Things you can't believe you're saying!

I was going through a file hunting for something and not finding it. I came across a piece of paper with this heading. It was a short list of some of the more unusual things I have said to my kids in response to their actions or requests.

Take your truck out of the fridge.
Take your feet off the table.
We don't wash hammers in the toilet.
Don't walk on the water. (We used to refill gallon jugs with water and had about 24 lined up.)
Why did you cut those holes in your shirt?
Take your shoe out of your mouth.
Keep your feet out of the fridge.
The rubber wheels off your truck are NOT gum!
No! Someone did not leave that gum under the chair for you to chew later!

I read them to my 22y son and we both laughed.

I work with a girl that is recovering from severe brain injuries she received in a car accident. Her Physical therapist and I decided to make this clock with her as part of her therapy. We gathered the materials and she decided where they belonged. Then we put it together and hung it in her room. It was a lot of fun! I had received an article where an artist made similar clocks for a living, but as I tried to follow up on his Internet site I could not find him. I threw the article away so I can't even give him credit here. We had a great time creating this unique clock.

Gifted Mosaic

This is a picture of the mosaic I made for and sent to my sister L. She had requested one similar to the one I open my blog with. I hope she loves it

Finished a few.

It is interesting how blogging affects me. As events are happening I think my blog about it , then when I sit down to blog I can't-for-the-life-of-me remember what I wanted to blog about.

I did tell you I finished some of my mosaics. (I am holding out on the one I made my sister though.) This first one is a repair job. I have it hanging in my living room and for some reason it has fallen off the wall about 5 times and the last time 2 pieces, 1 at either long corner, popped of and I had to re glue and re grout them. I can't see a difference, can you? It works as a test model as it fell 5 times before anything broke. I would say that is pretty sturdy. Of course it was onto carpeting, I really doubt the results would be the same on tiled floors.

The next 2 are my first birdhouses. They were fun to glass but a little tricky to grout. I set up a table at my yard sale and sold one of them.

This last is glassed over a wooden box, with pearls in the top. It was fairly fast even though I had to be very careful it would open and close when finished. Red is a hard color to find, but I think this turned out very pretty. Sorry the picture is blurry.

Getting the hang of this?

Truly there were words highlighted in yellow! I did the preview and they were still highlighted in yellow! I fiddled with several ideas and keys and still they were highlighted in yellow! But after I posted and went to a new window to look they were NOT highlighted in yellow! Then when I tried to go back and re-edit I couldn't figure out how. I REALLY need a class on blogging!

Long time...

I have been very busy. My son that was in Australia for two years came home, got a job, quit, and left for summer school in Provo as a visiting student. He will get home in two weeks.

I started my sisters mosiac, had a workshop with 5 participants, finished my sisters mosaic, and grouted several 'mosaics in waiting'. (I can't figure out how these words got highlighted with yellow and have no idea how to undo it.) Here is my snowman plaque (although not a very good picture.)

I took the bright blue 4 drawer dresser that the TV sits on in the livingroom, out and painted it, and painted it, and painted it. Then it rained, and wrinkled the paint on the drawers, and I had to sand the fronts of the drawers and paint them, and paint them. Now I have a pale grey dresser that the TV sits on, much better.

I looked through some of my storage and had a Yard Sale, where my youngest son proudly made about $17 on HIS toys (I had a very difficult time getting him to let go of anything) and we had plenty to donate to a nearby Thrift Store. In the process I discovered that I have at least 4 boxes of used jeans to make quilts out of.

We've had two birthdays. 13 son turned 14 and 15 son turned 16, a very important 16. With one more this week, 9 son turning 10.

We had family come that we seldom see. They stayed long enough to watch one of our towns Celebration parades.

We've had our towns mega celebration. Helped minimally on three different floats. Worked 3 hours in the Hamburger Stand. Watched parades on 3 consecutive days (luckily 2 of these we can watch from in front of our house). Had my In-Laws camp in our backyard for a nice two week visit. We have the most beautiful floats I have ever seen. Below are two of them but the pictures do not do the floats justice. The bottom one is of cows with the words "Cow'nt Your Blessings" and if you look very closely you can see my 9son sitting at the back.

Snowy Easter

Happy Easter! Spring has dumped about 8" of snow on us today. It is melting fast and we needed the moisture. We did not hide eggs outside though. I am loosing my thrill for doing baskets and coloring eggs. D is now 9 and is not convinced there is an Easter Bunny. So how do you wind down the bunny side of Easter? I have struggled with this as it does not honor the reason we have Easter. Do we teach about the atonement and resurrection enough? I think my kids all understand the importance of Jesus Christ. They believe He is their Savior, the Redeemer of the world. They know about the sacrifice Christ made for each of them. I hope they know how personal and real it is. I'm sure I was fairly clueless at their ages. I still am learning and gaining in my understanding. How do you transition from baskets, candy, eggs and bunnies to repentance, renewal, sacrifice, and love?

Baby Shoe Pin Cushions

I made these baby shoe pin cushions for a craft show. I loved doing them and then did not do the craft show. I gave a few away and sold 3, but still have 17, all different. Let me know what you think.

Buttons

I love love love buttons! One time while I was home (Denver-at my parents home.) I found a magazine of my sisters, Threads Oct/Nov 2008. On page 30 it has an article about buttons, very interesting and informative. It contains the web info for the NationalButtonSociety.org where I found an article about Norman Engler who did button mosaics. I copied two for you below, but if you are interested at all go to the site and look under Special topics and it shows them up close and give a lot of details. These pictures are LARGE and have thousands of buttons all sewn on.

I love love love mosaics and have given some thought to the idea of making a picture with buttons, but it has been done much better than I had envisioned. I really enjoyed these 'paintings'.

Talk about vintage fabrics!

As I said I have been going through ALL my fabrics. I came across this "vintage" fabric. It was probably added to my stash through a yard sale purchase. Not that I bought it because I loved it and couldn't go home without it, BUT because it was in a bag of other very useful pieces and the seller would NOT let me just take out what I did want to purchase, I HAD to take them all and this gem was among the rest. Now I'm sure it initially was purchased by someone to make curtains out of-- there are three yards of this choice stuff. My question is, now that someone came to their senses and got rid of it WHAT should I do with it? I could fussy-cut the pumpkins for an I SPY QUILT!

I could cut narrow strips and forget how unique it is. I COULD slip it carefully into a package and sneak-opps-ship it quietly to someone else and see if they have more creativity than I do and make something wonderful out of it! I am open to all ideas and if you secretly crave olive-gold-red fabrics covered with wine bottles and green filled wine glasses PLEASE ask for this remarkably....incredibly unique "vintage" piece. And if one day you go to your mailbox and find a package without a return address, don't be surprised if you open it and find......?

On hold and ...

This is an experiment my quilting sister told me about using the very small pieces to make a piece of fabric. What do you think? It was fun and I can see where I could improve on it. I have no idea how I will use it. But doesn't it look like a mosaic? Sort-of? I'm not clever enough to make it actually look like a picture or anything specific, but it is a novel idea and it satisfies my urge to never throw out the small bits and pieces and to make something productive out of them.

I'm thinking about another quilt. Already! Likely this one above. I'm a little stymied on the striped one, so I am organizing my fabrics. Talk about time consuming. First they are all stored in the crate, in different boxes and tubs depending on when I routed them out of my too crowded kitchen/craft space. I found some, but not all, in my forrays to find. But I found enough to satisfy my need to gather together. I made an appalling discovery...I habitually added to my pile without preshrinking when I got them home. OH NO. I have many (I mean MANY) to shrink and press before I can procede into any kind of production. Well that is probably good as I do not want to have two projects going at the same time. I really want to finish the stripes before I begin the next quilt. And it is getting warm enough to spend time in the crate doing my mosaics...

Riley Who?

We have a dog. Yes we said we would NEVER have an indoor dog. Well gobble, gobble, gobble...more words to eat. She is an indoor dog and we are crazy about her. Riley is her name (well, actually Riley Poo) and she is a miniature poodle. White and fluffy after her bath. Soft and patient while we brush her. Mad and distant when you finally finish and release her. She is the laziest dog I have ever seen. Thus the pictures of her sleeping ALL the time. she still hates her Kennel, which we insist she sleep in at night and stay in when we are not home. We have had her about 7 weeks now, after being on "the list" for 6 months. She loves to go in the car. The boys pass her around and Adam trained her at "school", which she tollerated, but did not love.

I sound like a quilter!

It seems like that is all I talk about, but... I took the blocks that had the Aspen tree trunks as the black and white and ripped them apart and put a REAL black and white stripes in the middle and like them much better. So the aspen tree trunks are relegated to the brown stripes pile.

My sister and I were talking about putting the blocks a different way so I arranged some in the way we discussed and took a picture ...

I don't like them as well, but it's do-able.

I am so anxious to put my blocks together, but I still have 18 to do and I still need fabric to make the last 11 black and white stripes. My quilting sister says to wait till I have them all done and can lay them ALL out to decide what order to sew them together. Soo... patience!

Quilt again!

We had a couple of extra days off of school last week. I guess since we have not used our snow days they gave them to us anyway, because our High school boys went to State wrestling tournament in Denver. Well Fri. I decided I would work on my blocks. I worked 2 three hour sessions on Fri. and again for about three hours Sat. then Mon. evening after FHE and everyone was snoring, 3 hours more. I finished another 34 blocks. That means I only have 28 left to do, whohoo!!

Water

This might seem rather long, but it is such good information that I wanted to share it. Our School nurse sends some good stuff home and I learned a lot from this.

Water

#1. 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated (Likely applies to half the world population).

#2. In 37% of Americans, the thirst mechanism is so weak that it is mistaken for hunger.

#3. Even MILD dehydration will slow down one’s metabolism by 3%.

#4. One glass of water will shut you down midnight hunger pangs for almost 100% of the dieters studied in a University of Washington study.

#5. Lack of water is the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue.

#6. Preliminary research indicates that 8-10 glasses of water a day could significantly ease back and joint pain for 80% of sufferers.

#7. A mere 2% drop in body water can trigger fuzzy short-term memory, trouble with basic math, and difficulty focusing on the computer screen or on a printed page!

#8. Drinking 5 glasses of water daily decrease the risk of colon cancer by 45%, plus it can slash the risk of breast cancer by 79%; and one is 50% less likely to develop bladder cancer.

Are you drinking the amount of water you should drink every day?

Quilt block comparison.

I posted a picture of the quilt a few posts ago, and told my sister I like the color coordinated blocks better than the random ones. I finally got some pictures to show the difference.

See if you agree with me... this one is all browns on one side and greens on the other,

and this one is all reds. Compare those to these two that have no rhymn or reason to them. ( I still need to trim them!)

I really like the first two better, but I will use them all.

I'm up to 58 blocks.

Quilt update.

I now have 47 quilt blocks done... well not DONE, I still need to press and trim, to get them ready to sew together. I showed them to someone I work with and they thought they were lovely. We even laid some of them out and they still did not think it too busy, so maybe there's hope I'll like the finished project. I AM having fun with it.

Still no car.

My car is out of commission.

My car has been giving us the red flag for a week or two. It was not getting warmed inside very well. Then Monday it never did warm up at all. Now in some places it might not be such a big deal, but here it was in the negative numbers all the way to work. There was ice on the inside of my windshield as well as the outside. Have you ever tried to scrape the inside? It is shaped wrong to accommodate the scraper and do any good. Luckily there were spots of no ice enough to dodge my vision through to get to where I had to be. On Tuesday my car decided I was not getting the message and just overheated so I had to pull over. Then the Trak phone I keep only for such emergencies had no battery (probably because I keep it in the car and it is too cold for the battery) so I had to get out the charger to try to call my husband. It took three tries but I finally got him and he came to my rescue. Man, I was cold while I waited the 10 minutes it took him to get there. 10 feels like 50 when you are helpless! Well he put some antifreeze in it and it worked till the next morning when I warmed it up for work. It was losing water. So I drove the beater pick-up the remainder of the week. I dislike immensely driving that pick-up. But I'm very glad we have it for a back-up, so I did not have to miss work or make Bob drive me each way, for days.
Let me tell you the background of this beater pick-up. Bob had to have a pick-up for his new job back in 2001. So he went hunting and found a white 1984 Ford cab (pick-up without a bed) in a junkyard for $700 which we felt we could afford. He and his brother got in and started it up and it ran pretty good. We took it home and put a free blue bed on it that did not have a tailgate, shortly we found a brown tailgate to put on it. Pretty, right? Well after a little tuning up he drove it miles and miles without any problems till they had him drive a pick-up they gave him. Then we moved over here and left it parked at the old house as a gate to the garage (where we are storing some of our goods). We started it up 1-2 times a year and then decided to bring it over the mountain to here. I think they did a little work on the brakes but other than that it has not had to have much work at all. So it is a blessing, an ugly beast, but a blessing. Maybe I will have my car back by Wed.-Thurs. It has a gasket leak that takes three days to fix because they have to take it all apart to get to it. Longer because they have to order parts and get them.

I'm attempting a quilt.

I have thought about starting a quilt for a long time, but had not found one I thought I could do. I'm a little chicken and I did not want any triangles, bias pieces, or curves for my first attempt. Now this is besides the one baby quilt I tried to do for my first baby, 21+ years ago. That I never finished--I ran into troubles, ie: fabrics that were too thin, I think some were not 100 percent cotton, it was not perfect, and when I got into it I did not like the fabrics together, I also did not know how to bind it. All those excuses mounted up to a really good reason not to continue with the effort. I think I still have the bundle of materials somewhere in my tubs of projects. Anyway... my sister sent me this picture from a quilt show she went to and we decided to make one each. I realize it is soo busy, that is one of it's charms. It also has all straight edges. I am not sure it is 'fabulous', but each block is fun to make and not hard, also on my requirement list. I have made 27 blocks. I have purchased several 1/8 yard pieces of fabric to help with this effort. Unlike my sister I have not got a mega stash of fabrics and need to build up a stock to make it possible to reach the goal of completion. I figure I will need 120 blocks, (each block requiring 1- 2 1/2" x 8 1/2" black and white stripe piece and 12 to 14 - 3 1/2" x 1"to 2 1/2" pieces) soo I am a long way from that point. I did raid my mother stash and found 61 pieces. It would have been a lot higher number except they all have to be stripes. She has flowers in the hundreds, but only 61 stripes. I have been surprised to find how time consuming the cutting process is, how long it takes me to decide on the combinations and what a big difference spray starch makes in the pressing step. I will keep you posted on my progress.

New Year

(I have yet to figure out the picture process. How do you get them where you want them?)

I wanted to show the birds I found for my mother. Her Christmas tree has birds, small red apples, ice cicles, and snowflakes.

There is this cool gift shop called Treasure Alley, that I like to go into at Christmas time(since that is the only time I really shop). They have some unusual items that are not terribly expensive. I always find some great stocking stuffers ie; geods to break open yourself, dinosaur bones you have to dig out yourself from a small block, and a square 9 pieced puzzle that has four halves of critters that you rotate to create whole animals. So when I went in to find S.S. I found this green cloisinae parrot bell. My mom loves cloisinae and she has birds all over her tree. I just could not resist this. And then as I was returning
to my car I saw another shop that I had never entered before and hanging in the windows were birds. Birds on a string, 17 to be exact with beads between them, the beaks and tails are beads and tassels. I loved them instantly and hoped mom would love them as well.
I think she did. We hung it on
her white wall and they showed
up very nicely. (the picture is at my house in front of my fridge-it does not do them justice)

This final picture is Christmas Day. We took the boys sledding. They had a great time.

Have a great 2009 New Year!