Rosie

Here are pictures of our dog Rosie. She is a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, one year old this past August. She came to live with our family a year ago this month.

Lunch

Today, I'm going to lunch with my friend PBV. We have been friends since we were small, small children. In fact, the earliest memory I have of playing with a friend is a memory of P and me. We wanted to know if you could make punch from the powder in Pixie Stix. You can't or at least you can't make punch that tastes good. One thing about "old" friends is that it takes a long time to make them.

Goodness, I've been tagged!

This is a "three things through the years" tag from PBV and I'm going to condense it a lot because I enjoy short posts. :-)

20 years ago--middle year of law school; Dad still alive; clerked at Snow, Nuffer.

10 years ago--two kids pre-school and T in Kindergarten; my mother was unraveling; gospel doctrine teacher.

5 years ago--started finishing basement; multiple lawsuits bogging me down; 2nd go-round being gospel doctrine teacher.

3 years ago--finishing basement and refreshing upstairs :-); into RS presidency for second time; bought van!

1 year ago--my mother very sick; six weeks post-surgery for me; I had shingles.

Yesterday--temple with former RS presidency; interview with bishop; ward Halloween party.

Today--visiting Mom; Swedish weaving; our family all at home with B cleaning carpets.

Tomorrow--attend church; my sister and I will visit our mother; home teachers will probably come.

Next year--hmmm. I hope I'm equal to whatever it holds; hope I go out walking regularly; should go on great vacation. :-)

I'm tagging Cori and Ann S. TTFN.

Ancestors' countries of origin

Thanks to L for this very timely bit of artwork. She drew it years ago but it still has seasonal appeal. :-)

In September, J worked on his communications merit badge. For his five-minute speech, he told his ancestors' countries of origin, showed the flags of those countries, told a fact about each flag, and told several bits of trivia about each country. (For example, Germany makes 1500 different types of sausage.) Here is a list of the countries:

1. Switzerland
2. Scotland
3. Germany
4. Denmark
5. England
6. Wales
7. Canada
8. Northern Ireland
9. France
10. Belguim
11. Netherlands
12. United States.

More aprons that I made

Here is an apron I made, adapted from a pattern in the book A is for Apron. The bright pinks and yellows are not coming across in this picture but it is a bright and cheerful apron. Because of my experience of having the Cosmopolitian apron turn out so small (compared to me), I undertook to enlarge this pattern. Enlarging it posed dilemmas that I finally and eventually resolved after much brainstorming, unpicking, trimming, and changing.

This is a border print apron made from the same pattern as the 4th apron pictured on today's post. I made another apron for a friend's birthday out of this border print (size medium, with two pockets) and had just enough to make a second apron (size small, with one pocket). For the apron pictured here, I made the one pocket a different shape, sewed a picture of a rooster from the border print onto the pocket and sewed the pocket to the bib of the apron.

This Christmas-print apron was made from a pattern by the company Stitch Thru Time. I have noticed on the Stitch Thru Time website that patterns are no longer being sold, but they were being sold at one time and I bought the pattern at a craft fair in St. George. This was my first experience with bias tape and I unpicked and threw away the first "batch" and started again with this sage green which worked perfectly (unlike the cream colored bias tape).
This is what I call the "prototype apron" that I made for the Super Saturday apron class that I taught. This is the apron pattern that was used for the class. Notice that the material is the opposite of the "clock apron with skirt" on the prior apron post.

L is a great model--these were all done in one take. :-)

How can I follow three posts in one day?

How can I top my three posts from yesterday? I can't but here goes anyway.

One of life's bigger questions was answered by J's science project in 4th grade: Will soda pop blow up balloons? The answer is yes, especially when you shake the bottle after putting the balloon on the bottle and, to the extent you can control it, pop will also blow up a balloon (and usually blow it right off the bottle) if you add Mentos to Coke just before you put the balloon on the bottle. We also found that certain types of pop will do a better job of blowing up a balloon than other types of pop will do, but I have forgotten which ones worked best. The pictures shows what the bottles and balloons looked like the day AFTER we ran the experiment.

Three of my aprons

Here is L's friend NB modeling my "clock apron with skirt." I entered this one at Peach Days this year. Of all the aprons I've made this year, this is one of my favorites. I particularly like that it looks good on many diferent body types.

Here is NB modeling my version of the "Cosmopolitian" apron from the book A is for Apron. I call it my "cupcake apron" because, although you cannot see them from this distance, there are cupcakes on the material. I wish I could have found the right color of brown bias tape but red is my favorite color so how could I go wrong there? I think I like this pattern best of all the patterns I've used this year, and it looks cute on NB, though not so cute on me.

Here is my cobbler style apron in a hot chili peppers material. It is lined with an orange material and there are orange ties. Lots of color here.

L was my photographer for these pictures. The girls had fun with this photo shoot. Now to get the rest of the aprons photographed . . . I'm trying to have pictures taken of all the aprons I used in the apron fashion show I put together for Super Saturday. The priority has been to photograph the aprons that need to be returned to other people, but at this photo session, I threw a couple of the aprons I made into the mix.

Firefighter picture

A picture from 2004. How could this blog be complete without a firefighter picture?

Butterfly costume

L had a butterfly costume that we'd purchased when she was in preschool. She wore it for many years but she finally outgrew it. Last year, as some kind of joke, L squeezed into her butterfly costume and wore it for Halloween. She enjoyed that lark so much that she intended to do it again this year. Monday night, when she tied to put the costume on, she could in no way, shape or form fit into that costume this year. Seeing how sad she was and knowing she had to have a costume by Friday (for the ward party she's helping with), I volunteered to make a bigger version of the butterfly costume. I picked up the material and notions yesterday because B and I were in St. George on some business. I made the costume last night. We may decide to put buttons on the collar but it is otherwise finished. So (drum roll please) here is the first of my projects to appear on this website. Here are the front and back (with "ad-libbed" sewing lines across the body), see below. The wings were part of the old costume and are velcroed on to this costume. I will try to get a picture of L in this costume. Now we're trying to figure out how to wear or adapt or fix the hat with the antennae.

Patchwork day

L created this patchwork art years ago. I thought it a fitting representation of my day today--full of lots of different things that leave me feeling like nothing was accomplished but all were necessary to make life go along.

Orchids in bloom

Here are two pictures from, probably, 2004 or 2005. The top picture shows B's three different orchids in bloom at the same time. It is rare that all three bloom at one time. In fact, I don't recall it happening more than this once. These are grown in our master bathroom. It has a skylight for indirect sunlight and lots of humidity from showers and bathing. The second picture is of one set of the orchid blooms up close.

Ancient history now . . .

B took this picture of Marine One when President Bill Clinton came to create the Grand Canyon-Parashaunt National Monument. I think President Clinton was in this helicopter at the time this picture was taken.

Someday I will run out of old artwork and old pictures to post and I will need to get around to posting the pictures I'm meaning to take. :-)

An advance on Thanksgiving well wishes . . . .

Thanks to T for this Thanksgiving picture. He drew this years ago. It is aptly titled, "T's Turkey."

Yesterday afternoon and evening, we spent at the B's deer camp west of Veyo. I think the dutch oven chicken and potatoes were even better than usual.

We took our dog. There were two other dogs already there. As we drove up, my father-in-law said, "Well, it looks like everybody and their dog is here now."

We had not been to that deer camp site (the traditional site) since the fire. The camping area looked the same but the area around it had been denuded by the fire. We saw about five deer (four bucks) as we were leaving last night. We probably should have slept over because it was not as cold as we had anticipated. But we were Solomon-like dividing our time between B's family and mine.

Today, we had a lovely lunch in the pines at my sister's in-laws' cabin on Kolob (on the other side of the county). Lovely weather. Lovely drive. I was even able to get a lot of Swedish weaving done. It was a nice, quiet afternoon (well, the boys shot guns and rode 4-wheelers, but quiet for the rest of us).

T macpainted this years ago. I think he titled it "My Volcano."

Young artists

This is a drawing J did many years ago. The title he gave the picture was: "Jolu hoiu monstr atack uth deth." Kind of a creepy title, even if you don't know what he meant, but it suits the drawing.

T did the artwork that was used about two days ago that is primarily green with the diamond in the corner.

L needed to learn some homemaking skills to pass off a knowledge value for Young Women. She needed to spend ten hours doing whatever it was. We decided on canning. Today, we canned for eight hours. We made jelly (a first for me--the blind leading the blind): blackberry. We made two kinds of jam: peach and a double batch of mixed berry. L also helped her dad and me bottle peaches. Now I'm stumped as to how to use the remaining two hours.

My dad

Some years ago, my dad died on October 7th and his funeral and burial were on October 10th so I always think of Dad this time of year.

Here is a picture of my dad (in the black coat). He thought the picture had been taken about 1908 (I think he looks older than 8). He's the one pointing out over the town of LaVerkin. He didn't remember the name of the friend who stood with him. Between them is pictured what is now known as the intersection of Center and Main Streets in La Verkin.

Interestingly enough, I think I see the vague outline of the big house through the trees, the one I'm supposed to try to get the county to designate as an historical house. Aunt Ruth wrote in her history that the house was built in 1915 so my hunch that Dad wasn't 8 is probably accurate. He was probably more like 15. Several posts ago, I posted a 1936 photo of the house.

One time, Dad told a story about when he was about 15, he and a friend slept in the house while it was under construction. They had to climb a ladder to the second floor because there was no stairway, yet. There was also no railing. The friend walked in his sleep, and fell down the stairwell. The fall didn't cause him to wake up and he wasn't hurt.

Some thoughts from my talk yesterday . . . .

Remember the story of Naaman who went to Elisha to be healed of his affliction. Elisha sent a servant to tell Naaman to wash himself seven times in the River Jordan. Elisah was offended, angry. The prophet Elisha hadn’t bothered to come and then, what an insignificant thing to do to wash in the river. Naaman’s servant said, “If the prophet had bid thee to do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? How much rather then, when he saideth to thee, “Wash and be clean?” Naaman listened to the servant, washed himself and he was clean.

Elder Rex. D. Pinegar said, “Are we not sometimes like Naaman, longing for big or important things to do and bypassing simple things which could change our lives and heal us of our afflictions?”

President David O. McKay said:

“There is no one great thing that we can do to obtain eternal life, and it seems to me that the great lesson to be learned in the world today is to apply in the little acts and duties of life the glorious principles of the Gospel. Let us not think that because some of the things . . . may seem small and trivial, that they are unimportant. Life, after all, is made up of little things. Our life, our being, physically, is made up here of little heart beats. Let that little heart stop beating, and life in this world ceases. The great sun is a mighty force in the universe, but we receive the blessings of his rays because they come to us as little beams, which, taken in the aggregate, fill the whole world with sunlight. The dark night is made pleasant by the glimmer of what seem to be little stars; and so the true Christian life is made up of little Christ-like acts performed this hour, this minute, in the home, in the quorum, in the organization, in the town, wherever our life and acts may be cast.”

President Howard W. Hunter said, “Frequently, it is the commonplace tasks that have the greatest positive effect on the lives of others.”

In Alma 36-37 it says, “Behold, I say unto you that by small and simple things are great things brought to pass and small means in many instances doth confound the wise. And the Lord God doth work by means to bring about his great and eternal purposes; and by very small means the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls.”

Chicks are having fun . . .

Thanks to J for this lovely art work from days gone by. The title of this masterpiece is "Chicks are having fun."

I spent some time Saturday photographing L and a friend in the ten aprons I borrowed from friends. I want L to have friends over again so we can work on photographing the other 35 or so aprons before I have to return them. (Well, about half are mine.) I already returned two prematurely (before I took pictures of them) so I'll have to work on getting them photographed.

Then I want to upload to the blog all of the aprons I made and I want to make a power point presentation of the apron fashion show aprons, with my script. So ambitious for someone whose life is otherwise scripted.

Here is a view from our front porch a few years ago. Of course, we must be at the end of that rainbow!

Evidence of my need to learn better digital photography skills

This is my first attempt at photographing the aprons I've made--not very good picture quality. I need to learn more about digital photography. However, this is one of my favorite aprons out of all the aprons I've made. I also made the cute pajama pants that you can barely see on this lovely model.

Another day dawns . . .

This is artwork courtesy of T. Quite colorful and imaginative.

In der Wueste . . .

I thought this picture matched my "in the desert" mood. I enjoyed General Conference and thought it was the best one we've had for several years. It was like water in the desert. :-)

A day for errands and shopping . . .

Thanks to J for his artwork from years ago. How about that? It seems like when he drew it, he said it was something's house, like a hamster's house.

L needed pants; she was down to four pairs of long pants and one pair of shorts. So we went shopping and found some great deals at Kohl's. So she's set now for a while. We also found a pajama top for T so he can start using the pajama pants I made him. We also found a blue guitar shirt for J. He was pleased. LOTS of sales. LOTS of shopping at Kohl's.

B and I didn't go walking today but I feel like I've walked from one end of the county to the other.

Old House Photograph

Here is my grandparents' house, circa 1936 or 37. This is the picture I need to submit to the county. I don't know why the color is so wonky but I have already corrected the color of this picture. I believe this house was built or the building started on this house in 1915. The county wants the house to be at least 90-years old and so I think this qualifies. The goal is now to have the information submitted by the first Wednesday in November.

Donating pictures

My sister and I spent Tuesday morning helping a distant cousin donate pictures of our mutual ancestors William Meeks and his wife Mary Elizabeth Rhoads Meeks to the DUP museum in St. George. The pictures and frames were real treasures and I think they have found a good home there. I always felt William and Betsy should have their pictures in that museum and now they do. The cousin had just come to town Monday and started calling people with the last name of Meeks hoping to find someone to help him donate the framed photographs. One of people he called then referred him to me and I received a call about 7:30 pm on Monday evening. I spent the rest of the evening calling people, trying to find out how to make a donation.

*More lovely artwork by L. This was specially designed for the blog. Thanks, L!