A fun BBQ!

Good afternoon everyone,

It has been raining off and on since Saturday. So far, we have had 2 3/4 inches of rain. It is wet here. We had a very good time at Carolyn and Bob's BBQ. They did a fabulous job on their new deck. I will share some pictures of it tomorrow. Today, it is the grandbabies. LOL But first....Bob really liked his GPS case and it just fit. I got the stains off of my iron. I made a paste out of baking soda and vinegar. I used a scrubby and put it on the cold iron. It took some work, but I got most of the ickiness off of it. The iron glides over the fabric like new, now. (grin)

Like I said, we had a good time. Cathryn and Jeremy were the only ones in our family that could make it, but most of Bob's family were able to come. I think we had about 30 people. Cathryn and Jeremy went by and picked up Izabella and Noah, since Hazel had to work. Wasn't that sweet of them? So we got to see all 4 of our grandbabies. (Big grin!)

This is Carolyn and Bob with their furbaby, Emma between them.

This is Jeremy.

Cathryn holding Izabella. Ashton lost his first top tooth on the first day of first grade. He is quite proud of it. LOL Noah had such a good time playing with his cousins. Ava was hard to get a picture of for some reason. Most of my pictures are of the top of her head. LOL Here she is hamming it up.

Izzie spent most of her time sitting on Aunt Cath's lap. She wasn't very happy to be away from her mama and daddy. Ashton and Noah playing in the sandbox before the rain began. The kids had lots of fun in the sandbox.
Noah and Ava. She is posing for me again. I think she is going to be a model. LOL

We had a wonderful time. I will share more pictures tomorrow. All of this rain has made it possible for me to get lots of quilting done. I am working on the binding of the Harbor Town quilt. I have also been quilting on the Disappearing Nine-Patch. I am making a block a day of the Flower Garden Quilt. Today I am on block #6. Then I have 6 more. The Double Delight is still sitting there waiting on me. I still plan to get it done, but I kind of have to force myself to do it. LOL

Well, I need to get my chores done before the rain comes back. Thank you for visiting. I hope you all have a good evening.

Happy Birthday Carolyn!

Good afternoon all,

Thirty one years ago today, I gave birth to our 1st daughter, Carolyn Ann. She is happily married to Bob and is an RN. We are so proud of her. She cooked for all of us yesterday, so I am going to show mainly pictures pertaining to her today. Tomorrow I will show our Easter egg hunt and so on. LOL Here she is taking pictures of the kids during the Easter egg hunt. She has the cookbook out trying to find something good to cook for us all.
Everything is under control. She fixed a delicious meal for us. We had fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, broccoli casserole, deviled eggs, pasta salad, and rolls with pineapple upside down cake for dessert. Cathryn brought macaroni and cheese and Hazel brought brownies and cupcakes. We had quite a feast. After dinner it was time for some rough housing. Ashton and Ava roughed their aunt up just a little. LOL Yep, Ashton and Ava are winning. LOLThis is Carolyn after the little wrestling match. She is a good aunt!Here is one of Carolyn's 'babies'. Her name is Emma and she is an English Mastiff. She can just walk up and lay her head on the table. Big dog! They also have another Mastiff named Brody, but he doesn't care for noise, so stays in the bedroom when we all visit. LOL Oh, I mustn't forget Mayleen. She is a very plump Pug who is about 10 years old yet is the boss of the place. LOL I didn't get any pictures of Brody or any good ones of Mayleen, but here is Emma. You can kind of see Mayleen in the background.Here is a picture of Carolyn, Bob, (her husband), Ashton and Emma. Ashton could ride her. LOL Carolyn loves crocheting like I love quilting. She is a prolific crocheter. She even crocheted most of the curtains in her home, but I forgot to get pictures of them. Here is a picture of their guest room. She made the spread, dolls, and the pillow cover. She does a beautiful job! Isn't this beautiful? Carolyn, I know you had to work today, but I hope you have a wonderful evening. Thank you so much, to you and Bob, for opening up your home to our crew and cooking for all of us. It was delicious! You know your dad and I love you, honey. Tomorrow I will show pictures of the gandkids. Everyone have a great day. Thank you for visiting and please come again.

It has been a week!

Good afternoon,

Sorry that I just disappeared like that. Spring has arrived and I have been busy. (grin) Not sure what happened last week to prevent me from posting. Fridays through Mondays are my busiest days around here. I spend Fridays getting ready for the weekend. The weekends are spent with my dh. Mondays are spent cleaning up all the messes we made on the weekend. LOL We both got our eyes checked last Saturday and will both be getting new glasses. Wow! That was expensive. Since I am diabetic, I had to have my eyes dialated. I hate that, but it is necessary. I was so relieved when she told me I had no problems. I will be getting transition lenses since I have dry eye and the sun kills me. After our eye exams, we had to get groceries for my MIL. Dh was driving. I had to wear these lovely things.

Aren't they stylish? LOL They also hurt my ears, but I had to wear them for a couple of hours because the sun was so bright and it was giving me a headache. Believe me, I tried just wearing sunglasses, but these wrapped around so the sun didn't get in the sides. So I had to wear this fashion statement through Sam's, Aldis, and Wal Mart. I did take them off inside the stores, but did lots of squinting until I just gave up and put them back on. I am glad that chore is done for another year. Now I look forward to getting my new glasses. Kevin wanted to take a picture of me wearing these, but I wouldn't let him. (grin) Anyway, we dropped the groceries by my MIL's and I put things away for her. Kevin spent the rest of the day watching movies and I worked on my Peter Rabbit challenge by Milah. I now have my top all done, but you will have to wait till Easter to see it. LOL I might even have it quilted by then.

Sunday was spent doing some laundry and maintenance on the vehicles. Our daughter, Carolyn and her husband Bob came by for a visit. We always love seeing any of the kids. I forgot to get my camera out. I need to get used to carrying the camera so I can become a good blogger. LOL Anyway, here is a picture of Carolyn from last summer. Here is Bob, also last summer. We hadn't seen them since Christmas, so it was good to see them.

I think I promised about a week ago to show you some change purses I have made. I found a tutorial for making them here. These are the first 3 I made. I called them change purses, then a friend told me she uses hers for a verse keeper. She cuts 3X5 cards down to fit in them and writes Bible verses that she is memorizing on them. She can then carry the verses around in her 'keeper'. I thought that was a neat idea. Here is the inside of the chicken change purses/verse keepers. The inside of the pumpkin purse/keeper. I made these one day last week.
I opened them up so you could see the lining.
Guess what I did yesterday? Give up? LOL It was such a gorgeous day with a nice wind. I stripped the bed and washed everything, even the comforter. I hung all this outside. They smell so good when you can hang them on the line. Yesterday afternoon when I made the bed up, I decided it is getting too warm to keep the comforter on the bed. So I folded it up and put my Thimbleberries Village quilt on the bed. So for the first time ever, we slept under a quilt that I had made. Ahhh, it felt good. I told Kevin there was no point in making quilts and just saving them. What am I saving them for? LOL This is the first big quilt that I made. I have made lap and twin size before, but this one was huge compared to them. Of course, the cats approve. They are both laying on it right now. Aeris was on it when I took the picture. Callie soon joined her. Doesn't it look good on the bed? Something very satisfying, sleeping under a quilt that you made and hand quilted yourself. (grin)

We get groceries every other Saturday. This Saturday is the week to get them. I am making my list. I have an idea. My husband loves ketchup. We cannot find any around here that does not contain high fructose corn syrup. In my opinion, that stuff is slowly killing us. It is so hard to buy groceries any more. I have to constantly read labels. I just put it back on the shelf if it has that nasty stuff in it. We are trying to eat more natural. Anyway, I can buy a gallon of tomato sauce at Sam's without any of the nasty stuff in it. Do you think it would work to use the sauce and add the spices and honey to make some ketchup for us? I don't eat much of it, but Kevin really likes it. If I just make up a gallon at a time, I should be able to keep it in the fridge. I am sure K can eat that much before it would go bad. LOL Actually I wouldn't even mind adding sugar to it instead of honey if the honey makes it taste too strong. We do like barbeque sauce made with honey, so I figured the ketchup wouldn't be bad with it. It would definitely cost more than buying it already made, but we would avoid the nasty stuff. I hope to have a good garden this year, so I can make and can my own ketchup, tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, salsa, and even pizza sauce. As you can see, we love tomato products. LOL I would love to have your opinions on this. I will probably try it. If so, I'll let you know how it turns out. We are trying to cut out 3 nasties from our diets. They are high fructose corn syrup, of course, monosodium glutamate, and partially hydrogenated oils. (Not real sure about all the spellings here, but I am sure you all know what I mean.) These 3 things are just not necessary in our diets.

Tonight is Biggest Loser, so you know where I will be. Planted in my rocker, watching tv, with a quilt on my lap. LOL I may not get a chance to post tomorrow. My MIL has asked me to come up and help her some tomorrow. She is in a power chair and finding it harder and harder to get things done, so I offered to come help her. I was surprised when she called me last night and told me she wanted to take me up on my offer. She has always helped everyone else out, but it is hard for her to sit back and let us help her now. I told her it was her season to take it easy and let us help. Anyway, not sure how long I will be there. Now I need to go make some laundry soap for MIL. I made some up a while ago and took it to her. She loved it and had me get the stuff to make her some, but she just isn't strong enough anymore to grate the soap. So I will do that in a bit so I can take it with me. I also offered to do her washing. As I said, she always was there to help me each and every time I had a baby. It is my turn to repay her for all of her help. She also taught me how to sew, crochet, cook, and can. She just lives 3 miles up the road from us, so I can help her alot if she will let me. She will be 80 on her birthday and is now very feeble. I am glad to help her.

Everyone have a great day. Thanks for visiting and please come again.