Something About Nothing

Bubba would like to wish everyone a carefree and happy New Year. He would also like to tell everyone about the lovely Christmas we had - even if the only present he got was a piece of ribbon! Christmas this year was different and it was all because of a Bunny. The Easter Bunny to be specific. You see the Bunny was very careless this past Easter as he left some of the candy from the Easter Baskets in our cupboard. Silly rabbit. As a result we had a very traumatic Easter day, and now all the children aren't as naive as they once were. :( Things were also different because my sister didn't arrive until 4 in the afternoon on Christmas day. We decided it would be best to wait until she arrived to open presents, and so after waking up late, we had a big breakfast followed by a day of game playing Risk. This is the face my dear husband makes when he thinks he has done something very clever. He makes me laugh! Once my sister arrived we had a delicious turkey dinner followed...

My creative friend stopped by this evening to bring me a delightful Christmas gift she had made for me. As she came up to the door she bent down to get a drink off one of the melting icicles hanging from our Christmas lights. We laughed at her childishness, and then paused to observe the beauty in the glassy sculptures. When I saw how the water from the top icicle was dripping to form a new icicle below it I became very excited and called to my family to come see right away! I heard chairs scoot and feet scramble because of the thrill they heard in my voice. "Oh, that's nice" was all one said when they arrived. As they returned to the kitchen, I heard a cynical voice crack that the most exciting thing to do in this town on a Saturday night was to look at icicles. I retorted that sometimes it's good for life to be simple and you just have to stop and lick the icicles! As my friend left she suggested that I take a picture and include it in my next blog entry. ...

Recently when I was working on some family history at familysearch.org (a free website where you can search for your ancestors). I discovered Family Search Indexing. A website where "Volunteers extract family history information from digital images of historical documents to create searchable indexes that assist everyone in finding their ancestors." I decided to give it a try. I downloaded the software and spent an evening going through all the tutorials and then downloaded my first project. It was some very interesting marriage records, which were all seperate pieces of paper, not the typical items listed in a column. I have always been facinated with old records and things, even if they don't have anything to do with my own family. Just so you understand, I also enjoy walking through a cemetary. I am facinated knowing that these people lived, and had families. I love reading headstones and seeing how old people were when they passed away and wondering what their life...

I finally finished my challenge quilt for Quilter's Holladay, and the verdict is in. The cats say it is a winner! Wahoo. lol Actually it did take two awards at my guild meeting as well - a tie for "Most Complicated interpretation of the theme" and "Most Original interpretation of the theme." I received a beautiful fat quarter as the prize for both titles, along with a beautiful ribbon which says "Good job" or something like that. I guess I should pull it out and take a picture, but that would interupt my train of thought. :) The challenge was multi-leveled: use only squares and triangles, use the color green plus one or two other colors, and you could also use black and white, and it had to be at least 50" x 50". I would never have made this quilt the way I did without the challenge and so I think I am grateful for the stretching it provided me? It took me about 10 months to complete with the majority of that time spent putting 2 1/...

There is no sarcasm in the above title. It is a statement of fact. I LOVE MONDAYS. Monday is the day after Sunday, which means I have been spiritually and physically charged (3 hours of church followed by 3 hours of nap). Monday is the day that we get back on a defined schedule, which means I am in charge of my schedule. I get to sit at the computer all day, or work like a demon all day without interruption if I like. Usually I am fired up for the week ahead and start with a to do list and get to it. By 9 p.m. I am happy with what I have accomplished and exhausted. This past Monday I ran to the bookstore with my two youngest at about 8:30 p.m. Suddenly I wasn't feeling like a happy mom anymore. "Are we done? Are you ready to go? Please put that down." I decided nights when I'm tired are not a good time to go shopping. My patience has gone to bed and I am ready to join her! Patience, Energy and Charity had all run off to bed because I had spent the ent...

Yesterday my husband and children put their busy lives aside to come with me downtown to have professional photos made. Over the years we have had photos made at Sears, Pennys , Kiddie Kandids and similar "studios." We have had a lot of mediocre photos taken at these places. One time the photos came back and one of the children was half way out of the photo! And the worst part was that we HAD to purchase them because my dear husbands parents were in them and they had returned to their home in another country. There was no way to redo the photos. It was terrible! We did have professional photos made once with a photographer who came to student housing. He actually took my favorite photo of our family so far. So why, you ask, do we keep going back to these barely adequate places? Well to be honest - It has always been about the money. This year is different. Our oldest child will be moving out of the state for law and/or graduate school soon and we decided it was time for some...

It was Saturday morning and we didn't have to run to any type of lesson or a volleyball game or a ballet lesson and it was glorious! Well we did have to run to pick up our fruits and veggies from the coop at 10 a.m. but that is a joyful errand - More on that later. My early riser daughter thought we should make something yummy for breakfast since we didn't have to run anywhere, and I agreed. We went through the usual list: biscuits - oops sorry, no crisco ; waffles - oops sorry, remember when we opened the waffle iron last time and someone had left a waffle in it and it was filled with green hairy mold - appetizing!; french toast - oops sorry, we are low on bread; how about muffins? Great idea! We have lots of frozen bananas that need to be used. So we pulled out all the ingredients, and I had the early riser grab her camera, which is my old camera, so that she could document the momentous morning. She's having a little trouble with keeping the camera still, but she...

As I walked the bus load of kids to school today I had to laugh. It is truly Windsday here in our neck of the Hundred Acre Wood. The leaves were not just dancing across the road, they were running! We looked up and it looked like it was snowing leaves! At one point, the only little boy that walks with us, stopped and the leaves swirled around his feet just like they are in this Winnie the Pooh picture. It was delightful! I love walking these kids to school on mornings like this. I will have to readjust my attitude once the snow flys everyday and the temperature drops to 30 on a regular basis. I read an article in Prevention magazine that says "When you're crunching that 100 th sit-up or scaling 10 flights of stairs, it's not your muscles that will really push you, but your brain. How fast, how long, and how powerfully you perform is mostly in your head." So I just need to psyche myself up to love the snow that is bound to come our way! I'll need to have a P...

Sunday nights seem to be my night to attempt a plan for the week ahead. I can often overwhelm myself with all I want to accomplish in the upcoming week and so I decided that perhaps I would write a "to do" list, however sometimes my these lists can be a little overwhelming. I decided that I should write an "I Did" list instead. A list that will help me to remember that I did more than just get out of bed last week. Here goes: I Did . . . read the Scriptures with my daughters every morning (wahoo). . . . walk my daughters to school every morning, and picked them up a couple days. . . . pick up my daughters and all their friends in the van one day because it was still pouring rain when school got out. . . . went to an Enrichment meeting at church and heard all about gratitude, for which I am grateful : D because I really have A LOT to be grateful for. . . . pick up my paycheck and of course I had to buy a piece of fabric while I was there, but I needed i...

One of the blogs I follow led me to another blog where the writer is giving away these three awesome quilts! Can you believe it? They are so beautiful, and I hope I win one of them! You could win one too. Just click on the button in myside bar and post a comment on her blog to enter! You can also earn more entries - read her blog entry to see how. Good luck to us all!

And come to think of it - these books should NEVER be left lying about or else someone might think you have actually read them and that you KNOW how to clean house! Sheesh.

Everytime I turn around I see something new that I want to try. I checked out an ebook at the library that will teach me more about Adobe Photoshop and haven't taken the time to read it and I think it may expire before I get the chance. There is another book I should just buy and then I won't have the pressure of reading it before a due date. One of my friends recommended a good read for me that is suppose to be very entertaining and I already have two books I'm attempting to read right now so I had to put it on my goodreads "to read" list. I did request it on CD hoping that I will remember to pick it up and then remember to listen to it while I sew. I haven't tried the listening and sewing thing yet. I love to drive and listen to a book on cd because I can so easily get lost into the story and it helps the miles go by. Maybe I will have to drive to my sister's house again so that I can actually listen to the story if the sewing and listening doesn't w...

Halloween was a beautiful day here in our part of the world. Costumes could be seen since overcoats, gloves and hats were not needed. (Unlike a few years back when the snow was falling so thick and cold that we drove from house to house!) We did have a couple sprinkles of rain, but nothing to cry about. We went on trick-or-treating and had a wonderful time! And now here we are just four days later and Winter has made her appearance. This is our lovely peach tree who refuses to die. She is an inspiration every year as she delivers hundreds of delicious babies which we gobble up and then cry when they are all gone. She looks so beautiful in her winter coat. We will pray she recovers in the spring once again. So goodbye Halloween, goodbye fun pumpkins and goodbye warm balmy weather -for now. Hello Winter!

If you haven't already, please go vote! If you don't vote then you have no right to complain, and we all LOVE to complain about politicians.

When you have a baby you become obsessed with things that you would never have given a second thought about before. You think and worry about everything they do. When your child is active you wonder if they have A.D.D. or are they just a "normal" active child? And when lethargic you wonder if they have a cold, a fever, the flu, cancer? Or are they just tired? You worry about your child's eating and sleeping habits. Is (fill in number here) enough hours of sleep for a child? What is too much? Did they get enough to eat? Are they growing enough or too much? Will they be stunted if they miss a meal? Did they just throw up that bottle because they are allergic to the formula, because they are sick or because I tried to feed them too much? Or perhaps they have stomach and intestinal issues? Ask any mother of an infant about her child's poop and show real concern and you could spend all day on the topic. At least I did when my children were little. Well actually...

Imagine if you will, a round woman with unkempt hair, wearing a loose green t-shirt, black jeans and very cute, well kinda cute, running shoes, which have never been run in, dancing, if you can call marching legs and flailing arms dancing, around her kitchen like a crazy person singing "I did it, I did it, I like it, I did it!" Sorry if that image is too much for you, but that is what I looked like a few minutes ago when I was able to put my new background onto my blog. I'm just a little excited because I was able to follow my clever friend's advice and put together something cute and then get it to load onto the computer properly! It didn't want to load at first and I had to go into the html and change it out, and I am very proud of myself for remembering what I watched Ali do! I feel like a little kid after writing my name for the first time. Thanks Ali!

Notice anything different? Thanks to my clever friend, Ali, I now have a beautiful blog! And also thanks to my clever friend I am learning how to beautify my blog all by myself. I feel so grown up. Keep your eye out and see what I can come up with thanks to my clever friends' tutoring. My design wall is happy again. It has blocks on it to play with and isn't feeling lonely anymore. I decided to do a rail fence design for a baby quilt and didn't like the funky look I was getting at first and so I've finally decided to go with this stripy look. I love the look. I've also been working on my machine quilting skills. They still need lots of work. It's difficult to see from faraway, but I know my mistakes. The quilting hasn't made the difference in the look I was hoping for. I like how I was able to put some trees in the background but I wonder if they are too much in the background. I just feel that something is missing. I seem to have that thought ...

Walls with apologies to Joyce Kilmer I think that I shall never see A wall as sad as this may be A wall who once held beauty there Is now but empty and threadbare A wall whose purpose is sublime And gives me jovial pastime Upon whose surface stuff has lain Been moved about and sewn in chains Design walls can create a treasure and call to me for my own pleasure After months of working on a challenge quilt I have finished sewing it together! Yipee! Now all I need to do is quilt it and that may take a few more months. Once it is completed and the challenge is over I will post a picture, in the meantime it must remain a secret. Shhhh. For now my design wall looks very dull and lonely. I may have to start a new project just to keep it happy.

The Cub's lost, the economy stinks, gas prices stink, and airfares stink! It's enough to throw you into the pit of despair. This past weekend my girls had a very long weekend off from school and I wanted to go see my sistah and get out of town for a bit, so despite all the negatives I went anyway. Because of the lousy airfares I decided to drive and take my chances with the lousy gas prices. I was very fortunate to find great prices all along the way which made me think it was meant to be! I even found a place outside Winnemucca with gas under $3 a gallon! I never thought I could be excited to see gas below $3. It was a great weekend and I put up a slide show of photos from the trip (on the sidebar). We did some of my favorite things to do in San Francisco, like shop at the four story Williams and Sonoma store in Union Square, and eat my favorite pizza (forgot to take a picture of it), and my favorite breakfast from The Grove on Fillmore (see photo above). We also went to a fou...

I have been working for over a month to prepare a 15 minute demo to present at my quilt guild. First I had to come up with something to demonstrate that was easy to make and could be used as a holiday gift. I decided I wanted to do something with shirring because it was a skill I had recently learned. I found shirring quite easy and I wanted to share it with others. (Shirring is when you use an elastic thread in the bobbin of your sewing machine and sew it directly onto the fabric - it's what makes this cute dress cinch in at the waist, neck and sleeves - isn't it cute! It's a pattern from Pink Fig Patterns, and I made up this sample for Whimsy. When I get more clever with this blog I will put a link to her website here.) Finally after an extensive search for ideas on the Internet I decided I had to figure out something on my own. I concluded that I would make bottle covers with shirring at the top. You know the kind of cover one might put over a wine bottle when they t...

Circles are fun. Who hasn't enjoyed a game of ring-around-the-rosy in their life at least once, or maybe played with a hoola-hoop. Circles are also yummy, like the doughnuts that my girls and I made last night. Circles are serious too. Teachers like to use them with red ink to emphasis something you did wrong on a test, or to bring attention to the fact that you received a big fat F on same said test, or maybe an A, or a perfectly acceptable C. Circles are also symbolic. Stonehenge is built in a circle and people have been arguing about what these stones represent for many years. Wedding rings are circular and represent the commitment that a man and woman have made to one another. Often though, especially on Sunday afternoons, circles at our house mean that the sale ads have been scoured by the children. They will spend a few hours perusing the sale ads and circling all they would like to have. They want to make sure that Mom knows exactly what they like and think they should be al...

My other beautiful cat was reading my blog today and decided that there was not enough about her in here. She demanded that I take her picture, add it to the blog and include a little something about her. (I'm a little concerned however, can you see how she seems to be squinting? Maybe I need to get her some reading glasses?) Well I hope this post will satisfy her vanity. Probably not, I should include that she has a beautiful voice which she uses to wake me up every morning so that she can get her treats. She also loves to keep fit by running around the house like a mad woman at very random times, usually at night. You always know she is coming because she has these lovely paws which are HUGE and alert you to her coming. We affectionately call her "Sasquatch." Canning takes forever! Well at least for me it does. However the results are quite delicious and I should remember that before I complain too much. Friday I purchased apples at the farmers market, and th...

I went to the farmer's market in Murray today with my neighbor and her cute doggie . He rides in a stroller and we receive lots of comments about what a cute baby she has. We take him in the stroller so we have something to carry some of the farmer goodness in! Today the poor baby was squished in the stroller with a couple watermelons and some corn. We did give him some of our samples of bread and some of the homemade tamale she bought to make up for the uncomfortableness . He was very content. I bought some fresh corn and was very sad to hear that this is their last weekend at the farmers market. I considered buying more to freeze because the people at the stand were telling me how easy it was to do, but this is a crazy busy weekend and I didn't want to buy it and then have it go bad before I could put it up. This winter, I know I will be sorry I didn't do it because they sell the best corn and it's only $5 for a dozen ears. I bought a couple of seedless watermelons wh...

I'm not feeling very creative today - writing wise - as I'm tired. I've felt a bit tired the past few weeks but somehow managed to overcome. Today I'm just tired, but I need to update my blog and so I will write in a dull manner and load some pictures and be done with it! It will no longer be hanging over my head, lurking in the back of my mind saying, "Do it! Update your blog you lazy slob!" So I'll write and then go to bed, well, I can't. I need to run the bikes to the "Bike Guy" and then go to the bank and run some other errands. Sleep will have to wait. I worked Friday and Saturday of last week at Whimsy and had a wonderful time as the shop was not very busy (we think because Quiltfest was going on). I had time to be create and play and have all of the supplies I could ever want right there in front of me. It really was like being a kid let loose in a toy store! Nancy bought some stamps from Artgirlz which have some cute faces, and body p...