A Finished Project

I finally have Grace’s quilt finished. I started it last year after I finished Julie’s. Gardening came upon us and I had to put the quilt away until winter. I now have made all 3 girls a wall hanging/quilt that I sewed by hand. I am not very skilled at sewing things by hand so these will probably be the only ones I do.

Temperatures are still cold here. Actual temperature this morning was 10 degrees with a -10 wind chill. When the cold wind blows here it is very difficult to keep the house warm. The wind seems to find its way inside in places we never thought possible. Anyway, our wood stove is working overtime. I am very grateful to have this stove. It certainly puts out a lot of heat.

I am working on a new apron and hopefully will be able to show you all a picture of it soon. School as usual today. The ladies are coming tomorrow for bible study and it is my turn to make dessert. I am thinking of making a buttermilk chocolate cake. I got the recipe from a blogger friend and it has become a favorite of ours. I like buttercream frosting with ours. It reminds me of a cake that was served at school when I was a kid. They called it wacky cake. I do not like chocolate very much but this cake is really good.

Enjoy your day and God bless.

January 13, 2011 4

Tee Shirt Dress

This is a picture from several years back. I was reading one of my blogger friends post and she was looking for a modest dress pattern. I commented about how I had made these dresses before but I felt like my instructions were lacking. I dug in my old pictures and found this. I hope this makes it a little easier for her to understand.

Today has been cold and very windy. Wind gusts of about 40-50 mph. We are doing school as usual. I hope to get some sewing in after school. Supper tonight is homemade pizza. Yesterday was very busy cleaning the attic. We use this space as storage and every year it seems to get way out of hand. It looks very organized now. Not for long, I’m sure. I’ve been trying to do some cleaning and organizing this week. Eliminating some clutter. I seem to have an over abundance of clutter.

Well, time for school to start back. Lunch break is over. Enjoy your evening and God bless.

January 12, 2011 3

A Good Laugh

I thought you all might enjoy a good laugh today. When I make fried chicken I bread the chicken inside a plastic bag. I put the flour and stuff in the bag, put the chicken in and shake. Well, this is what happens if the bag burst. I would have loved to see the look on my face when it first happened. I know it was priceless. Of course, my loving girls had to run and get the camera so they could have proof that this really happened.

It was hilarious. They had to get Hubby so he could see this beautiful woman he married. We all laughed so hard. What else could we do?

My thanks to my sweet Julie who helped her mama clean up this mess. Enjoy your evening and God bless.

January 11, 2011 4

Old Things

Today I was doing some much needed cleaning on the shelves that hold my teapots. I came across this old cream and sugar set. There is a story that goes with these. These are approximatedly 75 years old. They belonged to my mother. She said when she was a very young girl-about 6 or 8 yrs old-an old peddler came by their house riding a horse. On his horse, he had several saddle bags filled with trinkets to sell. One of them was the cream and sugar set. She said she remembered begging her dad to buy them for her. I guess she must have given him the right look because as you can see he did purchase them. My grandfather was a logger and money was not easy to come by. This set always held a special place in her heart. Every time she would clean them up, she would tell me this story so today, as I cleaned them, I told my girls how this particular set came to be in our home. Memories are special. They need to be shared.

This is another old set I have. The sugar bowl was my grandmothers and the cream pitcher was my mother-in-laws. Hubby bought me the teapot several years ago. All I need now are some cups and saucers to match.

Tonights supper is homemade soup. I am making a new bread recipe to go with it. I’ll let you know how it turns out. Enjoy your evening and God bless.

January 10, 2011 5

Apron

I finally finished the apron using one of the new patterns. What do you all think? I think my other apron pattern was a lot easier and faster but I know it is time to step it up a notch. My thanks to Grace for modeling for me. I used some material I already had to practice on. I’m not sure I like the rick rack, though. I have another pattern to try and then I will decide which one I want to use for the matching mother, daughter, doll aprons.

No church today due to bad weather conditions. Dave, Jess, and boys did get to come yesterday however the wind came also. It was just too cold for Daniel to play in the snow. Wind chills below zero. We had a good visit though. I made fried chicken, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans, and homemade rolls for “lupper”. For those of you confused by this term, this is when it is too late for lunch and too early for supper. We also had cushaw pie for dessert with whipped creme.

Now I must tell the story of why we had fried chicken for lupper. Earlier in the week, Jess had mentioned she would like to have fried chicken. As I knew they would not get to stay long, I thought something a little faster would be better. I decided on hot roast beef sandwiches with green beans. They called when they were on the way here and she jokingly said David would have liked fried chicken too. This conversation was on speaker phone. Hubby overhearing about the fried chicken, which happens to be his favorite meal, said “Oh, I didn’t know fried chicken was an option”. By this time I am feeling a little out numbered so I decided to give in and make the chicken. It was a wise choice. Everyone enjoyed the meal and that makes this mama’s heart happy.

Enjoy your day and God bless.

January 9, 2011 6

Snow

We are getting snow today. I am hoping it doesn’t accumulate too much. Dave, Jess and boys are supposed to come up today for a day visit. If they get to come, Daniel will have his first sledding experience. He will have so much fun playing in the snow.

The girls are outside now playing in the snow. It is a very pretty snow that hopefully is not sticking to the road. Can you tell this MawMaw wants to see her boy play in the snow!

Enjoy your day and God bless.

January 8, 2011 3

Working Hard

Hubby worked some more today on splitting wood. He wanted to know why I took this picture of him splitting a toothpick, why didn’t I get him splitting a real piece of wood.

Julie splitting her first piece of wood.

Grace getting ready to split her first piece. All girls need to know how to split wood. After practicing splitting, we got busy and hauled all that Hubby had split into the wood building and stacked it up. He almost has all the wood split that we have cut so we will soon have to cut more. Oh the joys of heating with wood! Seriously, it is a lot of work but it is definitely good heat and all it costs us is our work. Not a bad trade in my opinion.

We worked on school today, did some house cleaning. The ladies will be coming tomorrow for bible study. Supper tonight is baked spaghetti with lots of mozzarella cheese and home made garlic breadsticks. We also have some cushaw pie left with whipped cream.

Enjoy your evening and God bless.

January 6, 2011 6

Wednesday

I hope you all are not tired of sunrise pictures. I just love a beautiful sunrise and we get some amazing ones here. I thought this one this morning was especially beautiful.

Today while the girls worked on school, I worked on the dreaded refrigerators. We have two refrigerators here in the house. One is a side by side and the other is just a regular refrigerator with the freezer on top. So many little cups of this and cups of that had been stored over the holidays. It was getting impossible to find space to put new cups of this and that. I decided enough was enough. I cleaned both of them out completely, removed the shelves and washed them. I stood back and looked at them and was amazed at how much better they looked. Empty but better. So good that I decided to do the freezers too. Amazing! I actually have space in the fridges and the freezers now. I thought I would never get all those containers washed. I decided since the girls were working so hard on school, I would let them out of that chore today. Thats one job I am glad to have done.

While we were inside working on this Hubby was busy splitting wood. (Dave, he has your splitting maul sharpened and ready for you!) After we were finished inside, we went out and helped him move all the split wood inside the wood building. It was a fairly nice day for working outside. Temperature was around 30 degrees with occasional sunshine.

Enjoy your evening and God bless.

January 5, 2011 3

Tuesday

Today we are getting back into the swing of school. We had too many errands yesterday to start. We also visited some with the Horn’s yesterday. For Christmas, the Horn girls had received a kit from Wal-Mart to make a little girl apron and a little doll apron. I took some interfacing over and Vicki and I traced out the pattern. So I now have a little doll apron pattern to make. I want to make a mother, daughter, and doll apron to match.

Temperatures here are much nicer than they have been however yesterday morning was pretty cold. Temperature yesterday was 14 when we got up but it did warm up nicely with lots of sunshine. Cloudy today though, of course, because I am home and could hang our clothes on the line today. Oh well, thats how it goes. Hubby worked on getting some more wood yesterday while the girls and I ran errands.

Tonights menu is something I really don’t have a name for. I brown hamburger meat, add onions, cabbage, and potatoes. The options are limitless as to what you can add. I sometimes add fresh peppers, zucchini, squash, mushrooms. I like fresh baked cornbread with it. I got some cushaw from the freezer this morning. I think I will make a pie for dessert.

Enjoy your day and God bless.

January 4, 2011 3

Hard Worker

We start them working young around here. Daniel was a big helper Friday as PawPaw, MawMaw and Daddy worked cutting wood. He rode in the “bumpy truck”. He was a very tired, very dirty, little boy at days end but definitely a very HAPPY little boy. He had so much fun and I considered myself blessed to be part of his fun day.

They have been visiting since Thursday and we had a wonderful visit. Dave and Hubby went to shoot sporting clays Thursday and Saturday. We worked on the wood Friday. David will need to go back to work tomorrow to rest. We have been having beautiful weather here in Floyd. Friday, when we were cutting the wood, we worked in short sleeves most of the day. Temperature was in the mid 50’s. Unbelievable but great. Temperature today is 40 degrees. It is a little overcast with some sun and a slight breeze. So much better than last week (in my opinion).

I think I will go enjoy some of that sunshine. Take care and God bless.

January 2, 2011 5