Monday Musings and This & That

 

With over two feet of freshly fallen snow and more coming slowly (thankfully without the fierce winds anymore), I'm happy to sit inside and think a little about what all I want to have as my goals for this next year. I like to take the week between Christmas and New Year's Day as a time for reflecting on the last year and preparing to start the new one.

We had a delightfully relaxed Christmas though I was disappointed that our church's worship service had to be cancelled because of the blizzard. What better day to gather with brothers and sisters to worship the King than on Christmas?! Oh, well. We were able to worship at home.

On Christmas Eve our nearby kids were able to make it over and Granddaughter was happy to play with her little kitchen which I'd bought from a nephew's family who had outgrown it.

Of course there were lots of goodies and my husband's boss kindly smoked our turkey for dinner.

I enjoyed making some candle holders with dried flowers and Modpodge to put in cookie baskets, stocking, and as party favors for a few people. If I'd had more time and wasn't making them for families with small children, I'd have made beeswax candles inside like I made for myself. I just used fake LED candles this time.

I was also happy to get to gift H her Star BOM quilt.

My long-armer, Kathi Gee, is an artist in her quilting and I love the stars and swirls.

The backing fabric was not what H and I had originally chosen because we discovered we didn't have enough. But when I saw this fabric, I knew H would think it a great alternative, and I was right. I kinda forgot to attach a label as I was doing the binding, so I'll have to hand-sew that on.

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This Week's Goals

Homemaking

* Declutter area beside sewing desk in preparation for moving craft stuff downstairs

* Make saurkraut

* Get new tires put on

* Buy perfect gift for grandson's birthday

Crafting

* Finish fixing Tree of Gondor quilt (it's challenging to fix the machine applique on a queen sized quilt)

* Make label for H's Star BOM quilt

* Put binding on Autumn Jubilee 2021 wallhanging

* List and prioritize UFOs before moving to new craft area

* Complete as many little crafts as possible so I don't have to move them, too

* Settle on what BOMs to join for 2023

Homesteading

* Keep steadily growing indoor salad greens as well as herbs

* Finish reading "Building a Better World in Your Backyard (Instead of Being Angry at Bad Guys) by         Paul Wheaton & Shawn Klassen-Koop

Reading

* Continue "Dancing With My Father" by Sally Clarkson

* Continue "An Irish Country Yuletide" by Patrick Taylor

* Continue aformentioned "Building a Better World..."

Well, that ought to keep me out of trouble for awhile. 😆 Hope your goals go well this week and in the new year.

Monday Musings on Ukraine Mission Trip and This & That

Listening to Handel's Messiah as I write and being a little envious that the alto soloist, a man, is a better alto than I am. 😑 Thankfully my daughter reminded me that it's his job and he has much more practice time than I do. Also, with the beauty and majesty of this musical reminder of God's greatness and grace, how can I stay disgruntled?!

Speaking of said daughter, she just got back from a mission trip to Mukachevo, Ukraine and villages very near the Russian border. The team worked with Pastor Joel Sterling Brown (who updates regularly on Facebook) to sort, repackage, and deliver food and other basic living supplies as well as a power generator to various de-occupied villages. They got to play a "chaotic game of mostly kickball" with children from the church's refugee shelter as well as worship with youth groups and congregations along the routes of their travels. It was delightful for me to see her in videos, singing along in English with the Ukrainian versions of worship songs. It reminded me of the joy of singing with my Filipino church family as a missionary kid.

She plans to go back in early January to stay for about a month, doing whatever needs doing again, probably mostly working in the warehouse sorting and preparing donation deliveries as well as going along to deliver supplies. Our church folk are working at raising money for this endeavor as well as knitting, crocheting, and sewing hats to send back with her. 

She plans to stuff a couple of suitcases with these hats and cranking flashlights for the areas where there is no power or unreliable power and then just leave the suitcases there for use in deliveries. 

So I've been busy with communications as well as lots of crocheting. And of course I baked a family favorite chocolate chip cake to welcome her home. 😊

We got to enjoy some beautiful Christmas lights as we went to pick her up from the airport.

And she finally got to take up residence in the room that she had mostly built in our downstairs since our other daughter's family have moved to their remodeled house. Cozy, isn't it?! 

Near the foot of her bed is a window which looks out onto this egress area:

Yes, the bottle fence is done except for a cedar log top railing. I love it.

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So, on to this week's goals...

Homemaking

* Keep decluttering bedroom, preparing for moving craft stuff downstairs

* Make more saurkraut

* Do a little Christmas baking

* Finish all Christmas shopping (yes, I'm late this year)

Crafts/Sewing

* Keep aiming at making at least one hat per day

* Fix Tree of Gondor quilt (though I'm totally intimidated)

* Hopefully Star BOM from longarmer and bind it

* Decide if I'll join February Blog Hop

* Bind Autumn Jubilee 2021 wallhanging

* Prep Autumn Jubilee 2022 for handquilting

Well, that ought to keep me busy while my husband is out of town for a few days and I have plenty of leftovers off which to live. 😄

Hope you meet your goals this week!

Monday Musing and This & That (on Tuesday)

 Well, I'm late at getting Monday's weekly goals posted, but, hey, I'm recovering from a long weekend of relaxing and eating too much. :)

Thanksgiving dinner was enjoyed by ten of us, counting the 16month old granddaughter who didn't eat too much. I had hoped to play some Trivial Pursuit together, letting each two-person team choose which edition they wanted to answer, but it just didn't happen. So after dinner and reading our Thankful Notes some of us visited, one went to her boyfriend's family gathering, some snoozed, some played video games, and some collected craft supplies from Mom to use at home.

The tablerunner is one that we made years ago, probably around 16, having each child draw something on a block and then I sewed them all together. I use it every Thanksgiving.

While various elements of dinner were in oven or crockpot and we were waiting for all to arrive, I took a calming and beautiful walk through the woods and backyard. It was abnormally warm and sunny.

Being the type of person who wants to fully and solely celebrate Thanksgiving before fully enjoying the Christmas season, I waited till Saturday to put up our Christmas tree, complete with thoughts of having a toddler granddaughter around a lot. 

Daughter H helped the tot put the star on top. Today said daughter is flying out to join a team from A Jesus Mission in Ukraine in transporting food and other supplies to war-torn areas and in supplying shelter and food for refugees. I'm proud and nervous and praying a lot.

It's been so warm that the foot or so of snow on top of the garden beds melted and I was able to harvest carrots, kale, and chard.

Sunday afternoon I often enjoy baking, so this time I made our favorite Christmas Sour Cream cookies - in the shape of a plane to commemorate H's travels, and in the shape of a mitten so she can be sure to find her way home to the Mitten State after her 10-day trip.

In the sewing corner, I finished up the apron for my exchange partner in Jenny's apron exhange challenge. It's been fun to make it and fun to get to know my partner a little.

Since she's a quilter, too, I used this quilt shop fabric that I'd been saving for  just the right thing; this was the right thing.

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This & That Goals for the Week

Homemaking

* Declutter desk area already!

* Christmas shopping 

* Renew housekeeping routine (do daily jobs more faithfully)

Homesteading

* Continue growing greens indoors

* Study "Intro to Permaculture"

Crafting

* Bind Autumn Jubilee 2021

* Take H's quilt to quilter

* Mend T&S quilt 

* Maybe start hand-quilting Autumn Jubilee 2022

Hope you're doing well on your goals!

Monday Musings and This N That

 Well, it looks like winter is finally coming, not that I'm complaining about its lateness. I'm not a fan of snow and cold, but am trying to learn not to complain. It is beautiful, especially on our surrounding pines. Though I haven't looked at weather reports, I'm confident that we'll be getting a lot more before long. 

My daughter and I recently built those raised beds for next year's gardening. We now have a total of six of them, with at least one more in the plans. I let her do the chainsawing because she's knowledgeable and skillful. I'll stick to a circular saw and hammering.

I can't help but take pictures of beautiful and strange things in nature...

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My huggy and I were blessed by a marriage conference hosted by our church this last weekend. The teachers/counsellors were very skilled at helping us to see into each others' hearts and to renew connections that are lost in the everyday and in the difficulties of life. It was so valuable. We learned that often our responses in the present actually date back to defense mechanisms from past hurts or deprivations. Very thought-provoking and we continue to talk about stuff from it.

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This week's goals are:

Homemaking

Clear out some boxes of papers and books that clutter the area near my desk

Be more intentional about making a menu, rather than just winging it

Sewing/Crafting

Mend Tree of Gondor quilt for daughter

Finish borders on other daughter's BOM quilt

Applique music notes onto Music Blog Hop quilt (which I already have scheduled to post)

Handwork

Continue handquilting Autumn Jubilee 2021

Continue crocheting baby afghan for gifting/donation

Fortunatly, this week is a calm looking one, so hopefully I'll get these done.

How go your plans?

Progress!

 While I was out of state, visiting my elderly mom, my husband and daughter used a borrowed skidsteer to fill the new garden beds with sand which we'll later cover with a few inches of topsoil and compost. The beds are made of slab wood left from when we sawmilled our pines a few years ago. They're lined with plastic to help them last a few years.

They also hauled a bunch of chipped wood mulch we'd been given to fill in between the beds. It looks pretty decent, I think. We hope to build at least two more beds and may even get them done this fall since it's being abnormally warm and not-snowy.

As I visited with Mom, we watched alot of Cranford and I got a lot of handquilting done on Autumn Jubilee 2021. Yay! Soon I'll get to handquilting this year's Autumn Jubilee.

How goes your progress?

Monday Musings & This N That & Kinda Quilt Show

 I'm still reading through a wonderful book (that's a little hard to get a copy of other than on Kindle) entitled Dancing With My Father by Sally Clarkson. It's encouragement and help to keep in step with our heavenly Father even while going through tough times where we can't yet see his hand or his leading particularly.

The chapter I'm on now focuses on how friendships (including family as friends) encourage us and how we can also be an encourgement to others through loving friendships. It's been good for this introvert to read.

Here's some wisdom gleaned this morning:

    We are created to be one of the venues in which the Spirit of God demonstrates the reality of his own unconditional love. Friendships and other close relationships provide opportunities for people to feel the love of God through words and touch, given by real people who are prompted by his Spirit.                                                                                       True, fulfilling love is based on the principle of laying down your life for your friend. Love that accepts the limitations of each friend, spouse, or child. Love that over comes petty irrititations and differences with the strength of God's gracious love. When marriage, parenting, and friendships follow this servant model oflove, itimacy will happen, support systems will be intace, and community will be formed. And the Jesus' promis will be fulfilled: our joy will be full.

It will be good for me to go through this book with two young moms soon to enable me to have further opportunity to put these friendship concepts into practice as well as to reread this good book. 

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'Tis time for looking over last week's goals, seeing what got done, and what didn't, and setting new, perhaps more realistic, goals.

I didn't actually write a goals post last week, so can we say that I succeeded in everything I posted that I intended to do?! 😁 But I had hoped to work on my One Monthly Goal and I didn't hardly even look at it. 😑

But here's what did happen:

I finished the Autumn Jubilee wallhanging top. I plan to handquilt it, so it won't be competely done for a while.

I love how it turned out and can't wait to hang it on my dining room wall next fall.

(Right now I have this wallhanging, made years ago, hanging up. It will soon be replaced with our "Thanksgiving tree" quilt on which we pin the many things for which we're thankful this year. I'll show it to you when we get it up and going.)

I also finished the top of my squirrelly leaders/enders baby quilt. Or it could be a lap quilt for the elderly.

It's going to be a donation quilt. I'd experiement with quilting it on my regular machine, since I don't have a long-arm, but I don't have the right foot yet and I don't want it hanging around here till I get one. So I'll send it to one of the quilters listed at Jo's Country Junction with some backing fabric and probably some binding.

For handwork while watching the Dr. Blake Mysteries, I hauled out my partially handquilted Autumn Jubilee wallhanging from last year's fun and continued quilting.

I like to use cookie cutters as my template for quilting lines.

This Week's Goals

Crafts

Handwork - Continue quilting Autumn Jubilee 2021 

Machine work - Try again at the OMG diamond quilt

                        - Make fabric bookmarks as prizes for our church's children's ministry. Possibly make                                 some pencil and notebook holders, too.

                        - Start project for Music blog hop

Homemaking                                                                                                                        Outside (while the weather is remarkably conducive) - Build more raised beds

Inside - Declutter the counters

            - Continue to study "The Lazy Genius Kitchen" & prep to do complete overhaul in a week or                             two after daughter's family move into their remodeled house

    

That's all I'm planning for now because early on Friday my daughter and I are taking off to go to my mom's where I'll be helping her sort and declutter while daughter goes on to Cedarville University with a friend to visit her boyfriend.

I hope your plans and goals come to fruition.

Finished the Autumn Jubilee Quiltalong!

 I finished! I finished!

Well, at least I finished the top.

I plan to handquilt this since it's small, the weather is cool enough to have something like this on my lap, and I haven't handquilted in quite a while.

I have really enjoyed doing this wallhanging, though I did leave out an extra border that was supposed to be between the leaf blocks and the last green border, and I thank Carole for hosting her annual Autumn Jubilee.

I hope to participate again next year (and to catch up with and finish the 2020 quiltalong). Go check it out. https://frommycarolinahome.com/