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. :-)