Today, I've been

Busy.
Yeah, that's a good word for today.
I did a little school with my youngest. I did a little sewing. I started making some tarn (t-shirt yarn). It's kinda my first. It isn't difficult at all. Just time consuming and it makes my thumb hurt. Guess I'm gonna need a rotary cutter. A little laundry, cooked supper, let the dog in, let the dog out, let the dog in again, let the dog out again. Yes, we do that - a lot.
Now that it's close to midnight, I think I'll call it a day.

Blah and busy

I'm not sure how one can be blah and busy. But that is how I have been the past couple of days. I am so very, very sleepy during the day but at night it's a different story. It's like it gets dark and I'm ready to paint and sew and clean and cook and so much more. I take my vitamin in the am but I think it isn't in my blood stream until the sun goes down. Weird, I know.

A lovely lady, Ms. Angie, from church has given me lots and lots of material. She had a stroke and just isn't able to sew like she used to. The material is just beautiful and I have lots and lots of ideas about what I want to make. Yesterday, I worked on a project that Ms. Angie put in the bag of material. She had mentioned a vest that she had started but couldn't finish. I suggested that I take a look at it and see if I could finish it. Today I did just that. I finished the vest for her. I can hardly wait to see her and give her the vest. So I did get a little sewing done.

Speaking of a little sewing. When I went to the Parelli Ranch, I showed my butt. Literally! I am so thankful that my jeans didn't split until we were on the way home. I'm talking they split on the side of the back pocket so it all hung out! LOL I washed the jeans and was thinking of what to do with them. Patch them, throw them away or make something out of them. I came to the conclusion that I wanted to make an apron. I set my hands in motion and wa la...Yesterday I finished it. I used the bottom of one of the boys shirts that they are ruined to make the ruffle and the ties.

Pictures are coming so don't rush me. So what if it takes me a couple of months to post them here. You gotta have a good reason to come back.

Snake in the Napkins

Ok - not really. There really isn't a snake in the napkins. I used that to get you interested and so that I wouldn't forget what I wanted to talk about. Pretty smart of me! LOL

Snake - It was AWESOME! Camera? Oh yeah - it was in the house. I have heard a lot about teachable moments. Well today was a teachable moment. I don't even remember what I was doing outside. I walked by our garden and I just happened to see a snake. Of course I called the boys over and we admired it's beauty. I was amazed at myself for remembering the name of it. Oh yes - it was my time to shine! Once we oohhed and aawwed until the snake was tired of us entertaining him, he decided to crawl out of the garden and into the flower bed. I immediately came inside and googled our snake. You are gonna love what I found...

Masticophis flagellum better known as the Eastern Coachwhip and here is another awesome website Coachwhip

I read that the coachwhip snake is very slender bodied and extremely fast. I saw it first hand today. What was the most unique to me was half of it was black and the other half was a light brown color. Interesting indeed!

What a teachable moment!

Oh yeah!!! I almost forgot! Napkins
With times the way they are and money kinda tight, we have been cutting back on lots of things. One of those things that I ranted about the other day was the use waste of paper napkins. Use it once and throw it away. Not anymore at our house. I announced to everyone at supper that there would not be anymore paper napkins bought. We will now make our own napkins and not waste another penny on something we are only going to throw away.
In my mind I had this idea about how to make our cloth napkins. I thought hmmm...if I can google a snake, why not google a napkin. So I did and this is what I found.

Molly's Handmade Napkins and Rebecca Writes Cloth Napkins
I really think that you will love the handmade clothe napkins on both of those sites. I know I sure will be doing some sewing in the next couple of days. I have some scrap material stowed away just for such projects.

Better Ending to a Bad Start

Well I have to say that my 1 mile walk/trot thing was my workout for the day. I had all kinds of plans on what I wanted to accomplish today, but things happen. The horses made sure that I managed to get my exercise this morning. I guess they just figured I needed it - and of course - I did need the exercise. Thank you CoCo, Shadow and Redman!

After my little rodeo, I decided that I was pretty much done for the day. With the August heat outside and the air conditioner on inside - hmm... think I'll stay cool for the rest of the day. I started doing a few things inside and then I thought about getting a few errands done. Darn good thing I did. By doing 2 errands today I saved almost $100. Here's how I did it...

I decided to go ahead and run over to our local home school store and buy the Lifepac material that I needed to start school on the 20th of this month. They didn't have all the material that I needed, so I ordered it. By paying for the items today, I didn't have to pay State sales tax. Yes - no tax until midnight tonight for school purchases. How cool is that?! I had a store credit of $42.95 also. WW and JD will be starting in the 5th grade, so I don't have to buy the teachers guide for one set. That in it self saved me another $40. So with the credit, the discount for not needing the 2nd teachers guide and the no sales tax, I think I did pretty darn good. We were looking at $250 for each child, making it a total of $750. However, I managed to get all my material paid for at a grand total of $516.00. Yippee!

Off to Walmart I hurried so I could pick up a few last minute little things (3 chairs, 3 binders, 3 pair of scissors, 3 sets of binder dividers, 2 erasers and a quilt marking pen for me). We're getting ready for our big day - our first day of home school. I think the boys are as excited as I am. I showed all the material to Superman and I thought he was gonna cry. We both are so happy that we are able to love and provide for our 3 boys.

I almost forgot to mention that I started a quilt pattern today. I haven't quilted in several months of Sundays. So for now, I am off to bed (and lookie at that, it's before midnight), really early doctor appointment in the morning. Nighty, night, night!

Swimming In The Heat

It's getting hot down here. I should have said HOT! The temperature at 11:30am today was 93 degrees. The heat index is in the triple digits. I mean around 105 degrees and above. It kinda seems like the first day of August arrived and so did the heat. What I want to know, is who left the oven on?!

We are fortunate enough to have a springs near by, actually within a 15 minute drive. And yes, we went swimming at the springs again today. I had one errand to do before we went, only to drive 22 miles and then get told that it had to be in Gainesville, which is another 25 miles in the opposite direction from my home. Ok that will just have to wait until another day. I'm not one to just run all over the place. I try to plan things and do everything while I am out and about and all in the same direction.

There wasn't many people at the springs today and that always makes it nice. There were 2 very nice kids (boys, whatever you wanna call em) maybe 15 or 16 years old, that helped my boys with their diving and back flips and front flips. WW said that he would never try a back flip again because he did a back flop - kinda like a belly flop but on his back. Now MJ on the other hand - well he was doing back flips and front flips until he looked like a pro. At first I had to sit on the dock and have him stand on my feet before he would try it. But once again, like jumping off the dock, he had to try it before he would jump off the dock. It really made great conversation at suppertime. I can't wait until Superman gets to see his flips and how his swimming has improved. JD is fine with jumping in feet first or doing his famous cannon ball. He isn't much for the diving and flipping stuff. But that's ok, when and if he does them, I will be fine with that. Here is a link so that you can look at some of the springs not far from us. The one we go to is Bronson Blue Springs.

There are lots of things that we want to do tomorrow - such as - mow my moms grass and set up for a yard sale. In order for us to mow her yard, we have to get a bunch of buckets off of the lawn trailer and put them away. Yeppers, they needed moving today and yesterday too. Nothing like planning ahead. LOL Then hook up the trailer, load the mower and so on and so on. I'm just not sure that I have the energy. I know I need to clean the windows on the outside of the house but darn it. They have been dirty for this long, what's another day or 2 gonna hurt. Oh just listen to me, I sound like I'm complaining. Blah, Blah, Blah!

Superman ask me to pick up a movie tonight and he requested Premonition with Sandra Bullock. I saw it while he was out of town and I recommended that he see it. I know I really enjoyed it when I watched it. So sat down tonight and I watched it again with him. I enjoyed it again and he enjoyed it also. We are just big Sandra Bullock fans.

Unless I can think of anything else to blah, blah, blah about tonight, I am off to go through my material tub again. I am ready to start cutting some material, just so I can sew it back together again.

Recent Sewing Things

I think I mentioned that I have been doing a little sewing in the last couple of days. I put together some curtains for our homeschool classroom. They have a map of the world on them. The cutest darn things (or so I think). All of the primary colors too. WW and JD helped me sew them and they really enjoyed the project.

Yesterday I made curtains for our den. Of course they are John Deere print. I had to think for over an hour on how to hang them. Finally it came to me...I had some left over legs from a pair of jeans, so sure enough, I used the jeans material and I left the seam out for them the ravel. How cool is that?! Superman picked out the material and he said that he would love to have curtains made with the material. I orginally had a sunflower print hanging underneath them but I just didn't like the look. Yes, I made the sunflower curtains too and now I have them set aside for another window.

Check this out! I think I am the proudest of my little jeans project. My youngest son MJ somehow managed to ruin a new pair of Wrangler Jeans. Me being the thrifty and frugal person that I am thought that I would try to fix them. Well I tried. Sometimes things are just not repairable. I kept the jeans out and I thought and thought about what to do with them. I just didn't want to throw them out. It finally hit me! So I pulled out the sewing machine and started planning and sewing. I cut the legs off just above the crotch, that way I could fix the rip below the zipper. Here is what I came up with...a clothes pin bag!

I took the legs from the jeans and made a cute little bag. Sometimes when there are jeans that no one wears, I will cut them up and save them for later use. I had some pockets left over from another pair of jeans and added them to the bag. I had some heavy duty camo material, scraps from another project that I made handles out of. I know they kinda look like a pair of short shorts, but that really is the whole thought. Well that and the idea of recycling instead of putting something else in the landfill. To use the clothes pin bag, the easiest way would be to untie the bow and unzip the zipper. So watcha think?

I put all of the seams on the outside of the bag for them the ravel and I think it looks really neat. I can't wait to take it to the grocery store and load it up. It is heavy enough to tote the heaviest of thing. Now if I can only tote it once it is loaded up. But who says that I have to fill it to the top.

I am thinking about selling things like this. I love to create them. They are all orignal - designed and sewn by the 3 of us...Me, Myself and I.

Summer Is Almost Over

Or so they say. Here in Florida in the month of August, we break a sweat just thinking about going outside. Seriously, we do. And it's a good thing that we have cloth seats in our SUV, if we had leather or vinyl...we would have fried thigh. LOL Funny how our hottest month is almost the end of summer. We swim up until the weather gets cold though and that could be until Christmas. And to think that Christmas is just around the corner too. Wow, I haven't even mentioned school starting again either. Yes, school is almost here too.
Do you have any big plans for the last days of summer? Anything up your sleeve for the few days left before school starts? We have more swimming days planned. We didn't get much swimming in last week because of all the rainy days. I mean every day it rained and rained and rained. We need the rain though.

The boys were supposed to go to camp this week. JD didn't want to go today because of issues with 2 or 3 kids that keep picking on the other kids. It was his choice whether to go or not. And today when JD and I picked up WW and MJ, we heard all about all of the picking on the other kids is still going on. This is 4-H camp! How can this be happening?! And it is the same 2 or 3 kids that keep causing trouble with the other kids. It has to stop. At this point I am considering writing a letter. Superman is not happy with it either. WW and MJ said that they don't want to go back to camp this week. I will not make them go and be uncomfortable and submit them to being picked on and talked down to.

I did a little more sewing today. I made some really cool curtains for our den. The only thing is - I can't seem to get the bottom material to match. In other words the curtains are kinda like cafe curtains. A curtain at the top and one at the bottom. I am thinking about buying some crocker sack material and seeing if that will match. My batteries for my camera are on charge right now, so hopefully I will be able to get some pictures and show them to you in the next couple of days.

Tomorrow I have a swimming trip planned to the springs. The boys are all excited about going to the springs. They have even ask Granny Karen to go and she said yes. I think the boys finally got their job done for her. WW and JD came home yesterday with a 100 dollar bill. I had to go to the bank today and get it changed for them, but I got 2 fifties and gave them each their money. Now they want to start a savings account. Well I am off to do a little more research because I just came across an awesome homeschool website.