Ok, I need some decorating help!   Last year for Christmas my family bought a coffee house/bistro style print for me for our dining room.   It was something that I REALLY wanted, and had been eyeing at Michaels for quite some time.   So it was very exciting when I opened that gift on Christmas morning.   I had some Christmas money and bought another similar print to be paired with it.  Well, these two beautiful pieces of artwork just got hung over the weekend (yes, almost a year later!!!!).   Well, now that they are hung, the wall looks a little off balance.  I needs something else to be hung to the right of the whole arrangement…..this is where I need your help!   What should I hang there?

These are the prints (sorry about the glare)…

And here are a couple of different views of that wall…..

Any ideas?  Anyone?  Anyone?

Here’s my produce basket this week……I had plenty of veggies in the fridge leftover from last week (last week I was using up the veggies leftover from the week before…..I seemed to have had a backlog in the fridge) so I ordered a “fruit only” basket for this week.

So this week I got:

• cantaloupe
• pluots
• peaches
• nectarines
• grapes

I LOVE summer fruit!

Hi all,

One of my very dear bloggy friends Elizabeth is hosting a giveaway.   Please visit her blog to check it out….. here’s what she’s giving away…..   

If you choose to enter, let her know you got there through my website :)  I’m interested to see how many of my readers go and comment and read Elizabeth’s blog!  It is a nice calm, sweet blog with a lot of love and beauty!   I LOVE reading Elizabeth’s blog……oh!  and she loves to cook and prepares the most beautiful meals for her husband!  :)  Gotta love that!

Last night was our last night of Bible study for the spring semester, and my co-leader did something that was incredible!   She is also one of my closest friends and is one of the friends that I went to San Diego with to see Beth Moore a few weeks ago.   Anyhow, when we were at Living Proof Live, Miss Beth gave us 8 points to remember from Psalm 139, I mentioned to the ladies on the way home that I felt the leading to memorize those points.   Well, my dear friend decided to help me with that with this beautiful piece of art…..

She gave it to me as part of our lesson in “Fingerprints of God” from Jennifer Rothschild……isn’t that cool?   I LOVE it!

Thank you dear friend!

One of the very easy ways to be more environmentally conscience is to stop using all of those plastic grocery bags that are abundant across this country.   I have a number of tote bags and reusable grocery bags that I have bought here and there at various markets that I use for much of my grocery shopping.  The bad thing is, I forget to bring them with me, and when I remember to bring them with me, I sometimes forget to bring them into the store with me….if I have D or R with me, I can send one of them to the car to get them for me while I continue shopping, otherwise I have to abandon my cart to go and get them and risk a dutiful employee coming and taking my cart and groceries and putting them away….which would make me very sad!   So more often than not, I’ll just use the plastic grocery bags and then add them to my pile in the garage to take back to the markets to be recycled.     Well, today in an email from Martha Stewart Living, there was a link to a video to make grocery bags from simple t-shirts.   They made two of them in a matter of 4 minutes (granted, there were two pairs of hands working, so realistically, it takes about 4 minutes to make one of these bags), and the best thing?  Actually  there are several advantages….

1) they roll up and fit into your purse to keep in there at all times, so you won’t forget them in your trunk, or worse yet, at home!

2) you are reusing something that still has life left in it

3) the t-shirt bag stretches and gives for bulkier products….something that the canvas or nylon type bags don’t do.

4)  you can  use different sized t-shirts for different uses….adult sizes for regular shopping trips, PLUS sizes for clothes/household shopping, kids sizes for smaller trips maybe to the drug store or other trips where you will only be picking up an item or two…..and these can be very stylish!

Here is the link to the video instructions for this fun and easy and fantasticly “green” craft idea.  The t-shirt shopping bag portion of the video starts at 5:26 time marker.

As soon as I make some of these, I will post the pictures for you all!

 Last weekend I got a fantastic deal at Target on real Playdough…the Mattell brand…. :)  My kids (yes, they ARE 7, 10, 12 and almost 15, but they still find great joy in squishing and squashing their way through playdough and making and creating) were so thrilled to have the real stuff and some new neat playdough tools (instead just my old rusty cookie cutters ).    Anyhow, I babysat for a dear friend last week as well, and her two little daughters were thrilled to have new playdough to play with as well.  The problem is, the little one (she’s only 3) was getting the colors mixed together.   SO, after my kids voiced their concerns to me regarding this issue, I promised them that I would make some homemade playdough for this week when the girls came back to play, and they could all play with homemade playdough when we have guests, and the “real” playdough would be just for them :)   When the little one woke from her nap this afternoon she asked if she could play with playdough……so I sprang into action!  :)   I made my kids (and mine, because it is so easy to make) favorite homemade playdough.   I love this recipe because it is easy to make, doesn’t require cooking, and it smells SOOOOO good!   It makes a lot of playdough and is soft and silky and wonderful to put your hands in

Since I know that I do have some readers that have littles that like to create, I thought I’d share my favorite recipe with you all.   I got this recipe when R was in the 2s & 3s Sunday School class back about 12 years ago.  This is the playdough that their teachers made for their class.    So, once again, my thanks to Teacher Sarah and Teacher Diane for sharing this recipe with me oh, so many years ago.   I have shared this recipe with many many others, and have made it and given it as gifts to my own children, as well as other children.   It is a much loved recipe!   And it really does make a great gift if you put it into little containers and put them in a basket with cookie cutters and a little plastic rolling pin.   (And maybe a laminated placemat to keep the mess on the table to a minimum?)

Kool-Aid Playdough

(When I make this recipe, I usually divide the ingredients in half and make it in two different bowls with two different flavors/scents of the kool-aid so that I have a variety…..I don’t really need that big of a batch of one color/scent of playdough, unless I’m making it for a Sunday School or Preschool class)

2 1/2 C. flour

1/2 C. salt

1 t. alum (this acts as a preservative….I actually leave it out because the playdough gets played with enough in my house that I have found that I don’t really need to add the alum)

2 pkg. kool-aid drink mix (you can use any brand, but make sure it is the UNSWEETENED type…..no sugar or sweeteners at all)

Mix all of the above ingredients together in a large bowl until well combined.

Add:

2 T. vegetable oil

2 C. boiling water

Mix and add more flour until nice and thick and kneadable.  Turn out onto a floured surface and knead in more flour until the dough is smooth, silky, and no longer sticky at all.  Store in an airtight container for your little lovies to create to their hearts desire.

Today is Day 5 of Kelli’s special meme on Being Thankful, and preparing our hearts and homes for the upcoming Holiday…..no, not Christmas! This is all about Thanksgiving, and for our family, that means beginning some new traditions to bring back the true spirit of Thanksgiving, which does not mean preparing for the “big sales” for the following day, or even focusing on the gobbler that will be featured on our table that day…..it means returning to an attitude of Thanks and giving Thanks to our God who has blessed our family and our nation beyond belief! And as I told my girls at AWANA the other night (I did the Council Time talk for our T&T girls…..45 girls :)), our God is deserving of our Thanks, and we are not asked to give Him thanks, we are actually commanded to give Him thanks! And that is just what our family will be doing this year!

Well, my time is rather limited today, and I promised to share one of the ways that we will bring the true meaning of Thanksgiving to our friends house….and that it was a craft. Well, rather than retype it all, I thought I’d just link back to some past entries on my blog on Thanksgiving!

As time allows today, and then tomorrow, I will share some more recipes.

Thanksgiving Traditions in our home

A Past Thanksgiving countdown

and the foiling of that countdown

Past “I am thankful for” list

and my little girl giddiness

If you would like to participate in Kelli’s “Giving Thanks” meme, there are just 2 days left….today and tomorrow! You can click on the banner above to see more great Thanksgiving ideas, traditions, etc.

I have this in my links section but thought it was worth sharing again. Annie’s Attic (a fantastic crafting website) offers a free pattern each day. It changes each day, and you have to print it out and store it, or you will lose it (there is no way to bookmark an individual pattern…trust me, I’ve tried :)). Anyhow, today’s pattern is for an adorable crocheted baby doll backpack for your little ones to carry their special babies.

Thought I’d share a neat thing with you all today

I LOVE LOVE LOVE crocheting with cotton yarns.  They feel so wonderful going through my hands, and the items that I have crocheted using 100% cotton yarn have held up very well.   One of the problems with cotton is that it is one of the highest sprayed/polluted by poison crops grown in the world.   While I haven’t tried any of the organic cotton yarns…YET, I’m very excited that some of the major yarn brands are now coming out with organic/”green” fibers for fiber artists.   I got an email today announcing that Lion Brand Yarns now has a NEW organic cotton yarn.   It looks heavenly, and I can’t wait to find a local source for it! 

Nature’s Choice Organic Cotton  Yarn (clickable link for more information)

I’m done, I’m done, I’m done, I’m done, I’m done!    Did I say I’m done? :)  Yay, I finished it, and before the eve of the shower!   I am really proud of myself, I have not procrastinated AT ALL in regards to this shower!   I have the gift completed, the gift that R is giving to the momma to be is purchased, all of the napkins, thank you cards, etc, etc, etc have been purchased.   All I have left to purchase besides the food (which I can’t purchase until Saturday) is the prizes for the games, and the balloons.    I think that I will go ahead and do all of that on Saturday.    Thankfully the church has a helium tank, and I have been given the go-ahead to use it, so I won’t have to go to the party store on Sunday morning to get the balloons, I will purchase them on Saturday and then blow them up myself on Sunday with the helium at the church.   YAY!!!!

This blanket turned out really cute, but it definitely is for a newborn.   I think that the next one I make I will make quite a bit larger.   The pattern stated to chain 108, I originaly did that and once I got 3-4 rows into it I noticed that it was not nearly as long as it was supposed to be.  So I took it all apart and started with 120 chains.  This produced a 28″ square blanket with the hood.   I’m thinking that for the  size blanket I really want to do, I’m going to need to chain 168.   I’m hoping that this doesn’t change the instructions on the hood (and I don’t think it will, but I will construct the next blanket, and should know within the first 5 rows of the hood whether or not it will work, and will adapt accordingly…..who knew I’d be a crochet pattern designer…or re-designer ).