The Best Gift Ever!

My Grandma surprised me with a brand new Embroidery/Sewing Machine. How cool is that! It is quite the understatement when I say that I was excited. Forget Christmas in July, how about Christmas in August! I quickly got the kitchen cleaned up, who wouldn't when you have a brand new sewing machine calling your name and your fingers itching to open it up and play with all the features. And oh boy does it have features. My favorite part is that I can sew without even pressing the foot, just push the start button and let it go. Now how cool is that! Having to thread a sewing machine and bobbin manually is a thing of the past. I mean with this machine it seems all I need to do is push buttons and watch my masterpiece unfold from my very own eyes.

I haven't been able to explore the embroidery side of the machine, I am leaving that to this weekend. Grant is planning on going for a bike ride and when he gets back, I am shutting the door to my make shift sewing room and letting my imagination go wild. My mind is filled with endless possibilities of what I can do, and my project list is getting longer and longer. Christmas will be so much fun. I plan on making the kids quilts for their beds with matching pillows and decorative pillows. With my new machine I can embroider their names and other decorative finishes now how cool is that going to be! I am probably more excited then they are. I know this for a fact. The other day in my animated voice I was explaining to Anthony all the fun things I have planned for decorating his room. When I was done explaining everything I asked for his opinion in which he replied you are crazy mom, you crack me up! This machine will give me endless fun as well as drain my wallet, those cartridges are not cheap! To try out my machine I made a bag for church

This isn't the best picture, but I was trying to show the decorative stitching that I did around the handle bars and along the top border. It sure is a fun toy!

Thanks Grandma you are the best!

Spencer's Quiet Book

Spencer is an active boy and loves to be moving, so sitting in sacrament meeting is not his idea of fun. We don't really have toys for him that would be church appropriate. Spencer prefers the toys that move light up and other fun actions. So for a few weeks ago as soon as we would enter the chapel he would start to protest because he knew where he was and what would be going on. Grant and I started to take turns sitting out in the foyer with Spencer. Thinking about this I knew that Spencer needed to be in the chapel with us as a family and perhaps with the right toys we could enjoy part of sacrament meeting together as a family. I decided about a quiet book and looking around realized that those babies are expensive and then I had a crazy thought, I will just make one. And so for one whole week the kids' enjoyed their total freedom and I became good friends with my sewing machine. I looked at other church related quiet books on line to get ideas and that put on my creativity cap and went to work. I went to the fabric store and bought whatever I thought would be fun in a quiet book. I was totally entering unknown territory for me, but in the end it was fun, I got to know my sewing machine better, figured out how to thread my surger, and produced a somewhat useful quiet book which Spencer through on the floor when he saw it. So we are still working on sitting through sacrament meeting. Only if the quiet book lit up and had action to it, but then it wouldn't be called a quiet book.
My favorite page is the family tree. It really neat to look at his tree with pics of his family members. It is almost overwhelming. I could have kept going at least two more generations but ran out of room. To do the titles of the book I used this paper, I found it at the craft store but you can make it yourself.

The book was fun to make. There are eight pages total and then I made a cover with handles and velcro to close it. Hopefully Spencer will appreciate the value of the book and enjoy it, until then there is always hope and the other two kids will enjoy the book for him.

Martha Stewart came for a Visit

I don't know what happened to me, but I got into a Martha Stewart kick this weekend. It all started when I saw these cute crayon roll ups and I knew this would be great for church. I then saw these cute bags and thought these would be great and the kid's church bag so they can each carry their own bag to church with stuff just for them. No more carrying this big bulky bag around. And so let the sewing begin. Thanks for the help of Grant. I am not really good at reading all those directions and so my husband helped me cut the fabric and helped me to understand the directions. I think they turned out really good and the kids sure did enjoy them.

And then I just kept going for some insane reason and I decided to make homemade cranberry bagels oh but wait I still kept going and made homemade wheat bread and Grant and the kids made homemade cranberry muffins, and I guess I still had enough energy to make dinner. Clean up was a whole other issue, it took me sometime to go in and clean up from my cooking and sewing excursions. I have determined that Martha Stewart has a crew and I don't so being Martha Stewart is exhausting. I have put her in the closet and am taking a break maybe she will come out again. I have some more sewing projects planned so we will see.

In searching the Internet to come up with neat ideas for the house I came across these neat ideas for traveling. My mind is dizzy with ideas that I just might have to put to action. Not only am I going to do this one for travel but I think I am going to make one for Madeline for when she goes to the hospital in a couple of weeks filled with fun and comforting things to do as she recovers.

Madeline has been having problems with stomach pain and constipation to the point of it disrupting our lives. The doctor gave us a couple of suggestions one was to do a test which I wanted to avoid I don't want to cause her pain more than I have to and the other suggestion was to eliminate dairy, fats, and grease, and processed foods. After looking at the list I realized there was nothing left to eat. Well we have eliminated milk and cheese, fats, grease, and taking baby steps to eliminating processed foods. We have noticed a difference and Madeline has not had any stomach problems or constipation since we started the changes. The only change has been her eating intake. She has started to eat more and enjoy eating. This new diet puts a lot of work on me, since most of her stuff needs to be made homemade, but we are taking baby steps so as to not overwhelm ourselves completely. It has been rewarding to see Madeline feeling better and not having problems with pain. She already goes through so much so to take care some of her pain is worth whatever effort I will need to do on my part.