationed themselves in our section for the 3rd period. I don't like cheerleaders anyway, but these were particularly annoying. Anyway...here's a couple of camera phone pictures I took. They're a little blurry, but it gives you an idea how great our seats were. They got the winning goal right in front of us only a couple of minutes into the overtime period and the crowd went insane. M-I-N-N-E-S-O-T-A Minnesota, Minnesota, Yaaaay Gophers!!!

A Hockey Game

2009-01-03T11:07:00.000-08:00

DH and I have been given tickets for the Gopher Hockey game tonight. They are playing in the championship game of their holiday tournament at Mariucci Arena at the U of M. I started following Gopher hockey last year when one of my co-worker's sons started playing for the team. I enjoy watching the games on tv, but we've never seen them play in person, so it will be kind of exciting. I hope that the weather will cooperate for our trip to the cities and back, it sounds like there may be some snow. We watched their game last night after we got back from our final holiday gathering of the year. We had a pot-luck meal at some friends house with a white elephant gift exhange. I really should post a picture of the gift I got, perhaps another day.

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I'm considering joining my first group blog. It has to do with clutter removal and each person in the group chooses an area they need to work on and posts information they have learned to conquer the particular area. My area will be photographs, both regular and digital. I need to get all of that stuff organized before SD's graduation this spring so that I can make her a nice photo display board and maybe even an album. I'll leave a link once it gets off the ground.

Our Fabulous New Year's Eve Dinner Party!

2009-01-01T17:19:00.000-08:00

We had a great time at our New Year's Eve party last night. We followed a concept one of our friends had found in Minnesota Monthly magazine. There were five couples and each provided a course for the meal and an accompanying beverage. We had fairly small portions for each course, so at the end of the evening, we weren't over full on either food or drink. We did get a ride home, incidentally, something I highly recommend. Here's what we had:
Appetizer #1- bacon wrapped dates with reduced apple cider sauce and Cava (a Spanish sparkling wine)
Appetizer #2- Baked brie infused with brandy and wrapped in phyllo dough served on either sourdough bread or apple slices. Served with a selection of beers, Asti, or Reisling.
Entree#1-Lemon chive fettuccine with Greek shrimp served with Pomelo Sauvignon blanc.
Entree #2-Tenderloin Roast stuffed with mushrooms and onions with béarnaise sauce and asparagus served with a Shiraz.
Dessert- Flourless chocolate torte served with vanilla ice cream and caramel topping with coffee with Kahlua and Bailey's Irish Cream.

Everything was as delicious as it sounds and although it may sound like we were drinking a lot, we had small glasses. Each course lasted quite awhile and the rest of us would sit around and visit while whoever was in charge of the next course prepared it. Anyway, it was a wonderful evening spent with good friends and a great way to ring in the New Year.

Misc. ramblings and resolutions

2008-12-31T08:33:00.000-08:00

By popular request, here's a photo of the pasta drying rack DH made for me. As usual, it's larger and fancier than really necessary, but it comes apart completely for storage. With the state of the real estate market, maybe he should go into business selling sturdy pasta racks. This is the last project he completed before we started the complete overhaul of his workshop. Even before the broken pipe incident, I had bought him epoxy floor paint for Christmas. Romantic gift, eh? To use it entails moving everything out of one half, sweeping and scrubbing the floor, then painting, allowing to dry.....that's as far as we've gotten. Crawling around on a cement floor is very exhausting and every muscle I have is achy. It looks great though and it has been a good way to do a thorough cleaning and get rid of a lot of junk.

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I spent most of the day yesterday working at a funeral lunch at my church. A 63 yr. old man had died while shoveling snow with his wife on Christmas day, really tragic. Spending a day in this manner is a good way to put things in perspective. For one thing, you never know when the day will come for you. Not a happy thought I know, but thinking about it can change the way you live your life if you let it.

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As promised, here's the New Year's resolutions for 2009 in no particular order-
1. Lose another 25 lbs. ( I've gained back part of the 25 I lost last year)
2. Don't gain back weight you tried so hard to lose!
3. Exercise at least once a week to start with.
4. Be a better listener, not always thinking of how I will respond.
5. Give more compliments, especially to my kids.
6. Remember when things get tough that other people have it waay worse than I do.
7. Along with #6, be thankful and grateful for everything I have instead of thinking about everything I want.
8. Read more books.
9. Sort my pictures and print off/back up all digital pictures.
10. Be kinder than is necessary.
11. Don't watch so much tv.
12. Go to bed earlier.

Okay, that's it. I realize I'm leaning a little close to the "change your entire life" resolution area, but I think naming several gives me a little more room for success. I'm looking forward to a great New Year's Eve spent with friends and I hope you will have a wonderful 2009!