Thanksgiving Feast 2011

So, how was everyone’s Thanksgiving? Was it turkey overload for you?

My sister made a 24lb turkey and my nephew smoked a 16lb bird.

Plus we had a 10lb ham. Can you believe we only had enough leftovers for lunch the next day.

What little was left after that went into a pot of chili.

We did not get to eat outside like we had hoped. The wind was blowing too much to enjoy the dinner. So we went to plan B and stretched the dining room table into the sitting room.

 

And this didn’t hold everyone! We had 7 kids at another table by the kitchen.

I made up these place cards using photoshop elements. Then punched some hole in the ends and wrapped some ribbon around the napkin and out through the holes.

My mom suggested we all use the place cards around our wine glasses so we could keep them all straight. She is so smart! It was a great idea. They even slipped nicely around the beer bottles.

We used some silver creamer and sugar bowls to make the mini arrangement.

I brought some pots of mums and we just clipped the flowers off and stuck them in some oasis.

They came out so cute.

That’s my Halloween pumpkin on the cabinet that I never carved.

So we put it to use to hold another potted mum.

We all had a great time. Lots of food, lots of wine, lots of laughs.

This last shot was taken by my daughter-in-law to be. Yep, #1 son is now engaged!

She is a photographer as well. So they have a lot in common.

The poor thing was bombarded with so many people this past weekend.

It was an introduction to the family like no other.

We're so happy to have her and her 6yr old son join our family.

Oh and I almost forgot.

I will be doing a giveaway this week so be sure to stop back by!

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's been a busy week and it will be even busier the next few days.

So before I leave I want to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving.

We are heading out for our family feast.

I'll be sure to take lots of pictures so I can share the madness with you all.

Enjoy the holiday and try not to rush Christmas too much.

It will be here before you know it.

To all those who will be traveling, have a safe trip. 

See you next week :)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Using Up That Sweater

So I had some leftover sweater material from the pumpkins I made.

The sweater did not felt like I thought it would when I washed it because it wasn’t all wool.

But it still was really soft so I thought why not a pillow.

 

I had a bed pillow I wasn’t using so I just cut it down and used it as the insert.

Then I cut the body of the sweater from armhole to armhole.

 

I had already cut the sleeves off since that is what the pumpkins are made out of.

Then just a straight stitch across the top with my machine and stuff the insert inside.

 I became addicted to making these cute little flowers.

There's a great tutorial that Beth from A to Z posted. She even made a video.

I had a gray sweater as well (which felted better) so I decided to combine the two colors.

 

I cut out some leaves and then outlined them with my sewing machine.

It wasn’t showing up enough so I hand stitched them on top with some embroidery floss.  

I whip stitched the bottom by hand as well. It was very fast.

And I managed to hot glue them on without any injuries!

Not too bad. I was really happy with it.

It’s a great size for my bed.

Plus I love the texture it adds. 

Now I just have one sleeve left to use.

Linking up with:
French Country Cottage: Feathered Nest
My Repurposed Life: Catch As Catch Can
Freckled Laundry: Air Your Laundry

Give Thanks Banner

I can’t believe Thanksgiving is next week.

We are having our big feast at my sister’s home in Jacksonville again. 

If all goes well we will eat outside this year too. Only this year we will be over 40 people! 

You can go here to see our table from last year. And here for our Thanksgiving in 2009.

I’m trying to come up with some ideas for the table this year. 

This has nothing to do with the table but I thought a banner might look cute on her porch. 

I had everything on hand already.  I reused the burlap from last years runners. 

I had some canvas scraps that I used to print out the letters. 

I’m a sucker for cute fonts and I really love this one.

It's called beauregard and you can find it on dafont.com. Or right here.
You're welcome.

I used freezer paper and ironed it on the canvas then ran them through the printer. 

The paper was giving me some problems this time.
I think it was because the canvas is pretty heavy. 

But after a couple of do overs I was good to go.

I stitched on some bias tape. I couldn’t remember why I had bought it.

I must of had a plan for it. Oh well, I used it now.

I hot glued a few leaves and pinecones to use as a divider.

Then I had to tack down the canvas at the bottom because it was wanting to curl.

Leave it to Florida to be humid in November.

I should have sewn it down because the glue gun and I were not getting along today.

I have no idea how I got that much glue on my thumb.

Gah, it hurt so much. It was throbbing like Fred Flintstone!

That is the glue peeling off, not my thumb. 

That will happen soon though because that’s a blister forming right under it.

I’ll be back soon to show you what I did with the rest of the sweater from the pumpkins.

Now that’s an odd sentence.

Linking up with:

Funky Junk: SNS 107 Banners

Accomplishing Nothing

It’s been an odd sort of week.

I’ve been feeling out of sorts thanks to the party my hormones decided to have.

So I haven’t had much energy and I can’t seem to focus on one thing.

I started three projects today and didn’t finish one of them.

I found these wool sweaters at the thrift store. 

They are 100% wool so they felted better in the washer and dryer then the first sweater I bought.

This is what they looked like before I shrunk them down to a size of a doll sweater.

I loved the color and the little snow flake pattern.

They are ready to go. Now to figure out where they’re going and what they’re doing.

I played with some glitter. Which is very hard to photograph.

I’ve only had this German glass glitter since last year.

 

I’m glad I took some pictures because now I see I missed quite a few spots.

My eyes seemed to be very blurry today for some reason.

I’ll blame it on that crazy party.

I made this cute little rosette out of some sweater scraps leftover from my pumpkins.

I need to make a few more of these. But they are very easy to do.

I do have a plan for these. Let’s just hope I don’t forget it.

My memory has been in the crapper.

Moodiness, weight gain, memory loss…..

I thought I had another few years before all this fun stuff started. Lucky me gets to start early.

I love how they stick the PERI before menopause now to try and trick you.

So you don’t feel so old.

Was perimenopause even around when our mothers and grandmothers went through it?

Back then it was just “the change”. And it was whispered.

What exactly were they changing into?

I’ll leave you with a bit of my favorite TV mom, Kitty Forman from That 70’s Show.

Only Kitty can make menopause hilarious.

And the next time my hormones decide to throw a wild party they better bring a bottle of wine.

Hope you guys are having a great week.

:)

Commenting Problems

Blog commenting.

This is what I want to ask you guys about today.

Not very exciting I know but I could use some help with this.

I will throw in random pictures of our very windy day at the beach because…..well, just because.

Maybe it will help keep you reading :)

(this was like a giant sculpture on the beach)

The other day one of my followers emailed me and let me know she could not leave a comment.

I was perplexed. I googled and googled and I think it might have something to do with browsers.

But then I decided to try to switch from embedded comments to a pop out window type.

And it helped her. I was thrilled because I figured there must have been others out there that were having issues too. I was so happy she took the time to let me know.

But then soon after I made the switch I started getting spam.

They are being caught by blogger and not getting posted. 

Well, except for that one dude that really hates women from the USA. Oh he’s a delight.

But the rest are just advertising type spam. They are going to my email but that's it. 

Good but still annoying.

 (tail of a shark that was getting weighed)

I’d still like to figure out how to get them to stop coming in my inbox.

I can not figure out the connection to having the pop out comment window and the spam. 

The spam usually comes from anonymous. Big surprise there. 

Should I just ban anonymous comments? 

Do you think that doing that will leave some people out? 

I usually just mark them as spam and then delete them.

But since they are anonymous they are sometimes connected to the same email thread of the “noreply” people.When this happens I can’t mark them as spam because the noreply people that are stuck in this thread will be marked as well. At least it's like that in gmail. 

The noreply people get lumped together.

Are you following me on this?

Those of you still in the “noreply” mode should read this post that Donna wrote on the how and why you should consider changing that. She also goes over a few other things  like getting rid of word verification!

I think that if you are having problems commenting on people’s blogs then perhaps you need to update your browser. I use google Chrome and I really love it. 

My son and I finally convinced my husband to switch over from Internet Explorer and he even said it was a lot faster. IE seems to have a lot of glitches when it comes to blogger. 

I may have to switch back to embedded comments and see if it helps get rid of those pesky spammers. I hope you’ll consider updating your browsers as well. It really helps.

I’d love to hear your opinions on this.

Embedded vs pop out comment windows.

Allowing anonymous vs blocking them.

Or anything you know of that might help out.

Thanks so much for all the wonderful birthday wishes for #3.

You guys are all so sweet. 

He read my post and got up and gave me a big hug! :)

Linking up with:
Kat Eye Studio: Exploring with a Camera/Opposing Lines

Time Flies When You Have Kids

I’m not really sure how this happens. I feel like I lost blocks of time.

My advice you all of the young moms. Grab hold, make great memories, because it’s a fast ride.

Before you know it your baby won’t be a baby any longer.

My baby turned 18 yesterday.

This is just so scary to me.

I’m pretty sure it was just last week that he looked like this.

My easy going kid.

The one that I could drag shopping all day or take to the older kids games and he never fussed. 

Well, except that first day of pre-K when he grabbed the flagpole and he would not let go. 

Or that time we went to story time at the library and he pitched a fit because he did NOT want to be there. We both sat in the car and cried that day. 

Then there was the time…..

Okay, so the kid fussed a bit.

I love his sense of humor. He still makes me laugh. Every day.

He does impressions and quotes from movies like no one else can.

He is patient with me when I ask for help with photoshop. And that is pretty often.

He is not the neatest kid in the world but I can look past that. 

Or just shut the door if it gets really bad.

I tried to make a homemade cake for him. No box mix. All from scratch.

Yeah, that didn’t turn out like I had hoped. 

I had apologized to him last night for such a yucky cake. 

He hugged me then said it was alright and that he appreciated that I took the time to make it. *snif* 

What a guy!

I’ll have to make another one with some help from Betty Crocker.

She will not let me down like Martha did with her recipe.

Hope everyone is having a great week. :)