One day, years ago, Amy-next-door came to call. She often came to visit with her two little girls in tow to play with my youngest two kiddos as they were all around the same age. This time, she stood holding two paper grocery bags.
“Look what I found!” Amy said as she thrust the two bags into my arms.
Feeling light as a feather for all their fullness, I immediately knew they were filled to the brim with fabrics.
“I found these at a garage sale for $0.75 and I thought you might like to use them.”
More than just neighbors, Amy-next-door and I were enablers…always on the look-out for each other’s vices: she and her buttons, I and my fabrics.
As I began rummaging through the brown paper bags, I noticed they contained more than just scraps or random cuts of material. There was a huge piece of white cotton flannel, a stack of pre-cut 10 ½ x 10 ½ flannel squares, a handful of 3 ½ x 3 ½ ones and miles of uncut flannel fabrics of varying designs and colors.
This was someone’s UFO (quiltspeak for ‘UnFinished Object’). Continue reading
Category: Family (Page 9 of 10)
Holiday prep has been fun. Just the fact of being able to search out Christmas gifts for loved ones is a blessing not taken lightly. Ever frugal, this quest has held plenty of intrigue, mystery and excitement. Except for that, though, one would never suspect we were getting ready for the holidays with mucho-gusto. Continue reading
Note: this entry was written last year, but never posted. I thought it appropriate to send it out On Day 12 during NaNoWriMo 2014. Heck, it was fun to write; so it should be fun to read. Enjoy! (ahem, notice my current word count in the sidebar!)
Day 12 (NaNoWriMo 2013)
Today as I took a short procrastination break after reaching a little over the halfway mark on my noveling, I opened an e-mail sent to me within a few minutes of my landmark word count victory. My middle child, Michelle, had inadvertently sent on an appropriate reward for having reached 25K. Sent as an encouragement and motivation in lieu of our normal lengthy conversations, her timing was impeccable.
Milestone indeed, but I’m not really one to bribe myself with rewards in order to reach personal or business goals. Continue reading
Here’s to the Nines:
Entering
and
Exiting
2014: my year for exiting the Nines.
Of course, by interpolation, 2013 was my year for entering into the Nines.
Joe and Michelle with Dad/GranPa (9/14)
Dad turned 90 in April 2013 and I turned X9 last October 2013. We got to share life in the Nines for an entire year. As well, I’m blessed to have visited Dadland for a goodly portion of these past 12 months.
My times in the Nines have tended to be fraught with trepidation. Starting with the one where I joined Jack Benny in declaring to be eternally 39, my journey through the Nines can be a bit rocky.
Okay so it’s not like Dad where he’ll be in his version of the Nines till he reaches his 100th b-day. But still…
Count the layers on my decade cake*!
Once flipped over to the other side and into a new decade, I usually find it’s not such a bad age progression. Ah, but those Nines…both entering and exiting…are a perilous roller coaster of highs and lows; ohs and nos.
Ironically, the number 9 itself has been loads of fun for me. Perhaps I should focus on that…number 9, number 9, number 9…anything’s easier to tolerate when George, John, Paul and Ringo (my personal order of preference) sing about it.
That said; I am an October baby. Continue reading
A ‘good morning’ surprise
Here’s what greeted hubby and I when we stepped out through the front door to go to work this morning.
Well actually, what first caught my eye was this potted mum placed strategically next to my planter of waning herbs.
Notice the concealed grocery bag filled with jugs of water? That’s the kind of day we had yesterday…
Let me explain.
Getting ready for company is fun for me. It’s part of my heritage. Not that I don’t get stressed, but I truly enjoy prepping for ‘parties.’ Yesterday morning began the final leg into that realm. Already having fielded a week of impromptu clearing out of the laundry closet space that we’d been using as extra storage in our little rental house in readiness for its intended use, I was ready to focus on the task at hand. That being: the routine of last minute fixes and major cooking for a greatly anticipated time of dining and gabbing with our guests for that evening.
Things went along like clockwork:
- Get dough ready for rising-check
- Wash salad greens and place in crisper-check
- Put leaf in table-check
- Tidy up living room and hide extra storage stuff from emptied laundry closet-check
- Take shower before lunch-check
- Start sauce to simmer-check
It wasn’t until close to the end of the prep that I noticed something strange. Continue reading
Look what I found!
Roaming about the unpacked boxes in my studio space, I came across this unfinished, but not forgotten WIP. Carefully set aside to be finished at a later date, this Mother-Daughter Quilt Project was started when my middle daughter was in High School. We worked on it through her first two years of college getting the entire quilt top center finished, with only the borders and binding left to sew. It got put on hold as our business of over 17 years was going through bankruptcy and major changes were shaping the course of our lives. Once we packed up stuff to go into storage a few years later, it was definitely a WIP that I figured would never get done.
Borders, Backing & Thread: Ready to Go!
What’s so cool is that in its recent re-discovery, I know that now is the time to finish it.
Moreover, packed alongside the rolled-up quilt top were the materials needed to complete the project; all cut and ready to go.
My Michelle’s favorite color is no longer pink. She has grown up, become a confident, professional woman and married a fine young man. But our Mother-Daughter Quilt still speaks of the ties that bind: times past, present and future; the good times and the bad; what it means to love and be loved; forever and always…Amen.
I caught this re-broadcast segment on 60 minutes last night after returning from our 4015-plus mile road trip to visit Dad and be with Family. Because Dad fought in WWII, I offer this video in honor of the spirit in which it was fought…because he is my dad, I offer it in honor of what it means to be Family.
(Nicholas Winton and the Power of Good)
Barn buddies: Joanne & Skipper & Me
I figured you guys needed a horse photo fix, so here’s one of us taken the end of May just minutes before tacking up the horses for the 2nd Annual Bethlehem Therapeutic Riding Stables Horse Show. My, don’t we look fresh and perky? It’s a far cry from how we all look and feel now during the dog days of this endless South Carolina summer.
I love doing horse therapy. Today I spent another Southern morning amongst sweaty horses and humans. All of us out and about focused on the task at hand. Humans enabling horses to enable Wounded Warriors who in turn enable us all to thank God for this gift of life. Truly, it is a privilege to be part of such a place.
I came home after four and a half hours of such enabling, drenched. Soaked to the bone with non-secretive sweat patches emerging over 90% of my clothing. Not quite a wet T-shirt display, but daringly close to one! Continue reading
My hubby Terry’s twin (?)
Those baby blues. That attitude.
My future husband, my lover, my BE-ONE…and oh yes, he looks just like James Taylor.
What’s not to like?
Most of our family and friends know the story of how we met. Truncated version: Terry as best friend of my then fiancé convinces said fiancé to dump me and the rest is history. While it certainly was God’s plan for us to be married, it might not have been exactly His way of getting us together.
Over these past years we have celebrated June 17th in various ways. Our first anniversary we did the ‘eat the frozen wedding cake top’ thing in our little square cinder block married student housing house. Living on love in the midst of typical newlywed poverty those first years proved to produce a firm foundation to our new union; along with three children!
Our tenth anniversary we threw a huge backyard party celebrating the fact that we had made it together that long. Sadly, many we knew who married the same year as we did, were no longer together. This was also the year in which we followed the dream and took a leap of faith in starting our own business. Continue reading
Note: In keeping with the theme of this previously written Swimming with Swans vignette (2012), we celebrate in spirit with our daughter Hava as she receives her J.D. degree this weekend (2014).
Celebrations and Inspirations
from-Swimming with Swans: vignettes of our three journey between homes
May 2012 (Westminster, CO)
In honor of this time of year: a time of graduations, weddings and new beginnings. It is a time of celebrations and inspirations.
- Bobby is graduating College with a BFA in Studio Art this weekend.
- Our daughter Michelle is getting married in September.
- Our son Joe is in a few new bands and learning to balance work, play and school as a bachelor guy.
- My husband and I are faithfully walking the life-path before us regardless of its many mysteries.
- A colleague and friend Bill, has survived two years of intense cancer treatment and is entering into a new cancer-free life.
And there’s more, oh so much more to be thankful for and to celebrate… Continue reading