A Penguin, A Bag Lady & A Lazy Cookie

The above picture is "A Penguin"! Is it beautiful or what?! My grandson TJ drew this penguin for his Grandma. (The lighter color drawing says "For the Grandma" in TJ writing) I am honored. It hangs on a wall by my desk. He has great detail for a 2 year old. I have a similar picture drawn by his father at almost 4 years old. The hands and feet are drawn the same way. Yesterday he stopped over and came up the stairs saying "I want to look at the Grandma". He has such a way with words! I am truly blessed by this grandchild of mine.

Now I want to introduce the newest bag lady on the block..... Rachel!! On Friday, we cut one bag and completed it, and today we began to assembly line, construct the other 8. We got everything cut and the bag fronts made. Pockets are on the inside of 5 bags and the other 3 are ready to go on. Straps are cut and have the interfacing pressed onto them...all 16! I am still using the same bag pattern provided by Margaret. I feel like I know it well! We just adapted it to be larger and used 1 fabric. I personally like it better with 2 and a 3rd for the lining. Here is the one I made for Charlotte. She uses it for her church bag. It carries her bible, offering and a pen and paper. Rachel's bags are larger and 1 fabric, longer straps (instead of handles) and also she added an inside pocket for a cell phone.Pressing is key to making ANYTHING I think. Ironing is not my favorite thing to do, though without it we would all look a mess. Quilting and sewing would not go as smoothly as it does with a trusty iron at hand!! One of my earliest memories is of my mother ironing. My dad worked nights, 11-7. I was 4 at the most, because I remember the duplex we lived in and we moved from there when I was 4. It was the same place we lived when I got soap in my mouth! My mother ironed everything. She did some strange ironing ritual though....she had a 7-up bottle that had a silver sprinkler cap on the top. I can see it in my mind even now. It looked something like this...
Mom's bottle was taller and had a silver cap. She would sprinkle my dad's shirts and my little dresses and I am sure her own dresses. She would then roll them and stick them in a clear plastic bag and put them in the refrigerator. After my sister and I were tucked in bed and dad had left for work, Mom would spend her nights ironing. We awoke in the morning, all the clothes would be perfectly pressed and hanging in our closet. I do not know the point of the pop bottle or the refrigerated damp clothing rolled so neatly and stacked in their bags, but we ALWAYS had nicely pressed clothes. Did anyone else do this, or have a mother who did this? It is a huge memory for me.

My cold is back with a VENGEANCE!! I have been up for 3 nights with a terrible sore throat, which does not hurt as bad during the day. This morning (my 4th Sunday missing Church because someone was sick) I am feeling beaten. I will rest today. I promise to get the last installment of the Table Topper Tutorial up soon. I planned on baking lots of Christmas cookies, but those will wait. I did manage to get some cookie bars made yesterday. The lazy baker's cookie.... These contain oatmeal, butterscotch chips and chocolate chunks. Very good! So I managed a post with sewing, baking, new treasures and old memories. Have a blessed Lord's Day!!

Portraits & Presents

Today was a busy one! We were out the door early to get portraits taken of the little kids. They all did very well. Here are my favorite shots. Aren't they wonderful??!! Charlotte looks SO grown up and Zach is like a magazine ad! And TJ turned out beautiful! Precious memories of an age that will be gone much too quickly. TJ does not like to "pose" and is not willing to follow the direction of "say cheese". A game of "catch" with Grandma and a plastic apple did the trick! To know those eyes were looking at me is the icing on the cake. I have not seen the little guy in over a week. Paw Paw said he would probably have whiskers and a girlfriend by now! Nope, he was still my little guy, but he did look taller.

While we were gone, the UPS man brought new Science and Social Studies workbooks for the kids. This will be very helpful in our school, as I was finding it difficult to incorporate these subjects in the way I felt was adequate.

I ended up getting a gift made and actually made the apron I have been itching to make. Here is Charlotte modeling it. It fits me very well and I really like this pattern. It was hard to tell but the fabric is holly leaves, berries and little cardinals. (Linda thought it was cayenne peppers, so maybe some of you did too) I stopped at Lemstone's gift store and Walgreens on my way home from portraits. I managed 2 gifts and my Christmas cards. I also ran into Hancock's and bought some fabric for another apron...this one a gift. I have 3 packages ready to ship and may run up yet today to mail them off. My sewing machine will be burning as Rachel needs to make several bags and pillows for Christmas gifts. Mix that with the aprons and bags I have yet to make and my little White will be getting a full work out! Oh, I also made some hair ties and think these will be nice stocking stuffers ;)

I am off to bake some cookie bars, and head to the UPS store. I will leave you with this photo of my mom's sweatshirt...it is so cute!

My Pantry

I love my husband. His main goals in life are to provide for, protect, and enjoy his family. He does these things well. Another goal he has at the top of his list is to make ME happy. I just mentioned how I would like to make room in the closet off the kitchen for a small pantry. He has spent today building me a wonderful full sized pantry!! I am in awe of how he can create something out of nothing. His ability to make things out of wood is wonderful. There are many things in my home that Sweet Hubby has made to make our home more beautiful. I will, one day soon share these things with you.

For now, I will share my grocery shopping trip. I shopped at Super Wal Mart today. Next week I will actually go to Kroger for their sale and Wal Mart for everything else. UGH! That sounds exhausting. I may talk to Sweet Hubby and see if I can do a bi-weekly shop instead of weekly. My feet hurt!! I had 2 FULL carts of groceries...twice as much as usual and I intended to cut my bill in half. Last week I spent a total of $413.66 on food. GASP!! So this week I had a budget of $200.00. I changed a few things about my list. First I changed the kinds of foods I bought. Hardly any prepared foods. No treats or cookies, etc. No frozen bags of fries or chicken nuggets. Another thing I changed is, I looked at the prices. For example, I buy Cottonelle TP (I won't change that) and I noticed I could buy 24 double rolls for 11.94. Well I looked at the 12 double roll package and it was 5.50. It was cheaper to buy 2 of those...I would have never looked. I also saw the cottage cheese I buy was 3.64!! I switched to the store brand for a 1.40 savings. Cereal is a biggie here. Kyle eats a Jethro size (small mixing bowl) bowl of cereal in the morning, at 3 pm and at bedtime he has a normal size bowl. I told him he would be able to have his Jethro bowl in the morning and a regular size bowl at some point during the day....he would need to choose another snack for his third hunger pang. I bought a total of 7 large boxes of name brand cereals today. Another area where I do not care for store brand, and in this case there is not much savings. The price difference in cereal at Wal Mart and Kroger is DOLLARS. Wal Mart is 1/3 cheaper. I hope we do not go through the 7 boxes in one week, but this will tell me how many I need. I also had several things on my list for my baking center...I spent 29.10 in that isle alone. (I added with a calculator each section...dairy, baking, frozen, etc., just to see what I spend). OK, so GRAND TOTAL was $209.42!!! I only bought 2 things that were not on my list and those were for my mom, who gave me cash, so I guess I was only over my budget by $6!! I DID cut my bill in half and we will be eating better than we ever have!! If I can do this then anyone can!! Little TJ came over wearing his new shirt. I had not seen him in several days. Rachel said he was calling me on his toy phone. When they came over this afternoon, he said all the way here "I like the Grandma". Awwww. What happens at Grandma's, stays at Grandma's!! Well, all the groceries are put away and the Egg Casserole is in the oven. It was a good day! Here are a few pics of my finished pantry. They are dark, so I apologize.

Just to note...I am using this full size pantry for overflow. I still use my wonderful panrty with the sliding drawers for all of our food we are using. There is just no way I can bulk shop and have extra storage for extra boxes of cereal, etc. with my kitchen pantry alone. Isn't it wonderful?? Thank You Sweet Hubby!!!

Updates

SEWING UPDATE: At this time, my sewing has been non existent. Today I pulled out this project. I really want to finish it to use in a bag. It is a pattern from Threadbare Creations by Rose. I love her patterns, especially the new one she is designing, which she showed on her last blog post. The Masterpiece block is getting a few stitches in it as well. Masterpieces take more time than regular projects, or they would not be Masterpieces! My Pink & Brown is getting a little attention in the last day or so also. My reading is taking priority in my free time, but I am almost finished with the 2 books I am reading, so I will concentrate more on my sewing. I joined an apron swap and also want to do a couple of Thanksgiving projects. I will keep you posted on those.

SPIRITUAL UPDATE: I have this print hanging in my home. It is framed and matted in a beautiful blue and gold matting. It has hung in various places in my home. Right now it is on a wall in the upstairs hallway just outside Charlotte's bedroom door and just across from my sewing/classroom. I want to thank all of you for your prayers for my family over the last few days. We ALL had a wonderful day yesterday and all through the evening. The kids both went to bed with no anxiety and everything was peaceful. God is good. I would like to ease the minds of those who are concerned with Charlotte's exposure. It would be difficult to put yourself in her place or even begin to know what she would feel about these posts (even though she does not read them), unless you had experienced what she has. Well I happen to know someone who has. This person feels that if what she had been through had been exposed, she would not have felt so "crazy and suicidal" throughout her early adult years. I also want to make it clear that I will not ever share Charlotte or Zachary's most private horrors, but I will not deny them either. I respect anyone's opinions in regards to these posts and feel you have a right to your opinions. If you wish to share them I will gladly listen, however I will NOT give place to any opinion when it is given with a mean judgemental spirit. This does NOT "get my attention" and in fact will cause me to not even see your valid points. Let's, please, be kind to one another. This is the last I will say on this. Praise God it is NOVEMBER...a season of Thanksgiving. I am Thankful for all of you!

HOMEMAKING UPDATE:I have not baked anything since my "Niki rolls". I think I will throw a batch of bread dough in the bread machine for dinner. Today is laundry, vacuuming, laundry, dusting, laundry, and the kitchen floor. Did I mention laundry? I had a very late night last night. I remembered at 11:00 PM that the dishwasher needed to be unloaded, dinner dishes were waiting, and coffee needed to be made for the morning (my pot has a timer). I went downstairs and decided to pull a trick on myself that I have not done in FOREVER! I ignored the clean dishes, rinsed and stacked the dirty ones in a sink and wiped the counters after I prepared the coffee pot and went to bed. I can not stand a sink full of dishes in the morning, and that is why my kitchen sinks are always shined before I go to bed. So how in the world can I trick myself out of that? Cover them with a towel! The shame of it all!!!! LOLOK, I have a question...we are all taught to make a bed when we are young. Just how were you taught to put the top sheet on? I was taught to put the design UP. For years I did this and then my OWN mother, who taught me in the first place, tells me I am doing it wrong. You are to put the design DOWN so when you pull the sheet back you are "in" the design. That makes sense, because normally a quilt, comforter, or bedspread would cover the top sheet design. How do you do it, and does it even matter to you? Now that I know, it would make me nuts to do it the other way! KID UPDATE: Like I said earlier, the kids are doing great. We have been watching Kid Nation since it started and they both can not wait for Thursday to watch it. I tape it from Wednesday night. They also have music class on Thursday, which gives me 45 GLORIOUS "alone" minutes a week. I am thinking of signing them both up for violin lessons. Charlotte would love the piano, but we sold ours after the boys gave it up. I could rent violins until I see they really want to stick with it. I ordered matching dresses for me and Charlotte to wear on Thanksgiving. They arrived yesterday and are just beautiful. The quality of the fabric AND the workmanship is incredible. I don't think I could find a nicer dress in a high scale department store. Here is Charlotte in hers. The pics are too cute not to share more than one!

My dress is identical and fits just as nice. The colors do not appear as dark in these pictures. The body of the dress is a very pretty yellow/gold and the print is fall leaves. Lilies of the Field is going to get more business from me, that is for sure!

Kyle, Bud, and Rachel are all fine. Kyle got the new Spiderman 3 movie and is thrilled.

I have no new pictures of TJ. The kid will NOT hold still, so I will share a couple of old ones. Grandma's can do that, right? I took him a pair of Disney "Cars" slippers. I am anxious to see if he likes them. When he is here he is always putting Zach and Paw Paw's slippers on and then "skates" on the wood floors, saying "swippers" the whole time. He has wood floors too. Rachel got him a new shirt that says "What happens at Grandma's house, stays at Grandma's house!" That is so true!!

Faithful Friday

Friday is always faithful to show up. It seems to be the day most people look forward to, like a friend coming to visit. My Friday has been busy so far. Cleaning, laundry, groceries, school, and, in a minute here, a quick break with the kids. They are watching a documentary called "Saving Sharks" and then we will watch "Surf's Up" together. TJ is here for a few hours, though he is napping right now. What a sweet little guy he is. I caught him drawing in my book and said "TJ, Don't write in Grandma's book." He threw the pencil behind him and looked at his doodle saying "Oh No, Grandma, what happened?!" You know I would not erase that doodle for anything!!
The top picture is the tree in my front yard. It is well on it's way to becoming a flaming red spectacle. I will get a better picture when it is in all it's glory. My begonia's are showing signs of fall too. The edges are turning white and they are looking weak. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I plan to spend tomorrow working around my home and baking rolls, courtesy of Niki. I will show pics on Monday. For now, the shark documentary is over and my laundry needs to be switched around. Just like Friday is always faithful to show up, God is faithful to show up, also like a Friend. Just a bit of encouragement for myself and for you. God Bless your weekend!