Full and Happy

What a day yesterday turned out to be. We traveled 3 hours west of our home to have Thanksgiving Day dinner with my daughter's in-laws. They had invited us for this and we happily accepted. It was a wonderful meal with good friends and family. They live on a mountainside in the woods, literally. Their house is surrounded by trees and it is so peaceful there. You can hear nothing, just the quiet of the woods around you. Unfortunately, I didn't take any photos as I was too busy jabbering with SIL's mom, grandmother and aunt and my daughter while the menfolk wandered around the area.

The meal was delicious: smoked turkey (so moist), dressing, potato casserole, brussell sprouts (not my favorite, just can't make myself eat them), cooked apples and dessert. I made a dump cake and Doug's grandmother brought 2 pies; key lime and pecan. We had a really good time and left full to the brim with food and happy memories.

The drive home was long. For some reason, I've always thought the drive home was quicker than the going but this time it was just the opposite. Maybe  because I was tired and not feeling my best. Anyway, I'm glad we went and now Saturday, we get to go to my sister's and do it all again, only this time it will be slightly less bountiful. We are just having snacky stuff, not a big meal.

Fee of Chipper Nelly fame is having a giveaway. It's a "carry it forward" and she has gorgeous blocks to give.

See, aren't they gorgeous.

Pop over and see and get yourself entered. I so love these blocks and keeping my fingers crossed that I win!!!!!!

Now onto the book, "A Fine Colour of Dust". I offered on my blog after finishing reading it. This book is passing around the bloggy world and I had two people comment that they would like to read it. I went the old "write it on a piece of paper and select one" route, having the Hubs draw one while my eyes were closed. And the winner was:

Annie, please send me an email with your mailing address so I can get this headed to you.

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend with family and friends. It's almost Christmas time and I've been slacking on the Christmas decorations. I must do something about that this upcoming week.

As always, thank you for stopping by. Have a wonderful week wherever you may be.

Hugs,

Sharon

Moving On

I was catching up on blogs today and came across Trudy's. She was talking about wanting to start a new project even though there is much work to be done on your current project. I know that feeling so well. I'm in the middle of so many things right now. My chair is surrounded with tote bags, shop bags, books, yarn, cross stitch charts, etc, etc, etc. I look at it and think how am I ever going to get all this done. And I realize that other than the baby blanket for Jellybean, there is no deadline. Well, there is the Birth Sampler for Eli that hasn't been started yet and he is almost 10 months old! I've never claimed to be super fast about things. I honestly believe I was born under the procrastination star.

As I said in a prior post, to try to get rid of my black cloud last week, I stopped by my local needlework shop to buy the fabric for Eli's chart. I have it charted and know the colors and size but hadn't gotten around to getting the fabric to start it yet. While I was there, I found a canvas chart and bought everything I needed to start it.
Want to see?  Okay.

This is something new for me. I fell in love with the log cabin design and I'm a total sucker for season charts. I have many I have done and some I've got stored back. This one is so lively and colorful and I cannot wait to start on it. But I need to finish Jellybean's blanket first and get Eli's Birth Sampler done. But I take it out at least once a day and look at it. It uses Watercolor thread and I'm in love with that thread. Oh my, I don't know if I can wait or not.

I also have bought the yarn to do the Patchwork Granny Square blanket which will be a major undertaking as I want to do it big enough for my king size bed. I can see this project going on and on and on. But that's okay. I have enough to do when I get tired of working on the squares.

On Saturday and Sunday, the Hubs started clearing the garage to find room for a used freezer that a neighbor was kind enough to give to us. His wife passed away 3 years ago and he doesn't use the freezer at all anymore. Hubs cleared out the corner where he wanted to put the freezer and I went through the boxes to see what needed to stay and what needed to go. I have a hard time getting him to let go of things. For example, in one box were instruction booklets for items we no longer have or no longer use. With the exception of a printer we are still using occasionally, I pulled all of them out and handed to him to recycle. He looked through them and said that we still needed them. WHY??? because we have an old, old, computer stored in a storage trailer that has Windows 98 on it and these booklets related to it. WINDOWS 98!!!!! We can't even use that anymore. GRRRRR.

But in one box, I did find some quilts that we had stored. When we cleared out our extra bedroom to have the bamboo flooring installed and some other work done in there, these quilts were on the top shelf in the closet. They are now safely back in the house. I'm pretty sure both quilts came from my MIL or from my FIL after her death. One has an embroidered note on the back that it was pieced by my husband's grandmother and quilted by his mother. Treasures, for sure.

Of course, he doesn't want to use them. I'm of the opinion that if I take care of them and I am careful in cleaning them, they should be used. They were made to be used not stored away for no one to see. Ah well. I choose my battles wisely.

One more thing, I did get more yarn for Jellybean's blanket so I can make it more square now. I just wasn't happy with the sharply rectangle look and I knew I wouldn't be happy doing the border with it like that. So the lovely owner of the yarn shop where I bought the original yarn mailed me a box this week of the colors I needed and I'm ready to start again.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day here in the US. I have so much to be thankful for not the least of which is my blogging family. I count each of you as a member of my family and I so enjoy reading your comments and reading your blogs. Thank you for accepting me into this community of wonderful people.

Hugs,
Sharon

Thank You!!!!

Thank you so much to everyone who commented and sent me such loving thoughts. It helped more than you know. I'm happy to say that while the things that had me down are not fixed in any way, I am dealing with them better and I am enjoying the sunshine today and looking forward to tomorrow.

It is always amazing to me that there are people out there who, by just a word or  e-mail or smile, can make me feel so, so much better. I thank you, my bloggy family, for taking the time to cheer me up. In this Thanksgiving season here in the US, you have given me one more thing to be thankful for.

I still have this book and so far, have had only one person request it. I will wait until the end of the week (Friday) and if no one else has commented that they would like to read it, I will send it on.

I hope each of you has a wonderful day and that someone in your life makes you happy and lifts you up as you have me.

Thanks for stopping by.

Hugs,
Sharon

A Black Cloud

There won't be any photos in this post. I just have to walk my way through some things and want to get it out.

I had to check the calendar on Friday to make sure it wasn't the 13th. While I'm not superstitious, having been born on the 13th, there was bad news crawling out of the woodwork on that day. I felt like I was a magnet for sad news and that I had a black cloud floating over my head like the cartoons I use to watch.

The day started off basically as a good day. I was out and about doing errands and having a decent day. I stopped by a local florist shop owned by the wife and daughter of a dear old friend of mine. I found out that the bladder cancer he had a couple of years ago has returned and will be having surgery again on the 28th. This dear man is in his late 80's or early 90's and has always been a sweetheart. I use to do the books for him when he owned a real estate agency and we became really good friends. He never sees me without giving me a hug and telling me he loves me. This news really shook me.

One of my very best friends has been in Knoxville for a couple of weeks now with her son. He has had a re-occurrence of leukemia which he has been in remission from for almost a year. He has had 8 rounds of chemo and is really have a rough time. He's having chest pains which they have finally traced to a pulmonary embolism and he's having to have blood and platelets every day. The next step is a bone marrow transplant and he will be in total isolation while he has some intense chemo. He is only 21 and he really doesn't know if he wants to go through the transplant. His mother is beside herself with fear. I talked to her Friday and felt so helpless because all I could do was listen and cry with her.

I had to go to the post office after hanging up from talking to my friend. I had bought some movies for her son and needed to get them mailed to him. While there, the clerk told me that another friend who works at the post office was getting a divorce. He came home one day about 7 weeks ago and the house was cleaned out. This was a second marriage for them both. They had been married several years ago and divorced but got back together again.

I came home and just sat down and cried. It seemed like all the bad news was hitting me at once and I just didn't think I could stand it anymore. I had a good cry and then decided I needed some thread therapy. I went to the local cross stitch shop to pick up the fabric for my grandson's birth sampler and spent some time talking with the owner. She made me laugh which I desparately needed. I found a chart for a plastic canvas thing. The design is a log cabin and uses Caron Watercolor threads which I have fallen in love with. I definitely didn't need another project but I just could pass this up. I left the shop with a smile and feeling a little better but still with my friends' problems on my mind.

Then Friday night, I got an email from my son who is 33. He had an ASD (atrial septral defect) repair when he was 3 and a mitral valve replacement and pacemaker insertion when he was 14. He is now married and has 3 children. He had talked to me earlier about some leakage around the mitral valve replacement and had to have a transesophagal echo (TEE, he had to swallow a probe with very little sedation) on Friday to get good photos of the problem. Now he will have to have surgery or rather a catherization to implant devices to fix the leak.

Needless to say, this sent me over the edge again and today I have just been a zombie. I've managed to get the laundry done but not put away. I've cross stitched a little bit, crocheted a little bit, tried to read. Nothing has kept my attention for very long today.

Thanks for letting me get this all out. Sometimes it just helps to get it down and see it in black and white. I can't fix any of these problems but I can be a friend and a mother and listen and love. I'm sorry this hasn't been an upbeat post. I am usually a very happy person. I try to see the upside in things, the silver lining as it were. But that darn black cloud has decided to take up residence for a while and I'll just have to wait for a good wind health and healing to blow it away.

Thank you for stopping by.

Hugs,
Sharon

Tra La La, Off we go

This has been a whirlwind week beginning Saturday. On Saturday afternoon, my cousins gave my daughter a baby shower. There was lots of goodies to eat, punch to drink and presents! Pretty, sweet presents. It was a drop in shower from 2-4 and we all had a great time. My daughter was thrilled to see an old friend and her mother come by. They have known each other since 7th grade and hadn't see each in a good long while. They had a lot of catching up to do.

Forgive the photo of the half eaten cake, silly me forgot to take a pic before we ate. The fourth photo is a family shot, me, my Mom, Abby and my sister, Stacey.
The last photo is Sarah and Abby. See how happy Abby was to have her longtime friend there?

After the shower, we came back to our house and looked at all the sweet, cute, little baby things. My daughter has decided to use cloth diapers instead of disposable ones and she didn't get any disposable diapers except for the table decorations. She was so excited about all the boxes of wipes she got. I guess you can never have too many of those. One of the little outfits had a monkey on the bottom. I fell in love with that set. Absolutely adorable!

My amazing SIL made supper Saturday night. I caught him looking in the pantry when I came into the kitchen and asked him if he needed something. He told me he was just looking to see what was available to do a meal. How great is that? And then on Sunday morning, Abby made pancakes. Sunday morning pancakes have become sort of a tradition with those two and there have been few times that they haven't had a breakfast of pancakes on Sunday. After they left for home (4 hours away, sniff, sniff) I took a nap. Whew, this weekend wore me down completely. But it was so nice to see Abby and Doug and to see all the baby stuff plus having 2 meals fixed for me. *big smile*

I finished "The Fine Colour of Rust" which was passed to me from Wendy through a Pass it On blog. The book was wonderful and as I love all things Australian, it suited me to a T. The book deals with a single mother who is short of money, has a car on its last legs and whose best friend in town is a junk man. She is trying to save the school in their small town from being shut down and in the process discovers corruption on the town council. It was funny and sad but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Now part of the Pass it On deal is to post Pleasing things after reading the book.

So here are my pleasing things, all random:

1.  Watching my daughter blossom as her pregnancy progresses.
2.  Eating "Moose Tracks" ice cream.
3.  Reading a really good book that I can get lost in.
4.  Doing counted cross stitch, especially the back stitching. I love watching the piece come to life.
5.  A hot bowl of potato soup on a cold, rainy day.
6.  And last but not least, snowmen.

If you would like to read this book, just leave a comment and tell me so. If there are several, I will do a random drawing.

Now finally, yesterday's adventure. My Mom's 81st birthday is the day after Thanksgiving. Since we are going to be out of town for Thanksgiving, I asked if she would like to go out to eat for her birthday. My Mom doesn't need or want much in the way of things but she does like spending time with her daughters. There is a yarn shop in the next town that I have been wanting to visit for 6 months now and there is a new restaurant there also that I have heard good things about. So off we went on Wednesday to Rogersville to the yarn shop. I had checked online and they supposedly carried the brand of yarn I am using on Jellybean's blanket and since I need more balls, I thought we could go up and have a visit and basically, "kill two birds with one stone". The yarn shop is small and doesn't have a lot of yarn but what they do have is lovely and made me want to buy something but I was good and only asked about the specific yarn I was looking for.  It turns out they do have the yarn but only in 1 color, cream. Rats!!! On well, it was a great trip and we also found more quilt squares from the quilt trail to photograph.

Since it was after lunch time, we headed out into the countryside to the Amis Mill restaurant. Mom and Abby both said that we had relatives with the name Amis in the Rogersville area back in our family line so I was really wanting to see the area and have some of the good food I have been told about. Unfortunately, we went on the wrong day. They are only open on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. We both had a good laugh about that and I took some photos of the waterfall in the stream next to the restaurant.

Sue, I hope you enjoy the quilt squares.

I still needed to find somewhere to eat so I could follow through with my gift to Mom. We ended up back in Morristown at O'Charleys, one of her favorite restaurants. We had a really good time together and enjoyed the sunshine and pretty day.

Now I had better get off here and do some work. I'm still feeling great. The inhalers have been a lifesaver. Now I have to work on getting this weight off. The scales in the doctor's office were not nice!!!!

As always, thank you for stopping by. I hope you have a wonderful day wherever you might be.

Hugs,
Sharon

Goodies

I realize I've been missing in action but I've been trying to get a handle of things around here. Thankfully, the inhaler is working a miracle and I've energy and interest in taking care of things. My foot is still a little sore with some pain across the top and around the ankle but nothing I can't manage. It just means I have to sit down and elevate it several times a day and what better excuse to do some crocheting?????

This has been a busy week of run, run, run. Monday was a sunshiny day and I got out and ran some errands and visited with my Mom. Coming back home I couldn't resist swinging into the cemetary and taking a photo of the last couple of trees. Most of the trees around here are now bare with just a few hanging onto their leaves.

The gold against the beautiful blue sky just grabbed me and stopped me in my tracks. I love the way the sky is so blue in the autumn. Everything seems clearer and crisper and more vivid.

Tuesday was a stay home day and I worked really hard clearing the office of old files. I had files and papers all the way back to 1992 and since the Hubs uses papers and such as mulch in the garden, I was able to get rid of these and put them to good use. I was really on a roll Tuesday and got so much accomplished. However, around 6:30, the Hubs came in and told me I better stop or I wouldn't feel very good on Wednesday. He knows me so well.

Wednesday was a cold, rainy day and I woke aching in all my joints. I blamed it on the weather but maybe, all the work I did on Tuesday could have been a contributing factor. I really didn't want to go out Wednesday but I had an appointment with my eye doctor so off I went. I am being monitored for pressure in my eyes which is a sign of glaucoma. The pressure in both eyes was up on Wednesday but I had just come off a 2 week round of prednisone and steriods do cause your eye pressure to rise. It will continue to be monitored and if the pressure continues to stay up, I will have to start drops. Dr. Carson understands that with RA, I will occasionally have to be on prednisone and that may be the deciding factor to start the drops. I also got a prescription for new glasses. I'm having trouble reading words on the TV and road signs. Age apparently has something to do with that since the doctor said, "At your age, you need to have some increases in both the distance and close range." My life is just gets better and better. : ). But actually I really am lucky. I am still mobile and can enjoy most things and that makes me very thankful. I took a few photos of the rainy day when I was out yesterday.

There were cows in the field beside this barn all huddled up and I wish I had gotten them but I was on a busy road and was afraid to stop too long. Didn't want to be the cause of or the result of an accident.

I also have been getting packages in the mail. I love when the mail lady blows and it's another package for me. Getting packages in the mail is like having Christmas. Even when I know what it is, I'm still excited to get it open and look at it.

First, I ordered some new yard from Lion Brand. This was on their website and looked so soft and cushy, I just had to have it. It didn't disappoint. I love the colors and the feel and can't wait to make something cuddly.

And then on Tuesday, my book order arrived. I have looked at these books several times on Amazon and finally gave in and ordered. Does it make it better when you have credit on Amazon and the books didn't cost anything? Methinks this is a win-win.

The Crochet Stitch Design book has tons of stitches and also has the charting for those stitches. I struggle reading crochet charts but really, really want to learn these symbols. The Crochet Master Class is full of different projects and looks really interesting. Hmmmm, it occurs that I should have photographed some of the pages. Well, I will do that in another post.

And finally, yesterday when the mail lady blew her horn, I got this.

Wendy at 15 Coast Road sent this along after I commented on her blog that I really would like to read it. I've started and already am enjoying it. When I finish, I will post to send it along to someone else. I love the way the blogging community shares.

Oh, and I got this gorgeous handmade card along with it.

 Isn't that just too sweet? It has been a really good week around the Front Porch even with the rain and the achy joints.

Thank you for stopping by and I hope you have a wonderful day wherever you might be.

Hugs,
Sharon