weddings and graduations

I couldn't be more proud of my oldest 2 granddaughters. One got married this past September and didn't have a chance to get a  photo until lately. Here she is with her brother and sister. 

She and her husband were supposed to move back closer to us but he got transferred to SanDiego instead.

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Nicki who still lives with her mom and dad graduated from college this past Friday. She got a triple degree so took her longer than most to finish. Now we are praying she gets a good job in one of her fields. Here she is with her mom and dad. Jackie is her sweet mom and my daughter-in-love...

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Nicki is also getting married sometime next year but she and her boyfriend of 8 years are keeping it a secret of "when." Here is their engagement photo.

Her boyfriend Kolin graduated last May and has been working for Corp of Engineers for 3 years now. Thankfully he is stationed locally and expect them both to remain here. They are both such home-bodies.

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Sonny had his 2nd knee replacement last Tuesday December 11. He came home Thursday and he is really doing good. He did so amazingly well on first knee and looks like he is doing even better with this one. 

Yesterday (Saturday) our water went out. Son who lives closest to us was hunting so I called Jackie who got in touch with him. Sonny did not want to bother him while hunting. But we did and before the son could make it to the house, Sonny had hobbled out to the pumphouse and worked on the pump. Didn't help much and then decided we needed new pump. But the hardware store near us was already closed. After the son arrived, they figured out it was the electric wiring overhead from the electrical box to the pumphouse. So they called a young man in our church who is an electrician but he sent his dad instead. His dad is our pastor. So they got the rewiring done by 7pm. Wire is still on the ground but will have to wait to be rehung when Sonny is up to it. Our son leaves for work again late Monday so won't be possible to get it done before then. He won't be home for 3 weeks. Of course all that moving around and being on his feet made Sonny really sore. He slept in this morning. 

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Pictures to share- Thanksgiving

My sister had major back surgery in October and was not going to be able to do much for several months. Our middle son was off working and wasn't home and our sweet daughter in law and 2 of the granddaughters took a trip out to San Diego with her mom for the week of Thanksgiving. We usually go meet with my sister and her family for Christmas but with Sonny having his other knee replacement on December 11, we knew we would not be able to go anywhere for Christmas. So I prepared Thanksgiving dinner and we took it over to my sister's house and spent the day with her, her husband and son and our youngest son Sean, DIL Carmen and DGD Molly. We had a wonderful time. Carmen had a timer to take a photo of all of us together. And the weather was gorgeous. 

And yes there was still a little fall color left in our area. Not so much now.

Here are a few more photos.

Me and my son Sean and Miss Molly and then Molly with my sister Susan. 

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Another thing I forgot to put up a while ago...we had another bear sighting. Now we think they have gone into hibernation as none has been seen in about a month. But this one was so funny and looked like he was posing. 

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They had to take down the feeders until the bears went to bed as they were tearing them up so bad. Speaking of feeders and deer...Sonny has had a wonderful hunt this year and tagged out. First time for him to ever do that. All the meat is in the freezer but still needs to be processed into hamburger and sausage and steaks. We did smoke some for Thanksgiving and it was wonderful. But he is thrilled over his head mounts. He does all his mounts the European method which is bare skull mounted on wood block. Most he hangs on our porch wall but these this year have gone up in our living room. 

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I finished all the books and decided they were a little too overstuffed so am taking some pages out and making a couple of extras as know they will make easy last minute gifts for Christmas. 

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Now I'm working on using up tee-shirt scraps...crocheting them into a bath rug. Also working on the wedding ring quilt top for my one granddaughter getting married next year and a baby quilt for another DGD due this spring. Photos will come later. 

Little book gifts

I finished all my little books for gifts and it amounted to a total of 19 completed books. I had finished 14 for the gifts and then made several more..2 Thanksgiving themed ones, 2 Christmas themed ones and another gift for a friend facing surgery. Making these books were a learning process for me. At first I tied the closing ribbon to the ribbon that held the books together and there is nothing wrong with that. But later I glued the ties into the inside covers and covered with paper to hide it. 

So here are my steps..(somewhat)

After painting the books with gesso, the red of the original books showed through but when painted over the gesso, it covered them fairly well. Then I decorated the covers. 

The top book shows how I tied the closing ribbon to the back ribbon. It is nice but not as finished looking as the other 2. I had a friend to visit me while working on the books and she gave me hints on how she wanted her book done. Hers is the one covered in lace. 

I had measured the books to cut the inside pages and only cut them 1/4inch smaller. Later as I progressed to more books, I cut them a half inch smaller and it made a big difference in closing the books. I used old wall paper scraps from some wall paper books from my teaching years and cut 10 for each book. I was planning on just using one page but the backs were ugly so in the process of adding pockets and hang tags they needed the backs covered. So I cut scrapbooking paper and some old handmade paper I did years ago along with old sheet music for the opposite sides. I used my sewing machine and sewed all the flaps, pockets and other scraps to the pages and the putting a page of the wallpaper and a page of scrap together with wrong sides together, I then sewed the 2 pages together. On the first book I accidentally sewed one page upside down so I scrapped it. When finished I had 10 pages. I folded each in half and then laid the cover on top of one and using a pen, I marked through the holes punched in the covers on one page and punched out the matching holes. I used this first page as a guide to punching out the rest. 

I used tip-ins or postcards, pictures on cardstock I had printed or just plain scrapbook cardstock for the tip-ins. I sewed these in on one side so they opened like book pages. It gave more space to add the stickers and other things I added later. 

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Later I will share some of the mistakes and some of the finished pages. If you are following along, and want to attempt doing one of these books here are some things you might need. 

I have an old version of Corel and can add lots of pictures to one jpg file so it made it less waste of paper. I also bought sticker paper on Amazon (cheapest place I found). Cardstock and any scrapbooking paper or just junk papers cut from magazines, sheet music and old books..just mainly junk paper. 

You will need scissors, embroidery thread or string and large eyed tapestry needles, ribbon, hole punch, glue, gel medium like Modge Podge, hot glue, scrapbooking 3-D things like tiny shaped brads, buttons and any thing small junk items you might want to use. I used old jewelry and beads as well. I also used bought tags and tags I cut out myself from cardstock. I have a sizzix so used it quite a bit. I also used craft paint on the covers along with glitter. I am one of those people who love glitter, and I have all kinds and colors. For these books I mainly used the rainbow looking glitters in larger size. It made the covers look more finished. 

It was a major mess around my house until I finished the original 14. After that, I only pulled out what I needed for the extra books so it wasn't quite as big a mess. 

Just don't stress over it but HAVE FUN!!!! 

Busy working on Junk Journals

I've been busy working on my junk journals that I'm making for Christmas gifts. Haven't really taken any new photos so will try to get some tomorrow of the progress I'm making. I have 3 more JJ's to put together and then will start gluing in the added fun stuff. In the meantime I thought I would share a few photos I've taken lately around the place.

We had a terrific sunrise the other morning. We have had rains off and on and now the temps are really cold. Got to freezing last night. Thankfully we got our house plants inside in time.

My spider lilies had a really good bloom. Our flower beds are so overgrown and really need some work but physically neither Sonny and I able to until spring. 

My silver lace vine finally bloomed well and it will probably be awhile before it blooms this well again as I need to trim it back.

Of course I have to put up my baby...she is almost a year old and is finally settling down some...but still so much puppy to her. 

My faux sweet potato plants finally did something and look like they are taking over the yard. 

Sonny is into deer hunting season and this is what we are seeing on his deer camera...a bear! Bad news is they keep the deer run off so Sonny and son had to take down this feeder and relocate. Course that doesn't mean the bear won't move too. Thankfully one of the other hunters in their lease is hunting the bear as presently it is bear season. 

My junk Journals

I promised to try to update here often and with limited data on my internet plan, it makes it hard. I will be back here more after the 16th to update some but thought I would add a few photos to get you started on making junk journals

 I had these old old 1931 Funk & Waggnal Encyclopedias and they were beginning to dry rot so I took them apart and kept a few pages that had pictures to glue into new pages. I mainly wanted to salvage the covers to use for my new junk journals. Here is the beginning stage.

The original color was red and has been hard to cover up to change the colors. But first I measured it to be able to get the pages inside and the inside layer of the cover the correct size. These books were a little larger than 9x6 inches so I cut the pages a tiny bit smaller and the inside lining right at 9x6. 

Next I glued the lining inside. I used off white quilt fabric. I used modge podge to glue it in. 

It was quite messy. After they dried, then I painted all the outsides with white gesso. 

As you can see the red dye from the covers bled through the gesso. 

Next week, I will show photos of the afters of some of the covers after I painted and dry brushed and added trim. A big difference in looks. 

I didn't have my photos of the muscadines I picked. Today I worked on starting some wine. Pictures of it will come later. But to give you an idea of how to begin. I smushed up the muscadines and put in some crocks that are about a half gallon size. I added a cup of water to each crock along with a cup of sugar and stir well. Covered them with clean pantyhose and put on the top of my refrigerator to ferment. 

Once they go through the first ferment cycle, I sill strain and put juice back in crocks with more sugar and let it ferment again.

While Sonny was recovering from surgery I bought a Shark steam mop and man do I love this thing. It makes it so much easier to mop floors now.

It is well worth the money spent. 

Also while Sonny was recovering I slept on our sofa for about 3 weeks. The last night on the sofa, I got up while still dark and walked to shut the bedroom door so I wouldn't wake him when I turned on lights. I ran into our laundry room door which has a stop in it to keep it open so I blacked my eye and made a knot and huge bruise on my boob. Thankfully the bruising is gone now but still have the knot. 

Really at first it looked like eye shadow.

I guess I'm getting old as I tend to wander around at night which is not good. While taking Kinzey out early one morning, I saw this little critter. 

At first I thought it was a bird nest, but it happened to be a little wren. See him in the faux grass on the left side of photo. I had been watching a large spider but the rains had washed it out so found this cutie instead. 

I will be back later next week and will start posting photos of junk journals I'm in the process of making. I'm having so much fun making such a mess. 

It has been another long time since I've posted. Been too busy with life. Sonny had one of his knees replaced. And he has done marvelous. Has really gotten back to walking and doing around the place and it has only been 5 weeks. He has his other knee scheduled for December. It has taken all my energy with helping him. 

We had to let the outside yard work and garden go as I can't physically handle it. Also with late freeze and June drought our fruit and garden harvest were awful this year. Only fruit we got was about 1/3 the blueberries we normally get. Strangely we got an over abundance of muscadine grapes.

We got our German shepherd in December. She was born on Halloween and is fitting as she can be such a monster at times. She is now 10months old and weighs 80+ pounds. We had her spayed at the spay clinic in July and it seems to have settled her some. She is still a handful though. 

The first bed we bought her, she shredded.

We keep her outside during the day and in her crate at night.

I've not hooked a rug in over a year now but have mainly worked on quilts. I've made 2 baby quilts for gifts for young couples in our church. And finally finished the star top and have it at the quilters to be quilted. I hand tied the baby quilts. I also hand quilted 2 star baby quilts with left over blocks from my big quilt. 

We were rather busy with church this past year as well. Sonny was teaching Wednesday night Bible study and I was doing a weekly ladies Bible study at our house. But with Sonny's surgery, we ended our work at church. The church had their annual elections and we both stepped down. I am continuing to make the bulletin each week and help the children teachers when needed. I hope to get here more often and post more.