it's time to move

I'm moving to a new blog - with a name that suits me better
I hope you'll come visit me at

If you do stuff

Did you have a bad day today?

or did you wake up to a messy house to clean up after the weekend? Think your laundry room was bad?
Look what happened in my friend Tammy's house, her blog is Play for a Moment - but she did not get to play until she cleaned this up.



read the rest of the story at her blog, she makes it sound a little humorous but I know she is still wishing it never happened.

Hello everyone, I am fine, just been busy at home with some of those once a year cleaning projects. I've also been working on some Christmas gifts but I can't show you those yet.

One easy project I did for the first time is Martha Stewart glitter cards.
The site has instructions and even free print outs for different cards. Just use some card stock in your printer.
I have an assortment of Martha glitter that I bought after a holiday on clearance and some that I got from Nina. I don't think you would have to use Martha's glitter but it does need to be a fine texture glitter and the glue need to have a tiny whole that it is dispensed from. Her instructions say to use canned air to remove the extra glitter, I just thumped the back of cards and all the extra came off.




Isn't this fabric so sweet? I won it on blog giveaway from Heidi in Holland.
She has 2 wonderful blogs and is going to host giveaways on both through the holiday season. The Cranberry Chronicle and All My Scattering Moments



hmmm, I wonder if I could be lucky enough to win twice?

I wanted a few plants....

We are trying to eat healthier and just be healthier. I've been reading some magazines and books, every "healthy" type home advice says a home needs some houseplants to help clean the air.
So I thought I would get a few.


My parents have a lot of plants on their patio and Dad gave me a mixture of ones he had started.
So I brought them home and divided them up, repotting in them pots we already had.


I thought the plants needed some extra sunshine, so I swapped out the pink toile curtains that are usually in this nook for some fruit and floral print valances were hanging there before the toile.





Dad's plants gave us a nice assortment.

Then the day before we went to OKC last week for Jeff's VA appt., I got a B1G1F coupon for houseplants from Home Depot.
If you know me, you know I love good coupons. So we stopped at Home Depot. And not only did I have that good coupon, they had lots of nice hardy looking plants on clearance for 5/$10.
So of course, I picked out 5 more.



I guess our air will be lots cleaner now :)

K-Mart should pay a commision to Manuela

Last month I read on Manuela's blog about some cute Country Living things she bought at K-Mart.
Well, my town does not have a K-mart, I don't even think my whole state has one anymore, but Texarkana has a nice K-Mart. So when we visited our parents, we also did a little shopping trip. I got some great things and am using all of them everyday.


2 of our beds needed dust ruffles and I could not find any in my town.
The glass pitchers are so nice for holding iced tea in the fridge, they don't take up much room on the shelf and Jeff thinks the tea is colder and tastes better in glass.
2 red brushes for scrubbing pots and the kitchen sink
and some really cute toile-esque dishes.



isn't the tiny bird inside the bowl cute?

I have not even put these dishes in the cabinet yet. They have become our everyday dishes and live on the counter or in the dishwasher as we have been using them for every meal.

If you don't have K-Mart in your town, they have a great website and you can just mail order these cute Country Living items.

family fun on the weekend

Gavin dressed up like a horse for Halloween - no candy for him just yet - but he seemed to really enjoy having on his fun outfit.



Gavin's daddy needed to fix some things on their roof, no ladder for him though.
Gavin's mommy drove their spiffy John Deere tractor and hoisted him up to the roof in the front loader.

Gavin and Grandpa Jeff watched - I thinking Gavin was thinking that he can hardly wait until he is big enough to drive that tractor.


Nina spent the afternoon here mostly working on 2 photo album scrapbooks that will be Christmas gifts.



Jeff smoked a tray full of pork loins and chickens - now our freezer is full of yummy cooked meat



I hope all of you had a nice weekend too.

Oatmeal Glass

just one more picture from my parents house....
this is their kitchen window. The pretty green glass used to come as a free extra inside of oatmeal boxes.



When I was young, one of my jobs when I shopped with mom, was to shake the oatmeal boxes. Mom prefered to get the glasses and bowls instead of the little plates. So I would shake the boxes until I heard one make the sound of a round glass hitting the end. They sounded different than the plates.

The green glass came with oatmeal before I was born though,

all the oatmeal glass when I was young was clear with star designs in it. Mom has some the that clear oatmeal glass in the bottom right corner.

Progresso winner

The winner is Missy from There's no place like home.Congratulations to Missy and thank you to everyone who entered.

more pictures inside my parents home

There are lots of pictures in this post....

I found the circles for these pumpkins in Mom's stash, she had cut them out last year. So Dad fetched some branches that I cut up for the stems and I sewed this bunch of pumpkins on our last visit there.

a little quilt, ceramic hearts and a needlework scene - all made by Mom

3 grandsons framed on the wall - they are all 3 bigger and older now

3 generations
Mom, me and NinaBeth

Gavin is pretty much of the star of the fridge

Kitchen table decorated for fall

old oak bufffet,
my parents bought it at an auction in their hometown way back when I was teenager

Printers tray filled with pictures and momentos

glass front hutch filled with their wedding china and crytal

lamp made by Dad with help from my Grandpa.
they used a wagon axle and wheel hub. It was from an old wagon on my grandparents farm and Grandpa thought the wagon had been driven into Oklahoma during one the land runs.

dresser in the guest room - the clear crystal thing is a cast of my brothers face - he was the model for an award and it was a big honor made by a professional artist, it seems just a pinch creepy to me though...

Crazy quilt heart made by Mom from neckties that belonged to her daddy

crewel embroidery picture by Mom, this reminds all of us the farm she grew up on

Have you heard about Progresso's new high fiber soups?
They come in 4 yummy sounding flavors and have lots of good fiber. The Chicken Tuscany has 7 grams of fiber per serving.
I'm hosting a giveaway for Progresso. The winner will get 2 very snazzy soup mugs that have a nice indentation on the handle to rest your thumb on if you like to hold your mug up close to your mouth. The gift pack also comes with 2 big stainless soup spoons and of course, a can of Progresso high fiber soup.
It will be mailed to the winner directly from Progresso.

Creamy Tomato Basil
Chicken Tuscany
Hearty Vegetable & Noodle
Homestyle Minestrone

Entering is easy, just comment with which flavor you think sounds best for 1 entry.
For an extra entry, link this back to your blog or facebook or whatever and tell me.

Contest will close Thursday Night, Oct. 29.

Frugal Luxuries giveaways

Tracey McBride has a giveaway for 2 of her books at her blogs
Frugal Luxuries
and
Frugal Luxuries by the Season

both are easy to enter, her blogs are really sweet and I am pretty sure you'll be glad if you visit Tracey.

Jane Snead Samplers

My Mom made all these samplers and lots more. They are all from a mail order company that is no longer in business called Jane Snead.
They are stamped cross stitch with some embroidery, no one we knew did counted cross stitch way back then.

Thank you Tammy!

my blog's new header was a surprise from Tammy at Walking Out His Good Plans.

I'm still not used to the new and improved Blogspot ways so bear with me while I work on the rest of my page to match my pretty new header.

over the weekend....

I did a little sewing this weekend.

We also watched several football games,

did some shopping, laundry and cooking,

cleaned out the garage and Jeff's part of the closet.

bread machine cover for Nina

little bibs for a soon-to-be-born baby boy at church

I used the same flannel prints to make some new bigger bibs for Gavin, these are a pull-over style with ribbing at the neck because smarty-Gavin has learned how to unfasten his velcro bibs.

new pillows

I love Brenda's cozy quilts and pillows and used hers as the inspiration for mine.
My colors are a little different than Brenda's so they match my green couches. All my fabric was scraps.
I've also pieced a sofa-size postage stamp quilt and bought the batting for it today - used one of the nice Hobby Lobby 40% off coupons on it -
but it may take me awhile to get it quilted.

If you've never been to Brenda's Cozy Home blog, then go when you have some time and big mug of hot tea, because you will be there awhile. She has so many beautiful pictures, I promise you will enjoy her.

I'm a little slow....

I posted back on July 23 that I had a plan to swap around our 3 empty bedrooms. It's taken awhile for several reasons, partly because of Jeff's surgery and taking care of Gavin, but also because it just takes me awhile to think about things and decide what I want and where it should be.

So far, one of the guest rooms is pretty much done as well as the new craft room/computer room.

All the big furniture is in place as well as some the accessories, and my next step will be to get some pretty things hung on the walls.

Guest room #1

Most everything in here were things I had previously used in other rooms. The curtains and pillows are from the living room, both the bedspreads and side tables were once used in the master room.

The only things I bought were the lamps from a garage sale for $1 and new shades for them from Big Lots.

One side table - 2 patchwork table toppers were previously used as a window treatment in the craft room.

The decoupaged lunch pail is thrift store find several years ago and holds note cards.

the other side of the bed - the toile box is from a yard sale last month.

favorite toys from the past

Nina bought this cute message board at a yard sale but them changed her mind and asked me if I wanted it. It will look great hung on the wall in this mostly red and green room.

And you can lay in bed and watch TV if you want to.

Craft room / computer room

I already had one of the white book shelves, they work so well, Jeff got 2 more and put them together last night.

The sewing desk is in the middle of the room so while I sew, if I want to....

I can watch the news or a decoration show on TV.

The little armoire was part of Nina's bedroom furniture before she moved out. Now it holds craft supplies.

Rubber stamps on a shelf that Jeff and his dad built several years - it got a fresh coat of white paint.

This room does not have much hung on it's walls either - and it needs a a new valance on the single window.

And even though I've been thinking and working on these rooms for almost 3 months, not exactly as fast as those TV decorating shows, I'm really happy with how they've turned out.

The 3rd bedroom is also a guest room with Gavin's things in there too. I'll show you some pictures of it soon.