steph's stuff

9/11

 

My brother was just a couple blocks away from the towers when they were attacked and then fell. I am forever grateful that he is still here and always spend September 11th thinking of him and our phone call that morning after the second tower fell and he was trapped in his office. I can't imagine my life without my brothers and their families and today is for remembering those who did not make it home that night. I will never forget.

A Day in the Life

A bunch of scrapbookers and photographers chose to capture their life as it occurred yesterday on 9-09-09. I thought it was a neat idea but wanted to have a unique take on it. I've been wanting to play with the polaroid-like images that have become popular again but I don't have a small camera nor did I want to spend hours editing photos to make them look like polaroids. So, what I chose to do was to put the good camera away for the day and document my day with my camera phone and then simply frame the photos with Katie's Instamatic Frames at Designer Digitals. The photos are blurry, tinged with yellow and I love them. :)

My day started with driving the kids to school as I most always do. And, yes, I took the picture when the van was in park. :)

It was the first Parents' Association meeting of the school year and since I didn't want to photograph the other mothers or board members without their permission, I photographed my coffee cup on the media center table.

And then home again to walk the poor crazy puppy who's still trapped in his crate. (Please cross your fingers for Sawyer - I'll be out of town with him all day today having the surgeon decide whether Sawyer gets released or not!)

I met my sister-in-law for a quick lunch at Olive Garden - a lovely indulgence that we try to make time for every couple of weeks. Can you say breadsticks? YUM!!

A quick jaunt into Jo-Ann's for some thread. I ran out during quilting Tom's UT quilt the night before. Ack!

Then it was back to school to pick up the kids! I love that all three of them always run towards me when they see me. :)

Home for a snack of grapes and time for homework.

Emily grabbed some orange juice and gave me the thumbs up sign when I reminded her to start her homework.

With all 3 kids working on homework, I grabbed my laptop and checked in with Designer Digitals - my home away from home. :)

Cooking dinner with spaghetti sauce partially made from tomatoes grown in our own garden. It was absolutely delicious!

Emily's new love is folding laundry. Yes, I'm not kidding. She has learned to do laundry and asks all the time if she can do laundry and fold it. Here, she asked to finish folding the laundry on the den couch while I was cooking dinner. And I'm keeping it real - including photos with closed eyes is okay!

Tom commutes back and forth from work much of the time on his bike. He arrived just in time for dinner tonight.

After dinner and a shower, Tom took the kids on a bike ride.

My view while Andrew took a shower. Love that he is fairly self-sufficient in the shower at only 6!

And, finally, the kids were all in bed and I headed to the couch with my laptop and Photoshop. One of my favorite places to be. :)

***

If you've documented your day, please leave me a link. I'd love to see what you did!

It's really over

Summer, that is. It's really over now. Even though we've been back to school for two weeks, we were still searching for summer and summer activities on the weekends and after school. Well, no more. The kids' after school activities and sports all start this week, homework will be kicked up a notch, and long-term science and reading projects will begin. The hectic fall school schedule is here.

Knowing what today was going to bring, this past weekend was very, very busy as we tried to cram in as much as we could. And it was wonderful. The garage sale went well on Saturday but the best part was sitting and visiting with neighbors who stopped by. We don't often get to spend much time with our neighbors and it was lovely to just sit and catch up for as long as we wanted.

We spent Sunday with family who had traveled in from afar and had breakfast, played mini-golf, raced around on go-karts, snuggled nieces and nephews (and oh, my oldest niece just started high school and she's growing up so quickly that it's breaking my heart!!!), and then went out to lunch as a group of 19. Lots and lots of fun. Afterwards, Tom and I took the kids to a local university to feed the ducks and swans at the duck pond and then ended the evening at Barnes and Noble because the kids were itching to spend their allowances and garage sale money.

Yesterday was spent catching up on housework and just relaxing as much as we could.

I've decided to stop mourning the lack of a real summer and just go forward with the idea of fall. I might even bring out some candles to light in the evenings around the house. We're just going to go into cozy mode. Good thing we have some new quilts. :)

Back on Tuesday!

My garage sale was a success but I'll be doing it again on Friday! My neighbor and I still have a couple of full tables so we'll collaborate and do it one more day this week.

We ended up with family traveling up here for this holiday weekend so I'm going to take a short blogging break and enjoy them while they're here.

I'll catch up with emails and comments on Tuesday! Have a great weekend. :)

From the blogging doctor

To Whom It May Concern,

Please excuse Stephanie from blogging today. She made the ill-advised decision to hold a garage sale tomorrow. This decision has caused her considerable pain and suffering, including headache, back pain, exhaution, much swearing and cussing, increased consumption of both chocolate and caffeine, all aggravated by peri-menopause and PMS. She is in garage sale hell.

Her prognosis is good, provided that she does not totally tick off her husband and her children and/or that she makes a lot of money. Report to follow on Sunday.

Thank you for your understanding,

The blogging doctor

P.S. Stephanie would also like you to know that the winner of Tania's class is Gladys! Gladys, please email Stephanie via the email me link on the left side of her blog. She promises to hide all of her pain and suffering from you and be nice to you. :)

Thursday catch-up

I have so many blog posts in my head right now but I decided to do a scrapbooking garage sale this Saturday so they'll have to wait until after this weekend is over.

In the meantime, this is the fabric for my wonky log cabin quilts. And, yes, I said quilts with an s. I can't do just one. Sigh. Story of my life. So, both daughters picked out fabric and I'll make each of them a quilt to match their bedrooms. Lots of Amy Butler fabrics with some others thrown in to make sure I have enough.

And, after yesterday's post about the crazy puppy, I just had to do a scrapbook page about him. :)

All digital scrapbooking supplies from Designer Digitals and full credits can be found here.

Wish me luck on the garage sale! Last time I held a scrapbooking garage sale, I was almost plowed down by all the women fighting over supplies. Seriously, we had 4 of us taking money and counting paper and the lines were each 5-6 people deep. It was seriously nuts. This time around, I'm the only adult manning the tables, but I hired by 11-year-old daughter and her friend to help. Fingers crossed that we survive this!

Is the crazy puppy still broken?

I've had a lot of questions about Sawyer lately so I thought an update might be in order.

The quick answer is yes, he's still broken. :(  The above photo of him running was taken in July before his accident. (For the whole story, you can read all of the Crazy Puppy Stories and read about his accident.)

Physically, Sawyer seems to be doing wonderfully. He's walking without a limp and tries to run and jump the minute we take him outside. He's in no physical pain whatsoever, but I do notice that his bad leg doesn't seem to be quite as stable as his other legs. It may be from lack of use rather than from the accident, but we don't know yet.

Emotionally, he's struggling. We all are. I sit on the couch beside him sometimes and want to just cry at his whining and scratching at his crate door. He's on week 7 of his confinement. He's still restricted to his crate at all times, with the exception of 4 bathroom trips outside each day. Tom and I try to get him out of his crate in the evenings, even if it's only for 30 - 60 minutes. Just to spend time with us, get lots of love and snuggles and feel as though he's still part of the family.

However, we've had to resort to tranquilizers a lot of the time. It's simply too hard on him (and us if I'm totally honest) to make it through this without sedating him. I can't imagine being locked up for as long as he's been. Our hope is that by allowing him to simply sleep through his confinement, he will not be as emotionally traumatized by all of this.

The good news is that he goes back to the surgeon next week. His check-up is September 10th and I'm really, really hoping that some of the restrictions are lifted. We were told to expect 8 - 12 weeks of strict crate rest and I'm crossing my fingers that 8 weeks will be enough. And, if it's not, I may have to ask for tranquilizers for myself. LOL!

Quilt Along with me!

 

Lots of fun quilting going on this fall and I'd love to have you join me. :)

First, Tom's UT quilt:

I am so excited to have this quilt top done for Tom! It's a delayed anniversary present for our 15th wedding anniversary and my goal was to have it done before Sept. 5 - kickoff day for the college football season. I'm not going to have it done, unfortunately, but at least it will be pinned and basted by Saturday.

The top is made of 16 17" blocks - the colors of the University of Texas are burnt orange and white and they are often paired with gray or black so the color choices were easy. I ended up adding a white border that may or may not stay. It just gives me some leeway as I'm quilting and I can make that decision to trim or not before I bind it.

Here's a peek at the back. I decided to piece the back which was something I've never done and I just love it!

As much fun as I've had with this quilt, I learned that I would rather follow a pattern instead of making up my own like I did for this one. It's just so much easier to have someone else do all the math. LOL!

And, now, the second bit of quilting:

The third Quilt Along in the Old Red Barn Co. Quilt Along group starts today!! This quilt will be a Wonky Log Cabin quilt and I am so excited to get started. The leader of this quilt along is John and you can either follow along at the flickr group for the Old Red Barn Co. group linked to above or you can go directly to John's blog at Quilt Dad. The instructions will be at both places and the fabric requirements are already live. Yeah! I have my fabrics all picked out and I'll show them to you later this week.

I've gotten a lot of questions about how I find time to quilt along with everything else. The quick answer is that I don't watch TV hardly at all, so my free time is spent on scrapping or quilting. :)

Have a great day! It's a chilly 45 degrees here today. Brrrrrrrrrrr.

P.S. Don't forget to leave me a comment on the post below for a chance to win a free pass to Tania's class!