An Update Post

It has been a while since I did an update post, so here goes....

Sewing Update:

I am taking stitches in the frame quilt every once in a while. My push for quilting has faded and I am not really getting much done. I need to get going on the Christmas gifts if I am ever to finish them. I plan to make a couple more skirts and jumpers for Charlotte in the near future. She has little faith in me....I asked her why she had not washed her jumper. She told me she was afraid it would fall apart in the wash!!

Family Update:

Sweetheart's mom did well with her hip replacement. She is in a rehab and HATES it. Sweetheart said he will be surprised if she lasts the week....she is suppose to stay for 2. We appreciate all your good thoughts and prayers for her!!

Homemaking Update:

I am afraid my entire household schedule has been turned upside down since school started. Plus, Sweetheart is home and "bored" and wants to "help". Do those quotation marks make me sound sarcastic?? Good. They were meant to. I did manage to get the cupboards stocked today. They were bare!!! Even the large pantry is full and the frig is cleaned out (thanks to Sweetheart) and restocked! I was even out of eggs....that NEVER happens!

Diet/Health Update:This may be the reason for my waining enthusiasm for quilting. I am borderline diabetic at this point (if not all the way) and really needed to take charge of my health. I have that surgery coming up and want need to get my act together. I am eating 5 small meals a day..one protein and one carb with veggies. No sugar or white starches, and only 1 whole wheat carb a day. I have been walking Ugly Betty (my treadmill) everyday this week and I have dropped 3.5 pounds since Saturday....not too shabby.

Kids & Homeschool Update:The kids are doing great. Charlotte has been wonderful the last week or more. Her anxiety has calmed WAY down and she is not acting out her trauma to any harmful degree. I am praising God for this and also for your prayers concerning her....don't stop!!

School is going well. We are reading The Captive Diary of Catherine Carey Logan during our read aloud time. The girls are just wide-eyed and opened mouth through each days chapters. They beg to keep going, but I always stop at a big cliffhanger!! Right now Catherine, age 13, who is being held captive by Indians in the year 1764, is sick with a fever and is certain she will not make it through the night. On top of that, she just found out that one of her captors is not Indian at all, and use to be "English" himself. He is her only hope in finding her 7 year old brother who was taken captive with her, but who is now missing......just as she is about to find out, we stopped for the day. Am I mean, or what????

Zach is not enjoying the story as much, but he is doing well in school and got all A's on his tests last week!!I promised him next time we would read a more "boy friendly" book.

Spiritual Update:God continues to grow me in ways that I was certain I had already grown enough in. I am in the midst of the "don't be a people pleaser" lesson. I have had to make some tough choices recently...do I please God or man? Of course, we say God!! Still, it is a lot harder than it sounds, and I find myself bartering with God...."For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ."
Galatians 1:10....that is all I will say on that!!!

Catching Up

I thought I would do a catch up (semi-update) post as I am sure I will not be posting until after the weekend. It will be a very busy few days here starting tomorrow. I will start with the kids....
Charlotte came home from camp on Saturday afternoon. I met her at the church parking lot. I was there when her ride pulled in and she ran into my arms and immediately sobbed! That was such an incredible thing. She shared that she cried the first night cause she missed me and again on the last night as my perfume had worn off her pillow. Otherwise her time was fantastic. She had so many stories to share and she talked in 15 minute sentences for 2 days! I think she has just now gotten caught up on her rest!
She went a little heavy on the lip gloss there (it is the only "make up allowed yet)!! Still cute as ever. I love her hair in a braid...it shows all the highlights. She has so many natural colors in her hair.
My mom gave me some pics from their time at Cocokey. Here is Zach and Casey (my sister's grandaughter) in the "rapids".
Emerson and TJ were there for a few hours of water fun too!
The actual event was Casey's 8th birthday. Zach spent the night with them at the hotel. I had made Casey a quilt for her birthday....Sunflowers. I had made Casey a quilt 3 1/2 years ago...hand quilted friendship stars in purple and lime green. She loved it. I gave it to her at Christmas and the end of January she went to live with my sister. Her quilt was lost after that. The sunflower quilt was an old UFO from my "let's try machine quilting" days. I hate machine quilting so I rarely, if ever do it, and when I do it is baaaad. When I gave my sister her quilt at her birthday, Casey was reminded of her lost quilt.
This one fit the bill, as all it needed was a binding. Casey went to live with her father recently, though my sister gets her a couple weekends a month. She has had a rough start! I am glad the quilt made her happy.

As for other quilting, I finished hand quilting this little table topper and have the binding ready to hand sew to the back.These little 3" trees have been giving me FITS!
They are so darn cute, but they are not measuring out for me. I plan to conquer them next week!

All our plans for the Anniversary Open House are coming together. My Mother In Love bought us this beautiful outdoor rug for the deck. It is reversible. We are using the lighter side for the party. It looks very nice!

I am going to tackle my hardwood floors with this kit....In honor of Billy Mays (I loved that guy!)
Have any of you used this?

EDIT: After reading Christine's comment, I googled "Orange Glo Reviews" and found 3, 5 star reviews...they seemed to put up these reviews after using it one time. Then I read PAGES and PAGES of horrid reviews, all saying the same thing...it looked great the first day then it seemed to ruin the hard wood floor. They had to get on their hands and knees and remove the orange glo! There is even an e-book out there for sale on "How to remove Orange Glo" from your wood floors!! I will be taking the Orange Glo back to the store...here are the reviews.

I lost Zach this morning, and here is where I found him.... He was sneaking some cartoons...not allowed...but the fact that "Back to the Barnyard" was on the TV instead of the normal Fox News morning show, should have been a dead giveaway!!
Thank you again for prayers for my mom, and may you all have a blessed 4th of July as we celebrate the birthday of our wonderful country!!
God Bless America!

An Update Post

It is time for another update post....I have been so busy that there is too much to share, so this makes it short and sweet!

SEWING UPDATE:

I am pounding away at Emerson's border. I have 3 sides close to finished and the binding will go on. After that, I am longing to put the pink and brown in the hoop, but I know I have some other obligations to fulfill....a tablerunner for a friend's daughter, a PIF gift, a baby gift for my neighbor's new granddaughter (not yet born)....the list goes on....I also have some Christmas gifts in mind. BUT....for now it is Emerson's quilt I am focused on.

Homemaking Update:I love this picture of Charlotte on her first Thanksgiving with her new family. She was born to wear an apron!!! I am already planning Thanksgiving in my head! I practiced a new recipe for Pumpkin cake. It is actually a recipe for Pumpkin Bars, but I made a cake out of it. It is very heavy, moist, and sooooo good! I used homemade Cream Cheese Frosting on the top.I made 2 of them on Saturday. I hosted a Premier Jewelry party on Saturday afternoon, so it was a great dessert to serve along with warm apple cider. I also had coffee and a pot of wonderful Earl Grey tea that Page sent me from England. It was wonderful!!! My house is in good shape...floors clean, rugs washed, laundry under control. A great way to start the week!
Spiritual Update:The second Pumpkin Cake was baked to take to Bunko! It was my church's "Ladies Night Out" and we had so much fun. It is a wonderful outreach that welcomes women to join for a night of food (of course), bunko, and fellowship. My mom and daughter in law came too. Rachel cleaned everyone's clock!!!! We all received the cute "Blessings" bank as a gift and Rachel gifted me with the pilgrims in the top picture. I took TJ to church this morning and then he came back to Grandma's house for lunch and "10 minutes to play"...his words. He refused to let me take his picture!!!!Kids Update:

After TJ's "10 minutes to play", his mommy came and picked him up to go to the apple orchard. Emerson got to stay with Grandma and Paw Paw. We had some great time with our granddaughter! She is smiling now and cooing to you when you talk to her. She has found her own hand fascinating.I bought her this outfit before she was born with the idea of it being a beautiful Thanksgiving ensemble! It fits her already! She sure looks beautiful in it...pink and brown. Is it a surprise???Though she stayed bright eyed and bushy tailed for a good, long time, all good things must come to an end. She was ready for a nap! Paw Paw cradled her and she fell asleep watching the Bears game...I can totally relate as it has happened to me in the past!!! Emerson snoozed until Mommy came to pick her up.My kids???? They have been outside since they ate lunch, and it is almost dinner time!!!
Family Update:Thank you, everyone, for your prayers for my nephew Andrew, shown here with his quilt I made him....he must have been 10 or 11 years old then. He had surgery on his leg in Oregon state where the fall happened. 2 metal plates and 16 screws. His tibia was broken in 5 places and shattered at the ankle. His fibia was broken once. He came home last week on a train. It was a long 2 day trip, but he was in a recliner with his leg up. He moved from here to his new home in Minnesota where he is able to start his new career on Monday. Continue to pray for healing. It will be a long recovery and lots of physical therapy.

So those are the updates. I pray you have a blessed week! We plan to kick back this evening and watch "Surf's Up" with the kids while I hand quilt, so hopefully my next post will have a picture of Emerson and her finished quilt!

An Update Post

Sewing Update:
The 4 Seasons Summer quilt is quilting up nicely. It will be ready to go to it's new home by the deadline on Thursday! Everyone who sees it, thinks it is "cute", and if I look at it from outside myself, I like it too! I pray it's new owner approves. I think I will take a step back from swaps for a while. I have a couple of baby quilts to finish up, along with a couple of runners. This runner just needs a binding and will soon be on it's way to a newly established home in Alberta!
I love the texture of quilting. The back of this runner is a piece of fabric I love to use for little gift quilts.
It has all kinds of cute sayings on it. "May my stitches be pleasing to you Lord", "Hands to work, Hearts to God", "A stitch for me, a prayer for thee", and " She seeketh wool and flax and worketh willingly with her hands", among others. I am almost out of this fabric. I have had it for YEARS and used it sparingly. I will miss it when it is gone.

Homemaking Update:
This last week of July will find me working on detailing my master bedroom and master bath. I usually only have a few days to do this because the 5th week tends to be short, but this month I have almost the entire week. I will be out on Wednesday and some on Friday, but the plan is to get things, in those rooms, spic and span. My blinds are dusty and the woodwork is showing need of attention. Rugs need to be washed also. Oh, did I ever show you my new entryway rugs??? Ok, I went back and looked, and I didn't. Remember, I am pausing and tend to repeat myself! Here they are.
Now the strange thing about these rugs is, in the daylight, like in the pictures, the background looks green. In the store, and in the evening it looks golden tan. The golden tan is what I was going for. Oh well. They look ok.

Spiritual Update:

The kids and I visited a new church yesterday. We have been unchurched for a while. The last church we attended was one I LOVED. Rachel got saved there, then they married there. It was a huge church with many outreach programs. Lots of resources for any "issue". Well, that was the problem. The biological womb, knows every resource and just how to work them. I found out she used that church on and off to get "help". We could no longer attend comfortably. Can you imagine the trauma to my Charlotte if she saw her? Nope...not happening! It has been a while since we even looked for a church. I had found one last fall. A nice church of about 200 people. Loved the preaching. The music was ok...a little bit Grand Ol Opry style, but it was done well. I know there is no perfect church, but I found this particular church to put people in major leadership positions who should not be there. Who am I to judge? Well in that instance, I am the one to judge. I have the responsibility of looking out for the spiritual well being of my family (until my husband takes that over). I was not invested there, so it was an easy move. Soooo, the church we visited yesterday was the one that hosted the Backyard Bible Club for the kids. I really liked it. Very solid biblically, and the people were sweet. Very small...less than 100 people, but maybe that is what we need. I tend to like to blend in. Maybe that is not what God wants from me any more. Sweetheart asked about the church when we got home. I stay low key in that area with him...if you read "A Wife's Testimony" you know why...that red pen is still engraved on my heart! Anyway, I stayed basic and just let him know I liked it and planned to "visit" again next week. He mentioned that maybe he would go with us. God is so faithful!!

I plan to attend the ladies Bible study on Monday nights. They are doing this book, which they graciously gave to me....

Ladies. I will be with ladies!!! The only time I spend with ladies is reading your blogs!! I am feeling....not overly excited, but a calm serene feeling I can not explain. I need this!

Kids/Family Update:

TJ and that "say cheese" face!! I have dozens of pictures of him that are nothing more than a blur. Now that he will "pose" this is what I get!

My son, Bud, did not make it home a weekend ago, so this weekend we all really enjoyed him. He got his new glasses. He looks so good! I think he said he had been in 16 states in 14 days. It was such a joy to watch him play with his son. They played "pick a hand" and tickle monster!

Pick a hand TJ....He found the hand with the "tickle" in it!!!!
I love those boys!!!!
Well those are my updates. I can not believe it is the last week of July! Time is flying this summer. Fall is just around the corner and I am looking forward to pumpkins and colored leaves. Fall brings with it a desire to hand quilt for me. It also brings a warm feeling of home. Most important for this fall, it will bring our new Granddaughter, Emerson. I hear those Sunbonnet Sue's calling me!!!!!