Colors of September in Northern Georgia

I had more pictures to share, but they are stuck on my camera and my cord is MIA.  Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches.  We don't have much in the way of bright colors right now, but we are starting to experience the lovely daytime breezes and cooler nights of autumn.

Here is a shimmery dragonfly on a fence...

And here is the stuff September is made of -- crisp mornings!  My son took this picture one morning earlier this month.

 Go here to enjoy more September colors from around the world!

Eclectic weekend

As mentioned in my last post, we headed into the weekend already experiencing some deviation from the previously planned schedule...the weekend rushed by as well!

On Saturday we had my garage sale.  It went well and then everything but the kids' clothes went straight to Goodwill...good-bye clutter!

 My mom enjoyed educating the public about spinning since it was "Worldwide Spin in Public" day!

While the grown-ups cleaned up at the end of the day, David added a few accessories to this pile of bins and enjoyed a ready-made fort.

Sunday evening was our church's baptism service.  Seven people, including our David, were baptized.  This is something that David had approached us about this summer.  He wanted to be baptized, not for salvation or to earn a place in heaven, but rather as a testimony to others of his existing relationship with Jesus Christ.  It has been exciting to watch him learn and grow over this past year and then request this of his own accord.  We were also thrilled that both my parents and Bruce's parents were able to be in town for the occasion.  It was really special to have all of them with us.  (Bruce's parents breezed in Sunday afternoon and then out Monday morning...a whirlwind tour!)

 Afterwards we enjoyed a little obligatory rock-throwing and then a treat of Bruster's ice cream.

Monday my mom and I kept busy with several sewing projects that were on my punchlist.  I did some alterations and she made this for me. :)  Monday evening we went to a ladies' fellowship at church and had fun making beaded rings.  We have made necklaces, bracelets, and earrings before, but never rings, so it was fun to learn something new!

Today my parents headed home.  This afternoon, the kids and I headed out for an adjustment to Abigail's leg brace and hearing checks.  We are excited to report that David's hearing (which, during this past year, has been dropping towards "let's talk about CI" levels) has started climbing again!  The Lord has certainly granted hearing to my children for far longer even than we had first asked for...and we are very thankful for this time!  Unfortunately, I toted my camera around but forgot to take pictures at any of the appointments.  Oh well.  At least I remembered to go to the appointments. :)

Since I have no pictures from today, I leave you with a picture of Mindy "helping" my mom spin.  You know how much she loves to help me quilt and knit...spinning was a whole new delight to her!!

Breaking news

Wow...we were reminded this week that we can make a schedule, but we aren't in charge of making circumstances work according to that schedule!!!  Yesterday David broke his hand...here is a picture at the orthopaedic doctor's office getting his cast today.  My parents are in town, so Grandma came along to share the adventure.  No surgery, for which we are very thankful.  We go back next week to take off that cast, re-xray, and re-cast it.

And here's the reason David picked that color for his cast!

History field trip: Lincoln

Yesterday the kids and I enjoyed an afternoon at the Atlanta History Center for their homeschool day featuring their current special exhibit, "With Malice Toward None: The Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Exhibition".  It was fascinating...I have always been fascinated with Lincoln and the Civil War era and they had some incredible artifacts at this exhibit.  The kids also enjoyed making some related crafts...

...Abigail was pleased to see this $5 bill display, since she recently reviewed this in math class...

 ...and we also enjoyed the lovely walking trails.  We also walked through the farm they have set up on their campus, where we got to see a blacksmith working, a woman spinning and one weaving on a floor loom, a farmhouse decked out in period furniture and accoutrements, women baking some of Lincoln's favorite foods in the separate kitchen, a cabin that would have been typical of a slave cabin of the time, and we also watched a performance of a man portraying 23 year old Abraham Lincoln as he was running for a seat in the Illinois house.

If this Exhibition comes to your area (it is put on by the Library of Congress), it's definitely a must-see.  We thoroughly enjoyed it.  (It was so good, in fact, that I'm hoping that Bruce and I can get a babysitter so we can go down and peruse it before it leaves!)

A quilter's hug

What to do when someone you love needs a hug, but you can't give one in person?  Any quilter knows the answer to that...you give them a quilt!  Someone we love dearly has been struggling with serious health problems and is not up to having visits, so today I will be dropping off this quilt to express to him the love and hugs that we are not able to give him in person right now.

 Quilting specs: Lap quilt size (about 36x48); fabrics are 'scrapbuster' fabrics (even the backing, which is cozy flannel that was going to be pajama pants many years ago but instead has been languishing in my fabric closet); I designed the pattern to fit the Psalm fabrics I had on hand; it is free-motion quilted with various leaf and vine designs.

Back of quilt

This quilt goes to its recipient with much love and many prayers for his comfort and healing...

A "dairy" nice field trip

On Friday Karen and I took our kids on a field trip to Braselton, Georgia, to tour part of the production line at the Mayfield Dairy.  It was very interesting.

 We ate a picnic lunch outside, and then\we got some ice cream for dessert!

 Karen treated the kids to one of those machines that turns a penny into a souvenir penny.  The kids were so excited.

 Noah sacked out in the stroller...he's a trooper and does really well on our voyages!

 This cow -- "Mayfield Maggie" -- is made from the same mold as our 'big cow' on the way to Florida, except this one is a Jersey instead of a Holstein. :)

 We..ahem...took the scenic route on the way to part #2 of our field trip.  It turned out great, though, because we found this lovely old caboose in the middle of a little old Georgia town.  The kids thoroughly enjoyed playing on it and even got to watch a train come past on the active railroad right by it!

I fill up my baby-snuggle tanks every chance I get and Karen is very patient about letting me "hog" Noah a lot. :)  Isn't he a doll?!

Part #2 of our field trip was a solar system walk in Gainesville, Georgia.  It is a model built to scale, scattered throughout their town.  Here we are starting at the sun.

We stopped at the library for a break after Mars.  Noah ate, and the rest of us enjoyed the a/c and read books while we rested!

 The library also had a map of the solar system walk, and as we inspected it, we realized that the walk was MUCH longer than we thought, it was late in the day, everybody was tired out and hot, and we decided to make it a destination field trip for another day.  We got to Jupiter and then came home.  Not bad for a day's travels. :)

A bit of chaos

We are in one of those times right now where it seems we are running in a million different directions every day, even on the weekends!  Here are a few random events from this week...

We knew our hot water heater was on its last leg, but it reached crisis point this week and we had to get it replaced.  It's one of those things that isn't fun to spend money on, but the alternative isn't very pleasant either!!!

Our neighborhood pool will close for the season after this weekend, so I took the kids there yesterday for one last swim.  Since we have had a week's worth of nights in the 50s, the water is cold.  I suggested to David (rather wickedly, I admit) that he should just jump into the deep end, and he did...Abigail and I had a good laugh!

Here he is as he came out of the water yelling, "MOM!!!!!!!"

 "It's freezing!!!"

 They did a little bit of swimming and a lot of lounging in the sun.

 Cold-water swimming, some books, warm blankets, and company like this makes for good napping!

 Mindy likes to burrow into a pile of clean laundry until she is in a little cave.  She's so cute.

 David got his stitches out on Monday and the scar looks great.  You can hardly see it -- it's the thin purple line along the top of his right eyebrow.

And now we are on to the chaos of today!

My current quilt -- Abigail's bed quilt

After we re-did Abigail's room, I decided it was time to make her a quilt.  I wanted something classic and timeless.  I decided on a nine-patch (it has the perfect old-timey look I wanted), with the colored blocks done in pastel rainbow fabrics interspersed with solid white blocks using fabrics reminiscent of the old feedsack fabrics.

Little did I know how hard it would be to find peach fabric -- what a nightmare!!!  I want what I refer to as "1980s-wedding peach"...with a small monochromatic or white print, but it has been hard to find.  I have found one that fits the bill, but I need a second.  I decided, though, that I can work on the rest of the quilt while I continue to hunt down that peach.

The fabrics (in this picture you can see the second almost-peach fabric that I have since disqualified.  It just doesn't work.)

 Cutting...with my helper :)

 Colored strips, cut to size and ready to sew.  The photo color is a bit off but you get the general idea! (The yellow on the left is going to get the boot if I can find one I like better.  I don't like how its print doesn't quite match the mood of the other fabrics.  But again, it's a hard color to find.) 

Tonight's work -- orchid fabric #1's  finished blocks!

Happy Saturday

We had a lovely day at home today.  We didn't do anything momentous, but we were together at home, which is our ideal Saturday!  I woke up to this beautiful sky...click on the picture to enlarge it and look at the fascinating texture of the brushstroke-clouds!

I worked some more on -- you guessed it -- the basement and garage.  Progress is being made...one whole bay of the garage is sale-ready, and I have gone through about half of the kids' clothes bins.  While I worked down there, David painted a carry-box he built.  He decided to give it to Abigail, so he busily painted it pink and purple for her. (His cut is healing nicely -- the stitching job is lovely and the swelling is gone.  He says it's starting to itch, which is a good sign!)

Thoroughly enjoying the gorgeous weather (low 80s and a comfortable breeze -- harbingers of autumn), Bruce and Abigail mowed the lawn together.  (By this evening, though, what we had thought was just Abigail's allergies flaring up has turned out to be another virus...she is running a fever and coughing...poor baby!  We're just getting it all out of the way before winter gets here...that's my plan and I'm sticking to it!)

I even found a few minutes tonight to do a bit of work on my current quilt.  As always, Mindy was my faithful companion.  She started by lying at the end of my cutting mat and biting my ruler.  Then she moved on to sitting on my fabric...

 ...but when I kept on working, she decided to lay on the whole thing.

Despite her "help", I eventually got to the point where I could sew together some nine-patch blocks...she kept peeking at me through my machine, and having to swat her paw away from the needle resulted in a few rather drunken-looking seams!!!  Oh well...it'll give the quilt character. :)