Thanksgiving Turkey's 2010

Here's the Turkey's, I think they turned out really good.

Thanksgiving 2010

Got up at 8:00 and it was snowing, again!

Got my pies made, they turned out perfect, but I am pretty confident with my baking, it's my cooking that I am not so good at.

I made the cornbread the night before for my dressing, I had never made cornbread before especially from scratch, but it turned out good.

Here are a couple of my favorites right out of the oven, baked carrots and green bean casserole.

I also made Sweet potato casserole, Carina made the mashed potatoes and I made the gravy. All in all it turned out okay. We loaded it up and headed over to my Father-in-laws to eat, the main ingredient we were missing was my Mother-in-law which left a definite void, Thanksgiving will never be the same. Hopefully I can go back to just making the pies in the years to come.

Snowvember 2010

Here is our backyard, first snow of the fall, looks like it may be a really bad winter.

My pond is frozen, it is about 23 degrees out, I put the pond ring in there, but it may be to late to melt an airway opening. But it wouldn't be the first time, my fish are pretty hardy.

I don't think I will be hanging out on the swing today, or any day soon for that matter.

Baby Blankets

I embroidered some baby blankets for a friend who's niece is having a baby soon. I think they turned out really cute.

Darn Raccoons, why do they have to be so cute!

Last year I bought a trap to catch our stupid Raccoon, but every morning I woke up looked out the window and the trap was sprung, but no Raccoon so I finally gave up. Yesterday I thought I would do a little tweaking to the trap and give it one more try and low and behold, I caught a Raccoon, unfortunately it was a baby Raccoon and its Mommy and sibling were frantic. Here he is right before I killed him.................................................just kidding!

Here is the mommy and other baby after I reluctantly let the baby out. I just couldn't do it, they are so cute and I felt so bad. They were watching from our tree when I let the baby out and apparently they didn't see where he ran which was on the other side of the pond. They spent a long time searching for him.

Now I feel bad, but I'm sure they will reunite soon. They just wreak havoc on my pond every night and they drag stuff all over the lawn. But I didn't realize it was a family, I thought it was just one ( I wasn't going to kill it, just relocate it). I guess we will just have to live with them.

Everything I have read about trapping Raccoons say that you need to euthanize them, that relocating is illegal and ultimately more cruel, but there is no way I could do it, I would have to take my chances and relocate them and hope they thrive. I don't see any way to catch all of them, so I am going to give up and just let them have at it.

Break it to me gently

I added a link to my "My favorite links" tab called "Break it to me gently". When I was down in Alabama last month I found an old cassette tape that I had recorded for my Mom of me singing back in the early 90's. I had this cheap little Karaoke machine and I sat down one day and sang my own mix of songs that my Mom liked and taped it, then sent it to her. The next time I came to Alabama to visit every time we would go anywhere people would say, "Oh, I loved your tape!", it turned out my Mom had played it for anyone who would listen, it was pretty embarrassing. Anyway, I asked my brother Bob if he could record it onto the computer as MP3's, and he did and then he posted this link of one of the songs. You can tell it is an old tape, but I think he did a good job with it.

Dress for Wedding

I am going to a wedding on Saturday for Craig's cousin Taryn, and I decided to make myself a dress to wear. I took a day off of work today and got busy sewing.

Here it is from the side, I added a few embelishments that weren't part of the original pattern, like the buttons on the sleeves and the embroidery.

I just tried it on, and I knew it would fit because my dress form and I are exactly the same size, well maybe I have a few pounds on her. I love to sew for myself though because I can alter the pattern and make it fit perfectly.

I haven't decided if I want to add more embroidery around the bottom, I don't want it to look over done, I am going to add some swarovsky crystals to it though, but that will be tomorrow nights project.

Baby Ben's Quilt

I finished my quilt for my nephew-to-be, Ben, earlier this week. He is due in August, his shower was today so I can now post the quilt. This first pic is of the quilt on the frame.

Here it is finished and ready to go! I saw this quilt somewhere on the internet, I think it is called "Strip Twist", but I added my own twist by adding sashing between the blocks. I used my Accuquilt Go cutter to cut the 2 1/2" strips.

I did a meandering star pattern for the quilting.

I gave it a washing to shrink it up and soften it, I use a ton of starch when I quilt. I think it turned out really neat.

Sewing Table

I bought this sewing table almost a year ago at Joann's on a great deal. It folds up so when I am not using it I store it under my cutting table. It also has a table extension in the back that comes up when I need even more space to work on, in the pictures it is down. The side table can be used for a serger. Anyway, I had always wanted my sewing machine set into it, but it was just made for it to sit on top. But thanks to my wonderful, talented and skilled husband, my machine is now set-in to it as you can see.

He is so clever, he made a template out of a scrap piece of wood, clamped it to the top of the table and routed out the space for the machine and then installed a shelf below for the machine to sit on. It fits perfectly! I am in sewing heaven now! I am actually working on a quilt as I write this.

Ironing Board Cabinet

I have been wanting an ironing board cabinet in my craft room for a long time. I found this one at Lowe's and I decided I wanted the optional light and outlet in it. This is the wall where it will be (actually it is the only wall left where I could put it).

This is a recessed cabinet, so I cut out the wall and discovered it had an electrical wire running through the middle of it that ran from the switch to the outside light. I pondered how to deal with it for awhile when I decided to just run a new wire from the switch inside the wall to just above the cutout, I had Craig route out a groove in the stud on the opposite side to run the old wire up and then I spliced it and the new wire together in a junction box up above.

I ran a separate wire from the load off of the outlet below the cabinet and fished it up the wall to run to the new outlet/light combo inside the cabinet. You maybe asking yourself (or not) why wouldn't I just use the existing wire that I spliced earlier, well the reason is that the new outlet/light combo uses a timer and my outdoor lights would turn off as well when the timer would go off, so it had to be wired directly from the other outlet.

Here it is all done. The ironing board swivels left and right and then closes up nice and neatly. Another weekend and another successful project completed. Maybe next weekend I will actually sew.

Other entrance to Cat Walk

So this is the garage side of the cat walk. Riley is hanging out on the big toy that leads up to the cabinet opening.

You can see the access hole in the side of the old cabinet, the cat door is located on the other side of this cabinet and the outside wall and leads directly onto the cat walk.

The Cat Walk

We decided (well I decided then Craig decided to jump on board with another one of my hair-brained plans) to build a cat walk that goes from the cat pen into our garage so now the cats have two ways into the cat pen.

Just another weekend project. I have been itching to build something, although this time I think Craig did more building than me. This is on the ugly north side of our house that is pretty hidden from view luckily because it is where we hide our garbage. Every spring we have to power wash this side of the house because it gets mildewy over the winter, as you can see in the pics, that hasn't been done yet.

Here is Bud and Kelsey exploring it for the first time. We have the cat door blocked right now because it has wet silicone around it and silicone and hairy cats don't mix well, hopefully it will dry soon and we can open it up. Riley and Mittens haven't explored it yet, but we kind of knew that they would take awhile to get used to the idea, they are the skittish ones.

I still have to put shingles on the roof, but otherwise it is done. In the picture below is Kelsey sitting at the entrance from inside the cat pen. Star went down the walk once and then came back and just blocked the entrance for the longest time, after she finally went inside Kelsey decided to guard the entrance. We still have a little work to do on the inside on the garage side. They will basically come in to an old cabinet that we have emptied out so we need to make another doorway on the other side of the cabinet so they can access the cat door. I will post pics of that later.

The Jazz Police at Tula's

This is my brother-in-law (Warren Pugh) playing a solo with the Jazz Police at Tula's on Mother's Day. We had a great time, the food was good, music was great and we had fabulous weather that day, who could ask for more.

Cat Pods

Craig found these cat beds for $6 so he bought all that they had. We have been desperate to find anything to keep the cats out of our bed. Well these have worked, first time ever we slept all night without a single cat in bed with us. These are pictures of them this morning after I woke up, the first picture is from last night. Mittens is the only one of our cats that never sleeps in our bed, she spends most of her time in the garage, so she doesn't have one of these, but if that changes we will run right out and get another one.