Whew! Finally able to take a breath...

The last three months have been a whirlwind to say the least. Thank you for all your kind comments and prayers; I know they helped :-)

Over the next couple days, I'll go into more detail, but there are two major events that have affected our family since my last  post:

Here's our little bean; I'm almost 18 weeks along and so far so good. Baby looks healthy in all the scans so far, and, other than 6 weeks of miserable nausea that kept me in bed, I've been feeling pretty good. 

Source: flagpictures.org

As of two weeks ago, the great state of Texas is now our home. Tim applied for, was offered, and accepted a job with the City of Dallas as a mechanic for the fire department.

So, those are the biggies for us. I hope everyone out there in the blog world is doing well and having a wonderful Christmas season so far. I'm hoping to catch up with your posts soon.

Thanks for reading!

Blessings :-)

Two on Tuesday

Two Things I'm Grateful For:

1. My Daily Devotions. There's a lot going on in our house right now including some upcoming big changes. I can't go into detail now, but I've been spending a lot of time in God's Word. It's been giving me a peaceful spirit about everything.

2. Yarn Sales at Joanns. I needed to pick up some ruffle yarn in team colors for a 4H fundraiser. I was happy to find it at 25% off :-)

Two Patterns I Think Are Neat:

1. Flower Power Valance
Yes, it's fall, not exactly the season for flowers. But I love how bright and cheery this looks!
2. Rope Toy Storage Basket
This looks really cool; you crochet cotton yarn and rope together to make a basket.

Today's Inspiration

Source: mypinterestquotes.com

Thanks for reading!
Blessings :-)

More Baby Items

I spent most of the weekend making baby hats.

Four for the girls, four for the boys. These are being taken to my local pregnancy center. The pattern can be found here at The Dainty Daisy.

I also finished the apple butter and put it in jars. One big jar for us, three little jars to give away.

We went to one of our favorite restaurants, Bubbalou's Bodacious Barbecue. I love all the pig decor.

I hope everyone else had a wonderful weekend :-)

Thanks for reading!

Blessings :-)

Today's Inspiration

Fun Day in the Kitchen

We've been working hard on schoolwork for the last couple weeks so I decided Hope could have a light day. I just had her do a few math problems and read for awhile. So I spent the day playing in the kitchen.

Now, let me make it clear: I am no domestic diva. I really hate housecleaning and and  I don't like to cook. However, I love to bake.

Today was baking day for my Amish Friendship Bread. Because I had two bags, I ended up with 4 loaves. These two were made with Oreo Cookies n Cream instant pudding.

This one was made with chocolate instant pudding, hence the darker color. There were two loaves, but I gave one to my neighbor and then Hope cut off a slice before I remembered to take a picture.

I also decided to try the crockpot apple butter recipe from Fun Home Things. I gathered my apples, peeled and cored and sliced them, covered them with spices, and turned the crockpot on low. The last picture was after about 8 hours of cooking. I'll be mixing it up soon; I hope it tastes good :-)

I also did a little crochet today. I saw this picture on Pinterest.

Source: handycrafter.blogspot.fr

I followed the link to the Handy Crafter blog. She makes some beautiful things and sells them. There was no pattern for these, but I thought it looked simple enough.

This is the one I made.

Inside is a recycled baby food jar and a tea light. This is before I added the white border.

It fits inside very nicely and is very pretty when the candle's lit.

If anyone is interested in the pattern, I'll post what I have, although I can't take any credit for it.

So, that was my day :-) I hope yours was just as productive. Good for you if you made it to the bottom of this picture heavy post.

Thanks for reading!

Blessings :-)

Today's Inspiration

Source: mypinterestquotes.com

A Couple of Finished Items

  sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net

I normally post these on Friday but these are from last week and the week before. I'm just now getting around to showing them.

 

 I had a large box of scrap yarn granny squares that I was going to make into a single blanket. I decided instead to break it down and make several preemie blankets. This is the first one completed. And there's a matching preemie hat on top.

Another preemie cocoon (pattern here).

Baby hats, one newborn size, one preemie size (patterns here and here).

Once I treat these items to make them softer, they're on their way to the Guardian Grandmas.

 And I finally finished this blanket. It's for a friend who just had her first baby girl.

Thanks for reading!

Blessings :-)

Thursday Tickle

I saw this on Pinterest and had to share it :-)

We Will Never Forget

Two on Tuesday

Two Things I'm Grateful For:

1. Sweet blogger friends :-) Thanks for the kind words regarding some difficulties I had accepting people's opinions.

2. 4H Field Trips. Our 4H Club is all homeschool families, so we go on a lot of field trips as well as have meetings. Today's trip was to the Brevard Zoo in Melbourne.

Giraffe waiting patiently to be fed a cracker

Hope feeding two Lorikeets at once

As you can see, I figured out how to upload pictures on my new computer :-) That's something else I'm grateful for (bonus!).

Two Patterns I Think Are Neat:

Although the temperatures are still in the low 90's, I know cooler days are coming. Fall decorations are starting to appear. Here are a couple you can make yourself:

1. Autumn Leaves 

These are great if you live where the leaves don't change in the fall. 

2. Crocodile Stitch Owl 

The owl craze continues into the fall.  I like this one a lot because it uses the crocodile stitch. 

Thanks for reading!

Blessings :-)

Today's Inspiration

Source:punkkimono.tumblr.com

Recovered From the Last Few Days and a New Toy

Ugh! The last few days have been a little rough. As a homeschool mom who's also self employed, I'm used to people questioning me about why and how I do things. That's life; you're never going to please everyone and people are entitled to their opinions. I usually do a pretty good job handling these comments and try to respond positively with patience and grace. 

However, the last three days have been a little heavy with the judgements. I've dealt with comments and questions from nearly everyone I've come in contact with and had to defend everything from how and why I do my job, how and why I homeschool, my personal feelings and reactions to things, just to mention a few. I've dealt with a coworker lying to me and being treated as though I were untrustworthy.  Like I said, I can usually handle these situations pretty well, but the sheer amount of negative comments put me off my game. But I spent a lot of time in solitude and prayer and am feeling a lot better.

We went computer shopping today; that was an experience! I'm not techy at all and the sheer range of possibilities was overwhelming. Not to mention the computer I had was extremely obsolete so all the systems that are everyday to most people are new to me. We found a nice HP laptop for just under $400. My super techy hubby deemed it worthy of purchase and helped me set it up. I still don't know all it does (Windows 8 completely mystifies me!), but at least I figured how to use the Internet on it. The next thing I have to figure out is how to upload pictures. 

If you made it this far, thanks for reading my rant. 

Blessings :-)

Photo a Day September 3 and 4

Yesterday's prompt was Lines.

This was Hope's favorite dress for a year. Then she grew too tall to wear it as a dress and started wearing it as a shirt. It finally made its way to the charity pile last week. I've debated keeping it although I don't know what I'd do with it. It's just the sentimental side of me. But I've always loved the stripes and colors on it; I think the color palette would make a neat blanket.

Today's prompt was Alone.

I have this female mallard salt shaker (or is it pepper?). She's all alone now; the male mallard shaker broke right after I got them at a thrift store last year. I'm not sure why I'm still holding onto just the one. 

Thanks for reading

Blessings :-)

WIP Wednesday

A little more progress this week.

I'm on the fourth round of the border for the baby blanket; two more and I'll finally be done!

I've started piecing together my scrap granny squares. I'm using Aran color and the join as you method.

 

I also have a WIP that's not crochet related (I know; shocking!). We love Amish friendship bread, but no one's given us a starter in a long time. While cruising Pinterest the other day, I found the website and made a couple of starter bags. It's day 2 so it still looks like bubbly goo.

Thanks for reading!

Blessings :-)

Today's Inspiration

 

Two on Tuesday

Two Things I'm Grateful For:

1. Tim has a working computer. After a year of being on life support and being brought back from several crashes, my computer has finally died. The mother board fried. We're pretty positive the hard drive is OK so it's just a matter of buying a new computer this weekend. For now, I'm on Tim's. Although it has Linux, not Windows, I don't have any of my files on it yet, and I can't print yet, I'm still happy to still have a computer to use. Plus it's a lot faster than mine was.

2. That I don't have this many cats! We went to a junkyard on Saturday and, besides these 8, there were about 20 wandering the lot. All very friendly, but I wouldn't want that food bill!

Two Patterns I Think Are Neat:

1.Almost Reversible Shell Baby Blanket or Afghan

This looks really neat, and the color combination possibilities are endless.

2.Granny's Slouch Hat

I don't like wearing them, but I have a few friends who like slouchy hats. This one has a classic look to it.

Today's Inspiration

Thanks for reading!

Blessings :-)

Photo A Day September 2

Today's prompt was "My Name Begins With". Since my name begins with K, I snapped this photo.

A kitten sitting on the roof. This was taken out at the house where Hope has her horseback riding lessons. There are a bunch of kittens running around, but they're not very friendly.
Thanks for reading!
Blessings :-)

Webster Flea Market

Tim had the day off (a rare joy!) so we went over to the flea market in Webster. We only go a couple of times a year for a couple of reasons: it's about an hour and a half away, and it's only on Mondays. 

We had a really nice time, although it was miserably hot. Tim bought a portable fish finder for $5; we're not sure if it works, but it was worth a gamble. Hope and her friend each had some money and found lots of little treasures. I forgot to take pictures while we were there, of course.

I found a lovely bag of yarn for only $25!

Nine skeins of Lion Brand Wool-Ease in Fisherman.

Eleven skeins of Deborah Norville Serenity Chunky in Pristine.

Four skeins of Couture. I'm not familiar with this brand, but I love the color.

It's a wool/mohair/nylon blend, so I'm curious to see how it works up.

We took our time getting home, stopping at Hobby Lobby and to see several used RVs for sale. I had put ribs in the crockpot before we left this morning, so dinner was pretty much done. I made a couple of sides and we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening relaxing.

I hope everyone had a wonderful, relaxing Labor Day!

Thanks for reading!

Blessings :-)

Today's Inspiration

Photo a Day September 1

I love doing this challenge; I can just never remember to bring the prompt list with me, or I forget about taking the photo until I'm home and it's too late.

Today's prompt was Together.

Tim and Hope looking at the outdoor kitchen of our dream RV together.
Thanks for reading.
Blessings :-)

RV Show

We went to the RV Show today at the fairgrounds. We like to browse and dream :-) This was our favorite model (I don't remember the name of it, but we loved everything else about it!):

Dining room and living room

(Hope was trying to get out of the picture before I snapped it; that's why it's so fuzzy.)

Kitchen

Master bedroom

Master bathroom

These two pics are of the second bedroom, a rare feature in an RV.

Second bathroom. Just a half bath, but another nice feature.

It was a 2013 model for just under $40,000. Something to put on the "someday" list.

I hope you had a wonderful and blessed Sunday!

Thanks for reading.

Blessings :-)

Today's Inspiration