Garage Sale Saturday!

My men's table... up front to pull them in!

View from the front!

My Ladies/Decor table

View from the back... and my neighbor's sale across the street!

It's been a long, slow, Saturday morning. I've had only five or six lookers and no purchasers. I'm hoping it picks up.

Hey I just made my first sale! $12.50! WooHoo! And more people are coming now! I can hope!

Show and Tell Friday

Yesterday we cleaned out our garage! I found treasures I hadn't seen for three years. (Since we moved from Texas to Michigan). Two of my favorite quilt books. One big (see above).

One small!

Both are filled with beautiful pictures of quilts, as well as quotes about quilts and quilting history. I'm glad to have re-discovered these treasures.

For more Show and Tell Fridays go to http://kellishouse.blogspot.com

Whew! What a busy week!

Of course, being the END OF MAY we are still having frost warnings! Sigh.

A trip to the local nursery to replace my dead tomato plants

So much color... I could have spent soooo... much $$$

Practical purchases

Andi learning to plant- "Mom, why can't we just go to the store and buy our food?"

A look at my itty bitty little garden... it's a start!

My neighbors told me Tuesday night that they were doing a garage sale this weekend (Thurs., Fri., Sat.) so if I wanted to put anything out/have my own, it would be a good time. Sigh... I was no where near ready. I had some stuff put aside but I knew I had so much more to find and pull out. To make it more stressfull... I absolutely had to weed and plant in my vege garden on Wed. Finally about 4:00 on Wed. I was ready to start cleaning out the garage (which was where a good portion of garage sale items would come from). Luckily the neighborhood kids love a good garage cleaning. (I actually just think they are curious to see other people's stuff.) I had lots of helpers. I was able to get a good start on it and find enough stuff to make setting up a sale worthwhile.


On Thursday we set up and since my DH had the day off, he continued cleaning the garage while I manned the sale. He would bring out boxes to me and I would go through them to find more sale items. It worked well and we have a much nicer looking garage. Unfortunately, today it is raining so I don't know if the sale will happen today, but we'll be back at it tomorrow.

Not exactly what we were going for!

This was the beautiful layout of cupcakes in the May 2008 issue of Country Living that inspired us to try decorating. We made a from scratch lemon cake (very yummy!) from the book; Cake Decorating For The First Time by Jaynie Maxfield (Sterling Publishing, 2004). We made the Almost Homemade Buttercream frosting that was given in the article (pg. 162). It was wonderful tasting but I don't think we got the consistancy right because this is what we ended up with...

Now, I know that perfection comes with time and practice but I think our main problem was the texture of the frosting. It was not as smooth and firm as what I hoped for.

None the less, the kids had fun and we ended up with great tasting (although not particularly professional looking) cupcakes.

We give Reagan one knifeful of frosting and one cupcake. It keeps her busy. She tends to be a knife licker and I can't handle a licked knife going back into the bowl of frosting. LOL!

I'm seriously considering purchasing Teaching Good Thing's cake decorating DVD. ( www.teachinggoodthings.com ) Does anyone have any experience with this DVD or with cake decorating? Any tips you can share?

The Ant Whisperer

The Horse Whisperer hit the big screen. Cable t.v. has a dog whisperer. Coming soon... The Ant Whisperer! Starring Reagan! She absolutly loves ants. She will talk to them, let them crawl on her and then she will pet them. She gets upset if anyone in the family steps on one and she really gets mad if I spray them with Raid. The older kids want to get her an ant farm. Personally our whole back yard is an ant farm. She will be in for a shocker if we move back to Texas. One does not "whisper" red ants.

Show and Tell Friday!

Baby Blocks, Drunkard's Path, Triangles, Grandmother's Fan (bottom left, counter-clockwise)

Rose of Sharon (in progress), Trip Around the World, Rail Fence, Maple Leaf (Bottom left, counter-clockwise)

Rail Fence, Trip Around the World (Again), Strip Rail, Card Trick (Top Left, counter-clockwise)

Spider's Web, Court House Steps (Bottom to top)

Log Cabin, Dresden Plate (Bottom to top)

Hi everyone,

It's been a while since I've participated in show and tell, but since I've gotten back into the quilting I thought I would show off my quilt blocks. They aren't perfect but I'm just a beginner and I'm okay with that. I hope to improve with time. I have 14 1/2 blocks made and have 6 1/2 to go before I can start to assemble the quilt and then quilt it. I'm using Lynne Edwards' Making A Sampler Quilt book, published by Reader's Digest (1996). The directions are easy to follow and I've been quite thrilled with my progress. I actually prefer hand stitching to machine work and I love applique!

For more Show and Tell Fridays go to http://kellishouse.blogspot.com

Think you don't have room?

Stacy, at http://www.yoursacredcalling.blogspot.com/ , has a great video post up. It is about a family in the L.A. area who grow all their own food on 1/10th of an acre. (Their suburban lot.) Very inspiring! They even have chickens, ducks and goats! If they can do all that in L.A. then what excuse do most of us have. It definately changed my mind about needing a lot of land. Check out Stacy's blog and then go to http://www.pathtofreedom.com/ . I don't believe the family has a Christian mindset, probably more of a "mother earth" mindset but it is very motivating. (I won't be giving up my washing machine any time soon, though.)

Update on my garden: We have peas and spinach coming up as well as yesterday's lettuce!

I have lettuce!

My lettuce! (And grass- I need to weed.)

I checked my garden yesterday and found a neat little row of lettuce had popped up! Yeah, the frost didn't kill everything. I still can have hope for some of the other things I planted.

I plan to replace the tomato plants after Memorial Day. (When smart Michiganders plant.)

During Hiatus I've been reading

I've found new cookie recipes, candy recipes, cake and cupcake decorating ideas, and quilting inspriration. The DH and I are doing Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. (Our stimulus check went to stimulating our savings account.) I've been researching the Christian Writer's Market. I also have been enjoying a lot of fiction.

Terri Blackstock's Restoration Series is highly entertaining. There are four books in the series: Last Light, Night Light, True Light and Dawn's Light. The premise of these books is a world wide power outage caused by pulses from a collasped star. No electricity, no cars, no nothing... anything with any type of computer chip in it doesn't work. The author follows a family and a small town as they struggle to adapt and survive. Blackstock is a Christian author and the books have a Christian world view.

The other series I've been pulled into is Jennifer Chiaverini's Elm Creek Quilter's series. (10+ books, I believe.) While not written with a Christian worldview, the stories are entertaining and focus around a circle of friends and the craft of quilting. If you love quilts or quilting then you will enjoy this series.

Okay, I'm off to start school... have a great day!

You might be a homeschool family if...

...you have avacados growing in your kitchen window

... next to the avacados, you are growing crystals

... and you have dry ice smoking on your coffee table!

I started too early!

The start

Finish

My beautiful Costco tomato plant

The planted garden

My now dead tomato plant

One of my projects I've been working on over the past few weeks has been digging and planting a garden. Last Tuesday, after watching the weather faithfully and seeing the future nighttime temps. I decided to put my plants/seeds in the ground. I was sure the danger of frost was over. Sigh. No. Two nights ago we had a frost. I learned about it when it was too late at night to go cover up the plants. I think my chive plants and cilantro starts survived but my tomato starts (one a lovely big one from Costco) did not. I don't know if my seeds will come up now or not. I should have waited.

The Finished Project

Here is the finished fort! It is trimmed out and painted. Our kids and the nieghborhood kids love it. In the forefront of the picture you can see my oldest working in the playset area. She threw a fit, a couple of weeks ago, worthy of a three year old and thus earned herself some additude adjustment work. She gets to weed the entire area. She has been working diligently, weeding a bit each day and has made quite a dent. I'm quite proud of her. She is not our "outdoor" child or our "worker bee" so this is quite and accomplishment for her.

Mother Hen pulls me back to blogging

I have been on Haitus for a couple of weeks. I was reading blogs but didn't feel motivated to post on my own. I've been trying to spend my pregnant time and energy on other things. But how can I refuse a meme when I've been tagged?

Mother Hen over at http://www.shipfullofpirates.com/ has tagged me with a 6 Quirky Things meme.

Here are the rules:

Link to the blogger who tagged you.

List the rules.

List your six quirks.

Tag 6 others.

Okay, here are my quirky things:

1. I do not like salsa. I spent five years in Texas- three in San Antonio and I was not converted. I have never liked, and still don't like, salsa.

2. I love to climb trees. No, I'm not climbing any while I'm pregnant, but I have never outgrown my passion for a good climbing tree.

3. I believe Big Foot, Champ (in Lake Champlain), and the Loch Ness Monster could (and probably do) exist.

4. I have obsessive compulsive disorder when it comes to having things in a certain place in a certain way. I don't care so much about dirt and dust, but I must have a place for everything, everything in its place. Ever since High School my friends (and now my husband and kids) will move things just so see how long I can go before I have to "fix" it.

5. I love bright, funky nail polish (green, yellow, orange, black, blue)on my toe nails but will only put clear, sheer or nude polish on my fingernails.

6. I can't eat bananas while I'm pregnant. Can't even be around them. They set off my gag reflex. Same with brushing my teeth... of course I have to brush my teeth but it must be very quick or I'll end up in trouble.

There... I'm done. I don't think I have six people to tag but I will do:

Brenda over at http://timeandseason.blogspot.com/

Kara at http://ramblings-n-writings.blogspot.com/

Jendi at http://www.jendisjournal.com/

That's three people which is six divided by two!