Monthly Archives: December 2018

All is Calm, All is Bright

Listen, the children have gone.  All is calm.  The packages have all been unwrapped and the pretty paper is now just trash in the trash can.  The food has been eaten and the leftovers await us for the rest of the week until some of it turns green. The floors need swept, but loved ones did the dishes for me. Thank you. Thank you.

The time after Christmas is always a strange time for me. I told David that it felt like I have been holding my breath since about October and now I can finally let it out.   I think about Christmas all year long, looking for gifts I hope will mean something to the giftee.   But for this next week I hope to just rest and relax and reflect on the past year, thankful we all got through it with our lives and can say things were pretty good for most of us.  I belong to this group on Facebook that is all about quilting and, believe me, I have got some awesome ideas for quilts I want to make in the coming year.  I am taking part in a couple of quilt block quiltalongs, something I have never done before and am looking forward to with a lot of excitement.

In the coming year I hope to get another puppy and maybe a kitten.  We have some more renovations to our old house planned which includes the screened in porch our contractor didn’t have time for this Fall.   We have no trips planned, but that does not mean we won’t fit one in somewhere during the year.   It’s fun to make plans although I have learned the hard way that most plans never happen as you planned.

The calm after Christmas is a welcome time for me since I have been going at top speed for weeks now.  Add the multiple trips we have made to Indianapolis and my time in the hospital, it’s been a very stressful and tiring time.  But now, I breathe a sigh of relief and look toward 2019 with faith that things will be well for my family and myself.   I’m thankful for my faith in God and what He has done for me this year.  My prayers are that every person reading this blog is blessed by God in the coming year with health, happiness and peace.   Wouldn’t the world be wonderful if everyone was blessed in that way?

The days will continue to get brighter now that Winter solstice has passed.  I look forward to longer, brighter days and before we all know it, Winter will be past and we will be enjoying another Spring. Here in Indiana we are having balmy weather now.  In the fifties maybe this week!

I hope this Christmas was a blessing to you.  Bye.

 

Nostalgia at the Craig House

Every year when Christmas comes around I grow nostalgic remembering Christmases past. I have been so blessed all my life in having Christmases that were filled with family, love and fun.

When I was growing up, besides Summer, Christmas was my very favorite time of year.  From the start of a new school year until the big day, I was always looking forward to it, planning for it, thinking about what I would get under the tree, practicing Christmas songs for the school program or church program.  When Ruth Lyons . who was the host of  the 50-50 Club, a tv show out of Cincinnati, began to sing how many days there were until Christmas, I knew the Christmas season had really begun.   My family would make the trip to the city to Veach’s, a toy and department store that sold everything you could think of. Down in its basement were all the toys and it was packed from floor to ceiling with all things that make children’s hearts sing.  I had my eye on a blue Schwinn bicycle one year.  I had learned to ride a bike the previous Summer on my brother’s bicycle so I was ready to get one of my own.

As I was scrolling through family photos for this post about Christmas I got tears in my eyes remembering all the people who are gone, families that have broken apart, children who have grown up and moved away.  Remember that scene in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation where Chevy Chase’s character gets locked in the attic and he finds an old projector and watches old movies and cries? That was me, looking at these old pictures. Everyone looks so young in them.   Sad music should have been playing in the background as I looked at picture after picture.  But all I could think was, “we sure have been blessed.”

So without further ado, here are some pictures of Christmases past at our house.

We always had a lot of gifts under the tree.   I loved shopping back then.

Our two boys, nineteen months apart.  They were always so excited about Christmas. too.

Our daughter. She must have been very happy with her present.

 

The boys watching with interest what I was unwrapping.  Not a very pretty pose. Notice the playpen my foot is on. Do people use those anymore?  It was like a cage for your kid when you wanted to keep them out of things.

I made both of our outfits that year.

I made both my boys’ outfits, too.

I went through a gingerbread house making kick for a while. I use to bake and bake before Christmas. This year, one batch of cookies.  Everyone is on a diet of some kind.

Yes, I made these outfits also. My poor boys had to wear a lot of clothes that I made.  I didn’t make quilts back then.

I really must have shopped a lot that year!

One year we went to the Virgin Islands. David’s mother ran a guest house down there and we spent Christmas with her.  It seemed very strange to be where it was so warm at Christmas.

Here was David and our daughter with her cousins looking on as she opened a present.

We spent days at the beach in the middle of the Winter.

This was the view from David’s mother’s house.  Not bad.

The years have flown by so quickly.

My mother and daddy loved Christmas.  When all us kids were grown, we met at their house on Christmas Eve every year and gave each other gifts.

Mom opening a gift while two of her grandsons looked on.

My daddy loved having us all together. Behind him is my oldest brother, Jack, who passed away many years ago.  I still miss him and can’t wait to see him again.  He was in college before I even started school.   If you could see his senior picture, he looked like a young Clark Gable without the moustache. Jack was a very handsome man. And a kind man. I’m so glad he was my brother.

Daddy’s sister, my Aunt Ruth is behind Daddy. She never married and lived with her parents until both of them died and then she came and lived with us. Family took care of each other back then.   If one didn’t have a home, they were taken in by family.  My parents took care of my daddy’s father in his last days, my mother’s mother until she had to go into a nursing home because mom could not lift her any longer and Aunt Ruth.  Aunt Ruth was a very sweet lady and she always dressed so nicely and smelled so good.  I don’t know what kind of perfume she wore, but I always loved it.  She lived with us almost all through my childhood and after I married and left home.  I’ll always think my brother became the reader and excellent student he became because Aunt Ruth spent hours reading him storybooks.  The same ones, over and over again.

These final pictures are how I remember Christmas the best.

The looks of sheer delight on our children’s faces as they came downstairs Christmas morning.

It was always the same year after year.

Even when one was suffering from an earache, he was still excited Christmas morning.

And remembering David’s grandmother who was always so kind to me and really loved our children.  The feeling was mutual.

A big green machine and a new bicycle one year.  We lived on a big hill right beside a park with a lake.  You can see the lake behind the boys through the trees.  I really loved living there and cried so much when we had to move.

Family. It’s what Christmas means to me. From that precious family in the stable on that first Christmas, down through the centuries to my little family and now on to theirs and on and on.  But Christmas will always be about one thing to me. Love. Merry Christmas. Bye.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cluck, Cluck, Quilt.

I haven’t talked about my chickens for a while so here’s some pictures of my girls. It was a sunny day and they greeted me as they always do by the garden gate.

Loved the way the shadows played on their feathers.

Miss Mary Foster, my little crippled hen, but she doesn’t know that.  She lays one egg almost every day.

“Where’s the chicken crack?”

I have two Buff Orpingtons. They are so pretty and good egg layers also.

Every time I go to Rural King, I look at the baby chickens if they have them.  My flock is down to nine birds from twelve so I really can’t add many more until some of them go to, ahem, chicken heaven.    We won’t talk about that, though, especially around the ladies.   Having chickens is just so much fun for me and I can’t see a future without them.  I have to hire a pet sitter for them when we go away just like for the dogs.

Just had to share these pictures of Molly Marshmallow sitting out in her chair nodding off to sleep.

She almost fell off the chair and I was laughing at her as I took her pictures.

My pets give me endless joy.

I told you in my last post I was doing a mystery block quilt and I finally got it done.  In fact, I got several done.   Kathleen Tracy shared this pattern on her Facebook page so if you want to make one of these quilts, go to her group under files and find the pattern. It’s really simple, something I needed right now and yet I ended up with a very cute quilt.  Here are mine….

This was the first one I made.  I bought the ticking at an antique store and the floral fabric I originally bought years ago to make an apron, but decided I’d rather put it in quilts as I have a lot of aprons already.

Then I decided to make a Christmas themed one…

And then another vintage looking one…

And material for yet another one, which I already have all cut out…

These little quilts are almost addictive. They are quick to make and now I have a good start on next year’s Christmas!

I bought this book of Kathleen Tracy’s a while back and have made a few small quilts from it.

I made the quilt that is on the cover. Don’t have it quilted yet, but think this one will be hand quilted.

Here it is hanging behind my cardio-glide which I use once in a while for exercise.

I have my quilting mojo back. It kind of got lost in my sock knitting craze. I still knit a little every single day and everyone got or is getting socks if they want them for Christmas. I just hung them up on the fireplace mantle and let people pick a pair they want.

You can just see the socks on the mantle at the right.

We had one Christmas gathering with family already last Saturday night.   We had a good time together, although one of my grandsons was not feeling well. They found out this week he has abcesses in his colon and is on antibiotics for it now.   He was really sick for a few days.   Anyway, I gave him and his older brother each a pair of these socks.(warning to all Trump haters, don’t look!)

There is a company called John’s Crazy Socks. This man has a son with Down’s Syndrome and they started a company together and sell all kinds of socks and I found these and knew I had to buy them.

Along with the socks, I got a thank you note from John and a small bag of Skittles.  Kind of a nice touch for a company.

Anyway, the socks were a hit.

Put on and modeled. The socks come with a little comb to  comb President Trump’s hair.

Went out yesterday and saw these flowers blooming.

Honeysuckle. Confused because we have had such warm temperatures the past few days.  It won’t last, but it’s been nice.

Before we know it, it will be Spring. Someone said only about ninety-five days away which will fly by like it all does now.

Another project that I have become obsessed with.  Making twine.  I got the directions from this magazine which I love.

They call it ribbon in the magazine, but I call it twine.  It’s great for decorating packages, but I also think I will use it to tie up plants on stakes and maybe use as shoelaces.   Here’s how much twine I’ve made so far.

It’s really fun to make and is so pretty.   And last, but not least, another quilt I plan to make after Christmas, if not before…..

I’m done making large quilts for a while although I do have a few UFO’s I do need to finish.  Looks like a busy year ahead for quilting.

This was David’s and my very first Christmas tree the first year we were married. We went out in the woods and cut it down. I didn’t have a lot of ornaments then, but I loved our first tree and our first tiny house.  You see those tiny houses on tv now. Well, we lived in a tiny house with three tiny rooms and  I had to shower in the basement under an open shower head, no bathroom down there.    We didn’t live there long, but I have such happy memories of it.

Feeling nostalgic?  My next post will be about Christmases past.   Bye.

 

 

Enjoying the Days

I can’t tell you how wonderful the last several days have been. First of all, it’s just so absolutely marvelous to feel healthy again.  I’m not sure I had felt healthy for a long time, but I thought it was my new normal. Age and all, you know.  But I kept wondering how I went from walking five miles a day to barely being able to walk across the yard without getting winded.  Who would have thought it was the medicine I had been taking for years?  I’m telling you, be very careful the chemicals you put in your body even when the doctor prescribes them, because sometimes they do more harm than good.  David even says it’s nice to hear me whistling and singing around the house again.  Had I stopped?  I hadn’t noticed.   I was just trying to get through each day and get things accomplished that I was able.

So, this week, for the first time in I don’t know how long, I sewed on quilt blocks in my shop all day and never felt tired once.  There is a mystery quilt I am working on that I will tell you about later when I get some pictures. I have never taken part in a mystery block quilt before, but this one sounded like fun and I kept seeing pictures of the blocks ladies were making all over the world and I thought I should get in on all the fun and it has been fun.   Can’t wait to see how the quilt will turn out. I’ve been so enthusiastic about it, I am making four different quilts with the patterns we are given.

I know I’ve been talking about health issues a lot lately, but once again a family member was hit with a health problem. One of our grandsons was having stomach cramps and was passing blood and was taken to the hospital this week.  Quite a scare, but he is getting better. The doctor believes it is E coli and says it will have to run its course. Seems E coli and Salmonella are appearing a lot in our food and I have a theory on why that I won’t get into here, but people who are working with our food are not being very clean about it.   I love Romaine lettuce and I did eat it before we took our vacation in November.  I do wonder if part of my being sick was because I had eaten it.  We will never know.

We are having our first Christmas family get together this Saturday so I will be baking and cooking up a storm starting tomorrow. Baking rolls, making potato salad, baking a chocolate cake so we can celebrate all the birthdays in December(we have four.)  I want to try cornbread dressing sometime and am looking for a good recipe for it.  Also I always have to have scalloped oysters at least once during the holiday season.  I love scalloped oysters and I even love eating it cold.  I see so many delicious looking recipes on Facebook and I want to try them all.  Do you have a favorite food that you have to have during the holiday season?

I get nostalgic thinking about past Christmases when our children were young. Christmas is always so much fun when children are around. Our grandchildren are growing up faster than our children did, it seems, but they all still love coming to Grandpa’s and Grandma’s for Christmas and we love having them.   Having family gathered around is such a blessing.  I remember going to my grandparents’ house Christmas Day and it was always fun, seeing the cousins, eating Grandpa’s homemade popcorn balls and getting fifty cents from Grandpa(yes, fifty cents, I’m that old I thought it was a lot of money.)  If there was snow, it was even better and if somebody got a new sled it was wonderful.  We still have a sled our children used when they were young.     I would love to slide down a snowy hill again and feel the wind in my face.  Maybe I might try that this winter.

I’m sitting here on a rainy night, the Christmas tree lit, the fire in the fireplace, candles burning feeling warm, safe, and happy and thinking about the days ahead with joy.   I’ll be writing one last post before Christmas I am sure, but in case I don’t, Merry Christmas and may the day be a blessing whether it’s with a crowd or only one remembering the One we celebrate, whose birth over 2,000 years ago changed the world , and  showed we can all be united in love if we so choose.  Bye.

Prayers Answered

Do you pray?  And I mean to a God in Heaven who is sitting on His throne and knows absolutely everything that is going on with your life and knows the outcome even when you don’t.   Do you pray in earnest or half heartedly, never quite believing you are being heard?   Are any of your prayers answered?   Are they answered in the way you thought they would be or should have been answered?

Our God is hard to understand sometimes.   I know He loves everyone and wants no one to perish.  He feels our pain and knows our futures.   He has a plan for our lives, but it’s up to us to figure out what it is.    Most times we work against that plan whether we know it or not.

This last month I’ve had a reason to pray in earnest for several things.  There are some things and some people I pray for daily.   Some of those prayers have been answered and some I am still waiting upon.   I was in the hospital a couple of weeks ago and I was praying continuously.  Late at night in the hospital bed, I would ask God to keep me company and I would sing hymns silently to myself because I felt so lonely and scared. I didn’t know what was happening to my body and really wondered if my life on earth was coming to an end. I was all for it if it was,  because I knew to die was just the beginning of my eternity, but I was still scared.  I knew there were many people who were praying for me and believe me, I felt those prayers.

I really did not know my prayers had been answered in a very remarkable way until I got home.   You see, my blood pressure had been soaring and my heart rate had been falling and the doctors didn’t know what to do about it for a couple of days.  They took me off all my medications and started all over.  Nothing good happened until one day they tried this one medicine and my blood pressure fell dramatically and my heartrate went up.  I was also taken off one medicine that had been making me sick to my stomach for several weeks.  Suddenly, I felt so much better.  Now since I have been home and have seen my cardiologist and gotten a good report, I have felt better than I have felt for months. I didn’t even realize I had been feeling badly before other than being short of breath at times.  Now I have so much energy and feel so much better.  Was I unhappy I spent my vacation in the hospital?  Yes.  Did God answer my prayers for good health?  He surely did.  He just did it in a way I wasn’t planning.  I knew I was in the hospital for a reason and that one day I would know that reason.  It’s possible if I had not gone to that clinic that day and been hospitalized, I may still be feeling very unwell. I might even be dead.    God works in mysterious ways.  Why He made me miss Walt Disney World, He will have to explain to me one day.  By then I won’t care.  I’m just saying God answered my prayers in a way I would never expected and in a way I would not have picked out myself, but He knew what I needed.  Perhaps I needed to be placed in that very hospital to slow myself down and let others figure out what was wrong with me.   I pray for all those ladies and that one young man who took care of me while I was in there.  I will think about another young young man who had trouble taking my blood and then joked he had used the wrong vials and would have to do it all over. When I looked upset about it he said, “just kidding!”   The young woman from Puerto Rico who was so sweet and gentle and patient with all my questions.  The Haitian lady who told me about all the horrible things happening in her native land and how her church sends clothes and shoes to people there who have none.   The lady who always had a smile on her face.   Even the doctor who didn’t act very doctor like to me.  They all touched me in some way and I would never have met them if I hadn’t been placed in that hospital.

God taught me patience while I was in the hospital also.   Now that I look back on it, I’m pretty happy with myself how patient I was because there were times I wanted to throw a tantrum like a baby!    God must have been working on me.

So I am here to tell you, God does answer prayer.  I even find myself thanking Him for putting me in that particular hospital.  Only He knew that is where I would find health once more.  Never give up praying.  Whether it’s for yourself or someone else.  Whether it’s for your circumstances  or something you want.  If you really pray in God’s will, He will answer your prayer.  Maybe not like you think He should, but He will answer it in the way that is best for you.  Sometimes unanswered prayers are the answer.  Not now, He is telling you.

So my prayer for all reading this is that you take your troubles and worries and also your praise to God. He’s listening.  He loves you.  He wants what’s best for you.  God bless you.  Bye.