Happy Birthday to my Baby Brothers

My baby brothers turned 25 today. I call them my baby brothers because I am 10 years their senior. You can tell by the looks of them that are not babys at all. :-) That's Justin on the left in the plaid shirt and Jason on the right in the yellow. If you look real hard, they really do look different. :-)

Happy Birthday guys!!

Sew Crafty Friday

For this week's Sew Crafty Friday I am linking to a post about my Christmas Bags. I also went to Snapfish and made a book for my grandmother that included several of the pictures that I took during the Thanksgiving holiday. I guess that would count as digital scrapbooking. :-) She absolutely LOVED it. The book was about 22 pages and it cost me $35 including shipping. Not too shabby especially considering the fact that the book was bound in leather.

For more neat projects and ideas, check out Shereen's blog. Happy Crafting!

Christmas Bags

I was reading a post over at Mama's Song of how she makes these Camel Packs for her children in lieu of Christmas Stockings. Before reading the story, I had already decided to not put up Christmas Stockings, but I wasn't sure what I was going to do instead. I was so moved by her story and the bags she was making for her kids that I shut my computer down and went to Walmart to buy supplies.

Now that sounds really great doesn't it? Except I had no idea what I was doing or what I was in for. I did not have a pattern. All I had was the picture of her bag. So I opened the simplicity catalog and looked and looked until I found something close. You never can tell by the pictures how big these things will turn out.

I picked some fabric and off I was to begin on the bags. Did I mention that I had no idea what I was doing? At any rate, I got my sewing machine out and took out the pattern and read and suddenly I seemed WAY in over my head. I called my Mom to tell her what I was doing and she was so excited that I had to sit down and figure it out. These are the times that I miss having my Mom live near me. She could have just come over and helped me. I could have cut the pattern out and she could have done the sewing. Sounds like a plan to me. But since I was on my own, I just had to learn by trial and error, which is fine as long as you are not starting the project two days before Christmas. :-)

I wound up sewing my son's bag twice because for some reason in all my years of elementary, middle, and high school, plus 5 years of schooling to be a chemical engineer, I didn't seem to master the concept of front and back. In the land of sewing reading REALLY is fundamental!

He was so disappointed because on the first bag I had this really nice animal print, but when I went back to the store to get more fabric so I could start over of course it was gone. I was able to get some nice car fabric, but the colors were not nearly as nice as the first print.

So here is how they turned out. Not too bad for a novice. :-)

Here is Jasmine's bag:
This is the inside of Jasmine's bag:This is the back pocket:And Christopher's bag:

I filled each bag with little gifts including books, hot wheel cars, silly putty, jacks, balls, etc. Then before I went to bed on Christmas Even, I hung them on their chair at the dining room table. They absolutely LOVED them!

Baking Christmas Cookies

The kids and I decided that we would make Peanut Butter Carob Chip Cookies. We had a blast. Christopher wanted to be in charge of the flour sifter. I guess he thought it was a pretty cool gadget. We all enjoyed wearing our new aprons and Voila! No messy clothes. :-)

Fender Bender

Friday afternoon I went out to buy some last minute gifts. I needed to get a sewing box to hold all the sewing supplies I bought for my daughter. First I went to Hobby Lobby. They did not have even one box to choose from. I guess sewing boxes are a popular Christmas box. I bought all the supplies from Walmart so I had already checked there. I thought that I may as well head to the nearest Joann's Fabric store, but of course I'm not really sure where the nearest one is so I call my girlfriend and have her look it up. Isn't the internet a wonderful thing?
I'm traveling along Interstate 35. I get off onto the access road. I'm slowing down to make a right hand turn and looking to my left for oncoming traffic, when BOOM and F-150 truck slams right into the back of my Honda Accord. My head, My head is all I can say as my head is aching terribly. I motioned the driver to pull over into the Garden Ridge parking lot and get out of the way of more traffic.

I called 911 and request a police officer to the scene. I was pleasantly surprised that it only took him about 15 minutes to show up. While I waited for the police officer, the lady that hit me kept insisting that I give her my personal information and my insurance information. "Ma'am if you don't mind, I'd like to wait for the police to get here and let him do his job." She went on and on about how they probably won't give her my information and how if they do they will make her pay for it. Ummm, never heard of that but OK if hey don't give it to you, I'll be more than happy to exchange the information then.


The damage to my car was not too bad. The back end of my car was shifted forward and so they will have to replace the back bumper and possible the side panel. My trunk won't close. The lady that hit me was kind enough to give me a bungee cord to keep it closed. After the accident I had to go home and drop off all the presents I had in the trunk so they wouldn't get stolen and every time I go over a speed bump or a railroad track my trunk sounds like it's going to disconnect from my car. LOL.

I went in this morning to get an estimate done and they say it looks like $2,000 worth of damage. Praise the Lord for car insurance! The lady's insurance is taking care of everything. I can expect all of the repairs to take about 9 days. So we'll be riding around town courtesy of Enterprise Rent-a-Car in the meantime.

I guess this would be a good time to get my front windshield (that has about 3 cracks in it) replaced. :-)

Our Christmas Tree

We finally bought our Christmas tree on Monday. It was my intent to have it no later than the week after Thanksgiving. Better late than never? At any rate, the children went with my husband to pick one out. I love having a real tree. I just can't bring myself to purchasing an artificial one.

I went to the garage to get out the Christmas decorations that I thought I had. Instead I found a door wreath that I have no recollection of ever buying. First project of the new year-Clean out the garage!

So I had to go to Walmart to get some new decorations. Now it was my intent to decorate the tree this afternoon, but then my husband decided to take my car in to work. Of course all the new decoration are, you guessed it, in my trunk. So we will be decorating the tree this evening.
I wanted to decorate the tree in red and silver, but I found a really nice gold tree skirt that kind of messes up the whole red/silver theme. What was really nice is that in that box where I found the wreath, there was also a nice gold angel tree topper. It was in an Avon box and I don't buy Avon so I'm not really sure where it came from. My Stepmother sells Avon so maybe she gave it to me. I feel like I am missing some years of time in my brain. :)

The kids made a several ornaments this year and have already picked a place for each one on the tree.

The hexagon ornament was made at the library with the homeschool group. Each child had a wonderful time making it.The last ornament adorned a present that was given to me for helping out with Children's Church. It was attached to the bag and added a very nice touch.

Update on Jasmine's Sewing Lessons

Jasmine is continuing to work on sewing on the straight lines. Today she was very nervous when she started the lesson, but as the lesson went on she loosened up a bit. You can see the vast difference in the lines that she sewed when she was much more calm!

Local Geography Bee

This Friday our homeschool held a Geography Bee at our local library. Before the announcement of this bee, I never knew there was even such a thing as a geography bee. Evidently, the National Geography is a big deal as it is sponsored by National Geographic and hosted by Alex Trebec. Who knew??

Well so went the call from the Mom who was in charge of our local bee. My daughter, who decided that geography is not her strong point, decided that she did not want to be involved in the bee. I volunteered to help out by being a score keeper and I figured helping out would be a good way to show my support and see what this thing is all about.

The weather that morning was horrible(rainy and cold). The Mom in charge told me that it was not too late for Jasmine to enter and so I called her over to see. Of course she was not. Later on as the contestants started to arrive, I asked her again and told her that I thought it would be a good experience for her. I assured her that she would do well and let her know that it was perfectly OK if she didn't.

Well wouldn't you know it. Not only did she sign up, she won 3rd place! The questions were NOT easy. The first couple of rounds were not so bad as all the answers were multiple choice, but then it got harder and harder.

I was so proud of all of the kids that participated. They all knew their continents and you could even tell by the answers that they gave that they were familiar with a lot of the countries in those continents. Even when they gave wrong answers, they were not usually very far off.

Ebay-My new found love

I had breakfast recently with a friend who is seriously addicted to ebay. I have heard of ebay and I have even visited the website and looked for items, but I had never purchased anything-that is, until recently.

Now I am a mad woman! Since Thursday I have purchased 3 items. The next item that I will look for is a popcorn popper. My son is allergic to milk and we used to buy the Natural Orville Redenbacher Popcorn, but for some reason Walmart is no longer selling it.

So instead I bought some popcorn kernels. I guess I could just pop them in a pot, but I think it would be much more exciting to get a popper or at least to see if I can find one for a great price.

My New Apron

I made two sweet potato pies for my girlfriend Orlando for Thanksgiving. I did not have an apon and made such a huge mess on my clothes. It was really pathetic. I plan on doing more baking for Christmas and decided that I desparately need an apron.

I visited Shereen's blog and saw that she had made an apron for someone else and decided to place an order. My apron came today and I absolutely LOVE it! I got a matching apron for my daughter and she loves hers just as much.

So if you need an apron visit Shereen's store Cloth and More.

Thanks Shereen!!

Menu Plan Monday~Dec. 10th

Sunday-Haystacks

Monday-Stirfry and Rice

Tuesday-Leftovers

Wednesday- Pigs in a Blanket, Mixed Vegetables, Salad

Thursday-Black Beans & Rice, Cornbread, Salad

Friday-Pizza, Pasta, Salad

Not sure what's for dinner this week? Visit Laura for more ideas.

Scripture Memorization Box

I was reading a post on Shereen's blog about scripture memorization. We use the same box from the Charlotte Mason Scripture Memorization method. We started the box a while ago and then kind of fell off the wagon and have recently started it up again. I amazed at how excited the kids are to use it and how well they remember the scriptures.

We use a 3x5 card box that I ordered from Office Depot. The instructions for how to compile the box can be found here.

Today we are working on:

Daily: Psalm 19:14

Even: John 3:16

Tuesday: No scripture here yet

4th: No scripture here yet.

As we continue to add scriptures, there we be at least one scripture behind each day and we will learn/review 4 scriptures everyday. This is one of the best methods that I have seen so far for learning scripture because it incorporates review everyday.

Jasmine's First Sewing Session

We had our first sewing session yesterday. We learned all the parts of the sewing machine. And basic sewing tools.

First I took the needle out and she practiced pushing the pedal. Once she got the hang of that, her first assignment was to sew straight lines on a piece of paper. We started out with white thread because it was already in the machine. It was hard to see with the white thread on the white paper so I chose red thread so she could see what she was doing.

She didn't do so badly the first few times. Then all of a sudden she had a hard time following the lines and was very quicly discouraged. We stopped and I prayed that she would be more patient. I explained to her that if sewing was that easy we wouldn't need to practice before she got started on her first real project. She agreed and immediately her disposition changed.

She did not finish all the lines on the page. She said she was ready for a "break", which means she had enough for one day. :-)

We will finish the lines in the next session.

Psalms Sunday-Psalm 56

Psalm 56

1Be merciful unto me, O God: for man would swallow me up; he fighting daily oppresseth me.
2Mine enemies would daily swallow me up: for they be many that fight against me, O thou most High.
3What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee.
4In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me.
5Every day they wrest my words: all their thoughts are against me for evil.
6They gather themselves together, they hide themselves, they mark my steps, when they wait for my soul.
7Shall they escape by iniquity? in thine anger cast down the people, O God.
8Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?
9When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know; for God is for me.
10In God will I praise his word: in the LORD will I praise his word.
11In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.
12Thy vows are upon me, O God: I will render praises unto thee.
13For thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living?

Have mercy on me Lord because every day there seems to be something new to deal with-some new drama, some new accusation of how holy, or unholy, my life is(vs 1). Why is someone always twisting my words(vs 5)? It's like they are just waiting for me to do or say something wrong (vs 6) Lord I know that if it wasn't for you, my enemies would certainly get the best of me(vs 2) and I must admit that sometimes they even bring me to tears (vs 8). But, I don't have to fight back. All I have to do is praise Your name!! And that is not hard because you are definitely worthy of the praise! (vs 10). Lord you have promised that you will never leave or forsake me. So many times I should have been dead and you have delivered me, I know that you will keep me from falling so that I may be able to walk and be a light in this dark world.

For more on Psalms Sunday visit Butterfly Kisses.