Random Acts of Kindness

Steve and I came home Friday afternoon to a beautiful Christmas bow on our mailbox. We were not quite sure if there was a Christmas elf or if Iggy (our dog) decided to decorate while we were gone. Then, we saw our neighbor decorating the mailbox a few houses down. So we walked over to her and said, "Are you responsible for the beautiful bow on our mailbox!?". She said yes, I had the day off and thought I would decorate the mailboxes on the street.

How nice is that?! I love our little town that we live in.

It's SNOWING in Sealy, TX!!

Amazingly it is snowing here today. Something that doesn't happen here often. Here are a couple of pictures. I used the race car trailer for a nice black background :) These are by far the biggest snowflakes I've ever seen. I guess everything is bigger in Texas?! Of course, that's coming from a girl from Louisiana who has never seen real snow.

Quilting

I got inspired after attending the International quilt festival in Houston. Here is my first quilted reversible table runner using the cotton theory method. It is Christmas on one side and mardi gras on the other.It is a quilt as you go. Basically you are assembling it with the batting and top stitching your quilt as you sew it. I fought with it a bit because the green fabric I used was a satin and kept raveling. You have to fold the seams and top stitch them. The more I folded the satin, the more it unravled causing every thing to shift and come out crooked in parts. Of course I had to make my first one challenging, I used satin and tapestry fabrics along with cotton. The next one I think I'll use all cotton. I'm sure it will be a breeze compared to this one. I think it turned out ok for my first one. A bit crooked. Oh well, you can't learn if you don't make mistakes.


Below is my first crooked nickel quilt. The theory here is to use a grid marked fusible webbing. Then, iron all of your pieces on it. Once they are ironed on, you just sew down the lines of the grid. Sounds easy. However, I found the quilt I made the traditional way of sewing one block at a time to be much easier. I fought a lot with trying to iron it and lay it out because I had to pair up two 45" pieces of the interfacing side by side to iron it on. It was very cumbersome.

My sweet Dog

Iggy cuddled with me while I wasn't feeling well. Of course he fell asleep, and I didn't. But it's the thought that counts....
Isn't he just the cutest boxer you've ever seen!?

He will contort himself and be very uncomfortable just to get some cuddle time. Here he is hugging Steve after a hard day's work.
And here he is in his favorite spot, my chair.


Since I have no kids, I have to take pictures of our cute son, Iggy and post them for everyone to see.

Body Worlds

This weekend we went to see the Body Worlds exhibit at the Museum of Natural Science in Houston. If you ever have the opportunity to see this, you must go. I want to go back because I feel like there is so much I missed. It was quite overwhelming. I apologize for the lack of posts. I've been nursing a cold, bug, or something that has really knocked me down. I just can't shake it for some reason. Hopefully, soon, I'll be back to normal.

Butt Scratching and Bass Fishing

A must read for today.

http://www.daveramsey.com/etc/cms/butt_scratching_and_bass_fishing_10192.htmlc

Forrest Gump

Is that Forrest? Nah, it's just Steve cutting our back 40. You never truly appreciate the size of 2 acres until you have to cut it yourself.



It takes about 2 hours just to cut our backyard on a zero turn mower. Steve thinks he's going to get the backyard done before it gets dark, but I beg to differ.


I so bravely attempted to cut our front yard with a push mower when we first moved in. The funny thing is, I really thought I could do it. It couldn't be that bad, right? Ha, the big lots here make the front yard look deceiving. I thought, "I usually cut the whole yard back in Louisiana. Our front yard is about the size of that. How bad could it be." Guess again!! You see what we have now. :)

On the Road Again

Well, we are off to another trip back home to Louisiana tomorrow evening. This will be the first trip without pulling the 44 foot trailer, YAY! No more moving! Now it's just clean, clean, clean and sell, sell, sell. So, if you know of anyone looking for a nice house in Gonzales (great schools) with a 3 car garage that's twice the size of the house (a man has to have his priorities ;), let me know. A few of our neighbor's friends are interested. We are hoping that makes for a quick sell. If not, we will have to list it and wait because in Lousiana people don't buy houses during LSU football season. When I sold my first house, I put it on the market during October and my realtor told me that. I thought it was a joke. But no, it's true! It didn't sell until Feburary, valentine's day actually. I pray this one doesn't take that long to sell. It's no fun owning two houses in two different states. I'll be so glad when we no longer have to make this 5.5 hour trip every other weekend. It's no fun spending 11 hours of your weekend driving.

Silly Boy!

I finally finished my quilt. When I laid it on the floor to take the picutres, my silly dog thought he was taking a photo shoot. He is such a trip, notice how he perfectly sat on it like he's posing. I was laughing so hard, I could barely take the pictures of him. So, of course, I have to post his pics too :) I decided to try something I had never done before and made a rag quilt. The edges are clipped and fray after multiple washings. These pictures were taken after one wash. As you can see, the edges of the quilt itself need more washings to fray. All in all I think it turned out well. I had far less shirts than I thought, so it's rather small. But, still a nice sentimental thing.

Train Museum

We love Texas!!! There is so much to do here as compared to Louisiana. Every small town here has something to offer on the weekends from craft fairs to museums. We decided to venture out to Rosenberg, TX which is about 20 miles from where we live. We went to the downtown area and ate at "Another Time Soda Fountain". This place was excellent. I don't know what was better, the service, the food, or the atmosphere. I can't wait to go back and try an old fashioned dessert. We each had a burger and they were the best burgers we have had so far in Texas. Then, we ventured around downtown walking in and out of antique shops. We also went to the Rosenberg Railroad Museum. It doesn't look like much when you get there. There is a $5.00 admission fee. We thought at first oh boy, do we pay the 5 bucks to just walk around this tiny 'museum'? Then, the cashier who was a guy that looked like he stepped right off the train, started telling us the history of the trains and the area. It turned into a 2.5 hour tour that was SO interesting. It was well worth the 5 bucks! There were so many facts that I didn't know about trains. Did you know that American Express and Wells Fargo started out as shipping and cargo companies? Back then, if any letter/mail/package was over 8 ounces, it had to be sent via train. Wells Fargo and American Express were two of the major cargo shipping companies. They were quite successful obviously because look at what they are now :)

I can't wait until we sell our house in Louisiana so that we will be here in Texas every weekend instead of every other weekend (to take care of things there). There are so many things we want to go do and see. Just driving around the country roads is beautiful enough for me. It makes it even better that there are quaint country towns with lots of attractions to go along with the beautiful drive. The Renaissance festival is going on until the end of November, so eventually we will get there too. On our way to Rosenberg, in the town of Wallis, there was a banner hanging above the main hwy that said "City wide garage sale" next week. How neat is that!? And we haven't even made it out to the attractions in Houston yet. I wish I had moved here years ago. We have been to two fair events (the Belleville city fair and the Scarecrow festival) also. We have done more things in the one month that we have lived here than we did in the past year in Louisiana.

Presidential election

Dave Ramsey as I said is our hero. We have become debt free in two years even with Steve taking a 5 month sabbatical, keeping all of his expensive toys, paying for our own wedding, paying off our two vehicles (and yes, Dave, we kept the BMW but not as the status symbol of choice!... If you aren't familiar with Dave Ramsey, his motto is "where debt is dumb, cash is king, and the paid off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice"), moving to Texas, me quitting my job, and the media's exaggerated 'economic crunch'.

Every time I watch the news and listen to this economic scare I just laugh. Also, when listening to the debates I laugh as well because candidate after candidate, election after election promises the same things. What the majority of people doesn't realize is that the problem and fix starts with yourself! The government doesn't create jobs, we as entrepreneurs do. I could go on forever but I'll get off my soap box now. Read Dave's opinion, I have to thoroughly agree.

T-shirt quilt

Over the years, I have kept quite a few t-shirts from elementary school, high school, college etc that I just couldn't part with. There were even those that I didn't know I parted with (thanks mom!). I did manage to keep a handful though. Why do we have such a hard time letting go of things that aren't useful but hold sentimental value? I've decided to attempt to make something that will put those shirts to use, a memory quilt. Now you know what this means, even if it turns out horrible I still have to show it to my readers, right? Hopefully, it will turn out nice and I'll be proud to show it. If so, I'll even put it on my SewEmbroidered site and offer to make them for a fee. Guess I'd better get to creating and sewing. :)

Rain

You would think that just one state over the weather patterns wouldn't be so different. However, it rains much less here than it did in Louisiana. It just finished raining for the second time in a month. Even better, the rain showers or downpours only last an hour or so. Unlike in Louisiana, where they lasted all day and night, sometimes even days. I've also had to get used to the wind here. Being we are on 2 acres and everything is so spread out, it's always windy here. So much so, that my swing in my backyard has been knocked over 4 times by the wind. I finally had to move it behind the house where it's a little more blocked from the wind. Ha ha, as I type the last sentence in this paragraph the sun is already shining again. You gotta love Texas!! The sun and stars shine bright here!!!!

Home home on the range

Well, I guess I'd better start keeping a blog to keep in touch with everyone. Steve and I are still attempting to get moved to our new house in Texas (one month later). We are finally at the end of our trips back to Louisiana. Thankfully, he has every other Friday off. I can't tell you how thankful I've been for the 44 foot race car trailer (as many times as I tried to make him sell it for a smaller one). We made 4 successful trips with it and we have moved the entire house and the shop.

Now it's back next weekend to clean up and get the house ready to sell. And yes, I'm thankful for the huge car trailer and on our 2 acre lot it doesn't get in the way anymore. Our maiden voyage with the car trailer was during the weekend of evacuating for Hurricane Gustav in Louisiana. Boy, what a weekend to move, huh? It took us 11 hours to get to Texas which is normally a 6 hour trip (maximum hauling the trailer). What a nightmare that was. But, we thankfully we made it home safely. We even had our dog, Iggy, with us. By the 9th hour of riding in the truck in dead stop traffic he was starting to get restless. But he did great!

I will try and keep this updated. While in town this weekend we went to the 13th gate with friends. I hate haunted houses and scary things. I'm still waking up in a panic. Sadly, I want to go back. We were all so scared (all 7 of us, including the men) that we held onto each other's belt loops and sped through. There were a lot of neat details in each room. Now that I know what to expect, I'd like to go back and take my time to see the talented work of these people.