~Patterns~

A dear friend of my mother-in-law's passed away, and her daughter asked if I'd like some of the patterns and fabric. I got the box from my mother-in-law today. It was interesting to see the patterns, because so many of them were ones that I was familiar with.

It was funny to see all the Daisy Kingdom patterns. For many years, my grandma made us a dress for our birthday each year. For several years it was a given that it would be a dress made with a Daisy Kingdom pattern (I neatly escaped the Daisy Kingdom dresses, I don't think they came in teen sizes! LOL).

Not a problem for 1994. But when the dress got passed down, as it happens in a family with 8 girls, the girls having to wear the dresses in 2004 shed a few tears. And finally my mom conceded that perhaps they didn't have to wear the Daisy Kingdom dresses any longer.

I remember my mom making this dress for my younger sister. The pattern is marked 1983, so that's probably when my mom made it.


She did the embroidery too, I just remember loving the cute little birds. The dress was blue like the pattern as well.


I got this dress, view B for my 14th birthday, from my Grandma.


Bunnies, lots of bunnies. The 1990's were full of bunnies for my mom. I don't know how many she made but she made a lot. Big ones, little ones, medium ones. For herself, for gifts, for gifts for us.


I decided I wanted mice rather than bunnies. I started a pair of mice, which never got finished.


My Grandma had a pattern similar to this one, and made my sister 5 play dresses for her 5th birthday.


One of my sisters had a dress like this:


And at least one, if not more, of my sisters had a dress like this:


Not quite the same pattern:


But my dad's mom made me an outfit very similar:

~Hello!~

Oh, hello there! Long time, no blog!

It's been kind of busy around here lately! I haven't had much to blog about, and the summer is passing so quickly I sometimes forget I have a blog.

Over the last few months, Kevin lost most of his hearing in his right ear. The last week he has been extremely dizzy (lessening each day, thankfully!). Official diagnosis is: sudden hearing loss, unexplained. So all the treatments have been for the symptoms, not the cause. Which of course is how most doctors do treatments anyhow, but it would be nice to have answers. But we don't... The expectation is that his hearing loss is permanent, though of course I'm praying that it returns!

Also, there is a little someone which keeps me super busy! This low-energy mommy got a high-energy little girl. So from morning till bedtime it's run, run, run. All day long. Which I totally love, truly! I do have a hard time keeping up with the basics though. But I'm working on it. I need some super-duper-Super-Mommy pills. If I only had half my daughter's energy, just think what I could get accomplished! But on the other hand, my husband reminds me of what I get done. I'll tell him about my day and he'll say I got a lot done. Then I'll say, "but the laundry-dishes-sweeping-mopping-ironing-scouring-dusting didn't get done" and he'll say, "But look at all you got done!" So maybe I'm just being too hard on myself. I don't know!

We've had a few problems with our garden. It seems someone else was watering our garden, by way of an overhead sprinkler. Thankyouverymuch but stop it already. ;-) Our tomatoes and peppers were not appreciating the soaking they were getting in the evening. I think the situation has been rectified (though we got tons of rain overnight last night). And, HOW ON EARTH do all the bugs find plants? I found a tomato worm munching on a tomato. Those things are terrifying. I just might find myself sobbing in the garden if I have to deal with too many of them. (And if you think I'm joking about the sobbing part, I'm not!)

We (along with a lot of others in the Midwest/East) had a super heat wave, with lots of humidity and a high heat index (which still didn't ripen our tomatoes! LOL) I'm not complaining about the heat though. I refuse to complain about heat. As much as I complain about the cold weather in the winter I will not be unhappy about hot weather. :D

And lastly, I have a stack of vintage sheets that I've been collecting. The stack is getting wobbly, so it's time to start sewing! Watch this space for Etsy news. :D

~A Pint of Pickled Peppers~

I'm so excited! I put up a pint of pickled peppers from our garden!


My hope is that I'll have more peppers that are ready to use when my tomatoes get ripe, to make salsa with. But in the meantime my pepper plants needed harvesting so I picked them with the idea to make "nacho rings". I used a pickled pepper recipe from my canning book. The recipe called for three types of peppers, but I didn't want to buy more peppers, so I just used the one type.

In other canning news, I've put up 28 jars of jam and fruit spread, using both strawberries and cherries! Let the canning season begin!

~Title Goes Here~

I'm posting a picture of my toilet because my mother asked me to. No, really, she did.

So here it is:


It's our new toilet handle. This is the box it came in:

It describes the function of the two buttons. ;-)

It's a stylish, intelligent European system. I'm not making that up, either! It's right on the box.

I'm very impressed with myself, because "I do it" all by myself! I'm not usually very handy about the house, but I've wanted to have this type of handle for a while, and when our handle broke that was the motivation to get it! Kevin was gone all day so I went to the hardware store and came home and rolled my sleeves up and got it installed. A few "ABC" videos to keep my "helper" busy, and it was done! It will be interesting to see if our water bill shows a difference in the next billing cycle.

~Thinking Thoughts of Love~

One of my sisters has a new sales position, and one of my other sisters told her that if you look at people and think (not say! LOL) "I love you" your sales will be higher. Interesting. (Side note: I'd be scared to do this because sooner or later I would accidentally be telling random strangers that I loved them! Ha.) My mom and I were discussing this the other day, and how we should think thoughts of love towards the people we really do love!

I will admit, messes frazzle me. My daughter is 2. "I do it" is oft-heard around here, as is the phrase, "I'm making a mess" (yes, she alerts me to her naughtiness-in-progress!). So the next day after my conversation with my mom, I was washing my daughter's messy hands in the bathroom sink for the umpteenth time and I looked in the mirror and saw a frazzled mommy staring back. Not what I really wanted to see, and I figured my daughter deserved better than that face! Still looking in the mirror, I looked at my daughter and thought, "I love you" and my face instantly smoothed and relaxed. It was a pretty remarkable change of countenance!

Our thoughts drive our actions and feelings and our feelings exemplify themselves on our face and in our body language. This works in both positive and negative directions. I want to work on the positive side of things! :-)

~Flower Beds~

My front flower beds:



A close up of the hosta:


I have hostas, cone flowers (echinacea), bleeding heart, and a few flowering annuals that I've planted. I had a few alyssum plants last year, and left them over the fall. They reseeded and I transplanted them around the front flower beds. The beds need some weeding, but otherwise I've been so pleased with them this year. I'm working on buying perennials and planting them so that I don't have to spend so much on annuals every year.

~Muffin Tin Lunch~

I recently found the Muffin Tin Mom blog. Shortly after, I found a 6-cup muffin tin at a thrift shop which has been perfect for lunches! Today was "one of those days" and having a fun muffin tin lunch seemed to make things much better! :-)

top: Goldfish, raisins, Meijer Organics graham bears
bottom: sugar peas from our garden, Hormel Natural Choice lunch meat, yogurt



All was eaten, except for the raisins for some reason. The peas are devoured with relish. My daughter was quite excited to have "peas from our garden" with her lunch.

~Food Face~

Taco Salad for a 2-year old.



Plate can be found here (this is not an affiliate link).

~Gardening~

//roma tomatoes//

This summer I have a garden (besides the volunteer squash plants)! I haven't mentioned it on my blog yet, I don't really know why! The garden isn't in our yard, but I feel blessed to be able to have a gardening spot made available to us that isn't too far away!


//bell peppers//

What are we growing?
Tomatoes! lots of them! We have 15 regular tomato plants and 2 cherry tomatoes.
Green beans - again, lots of them! I'll be busy canning later this summer!
Red bell peppers (4)
"Jalapa" peppers (4) - these are hot peppers but not jalapenos, so I don't know what to expect
Lettuce
Radishes
Sugar Peas


//hot peppers//

It takes planning to get our garden watered and weeded since we have to go to it, rather than just walk out the door. But really, we don't have a spot in our yard that is ideal for growing the quantity of vegetables that we desire. So this is working out really well!

~The Great Squash Mystery: Update~

I know, all of my blog readers are on pins and needles, waiting to find out what my mystery squash plants are. Well, it's still somewhat of a mystery!

We have three plants. We've determined that all three plants are different. Two plants are growing like a "bush" but the other plant is sending out a long "vine". I don't know the proper terms, so excuse me if I'm wrong. ;)


One plant is growing these:


At first we thought they were acorn squash, but now we're leaning towards decorative squash. I did buy a few of those last year.

The plant with the long vine is growing these:


Maybe watermelon?

And the third plant is just starting to grow fruit, so we'll see what happens! It looks kind of round. Maybe pumpkins?