You Decide...

A lunch for princes (and princesses) or paupers?


Toasted four bean melts (on white bread of course!)



and for dessert

mock peanut butter cups (so good)




What do we think...

A meal fit for princes and princesses!

As odd as this meal looks EVERYONE (yes I mean all sixteen of us) enjoy it!

AWANA Awards Party

Wednesday night was the last AWANA meeting until fall. The kids are going to miss it!

Joel,Lily and I missed the actual awards ceremony but were hard at work at home getting our AWANA Awards pizza and ice cream party ready for our troops when the got home.

Jeff picked up all the ice cream sundae fixings and the kids went crazy with excitement.

I forgot to send the camera to church with Jeff but I was able to snap a few of the kids fixing up their ice cream sundaes.

I love that Grace was so in aw over all the ice cream topping choices!



Alan's reaction when he spied yet one more thing to top his ice cream with. My guess is he is looking at the bananas.

You can also see big sister Elena making sure no one was overlooked



Joel's cute delighted face over his huge bowl

The Hidden Costs Of A Large Family

I bet you did not know that we use three of the blue jugs of laundry soap a month. According to the package that would be 288 loads of I do laundry a month...about 9 loads of laundry a day. Do I really do that much laundry? I do a lot but I'm not sure I do THAT much!I bet I do 5 loads each day...maybe 6 or 7 loads if I am doing sheets or blankets. This month we even had to buy an extra little jug to get by. As of today, even that jug is empty three days short of our next month of shopping! Crazy! Someone must be using more than that recommended teeny tiny jippy little cup. I will blame it on Jeff. He likes his clothes to smell extra nice.



Now, we truly do fill up three 96 gallon trash cans a week.
Trash pickup is tomorrow and as you can see the two outer bins are filled to the top. The middle bin is filled just below the top and we still will be putting a few more bags in before pick up time. If we have any extra cleaning going on or a birthday or something our trash cans overflow!



I just migh try to figure out how many times we flush our toilets each day. That would be information most would like to know...

A Little Game Of Peek-A-Boo

A Little Sidetracked

After I finished the previous quilt top I started cutting out strips for my next batch of quilt tops.

I'm going nine patch crazy again just in case you might not have noticed. Nine patches are SO fast and easy if you use the strip method.Making them can be very addicting.

This color scheme of nine patch was next on my list...



But then I remembered I had these. Oh SO adorable are my little bunny guys!!!



So I started doing this



And came up with this quilt top!



I could not decide which picture was better so I included both.



It just took a few hours but now I'm off to bed. The next time I will stay on track. Focus,Tina,focus!

It happended Overnight!

Remember this mess I showed you yesterday?



Well,since then it became this!



It is still in the quilt top stage but isn't it just so pretty. I decided I am not even going to put a border on it but use a black/brown binding. I'm very pleased.

Busy Little Beaver I've Been

My sweet oldest daughter was away this weekend at a teen church conference up in Duluth. Her very first time away for that long and that far away from me. She made it home safe and sound. She learned a lot and had a lot of fun with her friends. I am glad she is home!

This weekend my sewing machine was humming along! I started making one quilt top and just could not stop! My mind was swimming with different fabric combinations and all those cute charm packs I bought a few weeks back.

This was the constant state of our dinning room table throughout the weekend. Sadly it still looks the same today. I just do not want to put my projects away for another week.



Here are the three quilt tops I finished this weekend.



Another one in the works



It is surprising how many home school books I find we do not use. This stack I plan to list on Ebay within the next few days.



I'm off to sneak in a little more sewing in before I officially clean up my mess.

Adorable Little One

l




Finally a smile!

A Very Nice Thursday

We have yet to make a special trash pickup for our broken baby pool. The kids thought that it still had a few hot days left in it so out from the garbage it came. It worked great as long as everyone just stood in it.



Although I had my Etsy shop since last fall I had yet to buy anything. I did make a trade and Catay's Creations gave me complementary jam. But I finally jumped in and made my first Etsy purchase and it came today in the mail. I am very pleased.

I bought this necklace from J Studio .Isn't it very pretty! She has a lot more beautiful pendent necklaces in her shop.

J Studio is raising money for Kolfe Orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia so all her profits from J Studio goes to help the orphanage. Since I have some dear friends who adopted from Ethiopia (although from a different orphanage) and us adopting from Africa, I thought it was very nice to help Kolfe Orphanage and get a very pretty necklace too!

A Little Wednesday This and That

It was a very nice day out today. Nolan is finishing up a little math on the front porch before the kids all head to AWANA.



Tonight is the second to the last AWANA meeting. The kids are sad that the AWANA year is coming to a close. Tonight the kids were able to spend their hard earned AWANA shares (kind of like points) at the AWANA store. Here is a sampling of all the goodies they came home with.

Odell



Anya



Josh



Naomi, Ekie, and Nolan

Popcorn Over The Fire

This evening, Elena and Grant thought they would try to pop popcorn over the fire. It was a recipe from the Gooseberry Patch cookbook I bought the other day. The only difference was the kids would use our fireplace an not a charcoal grill.

Getting it all ready.



In the fire they go. "Kids the flames do seem a little high..."



This does not look right.



No,not right.




Alan our expert fire maker (and now fireplace popcorn popper expert) saves the day!

Etsy Shop Talk

I have been finishing up on a few Etsy projects the past few days. Here is a small sampling of my favorites. Some of these I have to actually get on my Etsy site one of these days soon.

I have a bunch of these cute fabric panels. I thought adding one to a t-shirt would be fun.



This Jemima Puddle-Duck t-shirt is cute.



This mason jar pin cushion seemed easy enough to make but it was really rather tricky. I suppose I could have looked for actual directions somewhere but that would have been too easy! I made three other pincushion tops before I got it right. By looking at this no one could tell I was SO close to tossing the pincushion idea out all together. Now that I know how to do it I am planning on making three more.



My favorite of all! My tiny picnic tea set! This is just so cute! I painted the tiny tea set and made a little picnic quilt to match.



The tiny picnic tea set and picnic quilt come in a small picnic basket. This picnic tea set is just the perfect size for those hungry little stuffed animal guys that are hanging around looking for food.

I am pretty exited because this idea had been rolling around in my head for months until I finaly was able to sit down to do it. It turned out just the way I thought it would. I have two more sets to finish up for my Etsy shop plus a fourth I am making as a birthday gift for Naomi.

Chilly Sunday

It has been a chilly today. I think the rainy cool weather following such beautiful days has gotten me a little down. Throughout the day , I caught myself obsessively comparing myself, in almost every area of my life, to others that I know and found myself not measuring up at all. Not even close. I needed a big "your doing OK" but down attitudes were affecting many around here today. I think I want to curl up and sleep for at least three days.

Now that I think of it, I had a very very disturbing dream last night that woke me up abruptly. I still felt unsettled in the morning over the dream so maybe that had a little to do with my down in the dumps,looking for people to tell me I am important kind of mood.I had not connected my mood and dream.

Are you reading for my dream! Don't think I'm too weird! Here goes...

I entered a dark haunted boys bathroom at church (weird I know) with Grant (my oldest son)and a few of our other kids following behind me. Jeff (hubby) told us not to go in but because the idea of a haunted bathroom was just to great to pass up I just had to go in. A very me thing to do, tell me not to do something and I will be that much more determined to do it.

Anyway,when we got a little ways into the room I was telling Grant that maybe we really should not have gone in because it is a "porthole to evil". My exact dream words. In order to see in the dark room I would take pictures with the flash on so the flash would light up the room. No sooner did I say porthole to evil than in the dark I saw my dad just as clear as day.

Now in real life ,the significance of seeing my dad was that he died 15 years ago. He was 49 years old. It has been so long since I have seen him and I have very few pictures of him that I fear I forget what he looks like. My dad had his bad times,and some very bad times but I do not and have not ever considered him a evil man. I actually was probably unduly devoted to him. He had also accepted Christ as his personal savior a year before he died. No reason for him to be in the porthole of evil haunted bathroom.

But as clear as day in my dream ,just the way I remember him looking, there he was. I dropped the camera and ran towards him leaving the kids in the dark by themselves and yelled "Dad!Dad!Dad!" He slowly turned towards me but did not greet me and smile,he just looked at me.I stopped running and my heart just fell.In my dream I knew he knew who I was and I longed for him to smile at me. I was so confused and afraid. The I woke up.

Pretty weird don't you think? No wonder I was moping around all day comparing myself to others and needing reassurance.

Enough about my dream. Although I was in an odd mood today,it did not affect my ability to shop! There was the greatest sale at Joanne Fabrics. All the good stuff was on sale. Jeff supplied me with a little extra pocket change to pick up a few extras.


The quilt books were 40% off and I had a 50% off coupon that I used towards the Gooseberry Patch Summer cookbook. I am so exited,I love Gooseberry Patch !






These next two pictures are for Naomi's birthday in May. Jeff is the official birthday gift shopper but I like to add my fun little finds whenever I can.


The pink flower fabric I am going to use to make Naomi an apron and bundle it together with the cooking things. I am also going to make Naomi her own place mat with the leftover apron fabric and bundle it with the plate and silverware. I am sure she will just love them.




Here are a few more things I found in the dollar bin that Naomi will really like as well.

Must See Video! Spinning

Grant, Alan ,and Cyrus have been working for the past few weeks on their newest Youtube video.

This is a great video!

They filmed each other doing their basketball handling skills. Grant put it all together and added the music.

They have worked very hard this year with Waseca's local FCA's HeavenWord Handlers and it shows.


There are some great things towards the end of the video like fork spinning,making a basket while spinning the ball on a long pole,and a great part where Grant and Cyrus did a little choreographed spot so you need to watch the whole thing!

My boys are great aren't they!




P.S. If you were watching real close you will see a cameo by Nolan.

It Is Not As Easy As It Looks