Monthly Archives: January 2019

Baby It’s Cold Outside

Did you hear the brouhaha about this song before Christmas? That it was “sexist?”  People have way too much time on their hands and get incensed about the silliest things.  Maybe they need to get a job or hobby that takes most of their time so they can leave well enough alone.

That said, baby, it is cold outside.  We are supposed to have the coldest temperatures we have seen in a long time. I spend my days letting the dogs in my shop and out again.  They are mostly outside dogs, but when it gets this cold, I feel happier knowing they are inside where is it warmer. I look back at the hot Summer days when I was wishing for this and now here we are and I don’t feel so glad about it.   My favorite temperature is somewhere between 50 degrees and 70 degrees.  I can be pretty comfortable then. Anywhere lower or higher and I feel it. Is there a place on this earth where those are the temperatures all the time?

You would think the days would drag by when it’s this cold and I’m not outside all that much and we haven’t really gone anywhere all month except out to eat occasionally, but the month has flown.   We did have a late Christmas with our oldest son and his girlfriend and her son where I gave what else, socks and a quilt for some of the gifts.  I am already planning quilts for next Christmas and one for a friend who shall not be named, although I don’t think she reads my blog.    I’m ordering more fabric just because my stash needs refreshing and I have so many ideas in my head running rampant and I need some new colors.  You fellow quilters know what I’m talking about.

Here is the Bullseye quilt I am making that Mary over on the blog, Country Threads Chicken Scratch, has been teaching us.

It’s a little bigger than a lap size quilt. I’m going to sew it together and then with some leftover blocks I have a plan.  Plus, when you are cutting out this quilt, you are left with a lot of circles and I have plans for some of them, too.  This has been such a fun quilt to put together, I already am planning several more with one being in reds and greens for Christmas. You should see my cutting table. It’s piled high with all the fabrics I’ve picked out for these future quilts.

Meanwhile, I have managed to knit a few socks.

Hey, the colors in the socks match the colors in the quilt!

I do love color.  I can’t stand monochromatic decorating.  An all white room or an all blue room is not my style.  Right now we are getting ready to remodel a bathroom. The contractor who will be doing it, added this bathroom in an addition we put on the back of our house over thirty-five years ago, so I think it’s time for an uplift. We picked the tile for the shower yesterday and I can’t wait to show you the floor tile for the shower. The tile reminds me of a quilt.  The room is tiny so I’m going to use light, bright colors.  We are also getting our back deck rebuilt and screened in with a roof over it.  So there is much to think about for this coming Spring.

David celebrated fifteen years working for Ralph Lauren at the outlet mall the other day.  When he retired from over 36 years in the military, he was at loose ends for a time.  For nine months he cleaned closets and puttered around the house until he ran out of things to do.  So I told him it was time to look for a part time job as he was not an old man.  The store was just opening and he was one of the first hires at the time.  He’s been part time, assistant manager, manager and now back to part time and I’m trying to get him to cut back even more. He really loves the job and the customers.  He has customers who come in and ask for him. Even some from Europe who come in almost yearly to buy clothes.   Anyway, the vice president wanted to do a conference call with all the people who had been working for Ralph for fifteen years.  I was called and asked to come to hear it, but to keep it a surprise. Well, anyone who knows me knows I cannot keep a secret, especially surprise parties. I have “accidentally” ruined two surprise parties just by innocently saying something I shouldn’t have.  I was so afraid I would let it out of the bag to David.  But I managed to not spoil it and he was so surprised when I showed up at work.  The manager of the store had food and the best cupcakes I have ever tasted and she bought me flowers for being so supportive of David and his job for those years.

Gerbera Daisies which are some of my favorite flowers.

If David works another ten years, Ralph Lauren will fly him to New York for a celebration. I told him he was not going alone because I want to go to New York, too. We will both be close to or in our eighties by then, so let’s see if we make it!  I hope we do.

Speaking of birthdays.  Oh, I didn’t?  Well, David had a birthday this month.  We were going to go out to eat with some of our kids and grandchildren, but that was the weekend we had a big snowstorm so everyone stayed home. I baked him a cake and we had our own private celebration.

And we ate it all ourselves! Not all at once, of course.

The seed catalogs came right after Christmas and I have ordered some flower seeds. Found a new company I tried and this was on the outside of their package.

Kind of like I felt when I got the seeds.

It won’t be long before I will be planting these.  I got some more seeds in the mail yesterday that I will have to show you another time, because the packages are so pretty.

We are in the deep freeze now so I will be spending my day inside working on a quilt and knitting socks and baking bisquits.  Not a bad way to spend a day. I would be content to spend the rest of my days in such pastimes.

Hope you are keeping warm where you live.  If you live in the tropics, enjoy the warmth, too.  Have a happy day everyone. Bye.

A Star is Born

When our children were growing up, they all took lessons in music on one instrument or another.  One son played the bass, our oldest played the violin and cello and our daughter played violin and piano.  Because my one regret is that I refused to take piano lessons when they were offered to me, I wanted to make sure my children learned an instrument.

When one of my older brothers was taking piano, I taught myself his recital music and could play it as well as he.  In fact, I can still sit down at the piano and play it from memory.  I never did learn how to really play the piano and I have always been sorry about that.  But I’d hammer on the piano every day, probably driving my mother crazy hearing the same tune over and over.

Fast forward to today and now I have grandchildren who are musical.   This week we attended our grandson’s first recital.  I was really excited about it because I have always loved orchestra music.  I like it better than just about any other kind of music.  He just started to learn the cello this year.

Our daughter told us when to arrive. The recital was held at one of the high schools in the city.  When we drove there, we noticed there was a very long line of cars and I jokingly said they were probably all going to the recital.  To my and David’s surprise, they were!   We snaked along until we got to the school and could find no parking spaces. Our daughter neglected to tell us this recital was for every string class from every school in the county!    So, there were a lot of people there.  We finally found a spot to squeeze into and got inside where the bleachers were almost full. Our youngest grandson came and got us and showed us where we were to sit with our daughter and son-in-law.   We had pretty good seats.  Then the star of the show appeared.

At least to me he was the star of the show. I was so proud of him  And he’s growing up way too fast.

Don’t know if he was nervous or not, but I’m sure there were a few butterflies in his stomach.  It was so wonderful seeing that such a large number of young people are taking strings.

From fifth grade to seniors in high school were there to play their instruments.  There was excitement in the air. So many proud parents and grandparents to see their loved ones show their skills.

Our youngest grandson and he says he will be taking an instrument next year in school.  How did the baby of our family get this big?

When I took violin as an adult, I remember playing some of these songs.   I can read music and play a little on both violin and piano. Not good enough to do it in public.

So the elementary children played first.

So much concentration.  They sounded pretty good.

Then the continuing strings, still elementary children, played and they were just a little better.

The middle school children got up and gave a small gift to each elementary child in the orchestra and then they played and sounded just a bit better.

Then the high school children got up and gave a little gift to all the middle school children and then they played and they sounded wonderful. That is what practice, practice, practice and years of taking an instrument will do. Makes one a very good musician.  I just thought it was nice how the older ones were so encouraging to the younger ones.

The final number by the high school orchestra was the 1812 Overture.  Now I saw the big drums in the background and I knew the song was a battle song, but when the first beat on the drum was hit, I almost jumped out of my seat and let out a cry that made everyone sitting around me start to giggle. A man sitting in back of me leaned over and said, “That startled me, too.”   I was prepared when it happened again.  But it was all wonderful.  I enjoyed it so much.

I really hope our grandsons will love playing an instrument and continue with it.

We geared up for a big snowstorm this weekend, but so far all we have had is rain today.  I made beef vegetable soup. First time I have ever made it and it was soooo good.

It doesn’t look like there are any vegetables or beef in this, but it was full of carrots, green beans, potatoes and corn and crushed tomatoes. Yum.

It was delicious. Found the recipe on Allrecipes.com.

Hope the weather is good where you are. We are looking at ice and snow coming. Bye.

 

 

January is For the Birds

Here we are, almost in the middle of January already and it’s been a productive month for me quilt wise. Since Christmas I have pieced six small quilts and finished three of them, working on finishing a fourth and started a quilt that is being taught on a blog.

I am loving this little quilt from Kathleen Tracy’s book.   It’s almost folk art in its simplicity.

It’s not very big, but it packs a wallop color wise and will look cute as a table topper or a wall hanging.  It’s hung here by this….

This chicken toy I found at an antique store years ago.  Before I even had a thought about raising chickens. I guess I have always had chickens on my mind.

I did make a mistake on this quilt and it’s been fixed, but you can see it here if you know the pattern.   It was fun making this quilt and used very little material.

This is a pile of Bulls-eye blocks for the Bulls-eye quilt being taught over on the blog, Country Threads Chicken Scratch.  I am making a lap-sized quilt, but you can make it smaller or larger if you would want.  This is another quilt that is suppose to use up one’s stash, but it hasn’t made a dent in mine.

There are still a few steps to making the blocks so they won’t look anything like this when I am done.

While searching through my stashes and boxes, I found this book I bought eleven years ago. I know that because I  always write the date on the inside cover of a book when I get it.  I had high hopes of making a quilt from the book, but none has happened so far.  There is a lot of history about Louisa May Alcott in the book.

So then I had to hunt down this book….

Little Women, which was in my family’s library when I was a child and I am ashamed to say I have never read it. I have seen practically all the movie versions of it from when Katherine Hepburn played Jo, to June Allyson playing her and then Winona Ryder.  Then PBS is having Little Women on and have sexed it up a little bit more than I like. Why do modern movie producers feel the need to do that in so many movies?   We really don’t need to see the sisters in their skivvies, do we?  Even though Miss Alcott was a women’s rights advocate, I think she would be shocked to see her girls parading around in their underwear.  Anyway, I really must read this book sometime.    I remember it when I was growing up and looking at the pictures in it.

I guess because I had seen the movie I didn’t think I needed to read the book, but if it’s always true for me, the book is much better than the movie.  The only book I have ever read that I thought the movie was as good was Gone With the Wind, even though a whole lot of things were left out of the movie such as Scarlette  had more children than Bonnie Blue.

We finally had snow this weekend. We’ve been having almost Spring like temperatures for a while, but this is our normal usually in January.  David went from cleaning the pool…

to building a fire.

And because of all the snow, the birds must be fed.  They go through a lot of feed. We just bought two more forty pound bags of bird seed and hope it lasts the rest of the month, but I’m not betting on it.

I counted twelve cardinals at the feeder yesterday and today I barely got the feed in the feeder when two cardinals  flew above my head.

Birds wait in the trees like airplanes on a tarmac and drop down when it’s their turn.

I love seeing the cardinals against the new fallen snow. So pretty.  I was worried about the birds this year.  A businessman bought the property right next door to us and cut down all the trees. Almost every last one. The only one left was the one right by my shop and I asked him not to cut it down as it was mostly on our property.  I still worry about it.  He did leave a few bushes for the birds to alight in and I am planning to plant some more trees this Spring.  I was worried that all the birds would go away, but so far, we have more than ever, it seems.  They have all moved over to our property where they know there are people who love trees and bushes and birds and squirrels.

This is my one lone tree. A maple. I hope it will grow big and strong and lovely. You can see the barren field next door where the travesty took place.

There use to be trees all long the property line. They had to come down because of “liability” concerns.  I was very sad about it all, but I will be planting more trees on my property.

Sadly, in our travels, I am seeing more and more of this destruction of trees and meadows across our country due to “progress,” where whole forests are cut down and burned and housing developments and businesses sprout up like weeds and a blight on the countryside.  I know people have to have somewhere to live and work, but the wanton destruction of forests and farmland is very disturbing. It cannot be replaced and in newer developments, they are even told what kind of trees they can plant, so there is no diversity and that’s what I thought government and businesses were all about. You can drive from one city to the next and see the same kinds of houses and business and everything looks generic.   I call some of these developments, Taupevilles, because all the houses are the same color.   I’d love to see just one red house in  them just to stop the boredom.  As you can read, I am very passionate about this. We cannot lose all our forests and farmland to development.

Just a picture of my work area in the house while I watch tv or listen to the radio.

All the yarns laid out to inspire me.  Oh, and laundry that is less inspiring!

A devotional book to feed me spiritually.

And new lipsticks from Color My World. I love these lipsticks. They seem to last forever and they come in the cutest tubes.

Now that I have stepped gingerly off my soapbox, I will leave you with a good cup of coffee.  Starbucks has nothing on my coffee.

Bye.

 

Changing the Calendar

I always get a new calendar or two or three for Christmas. This year I just got one, so I ordered another one for the bathroom downstairs because you always need to look at a calendar while you are seated on the throne!

Before I hang a calendar, I write all the important dates to remember throughout the year, birth dates, anniversaries, etc., and it’s always fun to look at all the things I did throughout the year because I write all doctor, dentist, and hair stylists appointments and mark off vacation days and other special days like events at our grandchildren’s schools.  It was a busy year last year.  January already has a date saved to attend our grandson’s first recital.

He is learning to play the cello and will be performing with his group.  Our children all took some form of strings and our daughter took piano for years.  I think it’s important for children to learn some kind of instrument because even after they are grown they can play it if they so choose.

If this year goes as rapidly as last year, I may as well turn the page to December 2019 right now because that is how fast it seemed  the year flew by.  I guess it’s better than it dragging out forever and wishing time would speed up.  It’s all relevant.  Depends on what you are doing or what you are waiting for. Remember when you were a kid and were waiting for Christmas and it seemed like it took forever for it to get here?   Now it comes way too fast for me and I’m never ready and then it’s over and I wish the time had gone a little more slowly.

Have to show you some pictures from Christmas of my very favorite present.

It’s the rooster from the movie Moana.  He clucks and crows and I love him.

He has made friends with my skeleton Halloween dog.  The rooster crows and the dog talks back.  Yes, the dog talks.  I’ve had him for years and I get him out every Halloween.   I will bequeath him to one of my grandchildren one day. Ha.

The dog says things like, “Bring me a bone, I’m hungry,” and “I’m thirsty.  Water runs right through me.”  He’s been the cause of many laughs through the years and now he has a companion.

Another thing I gifted myself this year because I thought it was so cute was this little camper.

It goes very well with the truck I have had for a few years.

Makes me think of a dream of mine to get in a  truck with a camper behind and travel the United States and Canada.

May never happen, but I can dream.

Now David and I are sitting on the couch counting down the hours until the new year. I even dressed for the occasion. I am wearing pearls and perfume and my pajamas.  All ready for the big night!

We even have a small bag of cashews each and some peanut butter crackers to share. We really know how to celebrate!  One year we actually dressed up and went to a hotel in Indianapolis where there was a big New Year’s party with bands, dancing and gambling tables and food and at midnight they dropped hundreds of balloons from the ceiling which was fun. Then in the morning they had a breakfast buffet for all the party goers with everything you could think of to eat including  sushi, which I tried for the first time and didn’t like all that well.

But we are going low key this year which is fine with me.  It’s raining out and our house is warm and cozy.   So if you are celebrating at home, whether alone or with several, put on your pearls and perfume and enjoy the evening.

I wish you all a very blessed and joyful, peaceful New Year’s.  I wish you health and happiness and all that life can offer you that is good.  Happy New Year!  Bye.