Do You Like His Patch?

Will does! He's pretty excited to wear his monster to school today.

Blogging Questions Answered

I put together some pictures to help if you're confused about posting.

First, how you add and change the order of pictures:

Choose the pictures you want to upload.

Click "add selected."

Now onto editing.

 You can edit your post after you publish it.

Hope that helps! 

If all else fails and you have questions, just call. I'm happy to help.

Mary, how do you do it?

Alright Mary, how do we put pictures in the right order? And how do we put text under the pictures? And how do we edit the blogs? I just can't figure it out. Love ya, Aunt Betty

Remember these frogs?

It's Peter's 2nd birthday in the next few weeks and I thought these might be fun. He is such a boy, and I love little boys things. Last week in my favorite quilt store (Pine Needles) I saw these stuffed frogs, they brought back memories of making them as a teenager. I downloaded a free pattern from the internet and found some really cute fleece and went to town this morning. I reinforced the back of the button eyes with another button and just sewed them up and filled them with wheat. So easy, and I'm sure he will have lots of fun with them. I took a few pictures hopefully I can get them in order.

Annie's Book Birthday

Annie just turned one. As I was considering what to do for her birthday, I easily could have done something super girly and pink, but I thought it was better to do something that she really likes--books. They're easily her favorite thing to play with right now. I searched around for inspiration online, and  I found a great idea here. I scrounged up most of the stuff for the party around my house, and the goodwill. It ended up being pretty easy and cheap.

Invitations, found here:

 I cut a page out of an old book from college and just sewed up the sides to make an envelope.

Decorations:

 You can do so much with paper from books. I cut pages to 5x7", then ran them through my computer and printed the letters on them. Then I just cut them to a point and taped them around baker's twine.

 I made a timeline of monthly pictures I took of her first year.

 Hung it with twine and clothespins, and threw some books up to add to it.

I bought a Dr. Seuss book at the Goodwill and cut pennants out of it with my rotary cutter. Then I just slapped on some bias tape and we were done. 

Food:

I kept it really simple. Cake and cupcakes and fizzy lime ricky's. I made little cake toppers by shrinking down some of her favorite book covers and printing them out. 

 I found the straws here. Did you notice the table cloth? I had the Dick and Jane fabric left over from a quilt from a few years ago. Talk about perfect. 

I'm kind of in love with Baker's twine now. Oh, and I made the cake stand! So easy. I bought a candle holder and a glass plate at the Goodwill, and just glued them together with E6000. So easy. 

Favors:

Brown paper bags I ran through my printer with a Dr. Seuss quote on them. 

I threw made little packets of worms, and printed out these bookplates to go in the bag. 

I loved this party. So fun to get ready, and so fun to do something different. 

Cookie Thursday

Not having a whole lot of time on my hands, and not wanting to bake or cook for just one, I have not "cooked" a whole lot since moving to Las Vegas. But one thing I have enjoyed is instigating "Cookie Thursday" at my work. Working for a heavy equipment auction is pretty interesting most days, and being one of only a few girls in my office most of my days are spent with the guys out in the yard office.

I don't know exactly how I got it started, but now every Thursday I bring in a different kind of cookie to share with everyone in the office. Every week it gets a little more fun and the guys are starting to make a list of there favorites and coming up with the next weeks cookies before they even taste this weeks cookies.

So far I've done...

• Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Cookies (everyone's favorite)


• Snickerdoodles


• No Bakes


• Chocolate Reeses Chip Chews


• Cowboy Cookies


• Chocolate Chip


• Frosted Banana Cookies


• Strawberry Cheese Cake

I love that it gives me a reason to bust out the bosch at least once a week, and share something with everyone that I work with. I love that I have a plethora of recipes to go to and all of them turn out great. I think next week it will be Aunt Betty's Peanut Butter Cookies...one of my favorites! I mentioned turning Cookie Thursday into Treat Thrusday because there are other things that I would like to make like carmal apples, chex mix, and other treats. They quickly told me that that wasn't an option and we would just have to have "Treat Tuesday." I may have to start taking up collections from the guys...

If anyone has any great recipes that they would like to share I would love to try something new. Pretty soon I am going to run out of new things and have to start filtering back through the favorites (which the guys don't mind as long as I start with the Reese's cookies!)

I have such great examples to look up to and can't wait to be a great wife and mother like so many of my aunts, sisters, cousins, mom and grandma. Thanks for being so amazing! Love you all!!

P.S. I made the funnest outfit for Sadie.

For Sadie's Birthday I had such fun making a skirt and purse. Jenny mentioned that the purse I made her for Christmas was not quite big enough and a skirt to match would be fun so... Anyhow this is what I came up with. The purse was a pattern by Janell Wind called the frill seeker, you can find her fun patterns at www.thejanellwindcollection.typepad.com, she has tons of cute things. This purse is so much fun, but it is a bunch of work. I made 7 of them for Christmas and even after all that practice it took me at least 2 hours each one. But they are well made and very, very cute!

The skirt was just a bunch of ruffles and a fun bow, but such fun together with the purse. How you enjoy!! Love you guys.

Sadie is 10

Sadie turned 10 yesterday, (Happy Birthday to Katie and Carrie too). The end of the day brought so many wonderful thoughts, and so you guys get a few. I remember going up to the hospital the night she was born and saying to Gary that we now have a posterity. Yesterday my thoughts were how much has happened since that March day 10 years ago. We now have 5 great daughters-in-laws and one great son-in-law and 16 grand-babies. Wow, time passes so quickly. Anyhow it has truly been the best of times. Not that there hasn't been the worst of times in there but by and large the best of times. Thank you Heavenly Father.

Sew Fun

Grandma, we're grateful for your love and influence with sewing. It's so awesome to look at all your material in your home. I'm sure I'm like others when I say that I catch myself thinking of the time when/if I will have cupboards full of fabric myself :)

We are expecting a baby girl this May and we're so grateful and excited. To help pass the time this week I found myself sewing outfits. The patterns and tutorials I came across online, and they were really so much fun to make!

As I've gotten more into clothes construction I made some clothing labels for the kids' clothes. I think it gets me excited to sew as much as anything :) (You can order clothing labels on Etsy,  I just haven't explored that very much yet.)

I will be trying more box cut pleats in the future now. It's kind of hard to see, but it's in the middle of the skirt.

Hopefully I can make time to sew as my kids get older. I know you ladies have, so I'm sure I can too. I love you guys!

Food Storage Fun

A couple weeks ago we came upon 60 pounds of vegetables for $10! Awesome Deal! Nellie was with me and she was determined to make Spaghetti Sauce. With 120 pounds of tomatoes on the table we enlisted the help of the internet, Casey, Mom, & Dad. We worked hard (me not so much) and blanched peeled and blended lots of tomatoes. We made lots of spaghetti sauce and each still had 20 pounds of tomatoes left.
Casey is really the domestic one in my house (don't tell I told on him) and decided to finish the rest of the tomatoes by doing stewed tomatoes. We ended up with 12 more quarts.
Last weekend the 60 pounds for $10 came again, but with cucumbers. Casey got the bottles, vinegar, salt and dill and we made 24 pints of dill pickles. I'm so excited to try them! We also planted our garden this weekend we really hope something grows from it so we can bottle lots more fun stuff!
Working together to do these projects has been a blast. I can't wait to see what we come up with next! It's fun learning new things and being a little self sufficient on the way.

A new kitchen

Well.... I'm finally going to do a blog entry. First off thanks to Mary, Janet and whom ever else has gotten this thing going, it is one of the best ideas ever. I love seeing the posts and knowing that these are all people I love and care about who are doing such fun things. I can't wait to share my own ideas and eventually try to do my own blog.

But in getting back to the post. We have been working madly the past couple of months on redoing our kitchen. And even though it's not a real crafty-Grandma thing I want to share the finished product with you. And in it's own way I remember many a kitchen remodel with Mom. One memorable one was when we were adding on the the house in Alamo, it was such a beautiful kitchen and Daddy had let Mom design it totally on her own. The contractor who did the remodel was a fun guy, I can't remember his name, but I recall one day him spending the afternoon teaching us how he made pies in that new kitchen. It was so great and he was so good with us.

But, back to the kitchen.... I have needed some major overhaul on my kitchen and have been saving ideas for quite a while. I liked the idea of white cupboards that staggered up and down (cause that is the new thing) with a dark counter top (granite) and some sort of back splash (cause I'm a messy cook). I knew that we would have to do all the work because kitchen cost to much money to do a total redo. I wanted to keep a lot of my cabinets, they were well made and lasting in spite of a well used kitchen. The guy that did my original cabinets still lives in the area so I got him to make a few new boxes and then Gary and I took the old off and put on new shinny white paint. We added a new counter top and we even did the tile work for the back splash. With a new curtain and window sill the room was done. It has been so much fun to have this finally finished.