Merrily, I roll along..

Okay......I give up. Blogger will not allow me to move any of these pictures again. Somehow it did move one to a place where it doesn't belong. Sooo.....if you are reading this, please excuse the chaos of the blog this time. You will have to use your imagination as to where the pictures go once you have read the words. I guess I could call this post "The Back to School Challenge." Sorry.

The days slip by and then the weeks are gone. It is absolutely mind boggling how quickly the time is going. Why wasn't it like that when I was a child eagerly awaiting my birthday or Christmas? Life it too good.

Other than the weather, August has been a fabulous month. I have one quick complaint about the weather as I know that no one wants to hear it, but where is our summer??? I finally broke down and put the electric blanket back on the bed yesterday. All week it has been in the low 60s with thick fog at noon!!! This is suppose to be sunny California with tanned beach babes, etc. What has happened? Have I ever told you how much I love the heat? Perhaps the complaining will be heard. I can only hope.

It's been a great time to spend time in my sewing room. I had one of my granddaughters come over and we had such fun sewing up a couple of outfits for her along with a little purse. She told me that she was going to keep the purse until she was as old as I am. Hmmm. I wonder how old she thinks I am. I told her that I would want to see it then at which she promptly replied, "But Grandma, you'll be dead then." When I informed her that I would ONLY be 110 she told me that I could come sew at her house then. Out of the mouths of babes!!!!

I have also been wanting to tackle one of the disappearing nine patch quilts that I am seeing on so many blogs. It was really fun and super easy. I am going to make it into a twin size and put it on the twin bed in the kid's playroom. It's bright and will stand up to lots of little ones climbing on it.

Since I have joined the Friendship Bag swap, I made a couple little bags this week. They are quick and easy to do and would make great gift bags. I played with some embroidery work on the front of it and I am really loving these little flowers. They are designs from John Deer and are cut after completing the design so that the flowers are three dimensional.

Another project that I worked on this week is a romper for Christmas. It is done in red corduroy and was quick and easy. I thought it would look really cute with a little white turtle neck shirt underneath. Can you tell how much I enjoyed the embroidery class I took a few weeks ago? My husband says that he would not be surprised to see his underwear embroidered one of these mornings. Hmmm!

My mom continues to stay healthy and we are all thrilled. She was here the other evening for dinner and my daughter popped in as well. Since her husband works evenings, she joined us for dinner and we were able to get some cute pictures of the four generations.

With big families, there seems to always be a birthday or two or three. Our little redheaded grandson had his 6th birthday this week. Some of his cousins decided to dress up and parade around his chair singing the happy birthday song. Can you tell that he was less than impressed?

In closing, here is a picture of one of our other birthday babies. We actually had seven little ones hatch, but the rest have already gone to their adoptive homes.

Have a great week, everyone.

.................Blissful.............

Life have been blissfully normal and I am loving it. Can you all see me doing the happy dance these days?

There are actually several reasons for doing the happy dance. Has anyone else noticed that Moth*ers Cookies are back in the market again? YES....they are back. Now, I must admit that I love baking cookies. There is no comparison between a home baked chocolate chip or oatmeal cookie and a packaged one. However, the Taffy cookies cannot be duplicated, can they? I used to love the mallow ones when they had the vanilla cookie bottom and milk chocolate covering. Of course, they discontinued those years ago. I am not sure why they stopped producing Moth*er cookies, but I am surely glad they are back. I did notice that they are distributed by Kel*logg now and I believe they used to be Nabi*sco, but am not certain on that point.

Our very unusual summer continues with cool temperatures. Our heater actually came on two mornings last week and another morning this week. What is with that? The garden produce seems to be a couple of weeks behind as a result. I have usually completed my tomato canning by now and I haven't even started it yet.

My husband and our four sons went up fishing in the Sierras this past weekend. I thought I would get tons accomplished while he was gone, but I didn't get nearly as much done as I thought I would. For some reason my children always think I will be so lonely when E is gone so the gals suggested we all get together for a night of Mah Jongg. We did have fun. The next day my daughter and her son came over to "keep me company" for the day. Sunday was church and then the guys came back Sunday afternoon. We did, however, play a bit with the machine embroidery on Saturday during naptime.

The pears are ripe and ready for cooking. Since we don't get enough chill hours in our area these are more like apples. They are good to eat, but they are basically a cooking pear. I made a pear cake for dessert. I served it with a hot caramel sauce and whipped cream and it was delicious.

I finished my sig blocks for the swap and have shipped them off. Now....I have a ton of 1 1/2 inch HSTs to use in something creative. A doll quilt??? The Civil War reproduction fabrics are something that I really have not used much so this was interesting to me. I am also participating in a Friendship Bag Swap. The deadline for entering that one is August 20th if anyone is interested in participating.

If you want to put a smile on your face for the day you must check out this video. Some folks are so clever.

Now I am off to clean my windows. One might wonder why I should have to do such a chore with help like this.