Randomn Thursday

School is out for the summer.  The preschool that my kiddos go to have two summer programs and every year we enroll them in that.  This year's June summer program theme is "A Train Tour through Europe."  So that starts up on Monday.  It would be fantastic to actually get to do it don't you think?

 

 

 

 

A few more little random projects I sewed.  This tote bag from Zakka Style. 

And I am working on this quilt from Sunday Morning Quilts.  I still have the right side to piece together. When this top is done, it will be number 3 in my basting pile; I think in the next week or so I'll be doing quite a bit of basting and quilting.

 

Saturday plans consist of putting this little garden together in my courtyard.  I know, it's hard to read due to it be a scan from a piece of notebook paper.  But you get the idea.

 

 

 

 Linking up to: Live  a Colorful Life

 

 

 

 



In the New House

Remember the house we've been remodeling for the past year or so?  Well, we started moving in!  So now our new house is a mess as I try to find a spot for everything; our old house is a mess as we are still slowly moving stuff over.  At least all the big items (i.e. beds, couch, etc.) have been moved.

Unpacked boxes - ready to be repacked

I haven't sewed a thing in days and am starting to go a little stir crazy.  Not a good thing either with the Christmas season quickly approaching.  I need to sew something!  Anything!

The internet was just hooked up today!  In between unpacking, moving, work, and kids I've been trying to catch up on my blog readings.  At least I can live vicariously through others and their pretty sewing projects until my little sewing nook is back up and running!

Goal is to start sewing this weekend!!

This Weekend

Boy this weekend sure flew by!  And I have so much to do still before I leave on Wednesday for Sewing Summit! 

Remember those pieces of fabric I wrote about in my last WIP post?  Well, they are now blocks ready to go to Utah for a Quilt of Valor.

 

Saturday was spent working on the house we are trying to move into.  Logan's teachers came out and helped.  Seriously, we probably wouldn't be as far as we are if not for them!  Speaking of Logan, my little guy has a loose tooth.  Already?!  He is growing up way too fast! 

 

 

That means a tooth fairy pillow was in order!  And since it is pretty loose and can fall out at any time, a tooth fairy pillow needed to be made ASAP!  So, I dropped everything and went off to create.

 

While growing up, mine was a green plaid elephant with a little pocket on it's body.  I love that little pillow.  All of my siblings used it as well.  I think one of my brother's got it as they had kids before I did.

 

 

Okay, done reminiscing.  On to Logan's pillow.  He LOVES his trains, so I figured a train pillow was in order.  I ended up making a caboose, with the windows as pockets to hold the tooth and coins the tooth fairy brings.

 

The back is some leftover fabric I had from the I spy quilt I made his class. The fabric is The Little Engine that Could.

 

 



Logan was so excited, he brought his pillow to school today to show all his friends, as well as his loose tooth!

Remodeling - Part 2

The second installment of our remodeling job.  You can read the first one here.

Every time I go work on this house, I find at least ten other things that need to get done!  My husband says that we should just get done what we need to in order to move in.  However, I am afraid that if we don't get it all done before hand, then it will never get done.

At least it kind of looks like we have made some progress.  In part one I showed this bathroom completely gutted out. It's about done now.

Remember how we knocked out the closet to my daughter's room for the bathroom to be bigger. The shower/tub sits where her closet was. We built in those little cubby holes for towels and such.

The sun room (also known as the second reason (first was the oven) why I decided to move into this house)).  Still some of the owner's old furniture to move out;  I can see this room full of plant starts for my garden.  I would also like to get a dwarf lemon and orange tree to put in here!  :)

Everyone kept asking me what color I wanted to paint my son's room.  I told them to ask him, it's his room.  He chose white walls with John Deere green trim.  Of course, the only way to get John Deere green is to buy actual tractor paint.  We started painting some old furniture in the same green with Ag yellow trimming.  See that green and yellow dresser above? 

As you can see, his double windows open up into the sun room.

And so we move onto the master bedroom.  You can't see it in the picture, but there is a door to my left that leads out to the other side of the sun room.  And over there to the right of the closet is another door that leads to an office. 

We knocked the wall out between the office and my daughter's room so now you can loop between the two rooms through here.  I am going to put

some kind of shelving and rod unit in there to make her a little closet since we knocked out the original for the bathroom.  I have found that little girls need a closet!  You can see below the doorway we added.  That glass door leads out back to where I want to put my cutting garden.  I'll show more pictures of the yard and outside in part 3.



Every room has been painted except for the kitchen and my daughter's (above.)  My plan is to paint it the way it is painted in our house now (picture below.)  Those scallops were actually done with a quilting ruler!

As you can see, we've been pretty busy!  Hoping to get done and moved in soon.

Remodeling - Part 1

I don't think I have mentioned it here, but late last summer the owners of the ranch asked my husband and I if we would like to move into their old house.  They had just completed building their dream home out here.

The house is bigger than the one we currently occupy, but since the owners were only out here a few months out of the year, there were some needed adjustments to make it a full time home.

It took us a while to get going on it due to lack of time (it's a working cattle ranch so all things cattle related is first priority!)

The first thing we did was rip up all the carpet and look at the surprise we found underneath - the original hard wood floors!

Sewing area or living room?

This house has one full bathroom and one half.  So far, the full bathroom is the only one that has been worked on.  The walls were covered in green and black tile - sooo not my taste - we ripped them out.

The closet to one of the bedrooms was on the same wall as part of the bathroom. We ripped out the closet to make the bathroom slightly bigger.

One of the reasons why I decided to move over here is sitting there on the left hand side - I love that oven!  LOTS more counter space than my current kitchen.  Right now our little microwave and my coffee pot take up all of my kitchen counter.

Laundry room/mud room - would like to replace the floor.  If I can squeeze a stool or bench in here somewhere, I am.  Our current laundry room/mud room is a little small so muddy boots end up walking through the house instead of being taken off (not a happy camper with this, particularly right after I have mopped the floors!)

The below shot is looking from the sewing room/living room (first picture) - I haven't decided which side will be which yet.  It's really one extremely large room with that arch way separating them.

Back yard.  More work to be done here as well.  Can't you just see summer parties out here?  I want to string some garden lights and add one/two more tables and more seating areas. 

There are more rooms to explore which I will post in part 2 - along with what little progress we have been making!

Settling Down...For Now

Well, we survived!  The past week was hectic and fun all at the same time. 

Our cousin, Rudy, flew in on Tuesday for a couple of weeks to work out here on the ranch.  Meanwhile we had 7 inches of snow and lost power.

My garden

Thursday we had Logan's preschool out here for their annual field trip.  I made treats for the class again.  This time they were hay bails.  My plan was to tie licorice around to look like bailing twine, but it didn't quite work out as planned.  (I'll have more on the field trip in another post.)

Parent/Teacher conference on Friday.  Then it was off to one of Logan's classmates houses on Saturday to dye Easter eggs. 

Easter Sunday was nice and relaxing.  Rudy and I went horseback riding together, I got a few more granny square blocks done and replaced a zipper on one of Rudy's pants (my first time replacing a zipper.) 

Today it is back to our usual daily grind.  How was everyone elses weeks?

What's On My Mind

With Spring right around the corner, my thoughts are filled with an abundance of vegetables, herbs, and flowers. 

I went through my box of seeds...

And made an inventory on what I currently have.  I tried to break my inventory down in sections of vegetables, herbs, and flowers in alphabetical order.

Then I made another list of what I didn't have in my inventory but would like to grow; purchased my seeds.

I would LOVE to do a cutting garden this year.

   

Each morning I test the ground - is it ready to be worked yet?    Unfortunately, here in New Mexico we still have temperatures in the teens.  But once the temperatures begin to rise and that warm desert sun starts hitting, it won't be long.  Meanwhile, I'll keep dreaming. 

Victory Gardens

Perhaps it is the anticipation of my own garden, but I have been fascinated with garden history lately.

Victory Gardens (or War Gardens) were first brought about during World War I where food shortages and the fear of escalating food prices brought people of all statures to come together and plant gardens.  During this time the efforts were so successful that the National War Garden Community estimated a produced crop valued at over $350 million.  And all of this was grown in back yards and vacant lots!

The second time communities came together and planted Victory Gardens was in the 1940's during World War II.  Because of transportation and labor shortages, people were again encouraged to plant gardens in the name of patriotism.  Anything to help the war effort.
                                                              
Inspired by these stories - and tired of eating the same old stuff - I went in search of a cookbook with recipes focusing on the produce derived from the Victory Gardens.  Lo and behold, I found "The Victory Garden Cookbook" by Marian Morash.  A book filled with over 800 recipes, tips on how to grow that particular vegetable in your own garden, and picking the vegetable out at the market (in case you don't want to grow that vegetable.) 

As soon as the book arrived in the mail, I curled up on the couch and went through it page by page.  Each recipe I would say, "ooohhhh I'm going to make this" or "yum, this sounds good!"

From stuffed cabbage to pumpkin cranberry cookies, I drooled over each recipe.  Making menus of the recipes I find to serve.

So this weekend, I will venture out to the grocery store and purchase some items for our Victory Garden dinners (it's still too soon to plant my garden here, but I am looking forward to trying these recipes from freshly picked vegetables in the garden -- -- Hurry up Spring!!)

Here is one website I read if you are interested in reading more about Victory Gardens.  And here is another that has the history of farming from the 1920's to today.

Seeds Have Arrived

I was so excited to see the yellow padded envelope in my mailbox that I literally leapt for joy, clapping my hands!  In previous years, I haven't had much luck with my garden, but this year I'm starting a little earlier and changing things around (as you know from this blog posting.) 

What is awesome about these seeds though, is that they are heirloom seeds, they each have their own little history.  My very dear friend told me about Baker Creek Heriloom Seeds.  As soon as I received their seed catalog, I spent a good week, in every spare moment, pouring over the pages.  Reading where a tomato originated from or who grew it in his garden. 

Reading the history of the seeds alone is something.  For example: Love-In-The-Mist (top right hand corner of the picture) dates back to English gardens of the 1570's.  Knowing that I will be adding this tiny, delicate seed, who has been cultivated  with much care over the years to my little garden in New Mexico is...well, it's just amazing.

And my little guy here has a 3 x 6 garden plot all to himself. I let him go through my seed stash and he picked out some of what he wanted to grow (yellow plum tomatoes, orange baby carrots, calendula, pumpkins, butternut squash...)

Logan tending the gardens at school

And when Aslyn gets a little older, she and Logan can share the 3 x 6 garden plot or each have their own if that's how they want it.    

I am so anxious to see little plants popping out of the soil.  Now, if only the weather would clear up...

Gardening

Back in my little two bedroom apartment in college, I got the garden bug and impatiently waited to move on to a place where I could have an abundant garden.  When we came here, I was so excited to see the little fenced in pen off our backyard.  A perfect spot, I thought to myself.  I contemplated putting chickens back there, but after discussing this with the manager we were told no chickens.  So a garden it was to become. 

However, life got in the way and my "dream" garden has still yet to be.  It also doesn't help that my mind thinks, "I don't know how long I'll be here.  As soon as I get the garden and yard perfect, we'll move on and all my hard work will be wasted.  Best wait until we move on."  But then I started thinking.  Why wait?  If I keep waiting I'll never have my garden (or yard.)

Anyway,  here is what my garden area looks like now:

Seed catalogs have started arriving in my mailbox, so again, the fever has hit me.  You see, in my mind I have it all pictured.  It's getting it out of my mind, designed and in the dirt where I am having issues.  So this morning, I turned a blind eye to the dishes in the sink, the laundry in the basket, and got online to do some research.  It turns out the garden in my mind is called a Potager garden - in French it simply means, "vegetable garden."  However, it's really a garden that combines vegetables, herbs and flowers all mixed in together.

I read articles on Potager gardening, looked at pictures and designs for inspiration; now - the tough part for me - getting my plans down on paper.  However, with the weather cold and the wind blowing; now is the perfect time to get this part done.

A few pictures of Potager gardens - - Enjoy!!