It's Sink or Swim Time!

Yes, go ahead and laugh now...


uh, oh... it's directional print!  I don't know why I bought this way back when I did - I think I was just ignorant, but now I know about stripes, directional prints, and wow do I know better than to pick a fabric for a first time venture that is supposed to go public!  Oh, well - it's showtime baby :)

Time to get to work - I didn't mean to procrastinate, I really thought the apron had to be done by Thanksgiving Day, but now I hear it's Monday, yikes!  Susan, you did great on pulling me back into the blogging world, because you know I can't let a good challenge pass me by LOL!

I see you Ms. Fancy Pants Overachiever Mama Pea, popping up on my Reader with your title "Done!", umhmmm.... I refuse to click on it and read it - la la la la, I can't hear YOUUUUUU!

yep there's flames shooting out of my scissors now, I'll finish, I swear!

Fall Colors... Finally!

Would you believe it was 82º here yesterday?  Disgusting!  Lettuces, spinach and the like refuses to sprout or do anything at all this season, what a bust.  The good news is that the high today was early in the morning and as of right now it has fallen to 48º, keep going!

Fall colors finally appearing...

An early holiday gift for me, and no doubt my only one - and I am just fine with that!  Santa needs to pay bills, not buy unnecessary objects this year!  Plus, I asked "Siri" if I needed anything else this year and she told me me that she was all I needed, solved.  :)

Wouldn't you know that I don't hear from the school all year, and then when my phone breaks down, that's when they are trying to call me.  The school nurse has called twice in the past 6 weeks from Finn's school and I was the "bad mom" who couldn't be reached, figures!  But no more.  Also, if any of you are among those who I need their phone numbers, please send me an email with them, as all my contacts vanished.

With the lack of decent fall growing temps for greens and broccoli, we have been deficient in fresh so we have really been using up all the goodies that were put away last season.  

I'm not sure what the deal is, but the kids will eat their veggies as long as it's in stir-fry - although of course they have to exhaust the noodle or rice supply first before they move on to the nutritious stuff!

A couple of nights ago I went to a social event with some other gals at our church.  Very fun - the "assignment" was to cook a dinner for your family on a set budget that varied with the family size, and then bring it in and tell everyone about it.  The amount was a modest $5 for a family of 4 and went up from there.  This particular meal came in at approx $2.99 just for the 99 cent large package of Phillipine noodles (half the package will make one family meal leaving half for another night), and I estimated $2.00 for the amount of sliced chicken breast that went into the skillet with it.  Of course, the cost of my snow peas, beans, peppers and onions from my harvest stash were "free"... or were they?? Ha! The evening was really fun, we all ate a ton of good stuff and came away with some new recipes from others to try.  Now I wonder if everyone fed their families before leaving the house with the cooked meals, LOL!

Random strange sighting of the week:

What?  You've never had Canadian Bacon in your purse?  Don't judge :)

I'm progressing at a snail's pace on the apron, but progressing nonetheless.  Here's the fabric, kind of a funky Swedish folksy print I had oodles of on hand, can't remember what the original intention was but it was definitely kitchen related, and the pattern is cut out finally.  I'm hoping Sunday will be the day for indulging in quiet time with my sewing machine!

I have been scrapbooking a bit too, another reason I have been M.I.A. for awhile, I just can seem to find time for it all - I had like 7000 photos that needed to be transferred from a backup to the new computer and I did it, but they are all out of order, ugh.  One more thing, I am starting to get into couponing quite seriously, and that requires a lot of time as well.  I'll be sure to post what little I know so far on that soon, but I saved about $80 today in coupons, on things we actually use!  I'd love to be able to say that I don't have the time for that, but in all honesty it's become a necessity in order for us to be able to give our kids a nice Christmas this year, and unfortunately we can't even think about traveling home this year, it's just too cost prohibitive, on the bright side at least it's "in vogue" to be concerned about the economy and it's effect on the family LOL, now it's cool to be cheap... crazy, huh?!  Things will look up in the next year, I just know it - we just have some mud to wade through first.

I do know that I am thankful to have a happy and healthy family and plenty to keep me busy so I don't ever become bored with staying at home, and my great extended blogger family - I have gotten an email with the best news from Annie's Granny, a box just arrived this evening from Patty, a couple more emails checking on me and making sure all was okay during my unusually quiet hiatus... I am very thankful for all of you!  Now I'm looking forward to spending some time with some hot chocolate this evening and catching up on everyone's posts!  

One more thing - this is how lame I am lately -

Don't think for one second that these are mine, no, not this year...

These are Loch's!  These are what he brought home the other day from the plots at the school garden he volunteers at.  If it wasn't for Loch this year our fall harvest would be a complete fail!  I hope he doesn't get too confident that he'll outdo me in 2012, I'll show him - I'm not ready to pass the torch yet!  

Aprons and Rants...

Count me in for the apron sew-off this month!  These are the patterns I had in the house to choose from:

I swore I wouldn't go buy and books or new patterns since we just spent so much on a computer.  Next I need to check out my fabric, good thing I have a good stash of that, too!  I'm thinking the top pattern, since I really don't like aprons that "tie" behind the neck, I like the simplicity of the old styles that just just require flopping over the head and that have big pockets.  What do you think?

Sparkless expressed that she needed a good rant from me :), and wow do I have some from the past month.  I'll be quick though since I don't really want to rehash the loss of the computer!  Okay, here goes...

You know what the worst part of the computer ordeal is?  The fact that the old computer is bigger than the new one, and that the style hasn't changed one bit!  There's something nerve wracking about spending money on something YOU ALREADY HAVE (albeit non-functioning)!!  One would expect "new" to be "different" - maybe a light show or that it now doubles as a serger machine...something!!

4 year old mac now resides on the floor next to stacks of Halloween decorations...

New, smaller (but faster and functioning) mac on the desk...

I guess it's good news in disguise, the design is so awesome that it hasn't changed LOL, the other good part is that I have more desk space!  The bummer part is that we did have to put it on a credit card, but at least we were able to score it at the Navy Exchange here which had 0% interest for a year, 10% off and no sales tax, which is a pretty big chunk of change on such an expensive purchase.  As far as choosing the computer, there was no contest for me, since macs are all I've ever owned and they are wonderful (the demise of my last one was due to a storm and my not taking proper precautions!).  The kids' old style iMac with the dome drive is still functioning and it's really old, but it's also really slow, LOL.  Hopefully this one will last, and lesson learned:  this time I sprung for the extended Apple Care warranty :)

Only one more hurdle to overcome, and that's the fact that my iPhone died the same day Steve Jobs did.  Consequently, right now I'm paying for cell service I can't use, grrrr!  It was kind of overdue though, since I'm one of the proud ones that was still using the 1st generation iPhone, it was getting to be kind of a badge of honor whipping that relatively big iPhone out and having people ask "that still works?"!  Well, no longer, and that's next on the list.  It's hard for me to upgrade the thing since I only text and hardly ever use the phone to actually talk, BUT I did like having it when I needed it...   

*  Side story here: as the 1st "smart phone", I thought it was pretty cool to have years ago when it first came out but thought "really, will I ever use it for what it is?"... After having it for only a month, we took a road trip home to MN and when we stopped at a rest stop at midnight in the Middle of Nowhere, PA I went to get Finn (then about 2 yrs old) out of his carseat in the dark, I noticed little pills scattered all over the backseat.  He had managed to lift up a bag off the floor with his foot, root around in there and come up with an irresistible shiny foil package of estrogen pills.  Oh yes, he had popped them all out and I had no idea if he had ingested any!  Now I'm screaming and freaking out, Charlie is sticking his finger down his throat trying to make him throw up, the dogs are barking in the back, it's the middle of the night and it dawned on me:  smartphone!  I was able to look up  poison control on the internet even as my "voice" calls weren't functioning, and was able to get an "online help" person.  She assured me it was not an emergency when I told her what the pills were which was a huge relief!  The real relief came when hubby retrieved all the pills from the floor, seat and Finn's clothing and found that they were all accounted for!  So there's my little story for the day, haha!  

The End

Not really the end, of course... I have questions for you!  To save some $$ and get my new cell phone, I've been thinking of dropping the land line to the house.  Have any of you done this?  I don't know why it's so hard to drop that historic "landline", but really it doesn't seem to serve much of a purpose anymore.  

Okay, next up today I need to start digging through my fabric.  Was that enough of a rant, Sparkless?  :)  And ooops, I guess I wasn't very "quick" about it, was I?!