Happy Valentines Day

Hope yours is wonderful!!

A LITTLE CRAFT PROJECT (continued)

Since I have 2 granddaughters, I couldn't stop with just one play purse, so I made another one this weekend.  I wasn't crazy about the first flower, so I tried another one.  Not sure I like this one either, but I guess they'll do for play purses.

 


 

A Little Craft Project

I haven't done much crafting lately, but I came across some instructions for a crochet project that I thought I might like to do.  I found this cute little purse on http://www.tangledhappy.com/2010/11/granny-stripe-boutique-bag.html.


I thought the granddaughters would like to have one so I headed to the attic and found my yarn stash and came up enough to make one.

My flower didn't turn out exactly like I wanted, but I think it will do for a play purse.  Now to make another one so they won't have to share!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

Another year has come and gone.  It hardly seems possible.  This past year we've gotten to spend time at the cabin, enjoy a family reunion with several cousins, and spend time with our kids and grandkids.  I joined "You Version" last January and during the final weeks of 2011 I finished my "Read the Bible in a Year."  It wasn't my first time through it, but it had been a couple of years since I had completed it in a year's time.  Yesterday I began the New Testament again.  I'm looking for a good book on women of the Bible.  I'm hoping that there's an interesting one out there.
I read quite a few books last year, thanks to my Kindle and their new access to library books.  Our library doesn't have a lot of books  yet (just a little over 600), but they're adding rather steadily.  It's been nice to not have to purchase books for my Kindle.  
During the last 6 weeks of 2011, I started walking.  First at a city recreation center, then at a local church.  I found that the church's carpeted walking track was kinder to my knees.  I plan on ramping up my walking in 2012.  It was hit or miss, plus I was just getting back in the habit and trying to get my body used to the exercise again.  I walked 1 or 2 miles a few times a week.  Now I'd like to get back to 4 miles a day at least 5 days a week.  At least I know that I have a nice warm, safe place to walk while it's cold outside.  I do plan to change my diet a little, but not much.  Mainly just smaller portions.  Our menus are usually pretty healthy with plenty of fruits and vegetables.
I have a few projects around the house that I'd like to finish (or start), nothing major is on tap for this year that I know of yet.  Handyman will probably finish painting the walls in the bedrooms and I'd like to redecorate our guest bedroom.  New bed linens, a few new accessories, but keeping the furniture that we have in there.  I'd also like to change the lighting the master bath.  This year we changed the towel bars and TP holder to the bronze.  I really like them, but we need to change knobs on the vanity too and maybe a few other things in there as the year progresses. 
Our Christmas tree is still up in the living room, so I guess I'd better get up from here and start taking it down since it's back to work tomorrow.
Hope everyone has a great 2012!!  Happy New Year!

AROUND AND AROUND

I've finally started walking again.  As a birthday present to myself I went to Bowling Green's Kummer/Little Recreation Center and paid my $2.00 for a yearly walking pass.  The cost was to pay for the card, not really for the privilege of walking.   I had been looking at this place on the internet for over a year and just never took the initiative to check it out.  It's not in the best part of town, but I don't go when it's dark out.  I get there about 3:15 and right now I'm already up to 2 miles.  The 2 miles took me just under 33 minutes today.  I'm still dealing with walking shoes that are rubbing my heal or old shoes that don't really have enough support.  I'm sure that eventually I'll get that problem worked out.  I didn't get to walk one day this week because the electricity was out and they had to close.  Next week they'll be closed on Thursday and Friday, but I'll probably be too busy to walk then anyway.  They have a nice college student working at the front desk.  It's nice to know that someone is on watch while I'm walking. 

I couldn't ask for a nicer indoor track to walk on.  It's only 3 lanes wide, but so far I've only had to share it once with someone else and he only passed me once.     
If you look at the picture above and down the left side of the building you can see the half moon windows that are along the walking track.  There's lots of light and you can see what the weather is doing outside.  The downside is that you have go around 12 times to walk a mile.  At first I was having trouble keeping track of the laps, but I discovered that the stopwatch on my phone has a lap counter.  I just touch it each time I complete a lap and it tells me how many laps I've completed and how long it took to walk each lap.

 There is a nice room upstairs with a vending machine, a flat panel LCD TV, tables and chairs and water fountains.  There's also a meeting room and restrooms.
The main floor has 2 basketball courts with 3 rows of bleacher seating.    You can see the rail around the walking track in this picture.   For those that have trouble with stairs, there is an elevator to get to the second level.  They use this center for the Special Olympics and I'm sure the elevator comes in handy for them.
Below are a few pictures that I took of the track.  I had planned on taking more pictures when I finished my walk that day, but a group came in and were in the vending area and I didn't think it was a good idea to take pictures of strangers to post on my blog.
This picture shows the big half moon windows.  They're really nice.

Looking down on one of the basketball courts.

The goal right now is nothing more than to get myself moving.  After sitting at a desk all day and then coming home and sitting most of the evening I felt a great need to get some exercise.  I'm hoping to, at some point, start walking 4 miles several times a week.   When I get to the 4 miles, that means I'll have to go around the track 48 times (assuming that I'm in the middle lane).  Therefore, I'll be going around and around and around and around!!!  We'll see how it goes!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NATE!

I can't believe that Nate will be 2 years old on Sunday. Looks like we're out of babies in our family again.  We pretty much stick to having little ones for a short while and then have to wait until they grow up before we have any more (unlike handyman's family, where there are always babies).

We're happy that the kids are close enough that we can head down for lunch with the birthday boy tomorrow.  

It's great to finally have a little boy in the family.  Since we only had girls and then the first grandchildren were girls, we didn't know what it would be like to have a little boy.  He's cute and funny and daring!  There's no telling what all he'll get into the next few years.

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NATE!

SWAGS & JABOTS

When we first bought our house back in 1996, I made some cheap valances for the living room and dining room.  

Now it's 2011 and I finally decided to make some changes in the valances.  The old ones had started out a deep burgundy, but as time has passed, the window side of them had turned almost pink due to sun exposure.  Here is a picture from Thanksgiving, 2003 with the old valances.

This is a picture of the girls with their Grannie.  As you can see there is nothing fancy here on the window.

I found a picture while I was surfing the web that I really liked (see right).  I like the shutters too, but not for the living room.  I looked all over the internet for directions to make swags and jabots.  I found little bits of instructions, here and there, but not one set of instructions to use for the whole thing.  With the help of my handyman husband, we got the patterns made, figured out how much material I would need, and he purchased the mounting boards.  I lucked out and found a new bolt of fabric at Hancocks that had plenty of yardage for our project and the price was great - only $6.00 a yard.  The cashier even gave me her 20% discount so that helped out even more. 

I made a muslin pattern to use as my practice swag.  Let me say, this was more than a little challenging for me!  When I finally felt like we might be able to pull it off, we went to work. 

We set up both of our 6' long tables, side by side, in the living room.  This turned out to be a great work space.  We had cut out the pattern while sitting on the floor and I'm getting much too old for that.  (It wasn't even easy when I was younger.)  We spent most of today working and although everything is cut out and sewn, we've only gotten one swag and the jabots on the boards. I could not have done it without all the help from my handyman!

But I've got to tell you,  I love it!!  It turned out as well as I wanted.  Isn't it gorgeous? 

Now if we can just get the double one to come out looking as good as this.

.

Here is a picture of just the jabots on the double window.

I'm not sure when we'll get back to it as tomorrow we're heading south to celebrate Nate's 2nd birthday!