thread therapy

Ok, I've had a pretty craptastic day... to start it off, I had another dream about my mama last night in which she was 'back from the dead.' It wasn't in a scary way, but this is the third time I've dreamt that she has come back to visit and she looks just like she looked before she died and she always has a short time and then has to go back. It's weird, I know...... And I always wake up happy and sad all at the same time...
SOOO, I stayed in my husband's flannel cowboy pajamas all day :) I got jack-nothing done that was even remotely productive until I decided what I needed was some coffee and some thread therapy:

So, I made a little skirt for Ruby out of some old funky jeans and some scrap fabric to match the FABULOUS purple argyle tights I picked up at a garage sale a couple of weeks ago for a quarter :)
Now I'm happy.

thanksgiving-palooza

Oh, I can't wait!! Thanksgiving has always been an 'all-out' holiday for my family. We do it up for this one and make it a point NOT to do anything huge in the kitchen at Christmas. I like it that way :) We cook with more butter than is decent to tell, use half & half in the mashed potatoes, and whipping cream in everything else.... and just generally make a huge deal out of it all. I love it.

This is the second T-day without my mama. Last year, for the first one without her, I thought 'how DARE you skip out on making the dressing, mama??' LOL. No one can make dressing like my mama's. I'm trying, though. And what I'm not fixing, I'm delegating. That's a huge step for my control-freak self. Thankfully, Eric is an excellent cook and in charge of all things turkey; one fried, one roasted. You just can't make gravy with a fried turkey.

My sister will be driving down with her dog and one of our cousins, another cousin is flying in from CO, my great aunt will be coming over, my daddy will be home, and of course the five of us :) I will enter crazy cleaning mode around Monday morning, start camping out in the kitchen around Tuesday night, we'll have dinner early on T-day at my house, go 2 doors down to daddy's for dessert and to watch the Saints vs Cowgirls game, come back to our house for the annual guys vs girls Trivial Pursuit game, stay up visiting and giggling with cousins, get up and fix a HUGE breakfast on Friday, collapse around 2pm, ... (snore, snore, snore)...,get up Sunday morning for church :)

Here's what's on the menu:
MUNCHIES (aka hors d'oeuvres)
to be available early on T-day for all those people (mostly of the male variety) who walk around all day whining that there's nothing to eat
Garlic cheese 'stuff' with the appropriate crackers
Crack wienies
Aunt Marilou's mushrooms
Eric's oysters
Hummus
fruit/ cheese plate
Spinach & artichoke dip
Chex mix
White trash truffles
Various cookies

MAIN ATTRACTION (aka carb-o-rama)
fried turkey
oven-ed turkey
spiral ham
mashed potatoes (duh)
sweet potato casserole
broccoli salad
regular dressing
oyster dressing
cranberry relish
canned, no berry, with ridges cranberry sauce (nasty, but mandatory)
corn casserole
pistachio fluffy stuff
gravy
rolls

DESSERTS
pumpkin roll
mince pie
carrot cake
chocolate truffle pie
butterscotch pie
pecan pie
pumpkin pie
appropriate amount of whipped cream :)

Is there a such thing as too much pie? Don't answer that. I don't want to know.

Of course, we'll still be cooking all weekend. Eric will make his gumbo and I'll make my bread. We'll mostly do sandwiches with the ham and turkey and have turkey hash at some point.
Oh, and my cinnamon rolls. I have to admit, they are the best I've ever had. And maybe a breakfast casserole one morning and sausage gravy and biscuits another.
I'm hungry.

sewing & cussing

Ok, so as I've mentioned in previous posts, I love to sew. I have the cutest little model and I can't resist the temptation to dress her in funky prints and see her twirl around in something I lovingly created for her :) But.... I suck. I have made a couple of things that have actually turned out pretty good and I do get people asking if I sell my wares everytime she wears one of these things. What they don't understand is that for every cute-sy outfit you see in public, there are at least 4 that have been abandoned and put back in the fabric stash. I think my big problem as a seamstress is that I can't see that a problem has surfaced until it is all finished and either it's too late to fix it or I'm cross-eyed and burned out. It is infuriating.
I have been working on a pair of pants for the girl and, if they turn out as planned, they will be the cutest thing EVER :) My husband gently pointed out to me last night that "they're looking kind' long, don't you think?" yes, smarty-pants, they are. I tried one leg on her this morning and he's right. I've said it before (under my breath and with a couple of choice expletives) my seam ripper is my BFF :)
I'm having a hard time balancing my domestic-godessness, though. If I sew for three days straight, I don't get any laundry done and I barely cook or play with the kids. What's the answer? Doing everything else during the day & staying up until 2am to sew?? I don't know...
What I do know is this: If the girl is this high maintenance at 5, I'd better start praying now about her teen years. Good gravy, I must leave the computer now to stop that sound! It goes something like this "UUUHHHH!" (it's kind of a gutteral sound) "Saaaaaaam!" (same gutteral sound, yelling at her oldest brother) "IT"S MINE!!!!" (this was more of a high-pitched wail). I need more coffee.

Day 2

Ok, 'she' didn't have a car. I think that's what it pretty much boils down to. If we lived in a village and could get whatever we needed there and never had to leave that 2 square miles, I'd be good. I'd be 'her.' As it is, I have 3 children, whom I homeschool, 2 of whom play football 3 days a week, have chess club every other week, and I have the typical 'errands' we all do these days. Oh, yeah, and add to all of that the fact that I keep a toddler 3 days a week from 8-5 and inevitably have others because I'm the only 'SAHM' in my circle of friends. I don't mind it at all. In fact, I enjoy it but it does add to the madness. When do I have time to get ALL the laundry caught up? Please don't remind me that 'she' had to do hers by hand.
I feel like my day should look like this:
Get up at 5am with Eric, make coffee, make his lunch, kiss him goodbye, start a load of laundry, wake the kids & COOK their breakfast (as opposed to making them pour their own bowl of cheerios), figure out what I'll be fixing for dinner, have a devotion with the kids before we start our day, change out laundry while the youngin's do their morning chores, do some 'school', LAUNDRY, fix lunch, maybe some more 'school', then of course MORE LAUNDRY, at this point I should probably run the vacuum around and do some straightening up, start dinner, kiss my husband when he walks in the door at 6pm, serve a delicious & nutritious dinner, clean up after said dinner, play a board game or something else for some 'family time', bathe children, tuck them in, spend some time with Eric, and then go to bed with him and wow him with my sexual prowess instead of staying up until midnight or later either sewing & cussing or reading. Get up at 5am...
Here is a typical* day at my house: Eric's alarm goes off at 5am, I poke him until he gets up and shuts it off. Eric gets up and makes coffee and searches high and low for matching socks while I put a pillow over my head and go back to sleep. My alarm goes off at 7, at which time I hit the snooze. I get up at 7:10 and have a cup of coffee before my extra kid comes at 7:30. I get on the computer with my 2nd cup of coffee, the kids start waking up and fix their own breakfasts (which totally destroys my kitchen), I fuss at the kids to do their morning chores (feed & water animals, walk dog, empty dishwasher), at this point I look at my kitchen and turn around and walk out. I need more coffee. I may or may not fold the 2-3 loads of clean laundry on the sunroom couch and if i do, I probably won't put it away. I get another cup of coffee and get back on the computer because it might be my turn on Facebook Scrabble. Some time before lunch someone will call and say they are coming over. I go into what my kids have dubbed 'speed clean mode.' Every able body claims a room and picks up (and hopefully puts away) all the crap lying around, of course this is a result of constant 'direction' and sometimes my direction-giving is loud. I go from room to room dusting & vacuuming. Then I spot check the hall bathroom. Dang, do they EVER learn to aim?? Then I put on a handmade apron and make cookies because when my guest arrives I want to look like Susie homemaker. Guest stays, has some coffee (keep in mind, I'm probably on my 5th cup by now), eats the cookies that took me 15 minutes to make and marvels at my skills. Guest leaves and I freak out because it's 4:30, I haven't started dinner and the boys have to be at football (or if it's Wednesday, we all have to be at church) at 6pm. I throw something mildly nutritious on the table and rush out the door. I may or may not see Eric in passing. We get home from whatever it is we were doing around 8:30, I may put on a pot of coffe and then throw kicking & screaming kids in the shower, force them to bed and get on the computer to take my turn in Scrabble. Eric & I sometimes watch a movie together, but that usually ends up with him snoring on the other end of the couch and me poking him until he gets up and stumbles to bed. Sometimes I follow him there, sometimes I stay up sewing & cussing.
Ok, I just read over that and I think it's clear that I drink too much coffee. And probably play to much online Scrabble.

Oh yeah, and then there are books....

I forgot to mention that I will probably mention books I'm reading. Why would I remember to mention that? I'M ONLY READING 4 RIGHT NOW! I like to have one in the car for when I'm waiting in line somewhere, one in the bathroom for obvious reasons, one in the living room for those rare moments I can swallow the guilt that bubbles up every time I sit down during the day, and one by the bed for night time reading. At this moment, I've got "The Last Girls" by Lee Smith by the bed (btw, I highly recommend anything by her), taking the place of honor next to the 'throne' is "The Screwtape Letters" by C.S. Lewis, lying on the floor next to the comfy couch, anxiously awaiting my return is one of the numbered Janet Evanovich books (I think it's "To the Nines"), and somewhere under the passenger seat of my car is a Tony Hillerman paperback.

I come from a long line of women whose laundry went unfolded and sauces burned to the pot because they were in the middle of a good book. I know this is a weakness of mine and I'm trying to tone it down a little and get some clothes folded AND put away (that's always the difficult part of laundry for me).

Baby Steps

Ok, here goes..... I have been thinking lately about who I am /vs/ who I want to be and what I need to do to become that person and I've come to a few realizations....

I have very high expectations of myself, but get frustrated and tend to throw in the towel if I don't meet those expectations. I have a clear vision of what our home and our family should look like and I know it will take some sacrifices, a lot of work, and getting past the frustration of the changes coming slower than I think they should. I'm ready to dive in. Lord, help me!

I need to put in here somewhere (and why not here?) that I'm married to an incredible man of God :) Eric loves me unconditionally, is a hard worker, a good provider, a wonderful daddy, he's intelligent, kind, compassionate, thoughtful, creative, he's honest & trustworthy, he is one of the funniest people I know AND HE IS FINE! The whole package! He wasn't always this person... but, then, I wasn't always this awesome either ;) We've been together since 1998, had three beautiful children and then got married in 2007. Ok, so we did things backwards.... but we did it! Since we've been obedient to the Lord in this, we have seen so many blessings in our lives, not the least of which is our strengthened relationship and greater love for one another (I didn't even think it was possible!) God is good, and we are earnestly seeking Him in our lives and raising our children to know, trust, and live for Him.

Here's another realization for you: I'm a rambler... can you tell this is my first blog? I haven't written this much of anything since I was on the newspaper staff in highschool. I hope I get better at this or it could turn into another something that is supposed to help me but just takes up time that I ought to actually be DOING something.

Ok, as this is my first official post, I will briefly summarize what (I hope) will be included in future posts; I love to cook, so there will be recipes; I sew and have a HUGE stash of fabric that I'm making myself use up before I buy more fabric, so there will be photos (and maybe tutorials? that might be pushing it) of my projects; I homeschool my three fabulous kids, so I'm sure I will share some stories (wisdom?) from that; I am married to the aforementioned hottie, Eric, and you can pretty much bank on the fact that at any given moment my pupils will turn to hearts, the blood will rush to my head, I'll blush and grin to myself and not be able to keep from telling you what wonderful thing he just did. Yeah, I just threw up in my mouth a little, too..

The woman we all love to hate.....

Over the years I have admired, feared, loathed, loved and longed to be HER.

¹⁰  A wife of noble character who can find?
       She is worth far more than rubies.

 ¹¹ Her husband has full confidence in her
       and lacks nothing of value.

 ¹² She brings him good, not harm,
       all the days of her life.

 ¹³ She selects wool and flax
       and works with eager hands.

 ¹⁴ She is like the merchant ships,
       bringing her food from afar.

 ¹⁵ She gets up while it is still dark;
       she provides food for her family
       and portions for her servant girls.

 ¹⁶ She considers a field and buys it;
       out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.

 ¹⁷ She sets about her work vigorously;
       her arms are strong for her tasks.

 ¹⁸ She sees that her trading is profitable,
       and her lamp does not go out at night.

 ¹⁹ In her hand she holds the distaff
       and grasps the spindle with her fingers.

 ²⁰ She opens her arms to the poor
       and extends her hands to the needy.

 ²¹ When it snows, she has no fear for her household;
       for all of them are clothed in scarlet.

 ²² She makes coverings for her bed;
       she is clothed in fine linen and purple.

 ²³ Her husband is respected at the city gate,
       where he takes his seat among the elders of the land.

 ²⁴ She makes linen garments and sells them,
       and supplies the merchants with sashes.

 ²⁵ She is clothed with strength and dignity;
       she can laugh at the days to come.

 ²⁶ She speaks with wisdom,
       and faithful instruction is on her tongue.

 ²⁷ She watches over the affairs of her household
       and does not eat the bread of idleness.

 ²⁸ Her children arise and call her blessed;
       her husband also, and he praises her:

 ²⁹ "Many women do noble things,
       but you surpass them all."

 ³⁰ Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
       but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.

 ³¹ Give her the reward she has earned,
       and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.