Didn't realize it had been so long . . . don't know how in the world time sneaks away like it does! Man, it flies whether you're having fun or not, doncha think?

Let's see - we had the RCA (Riverside Christian Academy) retreat for teachers, staff and Board members, which made it extra special for us - Beth's been teaching there, Evan is teaching there this year (band) and I'm on the Board. We had a great time at Joe Wheeler State Park in north Alabama, which is right on a big TVA lake. This week we had orientation and got to see all the returning students and new students - more excitement.

At work we've survived another end-of-month and the leaving of one of the doctors (she's pregnant again and wanted to move closer to grandparents) and various folks being out with surgery or illness on top of the folks out for vacation.

At home we're working out different schedules and enjoying the pool in the evenings as we can, and - drum roll, please - I have a new sewing machine!!! The Janome 6500! Wasn't what I had in mind but what I got - I'm so excited! And hope to get to learn a little about how to use it this weekend. I've never had a good sewing machine before. After I sew on a few scraps, I hope to do the machine part of putting the binding on this quilt of Beth's.

And more excitement coming up! This is the last year for the big AQS Quilt Expo in Nashville, and we're going! Beth's taking a day off from school on the Friday. She and I will go up and drool on the fabulous quilts and the vendors' wares all day, the boys (Evan and Joshua) will come up Friday night after work and we'll all eat together and stay overnight. Then on Saturday morning, she and I are taking a hand quilting class from Joe Cunningham, buddy of Gwen Marston!!

Gratitudes: all the undeserved blessings we enjoy, surviving difficult situations, being part of the exciting venture of our fledgling Christian school

Weather, weather, weather!! Sooo many difficulties brought on by weather! And yet - we're nowhere near the slaves to weather that those who came before us were. We've just become so accustomed to air conditioning both in our houses and vehicles. Running hot and cold water everywhere. Light at the flick of a switch. The ability to cook at a moment's notice.

I managed to come by a bushel of green beans -for which I was very thankful as we have no garden this year. Beth and I planned to spend Saturday in the pool breaking beans on that oh-so-conveniently-placed concrete surround. We were interrupted 3 times by thunder and rain . . . retired to the porch each time till the sun was shining strongly again.....we finally finished on the porch! Our power was out for over an hour at one point. After power returned I decided to work on a couple of powepoint slideshows for church Sunday morning - one with songs so we could stand and sing with the use of the songbook purely optional and one with welcome and announcements and suchlike to just loop around continuously as folks were coming in. Sounded good except for the power outages that managed to come every time just as I'd added something really good and had truly had no chance to SAVE!!! This went on for a while but I got something usable and decided to quit! and then power was once again gone for good. Or at least for a while. I managed to shower and wash my hair and even shave my legs almost completely blind. Since I'm mostly blind in the shower anyway, I actually managed to get through this without doing myself mortal harm with the razor! There was no unending stream of blood going down the drain or anything dreadful like that.

By the time the power came back it was after 8:30 - toooooo late for me to contemplate starting the canning process.

So canning had to wait until after church Sunday. Even with a few rough spots along the way, I managed to get 19 quarts canned using the pressure canning method, not the water bath. (We only do tomatoes with the water bath method.) And green beans are the only motivation for me to do the whole pressure canning thing. I cooked at least 4 quarts to divide with Beth and Joshua before starting the canning. Finished around 8:30-9:00 last night. pooooooped! On the right is Evan's mother's old canning book put out by the Kerr company. The price was $1.00.

It is well-worn, used and loved. Lots of handwritten notes, extra recipes from family friends, etc.

Mrs. Grace Buntley was a neighbor down the road...we knew her and her daughter who was close in age to Evan's parents and her granddaughter (and husband and family) is a good friend of ours (and a contemporary - she's in that magic period after 50)

Didn't get laundry done, didn't get dusting or vacuuming done....didn't get anything done but beans. Oh - and haven't mentioned the additional 4 dozen ears of corn we froze on top of the 3 dozen I froze last week after eating over 2 dozen!!! - but we're taking the lazy route recommended to us by some folks who can be trusted of freezing it in the husk (yes, you heard right - no blanching, etc.) and then just taking out what is wanted and shucking and cooking just before eating.

Next year we WILL have a garden again somehow!!!

While I was timing the cooking of beans and the pressure canner and such I managed to get the most recent round of postcards fused to the stiff backing but did not have time for the quilting because I had to wet them and let them dry to make sure none of the blue marker lines remained. I did get pieces for the back cut out, though.

Inch by inch, as Pete Seeger used to sing.

Have a great week!
<

One of those seasonal pop-up thunderstorms forced me out of the water yesterday, so I finished sewing my Wee Play charm squares to the white squares! (and what possessed me to put them on the table with the white tablecloth for the picture??!!) Then I cut them apart and pressed them open. (still have the bunny ears to get rid of, though) The more I look at these fabrics, the more I like them. Can't remotely decide which to get for border/binding! Seemed like whichever one I was pressing would be the best one . . .

These are postcards-in-the-making. (is it obvious I'm still on my turquoise/red jag?) I finished all I had in my little project sack upstairs, and now it's time to trim them and finish them up and get them in the mail. I have managed to trace some new ones in spite of last week's fiasco, so there are more to take upstairs for my evening handwork.

Beth is progressing nicely on her new quilt, and when she brings it out here next, I'll try to get a picture of it. She took it to Mississippi when she and Joshua went down to visit his folks for a couple of days and in spite of his mother having been a home ec major, Beth had to explain the quilting in the ditch. They thought she was sewing the pieces of fabric together even though it looked like they were already sewn together. tsk tsk task Guess no quilters in their circle of family and friends, huh?

Our 4th was great, as usual. Lots of good food and good fellowship and then great fireworks! We are so blessed to live in this place.

Yesterday I heard the katydids for the first time, and they make me a little bit sad because they always make me realize our summer is running down.

Gratitudes:

• my sweet family
• my ladies' Sunday School class
• the glories of this earth

Oh, No!

What a dope! The last post should be removed from blog history. So dumb.

Quick...let me show you something better...Beth's first quilt...ALL hand-done from piecing to quilting to binding, etc.....she picked 2 fusion fabrics we already had for the body and then just some leftover yardage from I-don't-remember-what for the border and binding...just to have something to work with...this is a whole "learning experience" and all that jazz....quilted with dark thread and used a muslin backing for economical reasons and then realized the dark quilting didn't look so hot on the back...ah, well....a learning experience is how she termed the whole thing.

Some good fabrics I got on sale to use in a quilt from MaryQuilts, which has some great free patterns. Boxed Squares is what I want to do with these 30's prints. I'm hoping to have time this weekend to get the fabric cut. Or at least to get started on cutting it.

We've got a big 4th at the home of some friends who live down the road and who have been doing fantastic, unbelievable 4th celebrations for over 20 years now. Everybody brings food and they take care of barbecue and hamburgers and hotdogs and there are lots of folks and lots of food and LOTS of good times! Started with the dad and his sons doing the fireworks and then moved to the sons and now a grandson or two is involved....really neat....and the fireworks rival that of most towns!! And we're just out in the country having a good time!!

Everybody be safe over the holiday. And enjoy spending time with family and friends.

It was a good thought . . . :-)

I was doing something productive while enjoying the sun and water...tracing words and pictures on pieces of fabric on their way to becoming postcards. I was standing in the pool and using the surrounding conrete as my worktable, something that Beth and I frequently do. Well, truthfully it's a resting place for books for reading with your top half nice and dry and your bottom half comfortably in the lovely water more often than it's a worktable, but . . . anyway, I was working away when the rather brisk wind blew my first drawn-upon-with-water-soluble-marker fabric into the water along with several sheets of paper which had the various texts and drawings on them. AAAACK!!!!!! When was the last time you tried to hurry in 4 feet of water? Grab the fabric here...."dash" to grab that paper there...."dash" in the oppposite direction to grab another paper....several more "dashes" and then I saw the little blue pen floating merrily away - it was down in the deep end near the ladder. After rescuing everything and laying each sheet out flat to dry on the hot concrete including the now blank piece of fabric, I resumed my labors with another piece of fabric from my plastic Wal-Mart sack and a different page of text that had been safely residing under said plastic sack. Whooosh!! There everything went again. And went in as many directions as there were flying pages. I had thought the wetness of each sheet would safely keep it nice and flat on the concrete. That proved to be a completely incorrect thought. And not the only incorrect thought, either. Such as the one that lead me to watch over the sheets as they dried until the wind completely died down before again resuming my labors. The wind stopped. I started again. Whooosh! Another gust of wind sent the almost dry pages flying over the water only to drop them midflight. In my ridiculous optimism, this scenario was repeated in about 5 slightly different formats. But, guess what - I had taken the camera out there with me, so I was able to record some of the results of my folly.

However, I did get a few other pictures that might be of interest....they are taken from down inside the pool looking up in different directions - fortunately all have trees, even the side toward the barn.
east and then south


west is a large red maple and northwest is another one...and you can see a bluebird house on the outside of the fence

It's hot. No, make that HOT. And sticky. The humidity is so high you feel like gills would help the breathing process. When you start sweating - oops, no, that's glistening - at 6:00 a.m. while watering flowers, you know it's full-blown summer. Not that I was watering at that time this morning - it's Saturday! (but I have been doing that) This morning I mixed up a little plant food at half strength and poured it in some potted plants. I'm always so afraid of burning them. I even put a tiny bit in the geranium-from-2-years-ago where little mama wren has her nest with 5 eggs. I really appreciate her MO this time, because - wonder of wonders - she built the nest facing out so you don't have to be a contortionist to see inside it. You don't even have to bend over unless you just want to get really close.

I haven't done anything on the quilt front except help Beth, who's now at the quilting stage of her newest venture. This time it's a lap quilt she's doing, and she machine-pieced it. She and Joshua are going to Mississippi for a long weekend to visit his family since he doesn't have to work next week, and she wanted to have the quilt to work on while down there. I can't wait to see what she's done by the time she gets back Tuesday!

There are several folks I really need to get embroidered/quilted postcards done for, so I have one started that I can work on in the evenings when we're piled up on the bed watching tv and on my today's list is tracing off several more. That's the part I don't care for, because it's so tedious to trace words. I think I may prowl around at dafont.com to see if I can find something a little easier than the ones I've been using. That's a really cool site if you like playing with fonts and dingbats and suchlike.

I tried a site linked from Feelin' Stitchy where you can print text of your choosing for cross stitch (wish I'd had it back when I did a lot of that!!!) or backstitch. There's only one for backstitch, and because it's still done with cross stitch type fabric in mind, it didn't give me the effect I wanted when using it one of my postcards. My trial with it is the one I'm currently working on, and I'll finish it, but don't think I'll do any more with that font. If you do cross stitch, you really might want to check it out - here's the place for charting text.

Tagged! ?

I've read all sorts of interesting things as folks have participated in various memes (how is that pronounced, I wonder?) and now Caroline actually tagged me! Of course, it's taken me a week to get to it, but . . . that's kind of how things go sometimes. And probably my answers could be helpful to anyone suffering from insomnia . . .
What was I doing 10 years ago?
Specifically for June, I was canning green beans from the garden and counting the days till I could pick that first wonderful cucumber! I was working at the same doctors' office where I work now, although then I was Office Manager and now I'm Administrator. Daughter was in college 85 miles (hour and a half) away in Nashville. Hubby was working long hours 6 days a week as a utility contractor. (this year we're hoping he'll make the transition back to teaching and be able to start a band program at our Christian school)
What 5 things are on my to-do list for today? (no particular order)
Only 5??? Teehee - I love lists and making lists and few lists have only 5 items. However, the reality is that most lists have served their purpose simply by being made. Where does it say you're supposed to DO what's on a list?
1. Cook the fresh beans bought at the local farmers' market yesterday since we have no garden this year
2. Mow the yard before it gets too hot (no riding mowers here)
3. Do lots of laundry
4. Do something quilty - hmmmmm, cut more squares for the quilt patis or iron and cut strips of the lovely 30's fabric I got yesterday at the LQS sale?
5. Work on lesson and find a great handout for tomorrow's ladies' Sunday School class that I teach
6. Think of some cool something to do for dear sister-in-law's birthday coming up July 1st as she's been down in the dumps lately
Yes, I know that's more than 5, but I'm reminding myself that I really want to find that just-right something to do for Donna!
Snacks I enjoy:
Crunchy, munchy stuff - more toward the salty side than the sweet and NOT chocolate
Things I would do if a billionaire:
Definitely quit work to have more time for gardening and quilting and crafting and volunteering at school. Buy all the big instruments that schools have to provide for a band and start a music library for our Christian school. Build a separate building for the preschool program to give more space for the K-12 kids in the existing building and then add several other buildings like a separate chapel and theatre, a restaurant/meeting facility overlooking the river that winds along one side of the property, a camp in the wooded part of the property for us to use and to let other church groups use and so on and so on. Buy a farm and build a house for Beth and Joshua. (Not too far from our farm)
Places I have lived:
I have always lived in Tennessee. Grew up in the eastern part,in a beautiful valley in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, and now live in the southern middle part, in rolling farmland. It is very beautiful in this rural area, but I confess I still miss having the mountains all around me.

This is all still pretty new for me and I know some folks definitely do not like to be tagged, so how about this - if you think this would be fun, consider yourself tagged! If not, just ignore it.

The blog world really is a great place to get to know some neat folks you couldn't meet any other way.

Have a quilty day, everyone! Or at least a good day!

and yes, that's a bulb on a string of Christmas lights beside the fuschia in the hanging pot in the picture - I leave them strung on the porch, unlit, because all the birds love to perch on them in between visiting the feeders or flowers. Both Evan and Beth think they should come down, but I like to help the birdies!