Merry Christmas 2018

So peaceful and quiet on the pine ridge this morning......the pie is just starting to bake in the oven and all I really hear is the clock gently moving counting time, until it chimes again.

So thankful for the words in this verse and the picture that really shares the full story of His coming and his gift to me of His Son!  Thank you Jesus!

Shot a little video of the house decked out for this year to share with a couple friends who aren't able to visit this time of year.  Also it's good to take pictures to have a reminder of how decorations are arranged.....some things stay pretty much the same.....other things change and move around.  It's pretty amateur video and I thought the battery was going to die at one point.....but it hung in there.  It is what it is.  It's about 30 minutes long.....FYI!

If you have hung in here this long....here is a piece of clip art for you Cricut people.  If you have never brought in a piece of clip art for Design Space, here is your chance to practice and try it out.

You need to right click on it and save it to your computer, where you know where it is.  Open Design Space and click on the Upload button and follow the prompts.....then you will be able to do Print and Cut with this image.....very cool.  Sometimes I sit and do a whole page full of Print and Cut images and have them all ready to use as embellishments for whatever, cards, scrapbooking, etc.  

Kitchen Face-Lift Pt. 3......or not enough room in the corner for drawers

I love having my Easter decorations out.....after 2 weeks of rain and clouds at least inside my house feels cheerful and springy!  You can save this piece of clipart if you choose.  I would click on it and when it opens in a new window.  Right click on it and save it to your computer.

Back to the kitchen and what this posting is suppose to be about.  I know I got side tracked.....story of my brain. Partly why this has taken me so long to do, is I knew I took pictures of the things I wanted to post and every time I went to work on this.....I would look and look and look and could never find said pictures.  Grrrrrrrrr.........

So when I recently had a conversation with Jan and she asked me what happen to that.....I hung my head in epic fail position.....yea, I know, hasn't happened.  So I was off on Plan B, or C or lost count.

Here I thought I would make quick work of this and do a video instead of pictures.  Clearly didn't do that right because it spent most of the day processing the video.....need to evidently figure out how to make the file size smaller.  Here is the last of the kitchen update and I added in some of my Easter things at the end.  Enjoy!

Celebrating Easter

What a special time of celebration with our church family this morning....then we enjoyed part of our family for lunch today.  And it was a beautiful day here in Iowa....80 degrees!  Can you believe it?  So wonderful to have our windows open and the birds are singing today!  

I found this piece of clip art recently, so sweet.  I have been making necklaces with clip art lately.  I used this for one of them.  I buy tiny little frames with slide glass in them at the craft store and I printed out a whole bunch of different pieces of clip art various sizes that I thought would be close to the size I needed, then printed it out on matte photo paper.  Auditioned the clip art and cropped them if I needed to, cut them out and put them in the frames.  Then I also bought ball chain necklaces that went with the finish on the tiny frames.  I also bought some word charms and added them too.  So very cute and inexpensive!  In the boutiques, these necklaces are $25-30.

The Easter buckets all ready for the hunt!

Kirsten all dressed up in her Easter finery, with my dolly bed not quite full of doll quilts, but I am working on that.  

My vintage postcard album, displaying some wonderful vintage Easter postcards!  Both of my grandmothers enjoyed doing ceramics, so I have quite of few of ceramic Easter eggs....such pretty colors!

In the footed candy dish, the red egg on top is hand painted and the marbled eggs below it are from the Amana Colonies.  I made them probably 30+ years ago out of furniture glue and dyes.  Check out the link, if you would like to order them for yourself!  It is a tradition brought from Germany.

All ready for our 16 guests!

A ceramic bunny with a sweet face done by my Grandma Thedens, a little knitted chick done by my Grandma Kullmer and I crossed stitched the eggs in the basket many years ago, still love them!

A dear friend, Karen, just gave me this little bib set and it came folded up in the little embroidered pocket.  So darling!  I have never seen anything like it.  She gave me two of them, the other one is embroidered in orange thread and is just as cute!  The pictures are of my Grandma Thedens as a baby/child.....love the hair bow!

The eight of the fifteen that were able to be with us today!  We ate lots of good food, hunted lots of eggs and ate lots of candy!  Good day all around!  Easter love to those who were with us today and those we were missing.  We love you ALL!!!!

Happy Thanksgiving

We give thanks to Thee, O God, we give thanks, For Thy name is near; Men declare Thy wondrous works. Psalm 75:1

It is good to give thanks to the Lord, And to sing praises to Thy name, O Most High; To declare Thy loving kindness in the morning, And Thy faithfulness by night.  Psalm 92:1-2

May your day be filled with gratitude, not just today, but every day!
We have a LOT to be thankful for!

Easter Is Past & Spring Has Finally Sprung

Well this is long overdue....as you can see.  I shot these a long time ago and between my health issues and some family health issues.....blogs and extra stuff get set aside.

Even though Easter 2013 is past, I thought I would go ahead and post my pics any way.  We are finally seeing spring-like weather here in Ioway!  It has been a loooong time coming.  

I am wanting to do a give-away some time soon.  When this blog reaches 50 google followers, I will do a drawing.  So if you just follow with your email, please consider signing in as a google follower, it is easy to do and makes writing a comment very easy.  I might even let you pick your gift, how would that be for fun!!!

 Chicks, bunnies, & eggs, oh my!

The ceramic bunnies, eggs, and chicks were made by both my grandma's.  Can you find the one with my name on it?

I have several dozen ceramic eggs from the grandmas, they are all so cute!  You can also see several cross stitch ones that I did many years ago.

I have been filling my grandpa's toolbox with more eggs, chicks, & bunnies.  The tins have easter puzzles in them for the grandkids to do.

Even more ceramic eggs on a deviled egg plate....lots of spring quilts on my ladder and Easter postcards.

I love vintage postcards, I bought this postcard collection book at an auction years ago....love to display them in this book!  We had all of our local family here for Easter and the grands had a great time hunting their eggs.  We had a great day just being together.

One of the three table-fulls we had set up for the day....I think the big kid fits right in!

This is my cutie patootie.....she is my girlfriend!  I miss her!

What a sweetheart and oh that beautiful hair!!!!

Then these two nuts....playing with the old glasses that are in the dress-up box....gotta love those faces!

Then we had entertainment.....

I love that boy.....he played the guitar for us too.....what a hoot!

This would make a cute little cupcake poke, if you printed out on cardstock half facing right and the other half facing left, cut them out and glue a toothpick between.  Very sweet!!!  Or a larger one stuck in a Easter basket....or a bunch of them on a garland or glued to the top of a place card on your Easter table or.........

Mother's Day

We took my parents on a little jaunt to celebrate Mother's Day.  After loading them up in the van on Saturday morning we headed east toward a little spot in the road called Rowley.  I had my laptop powered up and a microphone plugged in ready to have my mom tell about the places she went as a girl,and about her grandparents and parents.  This little rural community of Rowley share the history of both my mom's parents the Schmidt's and the Theden's.  It was fun to hear her tell the memories she had, some of which I knew and some I didn't.

P. C. Thedens Home 2012

We drove by all the houses, building sites that her parents and grandparents lived in the Rowley area.  Also saw several of the Theden's siblings homes too.  There were a lot of Thedens kids about 10 I think without looking it up.  Grandpa P.C. Thedens was a farmer who had come from Illinois.  This home is still in the family.

Robert Schmidt home at the farm 2012

Grandpa Schmidt was a farmer and a carpenter, my mother has just a few memories of coming to the farm, but mostly remembers going to their home in Rowley on Sunday afternoons and spending a week with them during the summer months.  She remembers Grandma Schmidt always cooking or working in the flower beds around the house.

Robert & Emma Schmidt retirement home 2012.

Sometimes they would take Grandpa & Grandma Schmidt and they would go visit the Haine's Cousins on Sunday evenings.  Hazel always made jello with bananas and would make popcorn down in the basement for them.  When Mom was older she would drive Dick, JoAnn and Wayne around the countryside, sometimes Hazel would pack a picnic for them.  She remembered one time they stopped with a picnic at a grove a trees nearby to eat and the next thing they knew someone was shooting a gun and the bullets were flying over their heads.   They ran to get in the car and she thought she had the car in first gear reved up all the way back home to Hazel's.  The neighbor didn't want them in his woods, I guess.  Boy, have times changed.  :0

My mom was born while they lived in the upstairs apartment above the hardware store 2012.

My Grandpa Ed was one of the older Theden's siblings.  He moved to Jesup after marrying my Grandma to start a portable mill grinding business.  He would drive from farm to farm and grind oats, corn, etc. to feed the livestock at each place.  In those days, a farmer did not have their own mill like we would today.

The Ed Thedens home in Jesup 2012.

They lived in this home for several years.....I have always known it as the Tonn house before they bought a lot a couple doors down ......which was the edge of town.

Grandpa Schmidt built the garage......as a house and they lived in the garage for several years before they built the rest of the house.  It had a kitchen and bathroom toward the back side and the kitchen cupboards were still there as we cleaned out the house in the 1980's.  Mom remembered having her own bedroom, but her brother had a pull-out bed to sleep in every night.

This was Grandpa & Grandma T's house to me growing up......  climbing the trees, ran through the grapevines, learned to sew in Grandma's sewing room, played ping pong in the basement, dug around in Grandma's store room, woke up on Friday morning to Grandma vacuuming under my bed because it was Friday and she cleaned house on Friday, learned to make rolls and pies by watching her every Saturday for Sunday dinner.  My Grandpa T. planted all the trees on this property.....he liked to dig and pull weeks.

After they had completed the whole house, Mom really didn't consider it her home as she did not live here very much while going to college and then she got her first teaching job and lived in La Porte City where she met Dad.

We had a great day together and as I told Dad......guess what we are doing for Father's Day!!!  Down in "Czechland".....Dysart, Traer, & Reinbeck

Pulled this book off my shelf the other day and what a treasure it is.  It is full of great prose and stories of Oregon.  I have all of her cookbooks and they are wonderful.  I am sure you can still find them and they would make wonderful gifts for any loved ones who love to read  family stories surrounding the recipes.

Happy Mother's Day to you, Mom.  

I love you dearly and you are truly a treasure to me.

Flower Easter Egg

Want to do a fun little Easter project with a few supplies that you probably already have among your craft supplies?  Pastel felt scraps, pearls, pins, an egg Styrofoam shape, and a small flower shaped die.

 I don't know about you, but it is so much fun to get out a few basic supplies.....with a general idea and see where it goes and how the project develops.  

 I just bought this Sizzix lilac flower die recently, just for the shape and size of these flowers.  I know this is old school, but I have been using these dies lately to cut felt or wool.  It is so much fun and it cuts it so well.  Here I am using up some scrap pieces to get a few more flowers cut out. 

 I just cut up a bunch of these flowers in both sizes....in several different pastel colors that I had in my felt stash.  A couple of them are wool felt, which I love.  I don't have much of that because of the cost.....but it is wonderful to work with and has a more beautiful look to it.  Aren't they sweet?

This is what I ended up with....adding little pearls with pins and a piece of ribbon for the hanger.  I dip the ends of the pins in a little craft glue before inserting them into the Styrofoam to secure them well.  You could leave the ribbon off, if you don't want to hang it.  I think doing one all in the same color-way would be wonderful too.   I included Miss Chicky in the pic too....this is a Mill Hill kit from a couple years ago.  She is a hoot!!!  I often take something like this to work on when we travel.

We are enjoying an unbelievable spring here in the Midwest....so I hope this little project brings some "spring" into your life.  Isn't this Easter postcard wonderful?  ....as always right click on the image and you can save it to your computer.  I just saw a garland made from postcards that are machine sewed to a piece of rick-rack.  It was wonderful, I haven't gotten to that yet.....so many projects, so little time.......

Happy Valentine's Day To You

A fun stack of " embroidered love" on my old kitchen scale all gifts from my friend, Normajean.

A ladder full of red quilts and stack of "love" books.

Valentine Greetings!!!

A valentine to my "Silver Fox" several years ago.  Find a verse that you love and print it out in several fonts and sizes.  Audition on a light box and trace the lettering with your light box and pigma pen.  Beautiful!!!

I added some silk ribbon embroidery too.  I just saw some linens like this at the dollar store for a buck.

Still life on my treadle, the young girl is my Grandma T. as a young girl.

I love pincushions, this is a sweet little red beauty with crocheted blooms.

A treasure box full of pink loveliness.

A box full of red hugs and kisses.

Happy Valentine's Day from me to you.

(Right click on the clip art and save if you wish.)