Mighty Mitered Flanged Pillow

 Here is my final pillow that I have been working on for my Grandmother.  I have to make this its own post as it really deserves it!  I say it deserves its own post becasue this was the first time that I have made anything that has a mitered flange on it.  It sounds and looks easy enough, right?  Well, it isn't.  At least it wasn't for me.

With all the pillows that I have made in the past month, I have learned how to do 2 new t hings.  The first was I learned how to sew an invisible zipper and the other was this mitered flange.  The difference between the two were day and night.  I used the wonderful internet (YouTube) to find tutorials on how to sew an invisible zipper, however you would not believe that I could not find ANYTHING on how to sew a mitered flange.  I could not believe it (and still can't).  I thought that maybe I was not searching for the right thing so I tried everything I could think of.  When I finally gave up I asked my wonderful hubby to help.  He can find ANYTHING on the internet.  So, I began to give him a quick lesson on what I was trying to do and told him all the possible names and "terms" that this could possibly be found under and then let him go at it.  Even he couldn't find anything (video tutorials).  Finally, he did find a PDF document with some basic and mismatched steps.  So, I printed it out and studied it for days, trying to make out what to do, how to do it and where to begin.  In the mean time (during these few days of internet searching), I decided to try and figure this all out on my own.  It never happened.  I can't even remember how many times I ripped all the stitches that I sewed.

Finally, it clicked, after much time of reading and rereading this list of steps that I found, I did it! Now, I have to say that it is not the best.  There are quit a bit of nips and tucks around the pillow, specially around the corners, but overall  it looks okay and it is completed.  Here are a couple of pictures of this "mighty mitered flanged" pillow. 

This last picture is the back of the pillow where you can see the invisible zipper that I put in it.  I am still working on perfecting the invisible zipper as you can see just a little bit of it on the left.  You shouldn't be able to see any of it, hence the name "invisible" zipper.

The Band Star

It is that time of  year again... the "end of the year" ceremonies and concerts. Although we are a home school family we still participate in couple of the programs that the local public school has to offer.  One of those programs is Band.  Tyler has been attending band classes all year long at the middle school.  He took a mini band class last year when he was in school and played in the percussion section. This year he decided to change instruments and learn how to play the Tenor Saxophone. Changing instruments meant he had to start back in the beginner band all over again.  He was fine with that and has loved every minute of it.  He worked hard all year and made tremendous improvements.  Just a few months ago he was given the honor of moving up to play with the intermediate band.

This past Monday we got to see (hear) the fruits of all his labor at their end of the year concert. As it turned out, we learned that there were only two students the entire year that got to move up to the intermediate band, and Tyler was one of the two.  The teacher had both students stand and recognized both of them for all their hard work all year long.  I, actually, had no clue that Tyler was one of only two students.  I also didn't realize what a big deal she was gong to make about it.  So, I have to say, I was one PROUD mama!  I also didn't realize that the intermediate band only has 9 students in it (out of probably 70-80 total band students).  So I guess you could say he was definitely in the top minority. 

Way to go Tyler! We are so proud of you!

These are the 9 intermediate band students doing their performance.

 Tyler playing with the intermediate band.

 The two students standing and being recognized for all their hard work.

 Tyler doing a "speaking" part and introducing the next song that they were going to play.

The entire beginner band. They all did a wonderful job. 

I can't end the post with out recognizing the Band teacher. She did an awesome job with all the students. 

May Already?

Oh my! I can not believe that it has been a full month since I last posted here. Man, how time flies. So much has happened in this past month.  Here is a quick recap of life around here: 


-The biggest news and most exciting for us is that we finally are getting somewhere with finding a new (to us) home for our family. It seems that 99.99% of all homes for sale (where we live) are all short sale or foreclosures and that means WAITING WAITING and more WAITING...on the banks!  We had an offer on a home that seemed to be going NO WHERE and then Bam! there was actually a home that came available that was a "regular" sale. We jumped on it and are now only 2 weeks away from closing and finally having someplace that we will be able to call "home".  We are very thankful for the rental roof that is over our head now.  Somehow it is just different when you know you have someplace to really call home. 


-With April also came the end of the NHL hockey season and the beginning of the playoffs.  Our awesome Coyotes actually made it to the playoffs this year and we splurged and went to their home games.  It was so much fun and great family times and memories.  They didn't make it past the 1st round but we still love and support our team! 


-Sickness has hit our house pretty hard this month. We very rarely get sick around here (thank you Lord) but unfortunately most of the month of April we have all been fighting some sort of sinus and respiratory illness.  We have gone through more tissue in one month then we normally go through in one year.

-Soccer was in full swing as well.  Kyle spent most of the month in tryouts for next season.  Tyler's team wrapped their spring season and I was right in the middle of my 2 seasons (both indoor and outdoor).

-In the midst of everything else we are still moving right along with school.  Yep...we are in our 31st week of school and counting down until we are all done for  the summer.  It will not be long.  The nice thing with home school is that we don't count down by weeks or days but rather by how many pages are left before finishing up the work in our books.  It looks like, if we stay on track, we should be all done by the end of May. Woohoo!


I will leave you with a picture of us at a Coyotes White Out game.  Fun times and lots of memories!

Something Fresh from the Familiar

Thanks Jen for your post about Max Lucado and his words on this day, The Saturday of Silence.  I have often thought about this day and wondered: "What about Saturday?  There has to be something that God has for us on this day, too."  Well, today God revealed it to me through Max (via Jen).

Once again, I found the words to describe it while sitting in front of my facebook page.  Here is what I posted regarding my revelation on this Saturday of Silence.  

There is Good Friday & Resurrection Sunday, but have you ever thought about the day in the middle, the Saturday of Silence? Here again, as God does all throughout scripture, He uses this day of Silence as a parallelism to show us that we too have a day (time) of silence when ever we experience times of suffering and trials here on earth. But, there is always new life (resurrection life) at the end. Hallelujah! 

Ahhh, I love it when God reveals something to me that is Fresh from the Familiar!

Sewing projects

I finally pulled my sewing machine out, after moving a few months ago.  I had a small pile of clothes that needed a little extra help, a few pillows and a BIG quilt project to get started on.  I finished my clothes mending and one pillow.  I have 2 more pillows to complete and then I can get started on the quilt.  Here are a few pictures to share with you on what it all looks like.

This is the one pillow that I have finished.  It was hard becasue I am learning how to sew invisible zippers. I purchased the special invisible zipper foot attachment for sewing machines, but of course it would not work on my machine.  So, I logged into my online friend, ebay, and found the exact one that I needed, that would fit my machine.  I received it yesterday. Yay! I never would have thought that I would have been so happy to receive such a small piece of plastic. Ha!

Here is the "before" picture of the next pillow that I will be putting together. I am so excited about this one as I looked and looked for the perfect fabric to match the rooster. You can't really see just how perfectly all the colors match, but they do.  

This picture is one of the blocks that will make up the king size quilt that I will be starting soon. This will be a BIG project.  I hope that I can cut out time each day to work on it so that I can finish in a short amount of time. I hope to have it completed by mother's day.

I will try to post and document my progress here.  Maybe it will help motivate me to get it all done by the deadline that I have given myself. We shall see...

Autism Awareness Day

Today is Autism Awareness Day and even though I don't really have anything profound to share with you about that, I did share a little about our son on my hubby's Facebook page the other day.  I thought that I would share it here too.  This is what I posted...

Even though we have been through the "ringer" with all that we have had to deal with over the past 10 years, I would not change our son for anything. I love our son so much for who he is and who God made him to be. He is an awesome child and person. God has used him greatly to teach us and others about many things in life, some things that most people never learn or come to appreciate in life. Most of all God has used him to bring our whole family closer to HIM. That is more wonderful than anything! God is Good! "Thank you, God, for what we see as trials, and carrying us through them." 

When it comes to Autism and all the information out there about it and how it has changed our lives, I tend to get a little overwhelmed when it comes to sharing and documenting in a place such as this blog.  There is so much...Where do I begin? I never know. So, for any of you out there that might want to know more or those that have specific questions, please ask here and I can use that as a guide for a future post here.  I would love to share with you becasue I truly believe that the LORD gives us trials and situations in our lives so that we can help others.  Not to say that we have it perfected or our son has been "cured" but rather, we have found things that work and have learned to rely and on each other as a family and have grown deeper in faith becasue of it all.

Going Natural...

...or at least trying!

A few years ago I was introduced to the idea of what it would be like to totally replace all my cleaning supplies in my home with ones that were non-toxic and "all natural". That's when it all began.  I was a bit skeptical at first, but thought that I would take the advice and see where it went.   So, I slowly (emphasis on slowly) started to try these new products (new to me anyways).  I was raised on the basics of the everyday grocery store cleaners, so before I could purchase anything to try I had to open the mental envelope and start to dump out what had been stored for many years and make room for some new ways of doing things.  Old habits and learned behaviors are hard to break.  So, once that was done, one of the first things that I replaced was my everyday basic cleaner (the basic 409 stuff, you know).  Along with that was my laundry soap and dishwasher soap.  It took a little while to get the ball rolling, so to speak, and convert over to my new products.  Once I did I knew that I would never go back. So, after I was (pretty much) convinced I did some more research and started to find many other things that I needed to replace (at least try to). After spending many hours on the internet I was amazed at how much bad "stuff" is in so many things that we willingly bring into our homes.

So, one thing lead to another and before I knew it I was thinking, "change it all". I started with the cleaning supplies. Then I turned to body products, stuff that goes on our bodies, such as lotions, shampoos and conditions (etc).  And now I am trying to change what goes in our bodies.  I have to say that cleaning supplies and external body products were a whole lot easier to research and change then all the "stuff" that we eat and put "in" our bodies.

I have only begun to scratch the surface with reading, learning and changing these foods and products.   There are so many food options and choices out there, not to mention all the manufactured and synthetic stuff that is used in all of today's manufactured foods, too. For now, I am just taking it a day at a time and trying to make wise and  logical choices. I will share that the one rule I made for myself and have come to adopt is the "ingredient" rule. That is, if the list of ingredients is too long to keep my attention or if the list of ingredients are ones that I can not even pronounce then it is probably not good and it should probably not enter my body. Now, I obviously can not say that my rule I made up is accurate or fool proof but rather just a guide that I personally use to help me learn and keep track with what I am eating.  I am not a nutritionist, by any means. In fact, now I realize why that is a 4 year degree plan. Ha! 

After a few years of working to make these changes there are a good selection of products that I have grown to love.  I will share some of those in future posts, so check  back to find out more.