To keep

Man I cannot wait until the day arrives when I get to sleep through the night again. I am a total zombie again right now.

Jack gave me this letter on Christmas in July. It says:

This is a test for th e old_fashioned type_writer it appears to not be working perfectley but it works I say its "not perfect" but i ts fine actually
      dont worry about typing errors though, I think its pretty cool. Thist ## typewriter is really, really , cool. I like it a lot mom and dad thank you. This w s a really cool christmas in July.

Love,
Jack

Nice, huh?

Yesterday I had a productive day (which today will totally NOT be) so I attempted this pin for cookie pretzels.

FAIL.

Totally hard to make (but they did look okay going in the oven) and when they cooked they turned into big cow patties! LOL

Time to go try and scrounge up some kind of caffeine...

Christmas in July

Dave and I have done Christmas in July since way before it was a "thing", aka the late '90s. We were poorer than dirt and to break up the monotony of being poorer than dirt we would scrape together a few gifts for under $10 (hello dollar tree) for each other and decorate one of our houseplants with lights and ornaments made from stickers and stuff.

We still do it with the kids and Jack looks forward to every year.

I try to keep the gifts for the kids under $10 still.

For Jack this year - a thrifted typewriter. (Which I think really needs to go see the typewriter man to be tuned up, which will not cost $10. But it's a nice vintage Remington streamliner and worth doing I think.)

Sammi was thrilled with a "dora the splorer"towel and a few other super cheap amazon scores. (Including a fur real friends thing I scored for 80 cents which is now selling for $28. Pats self on back.)

Grant, in typical Grant fashion, would like to know why in the hell I have that camera out again.

But he will indulge me and eat some paper anyway.

I did the world's fastest version of a regular Christmas tree this year, with lights and ornaments. Usually I do something summer themed - umbrellas, birds, butterflies, but eh, not feeling it. Sammi woke up, saw it and gasped -"It's halloween!" then she thought for a minute and said "Oh, it's Christmas!" and started unwrapping all the gifts.

We've already listened to christmas music in the car and still need to let the kids pick a movie (I am voting for Charlie brown) and find something special for dinner.

Happy Christmas in July to you!

Grant 10 months

Ginty! You are 10 months old now.

You did NOT know what to make me of setting you on some astroturf in the middle of the golf course...

and your eyes were busy saying "mom, are you drunk? what are we doing?"

But then I started to sing.

Hey, I just met you and this is crazy, here's my number so call me baby...

and you started to bob up and down and dance.

So maybe it wasn't so weird after all, eh?

At 10 months you:
*have your sister's damn ear troubles. Infection number three WILL NOT DIE. I see tubes in our near future.
*dance!
*army crawl/drag yourself all around the house at the speed of light.
*get.into.everything. the trash, the cabinets, baskets, buckets, lamp cords, outlets, etc. You name it, you are into it. A tornado on your belly.
*Shrieking. LOUD. And the other two are constantly telling you to be quiet. Which cracks me up. They are louder than all get out.
*babbling loads - mama, dada, nono, hey, hi, and lots of nonsense babble
*an inconsistent sleeper - sometimes sleeping all night, sometimes up and down all night (I blame the ears partially)
*a crazy good eater. If I put it in front of you, you will eat. Except for peas. Peas are a no way in hell.
*humungo! That outfit is 18 months and it's way too small
*grabby - glasses and hair look out
*want what you want and want it NOW
*scream bloody murder if your father comes in the house and doesn't immediately pick you up
*love everything with wheels. You will lie and the floor and roll things back and forth
*in love with closing doors too - open, close, open, close
*investigating gravity by throwing everything overboard from your carseat or high chair
*Are my adorable, chubby, red headed, blue eyed darling baby boy!

Love you baby,
Mama

Up to

The weather has turned chamber of commerce beautiful again.

We went to our hometown baseball team ballgame last night.

Grant LOVES going to the baseball game more than Jack and Sammi (who calls it football and drives Jack crazy with that). He sits there clapping and bouncing the whole time.

There is an area where the kids can throw the ball around themselves.

On the way home the moon was HUGE and beautiful and perfect. I played with some camera settings trying to get a good shot.

No such luck. Must google that.

Cleaning out the playroom  means the dress up corner is finally empty and ready for me to put out the costumes. Sammi came upstairs wearing this one today.

We made a spiderweb picture in the yard yesterday by capturing a real spider web on black paper. (fun! want more.)

And we did some foam ice cream art this week also.

It's Christmas in July today! We are saving our celebration for Saturday...must redecorate the foyer tree today. :-)

Serenity now Kramer

So three kids plus the house plus trying to find time to make things keeps me crazy ass busy. And cleaning up all of their messes just makes me crazy.

That means it's yard sale time again at our house.

I have to clean out the quilt cupboards again to make room for new acquistions. And the tablecloths again. I think I am going to post some of those for sale on facebook first. Then here on the blog if no takers. Then onto the garage sale they go. If you want in on that find Makin' Projiks on facebook.

I picked these everlasting peas on the side of the road this weekend.

Just because they are pretty. :-)

I just met you and this is crazy - repairing the yo yo quilt

This is what the yo yo quilt looked like when I bought it in an Iowa field in early May.

I decided right away it was a good project because I could haul it around with me and work on it in short spurts.

I spent most of the spring in the backyard with the kids piecing it back together, one yo yo and one broken thread at a time. Because I was short about 15 yo yo's I made the decision to remove one row along one of the edges. That is the ONLY change I made to the original maker's design. I did not correct any of her choices (in some places two of the same fabrics are next to each other).

 It was the perfect project for that part of my life. I was piecing back together her work and piecing back together bits of my own life after the troubles of the past few months. It reminded me that even though I was feeling very broken everything can be put back together with time and patience and some skill.

 I finished it about two weeks ago. It took me another two weeks to decide how to wash it.

 I laid it on a big tarp on a slightly inclined section of our yard and took the hose to it.

 The water that came off it was really brown, erasing any doubts I had about whether or not I should have actually attempted to clean the thing.

 I tried to choose a pretty warm, but not sunny day. I did not want sun fade. But it kept sprinkling rain and a cool front came through.

I ended up rolling it up in the tarp and moving it to the cover of the porch and putting a fan on it.

When dark came and it still wasn't dry we rolled it up again and put it in the living room with the fan.

 I have two or three more threads that broke from washing, but overall it brightened up the colors, removed the smell (mostly, I didn't use soap) and made the yo yo's lay much, much flatter with no ironing.

What you cannot tell is just how huge this beast is. I live in a big ranch house and there was no where to easy lay it out flat. It didn't fit on my huge porch either. Above it is hanging on an 8 foot wide drive gate. With easily a foot hanging over the backside and another foot and a half puddled on the ground.

 The different amount of fabrics in this thing is staggering. I counted the yo yo's and I think there are around 1500 of them. There must be 200 different fabrics at least.

A true scrap project (some have seams in them from being from clothing remnants, etc).

And a true labor of love - for both her and I.

Flea Market Sundays

5-1, 5-0 somebody call the Hoarder show, I bought more fabric. LOL

Already spray painted this.

Had the boy version, now have the girl version.

I don't like to talk money, but this dress was marked $20 (!!). She looks at me and says "50 cents." Okay then, sold!

I have started buying halloween costumes. Sammi has started wearing Halloween costumes. It's all good. (And I have started thinking about the Halloween swap.)

This is a lot more fabric than it looks like. They are like 3x2 inches maybe? I think they are from fabric samples because for many of the patterns there is more than one colorway (sometimes as many as 4 different colorways). All super crispy and not fondled much and from the 30s/40s I think. I haven't had time to pet them much.

Some were already sewn together.

The world's tiniest sampling of the samples.

Best quilt pattern ever. Could never own too many of these. Will always buy them if I can afford them.

Sweetest big 1930's storybooks.

Look at those cheeks! 

And a few good ornaments too.