boy play

When Jessie came over last Wednesday for her normal hang out -but also baking for Thanksgiving day- she brought along her friend Allan to join us. He kept the boys busy while us girls cooked...and he did a very good job of it. See the look of glee on David's face? Liam's mirrored it!

Hamburger Cookies

What do you do with these ingredients?

Make "Hamburger Cookies" of course!

Mix up the mustard (yellow colored icing)

And the ketcup (red colored icing)

Construct the burger (other components: peppermint patty "burgers", nilla wafer "buns", green colored coconut "lettuce")

EAT!

Fun factor: a definite 9. I don't say "10" only because the boys prefered to eat the icing rather then put the hamburgers together, but it sure was a fun and creative craft/snack!

thankfulness

what is Thanksgiving Day without a post on the things I am thankful for? Of course, a post like this could be never ending, but I will keep the list short. Ready? Here we go:

1) God's never ending love and mercy.

2) FAMILY

3) good friends

4) food on our table and in our bellies

5) happy and healthy children

---what are you thankful for today?---

Happy Thanksgiving!

...hope you are enjoy a little of this today. We sure will be. Our Thanksgiving this year will be at my inlaws...we alternate years with the families since they are both close. There are visions swimming in my head of Turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing (which I am making) and lots, lots more. I baked a couple of Sweet Potato pies last night, and I am making deviled eggs and spiced fruit punch. I was going to make mini apple pies but ran out of time. There should be plenty even without them though!
We have the possibility of having 20 or more people out at my inlaws' for the big meal. Wow. It'll be fun, all are family and close friends.

I hope your Thanksgiving is full of fun and lots of food and that it is a wonderful start to the holiday season!

visiting...

I think it's appropriate to share a picture from "way back when" while I am at my folks visiting. Wasn't I such a cute baby? And don't my parents look young?!?

We came over on Saturday to visit. Jon and I had been given tickets to go see Trans Siberian Orchestra's Rock Opera with the rest of the Butcher clan, and mom and dad were watching the boys for us...
We had a delightful time at the concert, lots of music and singing and lights and fog. Beautiful. Lovely.
Getting to the ferry to find out we weren't getting on one until 12:45 made for a very late night, but we did enjoy ourselves.
Sunday was spent chilling at my parents house. We watched "UP" and played games. Faith spent the afternoon with us, and Daniel came over after work...around bedtime Jon went home.
Today, after mom got home from Bible study, the boys and I went over to Pam's for a few hours. That was very nice, I always enjoy my visits with my friend, and the boys like their friend time too. We'll see my brother again this evening.
And tomorrow will be another day of fun for us here before heading home in the evening. Got to prepare for Thanksgiving on Wednesday!

Aliens?

...no, not quite. This is my first attempt at making Kombucha. My friend Pamela and sister in law Faith both make Kombucha fairly regularly, and both have mentioned how good it is and how good for you it is. I was intrigued and wanted to try it out for myself. I got a bottle of commercially bottled Kombucha from the store, and it was quite interesting tasting stuff....kind of like drinking strong vinegar. Still, I wanted to try brewing it myself, and Pamela had an extra "momma" and gallon jar that she let me have.
So, on Wednesday, I began my Kombucha brewing journey. I sanitized the jar, boiled and cooled the water, brewed the tea and mixed it all up, then added the "momma" and set away the jar in the darkest corner of my closet. Now I'm waiting. Kombucha takes between two weeks and six weeks to brew or culture or ferment, or whatever you want to call it. So in a few weeks or so I'll know if my "momma" is good and if my Kombucha works. I'll let you know...

Quilting Appretice

Jessie asked me about a month ago (probably shortly after my birthday, I'm thinking), if I'd help her make a quilt. Heck yes! We picked a pattern she liked that was simple, and I gave her instructions to get fabric. She knew she wanted to make a black and white quilt, so I felt pretty confident in giving her freedom to get the  fabric on her own. This is the block she picked:

Last week, she told me she had some fabric, and wanted to start cutting out. I had to have her buy a mat, because mine warped during our move to our current apartment (total sadness).

So, this last Wednesday evening (Wednesdays are our day to hang out), she brought her fabric and mat, and I let her use my rotary cutter and measuring boards. The fabrics she picked for the large center squares are just gorgeous...

I guess I only got a picture of one of the fabrics, there are four all together. Two black on white and two white on black. All in the same sort of pattern, and all beautiful. And she did such a good job of cutting out too! She'll be getting some solid black and white fabrics for the rectangles and little corner squares.

I just can't wait to see how it turns out, it looks so nice in my imagination!

It is so much fun introducing quilting to the people around me. I got to be in on a fabric shopping trip with my mom and Faith, who is making her first quilt as well. She also picked super lovely fabrics. Beautiful greens and purples, with other colors mixed in...(the stack next to her is all her fabric choices!).

All this focus on quilting and fabric really made me want to find my missing nine patches and maybe work on them some more. I finally found them while talking to my mom on the phone one afternoon! I am so happy! I will have to put them off until after Christmas though, as I have a ton of presents to make this year and can't be distracted with a quilt that is destined to lay on my own bed!

Oh, I love quilting. I love fabric. Yes, I do!

Construction

This is what our deck looked like this past summer: 

...and this picture is looking out onto our deck and beyond as of a week or so ago. Notice anything missing? There's supposed to be a 4 foot solid railing around the outside of it, but the decks and walkways of the apartment buildings are being repaired and resurfaced. The work has rendered our deck useless and dangerous, so I keep the sliding door locked at all times (I just know my dare-devil David would try to base jump or something equally horrible). Out the front of the apartment is torn up too, with big billowy sheets of plastic up everywhere to keep things dry for the work. Over the last week, they've been doing to majority of the tearing up near our apartment and it is so loud.

"Bang, boom, crash, slam." Only instead of being done in a day, like Mike Mulligan and Mary-Anne were, this is taking quite a long time. I was grateful that the workers go home at night, but lately it has been really windy, which whirls into the plastic sheets and makes a frightful sound...right outside the boys' bedroom wall!

I know I am whining a little, but I am really, really done with all this construction. Just finish already!

Okay, going to end this post on a happy note with a list of the GOOD things this construction has brought us:

*An unobstructed view off our deck....really sweet at sunset time.
*A kick in the butt to clean off the deck (can't have anything on it because of the re-surfacing)
*A fun "Bubble" like feeling being surrounded by all the plastic sheets
*Something to keep my boys entertained a little (they sure loved standing at the sliding door watching the men work)
*The hope that all this work will make our deck/walkways even safer
*The fact that they didn't reach our building until it was cold and blah outside and we wouldn't really have been using our deck much anyway (SO grateful we had the use of our deck all summer).

Daddy Love

I am cheating just a little to share this beautiful picture with all of you.
My boys love their daddy so much and I think it's pretty obvious that he loves them too.

Rockwell Understood....

I just love Norman Rockwell's paintings. I always have. Such wholesomeness and down home simplicity about them. I had never seen this one until seeing it on a blog I stumbled upon the other day (unfortunately don't remember which one to give them credit).....

....Don't we all feel like her some days?. I know I do.

New Look

I've been mulling over changing the background of my blog for some time now, and tonight, I finally took the plunge.
"Tried On" quite a few looks before I found this one. I really like it. It's more colorful than my previous background, which is something I was wanting and looking for...and I think it works just lovely.
How about you?

Jenga and Jumping

Just a couple of things we have enjoyed over the last few days...

Happy fun.

Weekend Project

We pulled everything out of our storage room and went through it and organized it, throwing away old empty boxes and broken things, and then repacked the room adding some of the things that were in our home but not being used (like the exersaucer). Thankfully, David took his nap throughout our project and Liam was a big help...

...it was a relief to get done, and I feel one step closer to getting the apartment better organized and cleaned up.

Now, to just have the motivation to keep at it. I had none today. I felt very "blah". Perhaps- hopefully -the rest of the week will go better.

I also need to get a move on the christmas presents I am wanting to make this year. I am almost done with David's crocheted "sleep sack" (just like those "Halo" sleep sacks, only crocheted). My main necessity right is getting my sewing machine unburied so that I can do the sewing projects I have in mind, like slippers for the boys out of scrap polar fleece.

Yep, I really need to get motivated and get moving. Time is short...

Lost and Found

I started making nine patches a few years ago for a pretty scrappy nine patch quilt that I just love. For some reason or another, they ended up lost. I could not find them for the life of me. They were not where I thought they should be---in the bag with the extra strips of fabric.

Well, a couple of days ago, while talking with my mom on the telephone, I FOUND THEM!
I was so, so happy! If I didn't have so many christmas presents to make this year, I'd be diving right into them again, for now, I danced a happy dance and put them where I could find them again when Christmas is over.

And, just for grins and giggles, this is apparently my concentrating on crochet face:

romping

my kids love to play on my bed. It's soft, bouncey and tons of fun. They especially like to play on it with me. We had lots of giggles and fun this evening...

fun in leaves

we were at my parents house last week, and my mom helped the boys rake up a pile of leaves to play in!

...

I am feeling very bloggish tonight, but I have no idea what to write about. What's swirling around in my head is not fun blogging stuff. It's more like pray-real-hard-for-the-people-involved stuff. Kind of like a nightmare I wish I could get out of, but it's real life, and to be perfectly honest, I am glad I am no closer to it all than I am.

I guess now I have to relieve your curiosity and explain...but I don't really want to because it's yucky....

A friend of mine has a couple of friends who I know but am not well acquainted with. Both ladies have been going through separation/divorce things with their spouses and are currently sharing a house.

One of the lady's husband's had a mental breakdown, and showed up at the house with a gun, threatening to kill everybody (both ladies, plus the 6 kids between them).

Long story short, the police killed him. No one else was hurt (not physically anyway).

Please, please, please be praying for these families!!! If it's a nightmare for me, I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like for those who were there.

Halloween

This year, Liam decided to be an Orca Whale for Halloween. He was quite happy with his costume, and looked darn cute in it too:

David wore Liam's old Pirate costume. He looked pretty cute too. It felt sort of like "Moby Dick" to me:
Here's a group picture of those who dressed up this year; two pirates (David and Jessie), one military guy (Alan) and one Orca (Liam):
And here is our little Orca, "eating" Jonny's head. Oh my!
Liam had a lot of fun and got a TON of candy! He'll be eating on it for quite awhile!