Sewing Day

A good sewing day - at least the morning so far. I finished something - totally and finally finished a project down to clipping all threads and taking pictures. I have to say my sewing might have been better than my photography today.

First I had to stop and do some pressing and taking pictures of the little clothes I mentioned earlier. I'm still going to get some stain remover and do a little patching, but I wanted to stop and see where they stand.

The bonnet! It's just perfect with hardly a flaw - except for the fact that I don't think any amount of starch is going to make it stand up enough to frame a baby's face. It's almost like netting it's so thin.



Perfect little tucks along the brim.




The ties are not in good shape but what detail at the ends.



This is a bad picture of the embroidery on the crown, but it's beautiful.

This is the dress that supposedly goes with the slip from earlier.



There are some bad stains and tears, really shredding, and it probably can't be fixed too well, but I can still enjoy the work.

The bottom with the lace and entredeux.



The sweet little open sleeves.



I even like the placket and little buttons.



There are several reasons that make me think these clothes might have belonged to Mike's mother. First, they were in her cedar chest. Second, she didn't have any daughters, and third the little apron below has an E, and her name was Eleanor. The puzzling thing is why we never knew about them. I'm thinking maybe she received them from someone who discovered them and returned them to her after she was under the effect of the Parkinson's disease and she didn't understand what they were.

The apron with the embroidery on the bib and gingham binding and ties.

I love the little monogrammed pocket and the embroidery on the bib.


Now to my totally different sewing.

I bought several pieces of the Andover Fabrics "Meet the Gang" when I thought I was going to be making twin boy and girl quilts for expected twins this spring. It turns out they're both boys, so I needed to use my girl fabric (and totally need to start on the boy quilts - but never mind - first things first).

Emily and Elise both liked them, so I decided to do us a purse organizer just for fun.

I used the tutorial from The Giving Flower blog. This is just the first one I saw, and it looked easy (which it was), but doing a search for this tutorial, I saw many more and different versions of the same thing. I would maybe make this one an inch or so taller and an inch or so longer since I have a long billfold.

Here it is in the main fabric and a coral one with the little birds. I won't go through my steps. I don't sew "pretty," and no one wants to see pictures of the broken needle and scraps and thread all over the floor. Just see how I finished something. One down, 2 - maybe 3 - to go!

But I'm proud of the way this turned out.

I used the measurements suggested, but you can make the pockets any size. My main needs were for my phone, pens, and hand lotion. All the addresses and phone numbers from that address book are in my phone, but that's my security blanket, so I still carry it.



Standing up without the billfold in the middle. Stiff interfacing makes it stand up well.

It needs to be a little longer for me.



When you change purses, you can just pick up the whole thing and transfer. I do well to find one purse I like, so I change only with the seasons - and that's even iffy sometimes.


This is down in my purse. Fits nicely. I'll probably use one pocket for my camera since I'm always groping around for it and my phone at the bottom of my purse. And there are still extra zipper spaces in my purse for lipstick and keys and all the other stuff that collects.



So there! I did it. I've made this MY day. I do nothing I don't want to, and Mike doesn't have to do anything he doesn't want to either. I hear him clinking and banging in the kitchen, working on some wayward cabinet hinges and touching up some paint - and occasionally bursting out with a self-congratulatory sentence or 2. No modesty there. Like me.

No telling what we might get done this afternoon after a lunch that neither one of us is going to volunteer to make. I did breakfast....

Just another Day

Nothing interesting happened, and I couldn't even find anything interesting that other people did to fill this space.

I did go to our Turban Ministry at church where 6 of us ran in circles in a tiny room trying to remember where we left off before Christmas. The button sewer-ons and the puckerers finally settled in, and the 2 of us at the machines gave it a try. I'm not sure there was much accomplished, but there was a lot of conversation and fun. We'll do better next month.

I managed to save a good bit of money on groceries, making myself go into CVS and Dollar General where I got detergent for $2 a bottle (28 loads - it was supposed to be $1 but I didn't want to stay there arguing) and lots of paper towels, toilet paper and shampoo for very little and still have a $10 store credit at CVS. Publix didn't have many exciting things, but as long as I can get Alpo for $.32 a can (instead of $.78 and on-sale Fancy Feast), I'll enjoy it. I believe I saved $30 on a $100 trip without even concentrating hard.

Mike is attacking our cabinet doors and painting some worn edges plus replacing some broken hinges, so he was busy while I was gone.

This afternoon it was nice to play my senior citizen card and take a nap before working. The checkout boy at Publix didn't automatically give me my senior discount at Publix, and I had to ask for it. Nice boy.

January 3

Wow. Three days in a row.

It's beginning to feel like January now - down to the 20s tonight and tomorrow night. It's fine as long as I don't have to go outside, but unfortunately tomorrow is grocery day, and Friday and Saturday are going to Andalusia day.

But it's warm and cozy inside with a fire to enjoy and coffee to drink. And this timid daffodil that refused to bloom at Christmas time. This may be all I get, but I love the way it looks against the gray sky outside.

We discussed our tendency to enjoy the fire and coffee and just sitting too much, so we got up and cleaned house for a couple of hours this morning. Mike cleaned all the kitchen cabinets, even the ones over the refrigerator which have been ignored for 5 years. I did lots of odd jobs and only got side-tracked twice.

We have packages to mail to the daughters with some of their things that either wouldn't fly or wouldn't fit their bags. I needed to finish up a stitch or 2 on these dishrags before I mailed them. This should make cleaning up fairly cheerful.

A sprig of this interesting succulent is on the way to Washington. I'm not sure what it is, but it's trying to reach the ceiling
With the house kinda clean and the groceries bought, Thursday is going to be my sewing day. I'm tired of looking at these blogs with pictures of all these quilts and projects people completed last year. I'm counting those dishrags for 2012 since I just finished one of them today!

Sweet mysteries

These delicate little baby clothes were just discovered in my late mother-in-law's cedar chest last month. The search is on to find out who they belonged to. They were definitely hand made, some stitches by machine and some by hand, but that embroidery on the slip seems almost too perfect.


I waited until too late to get a good pictures and ran out of time to talk about them, so that will have to wait until tomorrow. There are a few more, but these are the ones that cleaned up best. Soaking in buttermilk worked somewhat, but they're going to take a little more cleaning and then asking lots of questions of those who might know where they came from. I'm afraid we'll never find out.

Welcome 2012

I'm sure it will be better than 2011. I'm going to try to keep up this silly journal once more. TRY. Let's hope some fun things happen and that I don't forget to write them down.

I like Jeannie's resolution from The Old-Fashioned Baby blog.

We managed to stay awake for midnight, mainly because we knew Darby and the cats would freak out at the sound of firecrackers and wake us up anyway.

This morning both my eyes are bloodshot, and I'm wondering if anyone at church will notice. The only indulgence I had was at about 11:30 - 2 pieces of Dove Dark Chocolate and a glass of Diet Coke.

No resolutions because I never keep them, but we have already started some new things that I hope we can continue.

One is walking. It may only be once or twice a week since the weather is not always nice, but it's a start. We usually enjoy it except for the time when we misjudged the huge storm coming in and -- well, just think of the old saying "soaked to the bone" - humans and dog. It was kind of fun, at least for me.

The other is breakfast. We both hate breakfast, at least early in the morning. I usually have a protein bar and a half a glass of milk, and Mike has about 3 cups of coffee. For a couple of weeks now, I've forced myself to make us a healthy breakfast, and we've done well. Always with milk and fruit and/or juice. We've had eggs, southwestern eggbeaters, cereal, oatmeal, whole-wheat toast, bagels. Sometimes we just go through the motions, but usually it's pretty good and has to be helping.

This is our official first year of retirement. We've tested it for 4 months now, and it's worked out fine. The insurance we chose has paid for anything we've thrown at it except for Mike's flu shot and a few co-payments. The 4 medications we take between us are either $4 or $7 a month. So maybe we made the right decision.

The "fixed income" is probably going to work. So far it has. And I even have a little money to spend wildly on fabric. Or shoes.

We and our families are relatively healthy, and we're thankful for that. With 2 parents not too far from 90, we can expect problems there, but everyone is handling things well. The nursing home is working out well for Roy, and Mama is still making a lot of her own meals, doing her housework and voraciously reading 2-3 newspapers a day plus watching the news twice a day and her soap opera faithfully at 12:30. She even still sews a little bit.

We're going to tackle the house and get some projects started. It's hard to know where to start, but we need to make some improvements. I'm looking forward to having a garden this spring. Mike - maybe not so excited but willing to go along with it.

I'm on the verge of actually finishing a quilty project. My friend Barbara and cousin Sherry (who are quilters who finish many things a year) are always optimistically giving me things in hopes that something will catch my fancy and make me finish something. I'm kidding, they're just nice and extra generous. But as soon as the girls moved out of the guest room, I moved my sewing machine and ironing board in there and started a project. It was a panel for an Advent Calendar with 25 little pockets that Barbara gave me a long time ago with some more Christmas things. So cute. I worked on it for a few days and finished the front, added a backing and batting and even quilted around the main area by hand while I watched Auburn's bowl game last night.

All I have to do now is bind it and stick a dowel through the sleeve, and it's ready to hang. I love all the little pockets!







I learned to do Pintarest, and while I won't ever be as enthusiastic as some people, it's a nice place to keep those random projects and ideas you run across on other blogs or just in general. People are so creative, and I have no shame about profiting from their creativity. Facebook doesn't interest me that much, even though I do check it periodically. I've mastered my new Android (or whatever that phone is called) - at least for the one or two things that I do with it so far. If I could only stop losing it. Lots of books I want to read but will never have time for.

We've rediscovered Masterpiece Theater on Sunday night - or Masterpiece Classics, I think it's called now. We're loving Downton Abbey and hate that the first season is finishing tonight. We have to watch it twice because we miss some little plot or some funny thing the first time around. Good news is that the new season starts January 8th, and it looks like there are some more nice shows too.



So it doesn't look like a boring year coming up. I think it will be wonderful. We'll come home from church and eat our red beans and rice that Mike made yesterday and eat our turnip greens and sweet potatoes.



And then go for a walk. There's only a 20% chance of rain.

Busy Baking Day

Yesterday I made chocolate chip cookies - my old recipe that I've used for 40 years - and today I made cranberry almond ones. I decided that those are the only 2 cookies I should ever try to make. They're foolproof, fairly easy and, best of all, delicious.

Mike chopped the fruit and made Gaby's punch while I did the baking. Yummy smells.



Big mess!

The first 2 cranberry-almond batches. Unfortunately, there was 1 cookie in each of the batches that was "ugly" and we had to eat it, so I only got 44 from the recipe.
Here's the recipe:

Cranberry Almond Cookies

1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 tsp almond extract
2 large eggs
2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 cups chopped fresh cranberries
1 cup slivered almonds, toasted

Beat butter at medium speech with an electric mixer until creamy; gradually add sugars, beating well. Add almond extract and eggs, beating until blanded.

Combine flour, bakig powder, and salt; gradually add to butter mixture, beating at low speed until blended after each addition. Stir in cranberries and almonds. Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets.

Bake at 375 degrees for 9 to 11 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool.

Yield: 3-1/2 to 4 dozen.

May be frozen up to 6 months.

This is the best thing I've bought this year. I think I'm late to the party, but it makes plopping out cookies so much easier than in the past. How did I live without it?


Oh, and here's the chocolate chip cookie recipe. I like it because it has the slightest salty taste and lots of chips and pecans. So easy too.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup granualted sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup sifted all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp soda
1 (6-oz) package (1 cup) semisweet chocolate pieces
1/2 cup broken nuts

Cream shortening and sugars, egg and vanilla until light and fluffy. Sift together dry ingredients; stir into creamed mixture and blend well. Add chocolate and nuts.

Drop onto cookie sheet and bake at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Makes 3 dozen.

I also made some cranberry bread since I was chopping cranberries anyway. It's an old standby, but it's been a few years since I've made it. Stella has enjoyed the new holiday things around the house.

Guarding the manger. We were amazed that she climbed up on the velvet-covered table, crawled under the little tree and settled herself down without causing even one ornament to fall.

When she asked to go outside this morning, she didn't bargain for rain. Here's her "Let me in immediately" face.
So the baking is done now and I don't having anything to cook until Wednesday when we get ready for the girls to come in on Thursday. Then it's Mexican casserole, chicken enchiladas and a new Southwest salad I'm going to try. We'll spend Friday and Saturday in Andalusia and probably make the usual turkey and dressing dinner before Emily has to head back to Washington. Elise gets to stay with us until Christmas.

Holiday Pictures

I'm not through with Thanksgiving yet.

When we went to the nursing home to visit Roy at Thanksgiving, I was amazed at the size and color of these marigolds. Beautiful. And a bee too. They had already put in the winter/Christmas landscaping the next time we went, but I didn't have my camera.

This is the nursing home foyer before the tree was decorated. It's much prettier now.



Roy's magnifier - which keeps him up on the outside world - reading newspapers and cards, etc.



Again, more and better pictures next week now that he's settled in a little bit.

I've been slowly decorating around here a little bit but just a few things.

Plants.

I planted the narcissus bulbs and the amaryllis bulbs the same day. I'm not sure what happened to the narcissus. They popped right up but seem to be just sitting there. I may have watered them too much since this pot has no drainage.

This amaryllis I love.

Usually the stems grow and grow until they're so tall they're almost tipping over, but this one grew a few inches and then started to bloom, the shortest I've ever grown.


And my crazy "Christmas" cactus. It's likely to put out a few blooms when you least expect it any time of year, but just for this occasion I got one bloom only.


A few more random pictures. Nothing like the beautiful mantels and table settings I love on the blogs I read, but just using what I already have, it's nice and cozy and pretty festive,




The small tree in the den. I have to say I enjoy this one more than the bigger one. But they both make me happy, the big one with all the memories and this one with where we stay most of the time.

Side door wreath. This is one of my favorites. Elise either bought it for me in Greensboro or bugged me until I bought it. The pears have a tendency to fall off now and then and seem to need a little glitter updating. These stockings! I made them in 1978 and have never been allowed to replace them. It was Emily's first Christmas, and she would stand beside me and sift her hands through the sequins while I worked. Fun times. I've tried to do similar ones for Stephanie and Ryan but never came close to the gaudiness of the originals.

And that's it. Wreaths hung outside and getting ready to make wassail and cookies in a few days.

Happy Thanksgiving

With just the 3 of us this year, it was a tiny tailored Thanksgiving feast. Only the things we liked and very few dishes. It was perfect. Stuffed as usual afterwards, but LOTS of leftovers in the refrigerator.

We had the usual turkey and dressing - this time turkey slices from the deli at Publix - and dressing that has just the right amount of seasoning and moistness.

Sweet potato casserole and brown rice and mushrooms.
Sugar snap peas (frozen - 5 minutes to cook and really good) and sauteed mushrooms.

A surprisingly good strawberry cream pie that we bought for some occasion and never ate. It came in handy today when neither of us wanted to cook a dessert.
It was a nice meal all in all. We missed the ones who weren't able to be here, but we'll see them in a few weeks.

Speaking of baking, this was Mike's next-to-last venture.
It's not an overstuffed sub or a loaf of French bread----

But a pineapple upside-down cake.

We discussed pan sizes ahead of time, and he decided to go against all odds and used a layer cake pan. There was a cookie sheet there to catch any batter than may run over. Unfortunately, there was nothing to catch what ran off the cookie sheet except the bottom of the oven. The smoke and smell did clear out after 3 days, and the cake was delicious - what was left of it.

We spent the afternoon aimlessly, taking Darby for a long walk and riding around and exploring some. We talked to Mike's dad who is newly in a nursing home and heard what a good Thanksgiving dinner he had and how much progress he's making - getting up and visiting friends, talking on the phone, etc. Big improvement over the past few weeks.

Just talked to Emily who is preparing her own dinner for friends. Homemade cranberry sauce, fried turkey, dressing. She gets upset with me because I change the dressing recipe so much (this year I forgot to add "day-old bread"). Pretty soon, she'll be comfortable with her own recipe. and I'll be trying to copy her!

Today is Gaby's birthday. She gets to share her big day with our Thanksgiving Day. I'll have to see if she's tried the sweet potatoes and dressing yet. Happy Birthday, Gaby. I know you're dying laughing over the cake disaster above.