Baby it’s cold outside

Posted on December 22, 2008 by Suzanne

You’ve probably figured out by now that I’ve tried to use song titles (or lyrics) the last little while for my post titles. After my earlier post, I realized that Dashing Thru the Snow would have been a better title for my tale of driving woes.

Yesterday Mark told the boys they’d go outside to play if it hit 10 degrees. I don’t think it made it past 2 degrees.

This morning I saw MINUS 10. Wrong direction!!!

I’ve been staying inside sewing and quilting on the longarm. And listening to my cherubs play together, during yet another day off school. I’m hoping they can go tomorrow: wouldn’t them to miss out on a Christmas Party! One nice thing about moving up to the Upper Elementary, is that they no longer exchange $2 gifts with classmates, instead they are asked to bring food to donate to the food pantry. I’m also hoping they can go so they can deliver their teacher gifts, which got finished up last week. I went to wrap the quilts this evening, and decided to skip trying to find boxe sor bags that might work — I made gift bags.

Seriously!

The fabric was 60 inches wide, I hemmed the short edges, sewed up the two long edges (and actually sewed the other ends of the ribbon into one of the seams) and Voila! Reusable fabric gift bags. I didn’t time myself, but I’m guessing I spent no more than 30 minutes total from looking for the fabric to writing the notes and tying it all up. (The 30 minutes wasn’t necessarily all at one time…but…you get the drift…)

We got one of our nephews a somewhat unwieldy gift for Christmas, and I was trying to figure out how to wrap it — I think I know, now, what I’ll be doing!

In last year’s Christmas Journal, I wrote myself a note reminding myself that I did NOT need to buy wrapping paper, I have more than enough. Maybe, I need to start making some more of these fabric bags for future gift-wrapping ventures. Hey! Stashbusters — just think how much fabric you could making gift bags, for gifts year-round!

In case anyone is interested, I posted about the School Letter Banners I just finished making for a customer — over on the Knots & Bolts blog. It might be a little too late for a last-minute Christmas idea, but it’ll give you plenty of time in case you need a graduation present this spring!

And now, I think I’m going to turn everything off and head for my nice warm bed, so I can snuggle under the clean sheets with my clean dog.

TTFN-

Suzanne

You’d better watch out

Posted on December 16, 2008 by Suzanne

Cause Santa will be listening when you slip and fall on the snow-covered ice and he’ll hear you use all those bad words.

(I’m fine, just grouchy. We got lots of white precipitation today. Enough said.)

Although, with the cool mail I’ve gotten recently, I have no reason to be grouchy. last week, I jokingly suggested that people needed to send me chocolate. Deb said it was on the way, and I thought she was kidding.

dsc07478 Youd better watch out

Joke was on me — not only did I score chocolate, but I got one of the cute cupcake pincushions she had shown off last week. (The best one of course, since it is all RED…)

I was a little skeptical of the Dove chocolate that was labeled Bananas Foster, but I was too desperate for chocolate to care. And hey! It was pretty yummy!

I left them at the shop, so I’ll have to report on the Raspberry Ghirardelli stuff later…

(I can report that the cupcake is awesome and is performing admirably already). Thanks Deb!!!

Speaking of small annoyances that we have control over and don’t do anything about…OK, that was a terrible segue, as the actual conversation about it was in a previous post…but it is related to the pincushion, honestly…

Why do I put up with bent and fat pins??? Why?? Pins are cheap! I think I’ve ranted about this before — you know, how no matter how many pins there are in the pin container, you always (Always!) grab the bent one? And instead of throwing away (well, putting it in a container for safe disposal), you throw it back int he pin container?

So, oddly enough, I now own a fair amount of inventory, and one of the items in my inventory just happens to be containers of brand-new pins. I treated myself to a container today, and THOSE are the pins that are now adorning my new cupcake. Not those nasty bent ones that I had been putting up with before.

I have MORE cool mail to report on, however, the SCAN of that cool mail is stuck on the computer at the shop, and I’m at home with no way to access it. Duh.

I’m going to go post a new quilt project to my other blog, and then I’m going to go see if I can get any sympathy from my husband for my aches and pains from this morning’s fall. I’m not counting on much. He’s not very sympathetic…

Suzanne

10 days until Christmas

Posted on December 15, 2008 by Suzanne

wrigley 10 days until Christmas

My morning was spent hand-embroidering Wrigley’s name on his stocking.

Wrigley is a dog.

My sister-in-law and niece had asked me to do this several weeks ago, but I took the stocking home and…the embroidery floss was all here at the shop. Finally, I managed to get both items in the same place at the same time and got that marked off my mental list.

I pretty much took the weekend off from the computer, and got a ton of quilting and sewing done. I’ll be sharing some stuff as the day/week goes on.

I was thinking about my post about how I was going to throw away that shirt that was so irritating. I wanted to add, just so you don’t think I’m really wasteful, that I do normally take things to Goodwill, but this shirt. I just couldn’t see subjecting someone else to the irritation that I had suffered through. Plus, it had some bleached spots on the front, so it wasn’t really in what I would consider donatable condition. I didn’t figured that the people at Goodwill needed to throw out my trash. I suspect they do enough of that already.

If you have nothing better to do, and are in need of a giggle, you could go visit my sister’s blog and watch the really short video clip of my nephew. He’s quite a character.

Suzanne

p.s.

I am not going to whine about the weather.

We have good mornings, too

Posted on December 12, 2008 by Suzanne

Lest you think all I do is complain, my boys have managed, for the last several mornings, to make it out of the house with all of their belongings, on time, with no yelling on my part. Phew. When we do have a good mornings, I try to remind the boys how much more pleasant the experience is for everyone, and while they grin and nod, I don’t know that they completely get it.

They really are very good kids, and I wanted to make sure I say that occasionally. And yes, I say it to THEM too.

On a completely unrelated note: I was getting dressed this morning and I grabbed a shirt that I’ve had for several years. It’s knit, long-sleeved, with some stretch to it. It’s nice and soft, except for this one spot on a shoulder seam that always irritates my neck when I wear it. When I examine the seam, I can’t SEE anything that might cause irritation, nor can I actually feel it with my fingers. I stuck it on, thinking, as I do every time I have worn it in the past, that the irritation must be in my head and I am not going to let this shirt get the best of me.

It only took about a minute before I could feel it, and I pulled the shirt back off.

My question is this: why do I even still OWN that shirt? Why have I put up with that irritation for so many years? It’s not a fancy designer shirt or anything, and I was noticing this morning that it has some bleached out spots along the bottom hem. If I had left it on, I would have been annoyed by that shoulder seam all day long.

What stupid irritations do you ahv ein your life that you have control over that you could get rid of? And what are you going to do about them?

Mine is in the trash.

-Suzanne

If I lived in a tropical climate…

Posted on December 3, 2008 by Suzanne

You KNOW that I’d be complaining about the heat. I’d whine and whine about how many days it was sooooo hot, and how much I hated being hot and sweaty all the time. There would probably be complaints about humidity and bugs, and I don’t know what else.

Oh wait. That’s what I do in the summer time here in Iowa.

We had snow on Sunday and a late start for school on Monday (mostly due to the wickedly blowing snow…)

It is snowing again today, though it seems to have quit for now. It’s always funny to see a forecast that says 100% chance of snow. Really? You think? I took the picture above (and some others) to try to remind myself of the BEAUTY of the snow and ice. It helps a little.

I did do yesterday’s Christmas Journal activity, but I’m not ready to show it yet. I printed it at the wrong size and need to redo. Oops.

Today’s prompt is about Christmas cards. Last year, at this time, we had the Christmas tree up and I could take some photos of the boys in front of it for our cards. This year, we haven’t gotten the tree up yet, and I’ll probably have to wait until this weekend to do pictures during the day when we (hopefully) have some good daylight. The other suggestion was to get out pen and paper and write a letter. And mail it. When is the last time you did that? I couldn’t even guess when I last wrote a letter.

Yesterday, I got a note in the mail from someone, and getting that handwritten note, which I never would have even looked for, really brightened my day. It was short, and probably didn’t take more than a few minutes to write and mail.

I’d like to challenge all of you, my blog readers, to step away from the keyboard and monitor and take a few minutes to hand write a note to someone today. It doesn’t have to be a multi-page accounting of your life, just a few lines in a blank card would do. Send it to a family member or friend that could use some cheering up, or look for one of the many letter-writing campaigns that are always looking for people to send letters to soldiers or sick children or…

I promise that when I write my letter to someone today, I won’t even complain about the snow. Not even a little bit.

Suzanne