WiP Wednesday, brought to you by the color red

Tyler's brother invited us to go to a Razorback game this Saturday.

Like last year, I'm not overly excited about it,

and was about to tell Tyler to just take Brandon (he doesn't get to go this year)

when he told me, "Mitch says Jennifer really wants you to come."

Well. Pooh. I guess I should go then.

And I did have a perfectly fine time last year...

(except, this year, we're spending the night and going to church with them.

Only an extrovert thinks it's fun to go to a church that isn't your home church)

Seeing as how this seems to be turning into an annual event,

I thought I should have a proper razorback shirt.

But since I'm not a sports fan, well, 

it seemed a little silly to splash an angry pig across my chest.

(plus, I had Brandon look online for a razorback I could use for reverse applique 

and I decided it was too tricky to accomplish in a week ;-)

A simple red and white shirt seemed appropriate.

And far more wearable for me.

I constructed the shirt by machine, but did all top-stitching by hand.

Lexi asked if I was going to add any decorate to it 

(meaning beads or glitz of some sort)

and since I'd already wondered the same thing myself, I thought a tube of white glass beads was in order.

When I'm not sewing

(or cooking or cleaning or schooling....)

I'm slowly working my way through Trim Healthy Mama.

I'd been reticent to buy this book.

For starters, it's thirty five dollars, which, in my book, is pretty expensive,

but a few weeks back, a friend posted something about THM on facebook

and I started poking around their facebook page

and got inspired by the daily weight loss testimonies.

I decided to fork over the money.

As you can see,

I've found a few things worth bookmarking ;-)

I'll tell you more about it later.

When I'm skinny...

linking up with 

and

they know me well

Fussing and fighting began as soon as there was more than one kid awake this morning.

Yesterday evening was our church's annual meeting

and the kids ate nothing but junk.

And lots of it.

Tensions are a little high...

During our Morning Meeting I said, 

"We ate a lot of junk yesterday, so you know what that means?"

(the answer I was looking for was 'we need to work harder to be kind, we need to try harder to be patient,

we need to recognize that we're grouchy and practice just being silent' - something along those lines... We've had these talks before ;-)

Lily sighed, "That means we're having eggs today and not any chips."

five things on Friday

1.

this makes me think of a bit of this post. and miss all of my big kids.

Today was a flex day for Tyler.

(which means he got to be home :-)

We're not real great at doing school when Daddy is home,

so this year,

I just scheduled every other Friday off.

Yesterday, Jeremiah and Josiah got a wild hair about building a fire and cooking lunch today.

They spent a good bit of time making lists,

setting aside groceries (including spices) and doing prep work

(like digging a hole in the sand pile for a fire and making lemonade. and lemonade icecubes...)

I'll be honest.

I wasn't overly excited about the whole thing.

I may have mentioned it before,

but when my kids cook - they kinda trash the place.

Jeremiah woke up early this morning 

and was too excited about making lunch to go back to sleep.

Fortunately, Tyler shared this with me in a timely manner, so I could adjust my attitude.

2.

I sewed on Tuesday for the first time since I made my skirt a couple of weeks ago.

Matching pillowcases in the girls' favorite colors? I couldn't not make dresses!

(complete with tags :-)

Sewing / reading time is built into the school schedule.

Wasn't that smart of me?

3.

We have had issues with our printer for quite some time.

It won't print from 'documents'.

We've managed to get around it by using notepad, or emailing ourselves

and printing that way.

A nuisance, to be sure,

but we have lots of nuisances in this house (not that this particular nuisome is the house's fault...)

Monday, I printed off the kids' handwriting sheets.

(this is what I've used for years)

Worked just fine Tuesday, too.

Wednesday, I just had the kids copy off of the ipad, 'cause I forgot to make them one and Brandon was on the computer.

(Interestingly, their handwriting is considerably neater with a printed copy for their reference)

Yesterday, it wouldn't print.

Said I didn't have a printer.

I installed it again, twice, but the computer still insists I have no printer.

grrr

4.

Here's a little peek at my current (besides the 2 quilts...) project.

I wish you could feel this fabric.

Buttery soft.

I wasn't overly impressed with the black.

Unimpressed, actually.

But the red? Nice. Very nice!

5.

(I finally got my rocks from Penny :-) aren't they cute?)

I went and messed with our perfectly delicious iced coffee.

I took it from a yummy and reasonably healthy treat

and tried to make it a power-packed snack by adding spinach, protein powder, and greek yogurt.

It's not bad,

but it doesn't feel like a treat anymore.

~

Not many people are dumb enough to mess with perfectly delicious iced coffee.

But then, 

I've never been one to follow the crowd...

one down

one hundred seventy-nine to go.

~

Not a bad first day of school, if I do say so myself.

TKD midterms

TaeKwonDo testing was Saturday.

Since the kids were at Gramma's (thank you so much!!) they would have a chance to test some other time.

Some other time

turned out to be yesterday.

I 'm a little irritated that we weren't informed, so we couldn't be there to cheer them on.

Brandon passed their midterm test

(meaning he didn't earn a new belt, but now he can test in 3 months for black belt, provided he meets all of the other criteria)

 but Jeremiah and Josiah didn't.

They were disappointed, naturally,

but honestly, we kind of expected it ~ it's a tough test to pass, especially for the younger guys.

Their buddy, Aaron, is in the same boat with them, which helped to ease the disappointment a bit.

Congratulations, Brandon!

(and thanks for working on TKD with your brothers, even when they aren't always the most agreeable)

Thursday thrifting

Mom and Bill were going to be keeping the kids for the weekend,

 but we wanted to do something fun with the kids before we took them to Gramma's house.

Bargains Galore on 64 (miles and miles of yard sales)

just happened to start on our anniversary,

so that's what we decided to do.

Brandon's haul. Too bad he doesn't like knives ;-)

We headed out around 8 in the morning

and didn't make it back home 'til 4,

although, some of the kids were done a few hours before that....

I'm pretty sure Lily got more than this...

We let each kid spend $5 (give or take. It's hard to keep track of that many people...)

Lexi was so careful to only buy what she really loved,

that she still has $2.25 left!

Lexi's.
The tea set in Lily's picture was actually in a box of tea stuffs that Lexi bought  and then shared with her big sis.

I was pretty impressed with her.

Not many 4 year old could dig through a mountain of $.25 toys and not buy a single one,

because there wasn't one exactly like what she was looking for.

(What was rough, though, and not at all impressive, was when Lex' discovered that Lily had found (and purchased) 

exactly what she had been looking for.)

Josiah's treasures

Jeremiah spent his $5 on a single purchase,

but man, is he happy with it.

The guy had $6 on it.

Jeremiah asked if he'd come down to $4,

but he'd only take off one dollar.

In addition to all of his sale loot, Josiah spent some of his $5 buying cookies for everyone

when we stopped at Walmart to get some sustenance.

(Also at Walmart, Lexi picked out lemon cake. 

I was going to put it back, because we ended up choosing orange chicken and general tso's chicken from the deli 

which was more than plenty of flour for a non-wheat family.

I didn't even know about the cookies at that point...

Lex' saw me put it back and said,

"Why did you put that back? I picked that out for everyone because you love lemon cake."

Then her lip quivered and her eyes got watery looking...

Well, goodness! If it means all that much to the kid, I'd buy the lemon cake!

So I went back and grabbed it again,

at which point Lexi wiped her eys, smiled, and said, "I'm so kind!")

Tyler and I got several goodies too - many of which were on our things-to-buy list, so that's always nice.

I found an insulated pitcher that I almost didn't get

because I didn't need it,

but it was only 50 cents....

I am so glad I bought that thing ~ I have already enjoyed it

way more than 50 cents' worth!

We passed on a vintage wire basket for 10 bucks and I'm still kicking myself over that. 

Tyler offered to go back out on Friday, but I knew there was no way it'd still be there.

Speaking of need - Lexi doesn't necessarily need clothes, 

but it seems to be really important to her to have things bought just for her, and I try to oblige when I can,

so I was really tickled to find a $5 bag sale and lots of clothes in her size and style.

we also got a pair of pink sparkly shoes - which have already disappeared... and - since the clothes and shoes
didn't fill up my bag, they let me stick  3 pieces of fabric I'd found in it, too.

I do enjoy thrifting with the fam :-)

surprising Pop

Around 10:30 or so Monday morning,

Brandon asked if I thought we ought to paint the shop to surprise Tyler.

They'd been priming everything, and were almost finished with that,

and they'd painted the ceiling.

I quickly calculated that Tyler wouldn't head out to the shop before Wednesday,

since he had a meeting that night, 

and Tuesdays are long days since the boys have TKD

and they don't get home 'til 7:30.

So I told him to run out and finish Kilzing.

Josiah went out to help him

and when they finished,

we went to Lowe's.

But first we stopped at Taco Bell for lunch

only to find out that they've taken their 99 cent 7 layer nachos off the menu!

So we went to McDs instead.

After we picked out paint (and grabbed $.50 icecream cones from Burger King)

we came back home and got busy.

We told the kids not to say anything to Dad about going to Lowe's or the shop or anything.

If he asked what we had for lunch

(he doesn't usually - and usually we have eggs... but every once in awhile he does ask)

they could tell him we had Mc Donalds 'cause we were running errands.

Nothing more.

They were also instructed that they'd have to do the 5:00 pick-up by themselves.

But when the house was clean enough that Mom would think it was clean, they could play Wii.

I was a little worried about our plan working.

We'd left the house messier than I realized and we'd have to rely on 4 kids, 4-9 years old to clean it up.

Brandon and I headed out to the shop a few minutes after 3

and by 3:37,

we had finished 1 1/2 walls! 

(the two sections that are the tan-ish grey color -  the workshop portion of the space.)

Impressed with our bad selves,

we decided to go ahead and paint the man cave grey also.

And by man cave, I am referring to both the section of the room,

  and the color.

Yes, the perfect charcoal grey I was wanting is called man cave. Which is perfect ;-)

(The 'shop' refers to the entire building, which they (roughly) halved,

and in that half, which they have insulated and dry-walled, and built 'boxes' into the rafters,

there is a workshop section, and a gym / mancave section.

The other half of the shop is storage.

All of it is a mess...)

I ran up to the house to do some dinner prep and check on the kids

and wouldn't you know it?

They had done a pretty good job!

I had them do a few things they'd missed,

and set a timer and told them if I wasn't back when it went off to turn on the oven for me.

Then I ran back down to the shop.

By the time Tyler called at 5 to say he was heading home,

we were almost finished with the first coat!

Brandon stayed in the shop to finish up

while I washed a roller and brush (and myself).

Brandon managed to finish painting and was in his closet changing out of his paint clothes when Tyler got home.

Yesterday

we touched up the tan,

painted a second coat of man cave,

touched up the ceiling

and cleaned up a bit in there.

Then we waited for our chance to nonchalantly get Pop out in the shop tonight :-)

(we had several scenarios in mind and figured we'd just go with what worked best.

What worked, was Brandon challenging Tyler to some pull-ups)

This time,

he was appropriately impressed ;-)

We love you, Daddy! It was fun to work together to bless you!

(and succeed in our surprise :-)

two, and one

Two days 'til our 26th anniversary!!

In the past year,

I think I've only been mad at Tyler one time.

(well, besides when I get mad because he's killing me in backgammon...)

He said, "You just aren't thinking about how much you love me right now."

And you know what?

He was right.

As soon as I remembered how very much I love him,

I wasn't angry anymore.

look! I made a skirt

(lined and everything)

and it took me like 35 minutes!

Never mind that Tyler isn't impressed because I didn't hem it...

(I will go back and add a bound hem at some point)

(We're already established he's kinda hard to impress anyways. 

I guess living with this much awesome will do that to a person ;-)

Many thanks to my photographer, Jeremiah Sweet Lips John.

(I deleted the picture of my backside.

It looked a little too Nacho Libre-ish  for my liking...)

needle and thREAD WiP

My quilt is coming along very s l o w l y.

My best calculation (and it would be easy for me to be missing a few hours here and there)

puts me at 36 hours and counting.

I no longer remember if that includes cutting fabric or not.

(I'm thinking it does not)

It takes me an hour to turn eight finished sections

into a completed (but untrimmed) block.

More than once, I've thought I've bitten of more than I can chew with this quilt...

~

My sewing class is coming along nicely.

I probably could have done without the Colette book,

since I'm not exactly a new seamstress,

but I wanted to start at the very beginning...

I did learn a few things, and it would be a good book for a beginning garment sewer,

(especially if she/he wasn't a perfectionist)

but I gotta say,

I was extremely distracted by the fact that - with the exception of the photo on the cover,

and one other picture - in all of photos with real people,

the person was wearing ill-fitting clothes.

"tight horizontal wrinkles means there is not enough width in that area"
Sarai demonstrates this perfectly, although I don't think that was the intent.

I made a croquis as she recommends

(basically (according to Tyler) I drew a picture of myself naked - but there was a heck of a lot more to it than that ;-)

(Florence talks about her croquis  here. I have yet to turn mine into a book ~ let's just say her croquis is a bit lovelier than mine...)

and as soon as I can figure out who to enlist to help me,

I will take a ton of measurements which will thoroughly disgust me.

(thus the difficulty of enlisting help) 

Then I will make a muslin of the dress on the book cover.

Depending on how it looks when I get a good fit,

I may or may not make an actual dress.

You can see by my picture that I've added more books to my course

(insert sheepish grin)

but The Perfect Fit is recommended by pretty much everyone in blogland, 

and at less than $13, it seemed a wise investment,

and supposedly, anything by Adele Margolis is worth getting your hands on.

The Dressmaking Handbook was the cheapest place to start.

It just arrived, so I've only cracked the cover, 

but I liked what I saw:

linking up with

and 

baby, you're a firework

Oh wait,

that's baby you got burned

by a firework....

Ahem.

Sorry....

It's been a month since I got blowed up 

and I'm mostly healed, so I figure I can post a picture without grossing any one out.

I'll spare ya the scars on my bum ;-)

to give you an idea of the size, which is greatly reduced from 1 month ago,
the section on the left there (towards the front of my leg) is 4.25 inches long

Not too bad, huh?

Quite honestly, if anyone else in the family had sustained this burn,

we would have been off to the ER;

it was pretty bad, ya'll.

But Tyler was a trooper and took great care of me.

I appreciate so much that he let me determine the course of treatment,

although - he did ask fairly often in the early days if I was sure I didn't want to go to the hospital ;-)

I'll admit there were a few times I almost told him to take me in.

I still can't sit comfortably for very long, especially in the car, since the seats kinda curve up on the sides,

and it's still a bit tender, so I sometimes have to remind the kids to be careful of me.

(I am surprised at the number of times I get whacked or bumped into in a day's time!)

There are only two tiny spots, in the centers of the larger burns that aren't fully healed yet.

I think just a few more nights of sovereign silver, manuka honey, and green stuff with a bandage and I'll be done.

(Whew! We spent a small fortune on gauze, non stick pads, and tape this month!

And it would have been considerably more if leaves (plantain and grape, for those who care ;-) 

hadn't been part of my protocol.)

I'll continue to use my special blend of skin healing oils (which I just finally made, 

but would have used in place of green stuff had I been on the ball and made it sooner)

until the scars have faded to my satisfaction.

a good sign

I forgot to take my Limu this morning.

Which is, I think, a good sign.

It's a good sign that my burn is nearly healed

(pain was my reminder to drink it)

It's also a pretty  good sign that it, sadly, hasn't helped my noggin any...

I may not have mentioned...

I love it when Tyler is home!

I like that man.
a lot.

if only I had a brain

 I handed Brandon the keys,

then  remembered he didn't have his wallet with him, so asked if he had his permit.

He nodded and said, "I put a copy in the glove-box of all of the vehicles."

"Well that was really smart, Bud!" I told him with admiration.

"It was your idea."

Oh.

integrated

Well.

No more baby chicks;

they're all just chickens now.

Sunday night 

when the kids and I were putting up the chicks,

(who were becoming increasingly belligerent about the whole 'carry the chicks in and out' part of our daily routine)

they decided they didn't want to stay in their pen.

I felt like they were still so small to integrate

(12 and 13 weeks, I think?)

but I was getting tired of the whole carry the chicks while they fight it part of our routine,

so I figured we could give it a whirl.

Things didn't go real super at first;

the big chickens instantly started pecking on the little ones.

What?! It was night time - they were supposed to be calm.

We had a big ole ruckus going on in the coop for awhile

with chicks trying to get away from hens

and me bopping and scolding said hens

while trying to get the babies in a safe roosting spot

while hens tried to get at the chicks.

Tyler and I ended up 

(okay, so Tyler ended up)

chopping some branches that the UPS drivers knocked out of our oak tree into roosts

and screwed them securely into the coop,

so the little ones could have their own roosting space - away from the big chickens.

I went out at 6:40 yesterday,

a little anxious about what I might find.

But they were all perfectly okay.

:-)

The little ones stuck real close together all day,

and had a little trouble figuring out what to do when it came time for bed,

but I think they're going to be just fine.

I never knew vegetables could be this good

For dinner tonight we had

stuffed bell peppers (Tyler's recipe)

pan squash (compliments of our generous neighbor) dipped in a mix of almond flour, ground flax, Parmesan cheese, and eggwhite protein 

and fried in a bit of palm shortening and butter

and 

 'pasta' salad

(only, the pasta part was zucchini (also from Penny :-) cut on my nifty tool).

Being wheat-free, pasta salad is one of the foods I've really missed this summer.

A few days ago, when I saw the zucchini from Penny, I decided to try making pasta-less pasta salad.

Only we didn't have any tomatoes,

and pasta salad just isn't as good without tomatoes,

so I used my noodle cutter thing anyways, and sauteed the zucchini 'pasta' in butter with garlic and onions.

It was pretty good, 

but it wasn't pasta salad.

Afraid that people might not be crazy about my zucchini pasta salad tonight, I just made a small batch.

Oh my word ~ that stuff was amazing!

When Jeremiah finished eating tonight

he leaned back, fully satisfied,

and said, 

"I never knew vegetables could be this good!"

continuing education

I've bought a good bit of knit fabric this year,

some for clothes for girls,

but even more for clothes for me.

The trouble is - I haven't wanted to waste my 'good' fabric making clothes for the size I am,

because, you know, as soon as I have a nice wardrobe, I'll suddenly lose weight

and I won't have nice clothes anymore.

I finally convinced myself that that's just foolishness.

In the unlikely event that my fears come true,

well, surely I can buy more great fabric...
And in the meantime, I can wear nice, flattering clothes.

I spent a good chunk of the day yesterday 

designing a dress, drawing up the pattern, and sewing a muslin.

I started with a jammie top that fits well (in some places)

and a dress that has a flattering gathered bit under the bust

and sort of combined the two.

In the event that it actually fit properly

(as I was certain it would ~ it's that darn overconfidence thing, which is so silly, because when does anything fit me the first time?)

I took the time to make it properly, as well. 

Needless to say, it didn't fit well

and now I'm stuck not quite knowing what to do next.

Basically,

I've been doing what my kids do - charging ahead without the really having the knowledge necessary

 to ensure a successful outcome.

(speaking of - Josiah just came in asking if he could make the recipe he just made up..)

Granted, there is value to learning by failure,

but there is also value in taking advantage of other people's knowledge.

I have laid out for myself a course of study.

And while my nature is to want to buy all of these books at once,

I am going to limit myself to one at a time,

learning from each

before moving on to the next on the list.

(with the exception of the fitting book, which I once borrowed from the library and decided it was worth owning,

and can be using in conjunction with the other books in my 'class')

I probably should to try to get them on inter library loan,

but the whole not knowing when/if I'll even get a particular book

coupled with not being able to keep ILL books very long

has me leaning towards just buying them.

 I'm going to start with

then move onto

.

This is the fitting book that will used throughout the course,

It's great because it shows pictures of fit problems and explains how to fix them.

Although, ultimately, what I want to do is be able to address these issues during the pattern making stage,

so I don't even have fit problems.

Pipe dream?
Maybe.

The following books are more textbooky and focus on actually making your patterns.

(which the Cal Patch book above does also, but her clothing doesn't seem to be as fitted as I prefer. Being less textbookish, though, I figured it'd be a better place to begin as I am rather slow in learning new things...)

They are both highly recommended by sweet Florence who is an impeccable seamstress, and a bit of a perfectionist, too.

I may also buy this DVD, and if I'm still having fit issues after all of the above, maybe this book, 

which I've seen mentioned several times on various sewing blogs.

If I need to take things up a notch, 

as on optional addition to my class, I'll add

.

And of course, I still need to learn how to take better pictures, too....