Follow the snow covered road.

1 Comments ~ Post a Comment ~Permanent Link

Here in Minnesota the temps are falling and so is the snow!  It started snowing later this afternoon and is expected to snow through tomorrow morning.  Mondays are a busy day for our family with Andrew having speech, Samantha having swim team practice and I have a weight watchers meeting in the evening but we were able to make it through the day.  Tomorrow might be a different story though.  And, as luck would have it my husband left for the week yesterday.  Somehow he always misses out on the shoveling and our snowblower isn't yet put together. 

Today I ran all over looking for Red Heart yarn that would match the blue that I am using in my snowflake afghan.  I have 13 more motifs to make and then need to use some of the blue for the edging and I ran out of the yarn.  I threw away the label but I thought it was called midnight blue.  So I have been to EVERY craft store in both Hutchinson and Mankato and I can not find a Red Heart yarn called midnight blue.    I bought one that was close - called Soft Navy but they don't seem to match.  I've tried looking online but still haven't been able to find one called midnight blue.  *sigh*  I'm going to make up a couple of motifs and see how noticible the color difference is.

Here is the afghan as it stands tonight without the 13 extra motifs and without the edging done.

The other afghan that I'm working on is this one.   It is worked in a different color for each row in order to see the stitching, so there are lots of little tails to tuck in!  I love how it is turning out though and its an easy one to work on.  Just single crochet, double crochet and then treble crochet.  You end each row with the treble crochet and then you tie off, turn the piece and start with a new color.  You would start the new color with a single crochet on top of the treble crochet from the last row.  Very simple, very fast.

I have to do 6 rows a day in order to finish it by Christmas so I best be off to tuck little ones in so that I can get busy.

4 Comments ~ Post a Comment ~Permanent Link

Welcome to the Christmas edition of getting to know your family.  I must say that this little meme is causing me quite the frustration.  It is not copying and pasting my answers correctly.  *grr*  O.kay I give up.  I have tried and tried to fix this to have returns after each question but its not inserting the.  So... it is what it is.

You know the drill.  Answer the questions and then have some fun and tag a whole bunch of friends and family.

1.  Wrapping paper or gift bags?  Wrapping paper for sure!  The mess is half the fun.  Plus once you've opened all the gifts there is always a possiblity that there is another gift somewhere under all that paper so everyone starts searching.  :-)

2.  Real or fake tree?  We have an artificial tree.  Someday I'd like to do a real tree though.

3. When do you put up your tree?  We put up our tree the day after Thanksgiving but this year my dh was gone so we haven't put it up yet.  Maybe tomorrow.

4.  When do you take your tree down?  We leave it up until the first week of Jan.  Then I take down the tree and all of the Christmas decorations.  I leave up my snowmen decorations through Feb. though.

5.  Do you like egg nog?  Yuck

6.  Favorite gift received as a child?  My Cabbage Patch doll.  My grandmother stood in line for hours and hours to get it.

7.  Hardest person to buy for?  My teenagers.  They just want money to buy their own stuff but I don't do that.  I think part of the fun is getting to open gifts. 

8.  Easiest person to buy for?  My two youngest and my nieces and nephew.  I have lots of great ides for the 10 and under crowd.

9.  Do you have a Nativity set?  Yes, two of them.

10.  Christmas cards.  Mail or e-mail?  Snail mail of course!

11.  Worst Christmas gift received?  I don't think I've ever received anything that I can call the "worst"

12.  Favorite Christmas movie?  A Christmas Story, minus some of the language.

13.  When do you do your shopping?  I would love to say that I get it done before December.  That is always my goal but somehow here it is December and I haven't even started.

14.  Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?  Yes.  Does that make me a bad person?

15.  Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?  My mom's Christmas cut out cookies and Shrimp

16.  Lights on the tree?  Yes, but only white.  I like a uniformed look.

17.  Favorite Christmas song?  Away in a Manger.  I've loved this song since I was a child.

18.  Travel for Christmas or stay at home?  Travel, but in state

19.  Can you name all of Santa's reindeer?  Nope 

20.  Angel or star on the top of your tree?  We have an angel but I'm looking for a star.

21.  Open presents Christmas eve or morning?  We open our gifts on Christmas morning. 

22.  The most annoying thing about this time of the year?  The fact that it is so busy.  Between shopping, cooking, baking, wrapping, Christmas parties and play practices we do alot of running.  That is why we took this month off of school.

23.  Favorite ornament, theme or color?  I love white and blue and I love snowmen.  I also like to decorate with home made things that the kids have made.  Snowflakes in the windows, cute ornaments.  Even my tree skirt is homemade.  Crocheted of course. 

24.  Favorite Christmas dinner?  Shrimp.  Big, fat, breaded and deep fried.  Its a Leonard tradition!  Of course growing up you had to reach a certain age to be able to eat the shrimp.  My parents whould share a little bit with me and it only whet my appetite for more!  We still have shrimp to this day.

25.  Favorite decorations?  See number 23

26.   What do you want for Christmas this year?  For my parents and siblings to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

Merry Christmas everyone!  I tag Christin, Beckie, Kimalita and Michelle

2 Comments ~ Post a Comment ~Permanent Link

I've been busy working on this afghan for a Christmas present.  I am over 60% done and I am really liking the way it looks.  Whip stitching the hexagons together is a pain though.  The picture was really dark and when I tried to lighten it up it compromised some of the quality.  I'll try to get a better picture soon. 

If your interested in seeing more of my crochet projects you can visit Everyday Crochet.

2 Comments ~ Post a Comment ~Permanent Link

A very timely article for me at Simply Charlotte Mason so I thought I would share it here in case anyone else was interested.

Over the past few weeks I've been trying to figure out why things seem so completely out of order around our home.  I've been reading through Shepherding a Child's Heart by Tedd Tripp and one afternoon the words on the page smacked me right between the eyes.  I was in disobedience.  Me!  I was uspset with all the bickering and strife between my children.  Wondering why they just couldn't get along or speak kindly to one another.  I knew that I couldn't let this go on any more.  We needed to have peace in our home and our words were constantly destroying that peace.  I wanted to correct and talk with both of the boys but because I was mentally overloaded I took some time to go to my room and pray first.  I picked up the book on the night stand and began to read.  It was then that I realized that by my asking them to get along, guilting them into trying to get along, nagging them or by yelling at them that I was just as guilty, no even more guilty of destroying the peace in our home by not doing my job. 

God commands me in the Word of God to train my children.  When my children disobey and require correction I am to give correction Biblically with more than just an outward goal of better behavior in mind.   I am commanded to correct my children and anything other than what he commands of me is disobedience.   Yelling, guilting and nagging are not how God instructs me to train or correct my children and yet I did those things countless times.  Becoming overwhelmed with the lack of improvement in their behavior only fueled my frustration.  Now I see that there could be no fruit because of my disobedience.  First in not training them properly.  By not teaching them the fear of the Lord and that everything they do should bring glory to God and then in not handling the correction process God's way. 

So this is where I am, a place that I've created and boy do I need the grace and mercy of God and the leading and disciplne of the Holy Spirit to guide me to all truth.

1 Comments ~ Post a Comment ~Permanent Link

I gave up blogging quite some time ago. This summer maybe? I can't remember exactly when. At first I continued to read some of my favorite blogs but eventually I stopped doing that as often as I used to.

3 Comments ~ Post a Comment ~Permanent Link