Just a day...

We didn't do anything amazing today, and I was totally ok with that. After the running and craziness and chaos of the past few days, it was nice to relax. Daniel actually let me sleep in a bit (actually more than I had planned on doing) and that was wonderful!

Once we finally got up and got motivated, we started puttering around the house. I was wandering around thinking about how much I really wanted something sweet to eat, but didn't feel like making anything (and felt that eating sugar straight out of the canister probably wasn't a good idea) and then he looked at me and announced that he wanted to go to our favorite frozen yogurt place.

*light bulb*

"Tell you what, kid. Pick up all of these toys in the living room while I get a shower, and we'll go and get some froyo - just me and you."

That was all that he needed to hear. By the time I got out of the shower, 95% of the stuff in the living room had been put away semi-neatly, so I finished getting ready and we took off to the other side of town.

He loves his froyo.

An added bonus was the close proximity to where The Dude works - so we got to stop in and say hi to him for a few minutes. We haven't been able to spend as much time together as we'd like because of both of our schedules, so even a couple of minutes here and there is better than nothing.

After we got home, he started pacing back and forth, anxiously awaiting the time when Alex was to come back from his father's house. He stared out the window for a while like a little puppy, and finally gave up and took a break........

........and promptly fell asleep while still about half standing.

I've been working on my sewing project off and on for most of the day - getting dangerously close to getting this row done soon so that I can get it mailed out to the next person. It *technically* doesn't have to be done until the end of March so I feel good being ahead of the game for a change!

Here are a couple of the blocks so far....

Kind of hard to tell from the pictures, but it's actually the same fabric in both - just different lighting. So the blocks are actually the same color. Anyway, I have to get this row done so that I can start on a really really cool really big project - but that project is a total secret. For now. But you'll see it. Eventually.

Christmas, Part I. And stuff.

The older 4 kids have been gone for a couple of days, so it was just me and Daniel for calendar-Christmas. He and I went to church last night...but not before he fell asleep on the floor after his bath. I got him back up and took him to church, where he proceeded to sleep through about 95% of the service.

I made special arrangements with Santa this year. He stopped by last night and dropped off just a couple of small presents for Daniel to open this morning, and then he's coming back tonight to bring EVERYTHING and to fill the stockings so that when all of the kids come home tomorrow, we can have our family Christmas.

Then Daniel and I went out to a friend's house and hung out with her for the afternoon. It was just a totally relaxed, laid-back day......but it's cold outside!

Along with being incredibly cold outside, it's almost as cold in my laundry room. From what I can tell, it used to be a porch and someone just slapped some drywall on the inside and some siding on the outside and called it a laundry room - but neglected to put insulation in the walls. It gets bitter cold in there in the wintertime, to the point that it is almost unbearable to walk across the floor without shoes on - which for me is horrible, since I hate to wear shoes.

Out of curiosity tonight, I grabbed the only thermometer that I have and I put it on the floor in there for a few minutes.

Yeah. It's that cold in there.

Next project? Adding to the bottom of the curtain across the laundry room doorway to keep that cold air from pouring across the kitchen floor. That might even be done tonight. Like, in the next hour.

At the moment, however, I'm waiting for The Dude to come back over. He got here a bit ago - on foot - because his truck died a few blocks away from my house. So he took my van to go back and try to figure out what's going on with it and to see if he can at least get it parked somewhere safe if he can't move it. Then we are getting up early early early in the morning to finish shopping for the kids before they get back home.

Sleep is definitely overrated at this point.

Well, that didn't go as planned....

I mentioned on my facebook page earlier today that I was trying to get 3 Christmas stockings made that are for a last-minute special order. I figured that I could get them pretty much done today. Maybe not done, but close.

So I dug the fabric out of the closet and started going through the unorganized mess of Christmas stuff.

It's always been disorganized. I toss all of my Christmas fabric into this one bin, use some of it for a project, then toss the scraps back in on top of what was already there. So there are scraps, then big pieces, and more scraps, and actual yardage, all jumbled up together. And wrinkled.

So I came up with a plan - like I always do. But as usual, my plan sidetracked any sort of progress that I was going to make today.

Not to mention that these kids - I swear, I fed them yesterday, but they wanted food again today! Sheesh! I would get started on something, and they would want food. Or need help with something. Or whatever. It's only the first day of Alex and Daniel's winter break - but they definitely kept me on my toes today.

I started pulling out all of the fabric and sorted it. Solids in one pile (to use for the backing) and prints in another. Scraps sorted from yardage. And so on and so forth. And then I started ironing. And then I started cutting.

So as of right now, I have lots of strips of fabric, but no stockings. But, once I get all of the prep work done (hopefully later tonight) I'll be able to get cracking on the stockings themselves and whip them out fairly quickly.

After all, I do have a couple more days to get them done....no pressure.

On the plus side though, Alex actually helped me to fold and put away 4 loads of laundry tonight, I ran the dishwasher, and the kitchen is clean-ish. So although I totally did not get what I needed to do done, the day wasn't a total waste. I still have to get up in the morning to get the older 3 to school (assuming that the predicted snowpocalypse hasn't hit by then) for their last day before break....and of course I have a million other things to do tomorrow along with the sewing. Woot!

And yes - I will post pictures of the finished stockings - but only after I make sure that the person who is receiving one as a gift doesn't read my ramblings!

I have to keep him.

The stockings were hung
'cross the doorway with care....

I kind of hinted around last night about a super secret project that I had finished, but I couldn't say anything about it yet.

Part of what I finished was getting all of our Christmas stockings hung up and ready to go. Since we don't have a fireplace, I have to improvise. In our old house, I hung them down the staircase, but in this house I just go across the doorway between the front rooms instead. It works, and they're up high enough that the kids can't mess around with them without climbing - and for the most part they know better than to do that.

Anyway, I decided that since it appears that The Dude is going to be a permanent fixture - he needed a stocking too.

How's that for cementing a relationship? No marriage, nothing official or on paper or anything like that, but a homemade Christmas stocking instead....

I told him that this means that I have to keep him - because I don't go through all of that work for just anyone.

Hey, it's a step, right?

Not sure if he's more proud of the stocking
or his silly football team.

Changed plans - but not all bad.

Today was supposed to be a fairly easy day. The older 3 kids were with Ex1, so I just had to get Alex and Daniel up and dressed and to Jared's basketball game by 10am. No biggie, right?

We got up, ate, got dressed, and took off. It was a fairly ugly morning and was cloudy and overcast but since we actually got rain last night, I was not complaining at all.

We had about a 35 mile drive to get to the game, and we were running right on time. About 10 minutes before we got there, my phone rang. It was Ex1, and I figured that he was just asking where we were to make sure that we were going to be there - but instead it was him telling me that the game had been cancelled.

Oh yay. Fabulous. In my mind, I started thinking about the amount of gas that I had just wasted, but he said that he'd wait there for me so that I could see the kids before they left to head out of town, which they had planned to do after the game. We got to the school a few minutes later and visited with the kids for a while before they left. After yesterday, it felt so good to hug them for even a few seconds.

After they left, the boys and I hung out in front of the school for a few minutes to check out their fully functioning oil well. It's not often that we get to get up close to these (although we see them all of the time) so it was really kind of neat.

And yes, this is literally in the school's yard. Maybe 25' from the building.

When we left there, I had to get some gas in the van. The gas station there in the tiny little town was a little higher priced than I wanted, so we drove a few miles to the next bigger city to get gas and to get something to drink. As we were cruising, I happened to notice a farm supply store that I needed to go to in order to get a bag of corn - so we got our gas and our drinks and then stopped there (although there is a similar store right down the road from me).

Call it fate, call it coincidence, call it divine intervention. Whatever it was, when we walked in the front door of the store, we were greeted by the big man himself! The boys were THRILLED! They chatted with him for a few minutes - and whispered what they wanted to him - and then posed for the picture.

Seriously - they whispered to him. Now how on earth does that help me to figure out what they want for Christmas??? Although Daniel did finally tell me afterwards that he just wants a new pair of sneakers. Gotta' love having one kid who enjoys the simple things in life. Alex still won't tell me what he wants.

Anyway, we got the corn (which turned out to be the wrong stuff, and I had to take it to the local store to exchange it)(where there was no Santa for the kids, so ha!) and we headed back home. By then the skies had cleared and it was a beautiful day.

We hung out at home for the rest of the day and the boys played and watched movies while I worked on a super-secret project that may or may not have ended up as a final something-or-other that I can't talk about or post pictures of until a certain person sees it first *hint hint*.

After I got done with that project-that-shall-not-be-mentioned, I started working on another project - that actually involved the corn that I bought today. A friend wanted me to make her one of those (I don't know what to actually call them) corn bags that you can stick in the microwave to warm up to use like a heating pad.

I made just a little tiny one out of some scraps to play around with it, and I'm already hooked. I warmed it up a few minutes ago and have it just sitting on the back of my neck while I'm typing, and I love it.

Probably a good thing since I have 50 pounds of corn to use - too bad it doesn't come in a smaller bag! The mice are going to have a field day with it if I'm not careful.

So anyway, this is the start of her bag, custom made to her measurements. I still have to make the cover for it, but I have a feeling that won't happen until tomorrow since that will involve digging through multiple tubs of fabric to get to the stuff that I want to use. But at least it's a really simple project, and one that I can make a bunch of for the next time I do a craft show.

So tomorrow's plans? Church. That's it. That's my only actual plan other than hanging out around the house and sewing. Hopefully, I can actually stick to those plans.

But knowing me, life will happen, and my plans will totally go out the window.

Another project done.

So it wasn't a huge project, but I've been putting it off longer than I should have - and since this one actually has a deadline, and other people involved, I figured that I'd better get off of my butt and do it.

Yep that is ONE ROW of a quilt. However, I have no idea what the other 4 rows are going to look like, because I'm not doing them. Random people across the country are going to do the other rows, and I'm going to do rows for their quilts.

I'm participating in this thing called a "Row Robin" - basically, there are 5 quilters in a group. We each make a row, however we want to make it. Then we mail our row to the next person, and she adds a row to it, and the she mails it to the next person who adds a row, etc. We can say that we want to go with a certain theme, or color scheme, or whatever - but each person gets to add their own interpretation to the next row. And eventually, we get our quilt top back with 5 rows on it.

I've already received the row from the person before me - hers is a "rustic fall" row, so I get to dig out fabrics that go with that theme and then create a row to add to hers before I send it on to the next person. I've never done one of these before, so I'm really pretty excited.

The only thing that I still have to do with mine is type up the directions, because I want everyone to use the same pattern, but different fabrics so that it ends up like a crazy quilt - because, well, I'm crazy.

I'm also hoping to get this done and packaged up tonight so that I can walk it to the post office tomorrow, since I've been totally slacking in that department lately. I need to get back out there and do it, especially with the impending holiday overeating that I know I'm going to do.

We'll see how well that works.....

Success at the bazaar

What a long day!

What a good day!

It was so nice to walk into the church this morning and have my table already set up and ready to go. I just had to tweak a few things on it and that was it. The morning was cold and windy, and since I was set up right inside the door, I did spend most of the day freezing my butt off every time the doors opened - which was a lot! There was a fantastic crowd, almost right up until the end.

I made lots of sales, and had quite a few repeat customers from years past - always a good feeling! I haven't totalled everything up yet, but I think that this might have been one of my most successful shows ever.

Oh, and can I just say

SCORE!!

Yes, that is a 31.79 fl. oz. bottle of real Mexican vanilla that I purchased for a whopping $6.00. I need to bake something now.

I love vanilla. I love real vanilla - not the imitation stuff. So I can't wait to test this out and see how it works.





So, once I get everything put away, I have a new project that I want to start - it's going to be fun (I hope) but I have to get it done before the older 3 kids get back on Wednesday.

What is the project? I'll give you a clue....

It's behind Door #1.