Crochet Me Crazy

She says these are super quick on her pattern and she isn't kidding.
Fake Mary Jane Pattern
As soon as I made these booties, they quickly became my favorite bootie pattern. I was having trouble finding a pattern that would truly work up to newborn size. These fit the bill and you can use worsted weight yarn too! One of these works up in less than 10 minutes!

Here are two sets of booties I made using this pattern.




This is the pattern I used for the baby booties I already posted here Here as well.

We went to my sister's house for Memorial Day weekend and had a really good time. They live on a lake and its really pretty. we got to do some fun "lake" stuff. The kids were able to try their hand at skiiing for the first time. Michael was up and going right away. Alison got up but couldn't quite stay up. We fished and actually caught fish for a change! LOL ... Michael caught a 14" fish!

Homemade Purse Handles

Alison was so excited to get her exam report back today. It is kinda like a report card for all of the skills you've learned. She got a overall rated of "Highly Commended" which is very good.



Her show, "Deliver Us" is only a few weeks away!



We were invited over for dinner at our neighbor's house tonight. They have a friend visiting from Germany and she cooked us authentic sauerkraut like they eat in Germany, roast and pan friend potatoes. It was very good! I was so surprised how much I loved the sauerkraut! It was so yummy and not sour like the sauerkraut is when we make our Reuben Sandwiches. She's going to give me the recipe.

My 15 yo son, Michael, has been on a bread making kick with my bread machine for the past week! He's been looking up recipes on the internet to try. So far, everything he's made has been pretty good! Our neighbor, Stephanie, loved his cinnamon raisin bread so much she brought over some bread flour and sugar with a request for him to make her some for her birthday! He tried another recipe that didn't use the bread machine for cinnamon raisin bread and it turned out better than the first. He's made plain white bread, banana bread, Italian Peasant bread. Luckily, the kids eat most of the bread so I don't get fat! He made some really, really good sweet dinner rolls today. Those were so good. Now, I'm going to have to coordinate him making those to serve with one of my dinners one night. It takes a while to make them because you have to roll them, let them rise, and bake them in the over after the bread machine mixes them. He says he's going to cook some food too so we're going to turn this into some Home Economics lessons for school credit. We'll get him to cook a whole meal one night. I'm voting for lasagne! :)

We've been painting the bathroom this weekend. Almost done!

My neighbor gave me some nice bookshelves so we moved those today and we went into the attic in search of some book nice book sets we got with our Encyclopedia's when we bought those years ago. I haven't had a place to put them but now I can put those out and hopefully put them to use.

We ended up spending a while in the attic and throwing stuff away and getting boxes down to go through. Of course, that made a mess and I had to clean that up before I can function tomorrow. I have a room FULL of bags and boxes of stuff to get rid of. I wasn't wanting to have a garage sale but my neighbor is begging me to have one with her and now that I have so much STUFF....I might as well make a few bucks, I guess. I really hate having garage sales.

Then we went to the grocery store to get the $1.00 hot pockets they have on sale at HEB this week! It's the ONLY time I buy them. So when HEB puts them on sale for $1 every couple of months, the kids get a treat!

Craftzine.com blog : HOW TO - Crochet a Fortune Cookie (Video)

Now how creative! The perfect cookie for me since I don't like to eat the real ones! Maybe I'll make some of these for one of our chinese food at home nights!

How To Hidden Blogger Header and Replace Image Instead ~ Blogger Tips And Tricks|Latest Tips For Bloggers: ""

I will try to re-build my blog. If you were linked, here email me so I can add you back. It's going to take some time but it will eventually start to look better. I did figure out how to get my crochet background back after trying many times. I'm not familiar with CSS that is used in the template coding so I need someone to baby-step me through it. I finally found this tutorial here: blogatech: Adding Background Images to Blogger and it worked like a charm.
Actually, this might end up being a slight bit easier than the last time I built it because there appears to be more free 3 column templates available now and some of them are written to be easily customizable. I got my template here: Our Blogger Templates: The Professional TemplateI was looking for something plain since I want to use my own images. I may change my background while I'm going to this trouble but it might take me a bit to get the right picture, figure out how to get it the right size, etc. .....

I will be posting notes here as I do this so that if something terrible like this happens again, I will remember!

BIG SIGH......

Now it is ugly and boring. I was trying to add something through blogger and it SAID that it was going to back up my template but apparently it did not! I can't find any info anywhere on how to RETRIEVE the back-up template even if it did back it up! I am VERY upset because I worked so hard setting that 3 column template up with the graphics and my crochet background. I literally gave myself a head-ache trying to figure out how to add/change all that html when I first built that template. There is no way I'm up to doing that again anytime soon. I even lost a lot of my links, etc. I can't even remember what all I had on here! ARGH! I am sick at myself that I did this!

Michael went to the orthodontist today and they took impressions for his bottom retainer! He will get the braces off at his next appointment in 2 weeks. It could be sooner but that was the soonest they had an hour slot appointment available. Guess I better see if I can get him to actually smile in some pictures before he gets them off. He never wants his picture taken.

I've been spending a lot of time on-line totally engrossed in researching homeschool curriculums and figure out our plan for next year. Every year I look at Sonlight, which is a literature based curriculum, but I never do it because its so expensive. I think we are going to go for it next year. Alison really wants to use it because she likes to read. I'm hoping it'll work out good for us because its designed to use with kids of different ages. I also like the idea that their Instructor's Guides schedule everything out for you. I've also been researching transcripts and I'm going to use Homeschool Tracker next year to keep records and make it easier to keep track of credits, etc for Michael's high school transcript. We are just about finished with our Grammar Program this year. I am going to try my best to keep the kids doing at least Math through the summer.

I started to crochet a pattern by "Just Crochet" designer that a friend loaned me. I ended up having to un-do the whole thing because the pattern totally didn't make sense to me. I wasn't about to struggle through that whole pattern. She doesn't write her patterns in normal US terminology apparently. I'm glad I borrowed that pattern and didn't pay for it! Now, I'm kinda in a lurch trying to figure out what I want to make next.

Well, I better go cook dinner now. We are having King Ranch Chicken, Cabbage, and green beans tonight. I just discovered recently that my kids love cabbage! :)

Had a nice Mother's Day. Jeff got me a Satsuma Tree! Our neighbor's have one that is loaded down every year and I've been saying I want one. Once ours starts producing, between ours and the neighbor's tree, we will have more than we could ever eat! Our neighbor's tree yields so much fruit every year that between them, us and another neighbor we eat as many as we want and still have left overs. The kids will go pick whole Wal-Mart bags full of them.

Michael gave me a rooster plate that goes with the one he gave me for Christmas! He spent his own gift card for Hobby Lobby he got for Christmas. He wanted to get me a really good present.



Alison gave me a bag of Recese Peanut Butter Cups that she bought with her own money and two cards. One she bought and one she made herself. I love her homemade cards and she always writes the sweetest notes in them.




My kids are so great. I am very blessed to have them both.

Then we went out to eat at Pappadeux Seafood Restaurant. It was very crowded but the food was good. Alison had her face painted while we were there waiting.




We went to go see "Granny" (my mom) and brought her a hot fudge sundae from McDonald's. She doesn't eat much these days but she sure loves those sweets. She really enjoyed it and ate all of it. It's very sad to visit my mom most of the time now and seeing her deterioration.

Today, we found out that she had fallen again. She is okay. She's very frail and unstable. I went by again today on our way home from Alison's dance class and brought her another hot fudge sundae since she seemed to enjoy the last one so much. She was looked very distraught when we went in. She brightened up and was happy about the sundae again. She has reverted to a very child-like state. I tried to just talk to her like normal and she seemed to enjoy it even though she can't really converse anymore. The words just aren't there. She ate all of the sundae again. We took a few pictures tonight. I realize I need to start taking more pictures because I'm not sure how much longer my mom will be with us.

glitterwink.com

I was looking for a natural recipe to make my own mosquito repellent. The mosquitos are about carry us away here and I hate using OFF! Anyway, I tried this recipe of mixing equal parts PURE vanilla and water together. I put it in a spray bottle and it seems to work great! You aren't sticky like you would think and its smells very strong, obviously, like vanilla. I don't know why this works but it does. I don't particularly like the strong smell. My husband loves it and he likes the smell. It's a bit much for me but its better than smelling like OFF to me so I'll keep using this until I come up with something better. I've read about some other recipes using essential oils but I have to get ingredients before I can try them.

On the crochet front, I finally got around to taking pictures of some hat/scarf sets that I made awhile back when I was on that spree.

Next pair of slippers in my green slipper-a-thon. I'm getting tired of making slippers now. Unless I see another pair I want to try, I'm going to lay off of the slippers. I used the same pattern as I did for the slippers in the post below. I just changed the trim to fun fur. I like it.

These look kinda "Christmas-y". This was a great pattern. I have a hard time trying to find slipper patterns that I like. This pattern made sense and didn't involve any sewing stuff together. The pattern came from the 1993 Aug-Sept Issue of Crochet Home Magazine. It would be cute with or without the ruffle or you could easily change up the ruffle to something more simple. This is a pretty big ruffle! Anyway, I like the pattern so much I'm using the same pattern for the next pair of green slippers.

You've been warned: Now for the rest of us who don't want these creepy creatures anywhere near me....

This is what happened to the snake that had the unfortunate circumstance to cross the path of my son:



Yes, I realize this is a poisonous Coral Snake. This is the first time we have every seen one not in captivity before so it was pretty amazing! My son was mowing the neighbors lawn and this guy slithered in his path. Of course, the lawn was forgotten while he decided he needed this snakes hide to display with all of the other creepy crawlies he has in jars and such in his room. (Including Black Widow spiders) Sorry the photos are graphic. A quick search on the internet and this snake is now skinned and mounted on a board to dry.







Sorry, snakey but you should have stayed in the woods.

Alison had her ballet exam today. She was SOOOOO nervous and has been working very hard to get ready.

Last minute practicing before exam.




Prayers before exam



Lined up to enter exam room




Daddy and brother were outside with flowers when she came out:





Now that exams are over they will spend the rest of the year concentrating on getting ready for the performance on June 12, 13, & 14th. They are putting on the production "Deliver Us".

I have a basket of different shades of GREEN yarn. This is Red Heart so I don't want to use it for baby stuff. I'm ready to clear out that green yarn so here's the first of my stash-busting projects. Both of these slippers turned out very small size so I guess I was off on my guage. They are going into my finished project bin now. Both of these are shown on Alison's feet but they are even too small for her.




What else is up with me? We're just plugging along with homeschooling. I'm really happy with what we've accomplished as far as grammar skills this year! If they can retain the skills we've learned this year, they should be ahead of the average Joe. I think we're going to focus on using those skills with writing next year to cement what they have learned this year.

Alison has been working to get ready for her ballet exam which is tomorrow! It's getting a little tougher. She is in Grade 4 ballet this year and has been dancing since she was 4 years old. This is an important year to master as next year it gets serious with beginning ballet Pointe which is what most people think of when they think of ballet!

Michael is on the last stages with his braces! He is scheduled to get them OFF in less than 3 weeks! Yea! No more sore mouth and rubber bands!

My mom is doing okay. She had a tough 2 weeks where she fell 3 times in that time period. Thank God she wasn't seriously injured during any of those falls but she had some a nasty bump and bruises. We finally narrowed the problem down to the fact that she has been prescribed "Ambian" to help her sleep. The time period she was falling was the exact time period she was being given that medication. We stopped the medication and she hasn't fallen since.