{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}~ Feb. 24, 2013

It's time for {pretty, happy, funny, real}!

{Pretty}

I am probably the only person on the entire internet still posting Christmas pictures, but please bear with me.  I'm still catching up from my blogging hiatus. :-)

Man of the House and I made this nativity set for Sweet Pea and her family for Christmas.  I've had the patterns for years (ever since we made a set for ourselves).  I copied them onto card stock, colored them with plain ol' Crayola colored pencils, cut them out, and then we used spray shellac to make them adhere to 2x4 blocks of wood Man of the House cut to size.  They are just right for little hands to play with!

 

 

{Happy}



Girl of the House is a quilting maniac these days.  She has been churning out quilts at (what is to me) an astounding rate lately.  Last week she finished two quilts that she made for two elderly ladies at church who have been suffering from various ailments all winter.  You can see them here (the quilts, not the ladies!).  And here's one she made for her cousin who is having a baby in a few weeks. She made this colorful quilted wall-hanging for me Christmas.  Girl 2 also helps make quilts to be sent to poverty-stricken and/or disaster-ridden areas of the world through Lutheran World Relief.  One of these days she may make one to keep for herself. LOL  It makes me happy and proud to see the hard work and care Girl of the House puts into her quilting projects!

{Funny}

 

Man of the House's birthday was last week. He was given, among other things, a bottle of Wild Turkey and a bottle of Old Spice. He got a little confused about which one he should drink!



We were amused by something on the box of the Old Spice.  It's blurry, so I'll translate for you: "If your grandfather hadn't worn it, you wouldn't exist."  LOL!

{Real}

Yet another painting project in this house of the ugly colors.  Our camera does not do justice to the utter drabness of the walls in this room.  Imagine a washed-out mix of olive green, khaki, and gray minus any particle of light that might accidentally stray onto it through the windows.  Then you'll be close.  We were surprised that it took us less than a day to paint this room, which is being transformed into an actual sewing room!  It will be lovely to have a designated and organized place for sewing and keeping all the associated paraphernalia.  (Sometimes our living room looks like a fabric factory exploded!)  The room is now this color.  I will do a big reveal when I've finished going through boxes and bags and cabinets and organizing everything.  Stay tuned! 

Thanks for visiting!

{Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real}~ Feb. 17, 2013

Can it really be time for {phfr} already??  Here goes . . .

{Pretty}

Have you ever tried to take a picture of a black cat?  It's nearly impossible, at least for a point-and-click kind of photographer, such as I am.  He always comes out as a black, indistinct blob, but I thought just maybe since he was up against the white bedskirt and there was plenty of light that day, the results might be improved.  I was right!  I think he looks particularly handsome in this shot, if not exactly {pretty}.


This recently got replaced:

 

 

 

With this:

 



I did not love the brass and glass light fixture in the dining area.  It was hard to keep clean and smacked of the 1980's, but living in a parsonage means we can't just go changing things willy-nilly.  Besides, it still worked, which was its essential function, after all.  But one day I noticed the "candles" were quite scorched~ all black and brown~and one of the sockets kept blowing out light bulbs.  So we got the go-ahead to buy a new one.  Man of the House and I installed it one afternoon. (My job was mostly to fetch and carry and hand things up to him on the ladder.)  Despite my poor photography, doesn't it look a lot better? 

{Happy}

Last week I made a batch of homemade (and partially homegrown!) vegetable/beef soup.  We ate some, but I canned the rest, so now I have seven jars of homemade soup ready in the pantry for when we need a quick meal.  It satisfies me to know they are there!

 

 

 

As {happy} as my jars of soup make me, I'm even happier about this:

 





See the little flower bud there?  No?  Well, trust me, it is there!  The other bulbs are just beginning to poke their noses out, but the snowdrops are well on their way to blooming!  They are the earliest flowers in our garden, and once they appear, I know spring can't be far off.  The snowdrops mean the end of winter and the beginning of lots of garden work~ both flower and vegetable.  Which reminds me~ we need to get our seeds ordered ASAP!

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From My Commonplace Book

"The first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together.  If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb, when it comes, find us doing sensible and human things~ praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts~ not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs."~ C.S. Lewis

"A garden is an evidence of faith, and it links us with all the misty figures of the past who also planted and were nourished by the fruits of their planting.  The truth is, none of us belongs merely to today; we are a small part of the whole progression of mankind.  We have a responsibility to pass to the next generation as much good as we can, and we are also responsible for those who went before us."~ Gladys Taber

". . . a wise and elegant thrift~ nothing wasted, nothing wanted . . ."~ a description in 1885 of Zilpah P. Grant by her biographer

"“For a liberal arts education is not a tool like a hoe or a blueprint or an electric mixer. It is a true and precious stone which can glow just as wholesomely on a kitchen table as when it is put on exhibition in a jeweler’s window or bartered for bread and butter. Learning is a boon, a personal good. It is a light in the mind, a pleasure for the spirit, an object to be enjoyed. It is refreshment, warmth, illumination, a window from which we get a view of the world. To what barbarian plane are we descending when we demand that it serve only the economy?”~ Phyllis McGinley

"From the hour I began to reason, and possibly from the hour I began to feel, I have been a conservative. Quite possibly I am on the losing side; often I think so. Yet, out of a curious perversity I had rather lose with Socrates, let us say, than win with Lenin."~ Russell Kirk



{Pretty, Happy, Funny Real}~ Mega Catch-up Edition (Feb. 8, 2013)

Lookee!  It's only Friday and I'm posting for {phfr}!  I'm going to make this a combination catch-up/phfr post in order to accomplish two things at once.

First of all, nothing bad happened to make me stop blogging for two whole months.  No one was seriously ill (though the flu did sweep though the house a couple times, leaving me unscathed both times), our house didn't burn down, no one was laid off, Man of the House and I didn't get a divorce, nothing like that.  Lots of the good stuff of life happened, though, and I just never found the time to blog about it.  I've been busy teaching, homeschooling, traveling, celebrating, working, playing, reading, conversing, praying, planning, and learning. 

{Pretty}

I know, I know, the angle is all wrong and I cut off her dad's head, but just focus for a minute on the gorgeousness of this baby!

Serious but sweet!  (I made that toy! :-)  )

We bought this headboard on sale at an antique shop last summer.  I spray painted it in a jiffy, but it had to sit in the garage for six months before it could be attached to the bed.  Don't ask me why.  Maybe it took that long for the paint to dry?  Anyway, here it is fully installed.  Isn't it pretty?

{Happy}

 

Every year about this time I begin to crave flowers, don't you?  When I saw primroses at Aldi for $1, I had to buy one.  It cheers me up!  And on top of that, my African violet is blooming!

This next picture makes me very, very, very happy!  Sweet Pea loves being read to, even at six months old!  And Girl of the House has a wonderful lap perfect for storytime.

Sometimes I can hardly believe that my baby has a baby of her own!

 

 

Girl of the House made this for me for Christmas and I love it!  She made it entirely of scraps and fabric we had on hand and quilted it with thousands upon thousands of the tiniest stitches you ever saw.  She worked on it for months.  I love the jumble of colors and patterns!

{Funny}

For Christmas Day itself Man of the House, Girl of the House, and I were at home.  (Something about a Christmas Eve service followed by a Christmas Day service makes traveling 500 miles for Christmas difficult.)  But we left the next day for a week with Girl Out of the House and That Boy.  Girl 2 requested Christmas crackers and I found fun ones with tuned whistles inside and instructions for playing Christmas carols.  But alas, one of the pitches was missing (a defect), so whenever we got to that pitch, we hummed it . . . very badly.  It made for quite the hilarity!  (I guess you had to be there.)

 

 

 

A glamorous baby!

 

 

 

 

Girl 2 and I are enrolled in Man of the House's beginning Greek class.  Girl 2's 16th birthday was Monday and her grandparents sent her a Greek New Testament.  She was excited!  She couldn't wait to show her dad, and while watching them both ooooo and aaaaah over it I was struck by the delightful nerdiness of my family.

 

 

 

{Real}

As I mentioned, we visited Girl 1 and her family for a week after Christmas.  Traveling at this time of year can be iffy, so we diligently and duly checked the weather forecast ahead of time, and it looked pretty good.  An inch or two of snow was predicted for the Indianapolis area, but pshaw! that wouldn't stop us!  So we set out bright and early Boxing Day morning for a 500 mile trek to the hills of Appalachia and were stopped dead in our tracks one and a half hours later by what eventually amounted to a foot a snow!  We sat at a complete standstill for four hours and never did see exactly what the hold-up was, though we could guess by the number of tow trucks passing us on the shoulder.  There is nothing more tedious or seemingly unending than being stopped on the highway and not know why or for how long.  *big sigh*  We eventually toddled our way to a hotel and hunkered down for the night, arriving a day late at Girl 1's house.  It took us all day to go two hours from home!  If the weather forecast had been accurate, we could have waited a day at home and saved a lot of aggravation (not to mention money) and arrived at the same time! 



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Checking In . . .

Hello!  For various reasons I haven't posted in two months, but I am hoping to re-enter blogland more consistently in the future (hope springs eternal!).  My reasons for disappearing are not serious, but it's just that blogging kept getting pushed to the bottom of my to-do list, after Christmas shopping, Christmas celebrating, traveling, teaching, studying, Girl of the House's birthday, and myriad other things.  But I'm going to try again.  I want to make a mega-catch-up post in the near future, but in the meantime, you can enjoy this picture of Girl of the House and Sweet Pea reading together:

If you're still out there, pop by the comments and let me know! :)

More later!