Shoot Me! 4 of 52 Challenge

My picture is a couple of days late, but still getting it in!  Grand daughter Amanda came over late this afternoon wanting me to color her hair.  She said she wanted it more natural, and not so dark.  We can do that - She got the color - Medium Golden Brown.  About 6 weeks ago, we had put in a Dark Brown - and it was dark!  As long as we were doing her hair, after I got the color on her and the timer going, I quickly put in Medium Ash Brown in mine.  It will cover up the grey and having a color in, gives my very fine hair some body.

Here is our picture during the process and then after.

How nice for her to have long arms!

I'm standing on my tippy toes and she is kneeling lower! 

I think the color job on both of us turned out fine.  Her friends probably won't even know that she changed her color a little.

It's been fun doing hair stuff with her - one time she was adament that she wanted a lighter color.  It turned a bad color, and it was later evening after the stores were closed, so we couldn't go buy another color.  But lucky enough, I had a darker color in my stash, and we got the job fixed!  That was a terrible experience for her.  She was not happy; and you would have thought that she would have given up on coloring hair.  I've tried to tell her, she is beautiful enough and her hair is too without coloring!  But since she wants me to help her I will - it's good fun times together!

Week 2 being accountable/week 1 of POWER community challenge and Odda

 Being involved with two challenges for living a healthier lifestyle (replacing the dreaded diet word) is making me accountable if to no one else - ME!  I've been doing really good this past two weeks, except today was not so good.  I had 2 cokes today, and 1 candy bar!  Bad Girl! - but it was a mixed up day, and I couldn't cook and was on the road. 
Our Odda has had a bum eye for about 2 weeks, the right eye (not the eye itself, but the area around the eye) was all swollen, and hair rubbed off.  At first I thought she'd punctured the upper lid with a branch or something, but our local vet thought it was a dermatitis type thing going on and we'd been giving her antibiotics, and after a week there was no change.  You could tell it itched or bothered her because she was rubbing it with the side of her paw, and on our pant legs, etc.  It has been swollen shut, and she did not always open her eye up, and this morning it was pussy.  Our vet is on vacation, so I called the Vet hospital out of town that he recommended and drove the 60 miles there to have them check it out.  They determined that she has  Entropion of the lower eye lid; which is where the eye lid is turning under and scratching her eye, and very irritating.   I'd called about 10 am and they wanted to see her at 1 pm, so that meant I was on the road during dinner time, and didn't even have time to fix something for Steve.  He was outside cleaning the barn, so told him where Odda and I were going and off we went.  So now Odda is scheduled for surgery on Monday Feb 1st and needs to be there at 7:30 am - another car ride early in the morning.   The doctor said it isn't uncommon for large dogs to have this happen, and there was nothing we did wrong!  (Thank goodness.)  They will pull the lid out, do a little clip/cut of extra lid, and sew her up.  He called it a little plastic surgery.  She'll come home with a cone on, so will be staying inside a few nights then.  As long as she is under they are going to do a prelim OFA check also, saving me about $60.00 as she is already under.  They said she was such a good girl.  I told him we were doing obedience training now, and he said she was better behaved than any other 9 month old large dog he's seen for a long time.  So I had to let Sue (our dog teacher) know that Odda wouldn't be there for 3 to 4 weeks.   Odda has been doing so good at classes, and I was going to have our daughter come this week and take pictures of us and all the dogs.  Oh well, that will have to wait.

Didn't get home until 3:30 pm and husband was getting ready to head to Iowa.  He was loading a couple of young boars to take to a boar stud station.  He's staying overnight at friends, and then the two of them will be driving to Iowa and back tomorrow.  It was Hi and Bye again as I had to be in town to practice bells at 5 pm and had to leave home before 4:30 pm.  Didn't get home again until after 7 pm.  So that was my day.  Had left overs for a supper by myself, and had Odda inside, thinking maybe she could stay in all night.  But she wanted to go out.  So I put in her eye ointment in twice before putting her in her kennel now at 9:30 pm.  Her house is nice and warm, but not as warm as being inside.  After her surgery, she'll just have to stay inside overnight and sleep by the door.  We'll need to be able to watch over her more then. 

So my day of not eating well today is over, and on with the program better tomorrow.  If I'd thought straight, I'd have taken  cut up celery and carrots in a baggie with, or make and take a sandwich with.   It's not that it wasn't available.  I did drink water, but did have a diet coke on the way there, and the way home.   Other than today, I've really cut back on the pop, which is good, and I feel better for it. 

So I'm being accountable for what I'm doing; and also on week one of our community POWER UP challenge.  POWER stands for
P-rotein/produce; O-ptimism; W-ater; E-xercise; Resist grazing.  Leah, went with me to sign up for this at our Community Education office.  We will report every Monday on how we are doing.  You grade yourself from 1 - 5 on how you feel you are doing each day for each of the POWER catagories.  You pick 2 goals each week  and mine for this week are:  Water - drink 8 - 8 oz glasses of water daily, and reducing the cola drinks.  Doing fine on this goal (except for today- so my number today for Water will be a 4.  2nd Goal this week is Proten/produce - eat protein and veggies with each meal.  Well - today that was a bust!  So grade today will be a 1.   My Optimism today will be a 3 and Exercise a 0 and Resist grazing a 2, as I'm not grazing tonight!

So it goes - A busy day and not planned, but I'm going to pack up some celery and carrots in baggies and have them ready to grab when I go out the door unplanned.  That will help.  Need to dig out the water bottles and have some ready to take too.  Then I won't be so tempted to stop at a gas station to get munchies.

The drive to the Vet Hosp. was pretty, and the drive home was not so nice.  It was blowing snow and getting slippery.

On our way to the Vet Hosp.

This one is on the way home - icey roads and blowing over. 

Odda slept the whole way home.  She is such a good traveler. 

More again another day!

Long Ago Doctor Visit

Picture of me when I was about 5 years old.  Maybe a check up after having had my tonsils out?  Or getting ready to go to school?  Don't have anyone to ask, and I don't remember.   I do remember Dr. Higgs as being a very nice doctor.  There was a note from either his wife or someone in the doctor office to my mother that was with the picture.   The note said that the picture didn't turn out very good, but the little one will enjoy it anyhow. 

This original scanned picture shows the little brown spots that are ruining the picture, and I did make some copies and colored over the dots so they don't show, but the transferred copy errored out when I tried to copy here.  I think the brown spots came from the note paper that was included with the picture.  They didn't have the special paper to preserve pictures like there is now.

   There was one get well card in the book, and the time frame could be right.

This card is from Gretchen, an older high school neighbor girl that used to babysit for us, and that I idolized!  I remember thinking she was the most beautiful girl ever!  She would come play with us some times even when not baby sitting.  Her house was just across the road from ours.  After she graduated and moved away to a southern state, she was killed in a car accident.  

It's a good thing no one takes a picture of me now when I go to the doctor!!!!!  I wouldn't print it here if they did!!!!!

Keeping busy on a Snow Day!

It's still snowing - snowed all day Saturday.  Didn't go anywhere!  Sewed all day.

Our photo book for baby Renee is almost done.  Just to finish sewing through all the layers of pages so it won't fall apart when little hands are busy with the book.  Here are photos of the process of getting the pages together.

Sewed together two framed pictures and then put another set of two pictures, right side together, and put a piece of batting on, and serged aroung the edges, leaving an area open on the the bottom side so I could turn it right side out.  Would you believe on the cover pages, I goofed the first time and had one page upside down!  dah!  had to cut around the serged area and fix, then reserge correctly.  It made the cover a little smaller, but it still turned out ok and a little bigger than the other pages.  Then another time, I serged around the whole page, forgetting to leave an opening!  Had to cut some threads.  Does anyone else ever goof like that?

This shows the other side of the serged piece before turned right side out.

Now to decide what order the pages should be - no special order, just a good mixture.  Then hand stitched down the middle of all the pages for so pages won't shift when I machine stitch the middle seam. 

You'll note the ribbon taggies I put on when I sewed the cover together.  This is the inside of the front and back cover pages.  The taggies off set each other when the book is closed.  Decided not to do all the way around the book; and don't know know that I like it any better this way.  Still undecided on a closure for the book.  I need to buy more ribbon if I want to put ribbon on the front and back and when closed tie in bow.  Didn't have any long enough so will have to buy more ribbon the next time I get to town. 

Front cover.

The completed book has 14 picture pages inside, and when closed measures about 2 1/2 inches wide.

With the cover pages, there are 16 picture pages.  Could have done more, but then I think it

would have been too bulky.

Back cover page.

Maybe I could sew a cute button on both the front and back cover, with an elastic that is tight on the back cover, not able to come off, and with a little elastic loop to pull over the button on the front cover.    Wonder if that would be better than loose ribbon to tie.

Which option do you think I should do?

This is what I was working on most of the day Saturday. The "sweetpea" print is is lavendar and is so much prettier than this picture!  I have it ready to quilt and hope to finish it today.  It is a square table topper.

Odda was my helper and my "tail" - following me  every time I moved from the kitchen, back to the sewing room, to sew pieces together, and then back again to kitchen to iron seams, or cut more, etc. etc.  When I was busy, she'd lay down and nap a little or nuzzle me to pet her! 

Frosty - 30 days old!

Frosty has been here for 30 days!  He is starting to settle from all his weight, and his back bend is pretty good.  I think he may be trying to go for the "Limbo".  We'll have to see how far he can go before he falls!  This only problem with that - he won't be getting up again! 

Today it is snowing again, and it started yesterday evening with rain and sleet, changing to snow early this morning.  Must have over 3 inches now and it's still coming down!  

 Snowball the horse is not doing well.  His head has fallen apart, so he can't think straight anymore;  has lost his halter and saddle blanket!  His tail is still good, but big butts are hard to get rid of!  Just like me - Big butt!  Ha!  More exercise called for and as for being accountable; more exercise has been started on my part.  Don't think Snowball will be keeping up with me! 

Last night we went to visit our granddaughter Amanda.  She had her 4 wisdom teeth surgercially removed on Thursday.  She looked pretty good last night.  No black and blue coloring, just "gopher" cheeks.  She used a cold compress on her cheeks several times while we were there, and we played a game of "Apples to Apples" with her and grandson Blake.  Lineman Blake got called back to work, so he went to bed very early and left early this morning - driving on terrible roads to their last job site, and then to take equipment to the Huron SD area where there are over 1700 poles down.  They'll be there a few days getting that system all back in working order.  With that many poles down, I'm sure there will be other power company crews called in to help.  Our daughter that works for Xcel Energy in Sioux Falls SD said they have some trouble in their area, but will be sending linemen to the Huron job site too.  Praying for all those linemen to work safe in harsh conditions.

The snow today is sticky because the temperature is above freezing.  We could build another Frosty, but I'm not in the mood to do that all by myself.  Christmas day was much more fun when all the kids were home and we built our snow buddies together!

Basketball Team of Old

My sister found this picture of our father and basketball team for Park Rapids high school.    Dad is the 5th one from the coach, and his brother is behind him.  His brother John actually was a year older than dad, but both graduated together, I believe in 1927.  I have no idea who any of the other players are or the coach, so will be taking this picture to the "all class reunion committee" to see if they have any old pictures close to that year of graduation.  I wonder if they had numbers on their shirt backs?  Found it interesting that their shoes don't look like they give any support at all!
I remember hearing stories of how good an athlete my dad was; both in basketball and especially in football.  He wasn't that big, but must have had the spirit and aggressiveness needed to be good.

Shoot Me! Week 3 of 52 - Mom & Grown UP Country Girl

Picture of our beautiful oldest daughter and myself this past week.  This is really a good challenge, as by the end of the year we'll end up with some good pictures of all of us! 

Our other girls live away, one in southern Minnesota, which I won't see until the end of January, and the other in Louisiana.  So their pics with Mom will be later. 
Love you much Leah!
Have a good weekend everyone!

Frosty Morning

      Everything is coated with frost this morning.  What wonderful pictures can be had!  Here are  some from my garden!

                         The little beads at the top of the house can hardly be seen!  Love the frosty fringe on the roof line.

The birds weren't at the feeder this morning - must be snuggled down in their beds keeping warm!

Window Pain!

A unique picture taken last spring from Grandmas house looking toward our house. 

At that time, the house was already vacant; but

the memories that are evoked when looking at this picture are kind of painful!

WooHoo Vikings Rule!

Great game Vikings!  Now you can rest for next weekend!  We can beat the Saints!!!!!       Grandson Blake when he was young enough to go out trick n treating - a great Vikings fan!

My First Pet

Subuckie!  What a name - Where did that name come from?  Would you believe a 2 year old child (ha, me) came up with that name.  Actually, the Cocker Spaniel's name was "Bismark", and we got him in Bismark, ND.  But as a small child I couldn't say that name, and came up with Subuckie instead.  So that is what we called him.   This picture must have been taken in 1950, as my sister was born in 1949, and must be about a year old here.  That makes me three.  Check out the perm that my mom has, and the rolled up cuff on her jeans!     

Leaning Frosty!

Our Christmas snowman Frosty is leaning - badly. If he was into exercising, it looks like he is ready to do a back bend!  The weight of the snow is settling with him bending backwards.  Poor fella - lost one arm to Odda!  Then Friday with warm weather and temperatures in the low 30's, his smiley mouth fell off - or  maybe Odda is guilty of removing that too, as there are dog scratches or marks of Odda trying to get to his potato buttons, and maybe Odda actually reached his mouth!   

Our "Frosty" as he looked the first day!

Frosty update on Jan 15, 2010

I'm afraid that he will fall over before he actually melts much!  You can see here, that one arm is missing and his smiley mouth fell off.   The horse head has been chewed on by one big puppy!  Odda has loved having these playmates - we have seen Odda laying close to the horse, and  playing with the lead rope, which I have now removed so the rope and halter don't get chewed up.  Odda will miss Frosty and snow horse after they're gone!  

You know, Frosty's head and body still are pretty big in size, and when they fall, I hope no one will be in the way, as that snow is really heavy!

More pictures of the frost on the trees yesterday.

The frost hung on the branches all morning.  Then the sun finished it off.  Maybe it'll be back  on Saturday!

Calendar Pic!

I was pleasantly surprised the last week when neighbor Roger (fire chief for our local fire department) showed me that one of my pictures of our house burn was printed on the Minnesota State Community & Techical College from Moorhead, MN calendar for 2010.  I'd taken many pictures of the burn; of all of the firemen; the fire trucks and water tanks; the different stages of the burn; and then each group of firemen toward the end of the burn.  I made a DVD for each fire department and the Moorhead Tech so they could review the burn, etc.   The young firemen and women on this picture learned much that day.  This fire training will help to save the life of a fireman one day, or save the life of someone in a burning structure, and they learned how to save a burning structure.  Training like this is so valuable to these young people and other the new firemen that haven't had to enter a burning structure yet.  They took turns entering, searching, putting out the fire in each room.  They trained doing kitchen fires to fires in the upstairs from the roofline, to bedrooms, to the living room, and celler.  I thought it was very interesting how they searched for victims, and I noticed that at one time, there was some confussion, and a little panic, as a young fireman had not responded/or reported that he was back out after a training session.  For a few minutes, there was some mighty fast action getting in to play, for a group to go back inside to search for this individual; but the trainee was out, and  found out real fast that you HAVE to pay attention at ALL times! 

There were alot of other people taking pictures that day also.  For our family I made prints too, as one last remembrance of a house that was home for many years for my husband's family.  We miss the house standing there, however, the foundation had dry rot, and it needed a lot of work done.  It wasn't a project that we were able to afford.  It didn't take a week after the burn to get everything leveled off, and new grass planted.  I got a couple of trees planted this last fall, and now this spring we will be planting more trees, and flowers.

Shoot Me! 2 of 52 Challenge

Didn't get a new picture this week, but will use a picture that was taken at Christmas with grand children and Steve and I.   Won't have baby here to take weekly pictures, so this one is close enough!  Baby Renee lives too far away for weekly pictures; and Blake is working away during the week as an electrical lineman; Amanda is a Junior in high school.  Time goes by fast, kids grow up!

Grandpa still keeps busy with raising Duroc pigs, and sells alot to 4-H kids for showing and we sell alot to area friends to eat.  He also does some grain farming on the few areas we have.  I'm retired from my 8-5 job of 35 years and now enjoying sewing/quilting, crafting and working with Odda and Hooch.

Sixteen years between grand kids.  Blake is 20, Amanda is 16 and Renee was almost 6 months here.  Won't tell you my age!!!!!
It's fun checking out all the Shoot Me sites!

Friends!

This past weekend we helped our neighbor Barb celebrate her birthday. 

We have gone out to supper for quite a few years to celebrate our birthdays.  Gives us an excuse to get out - otherwise we don't go out to eat very often.  Where we went Friday evening has Bingo.  We played - of course none of us won!   There are about 16 area bars/restraurants that do have Bingo on Fridays and Mondays.  The closest Casino helps to sponsor it.  It sure brings out the people! Barb and I were co-4-H leaders together for many years.  She babysat our youngest daughter, and Jessica is considered one of her many kids, and sister to her boys.  She has been babysitting for so many years; and I can't imagine having a career doing day care.  It takes a VERY SPECIAL person to  do that job!  Bless you Barb and hope you had a Happy Birthday! 

Even tho the school bus driver knew the schedule of when Jessica was suppose to get off the bus at Barbs, Jessica was guilty of telling him to take her to Barbs instead of home!   My mother-in-law was frantic when it was about 5 pm and no Jessica!  But she was safe and sound at Barbs and later got a scolding  after she got home!  However, that wasn't the last time that she tried that.  Every now and then, she decided that it was time that she go to Barbs again!  She claimed "it is more fun there!"  How can you blame a kid for wanting to be where the "fun" is!

Start of a MN Family Christmas Cloth Book!

Yesterday I got the pictures transferred onto the fabric by using The Electric Quilt Company Printables.  I scanned the pictures with our inkjet printer onto fabric sheets.   The directions  have you peel off the plastic backing after allowing the print to dry for 15 minutes.  Then I soaked the fabric printed 8.5 x 11 pages in room temperature water for 10 minutes, (used my cake pans with water)and then rinsed and laid flat to dry.  I had the printed fabric sheets dry on folded towels on the table.  This morning I ironed the fabric I found in my fabric bin  that I'll be using to make quilted framing around the pictures and ironed the picture fabric.  I was really pleased at the color quality that transferred to the fabric. 

I cut the picture fabric with 1/4 inch edge around each picture.  Some of the pictures I put at an angle with two pictures in the space.  So I'll have to make the quilted edging different sizes.

                                                        
 Got the use of more pictures by putting two together. 

This will be the front (group) and the back of the book (the dogs).  The pink will be the spine of the cloth book.  I think I'll add another color to frame both pictures together.  Now to pick the pictures that will be the 1st page inside and last inside page.  Then I'll make the quilted frame around those pictures to match the set here.  The rest of the pages will be just a little smaller than the cover.  

I don't have a pattern, but it makes sense to me that the cover should be just a little larger than the inside pages.  I think I'll make  two stitched lines about 1/2 " wide on the first couple of pages down the spine, and for the middle pages, just a single stitched line.  But I'll see how that will fit together as I get further along.    More pictures will come.

Little hands to play with a cloth book; to turn puffy pages; to learn the names of her aunties and uncles and cousins;her GPa and GMa; and dogs!  I'll be finishing this to take to baby Renee in Louisiana when I go in February.

Shoot Me! 1 of 52 Challenge

I think it's a great idea to do this challenge - To post every Thursday a picture with myself in it for 52 weeks.  It may end up that I'll have to TAKE my own picture!   Hopefully not, but usually I'm the one taking pictures, so not in a lot of family gathering pictures.  Especially years ago.  Now our BIG girls all are camera bugs, so I'm in a few more.   Carin over at  Forever In Blue Jeans posted this challenge.  It'll be a challenge for me!  But here we go.

Hooch and I working on a photo project to make a book for baby Renee with pictures of her "Minnesota Family".  It was one thing I didn't get done before Christmas due to computer printer problems.  Now with that working better and a good serger, I should be able to get this done!  More pictures as progress goes.
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Have also started other projects now that the kids are all gone.  One was to finish up some baby blankets that had been left undone when my serger decided to take a vacation.   I don't know what happened to it (a few months ago); but the stitches came out so badly I couldn't use the serger.  Finally had taken it to a repair man in Fargo ND, and it now works wonderfully.  I finished 6 blankets in short order the other day.  Don't know if this will help me, but I took a picture of the setting of the dials, so if my stitches become messed up again, I'll hopefully be able to get the thread tensions back to these settings.    It'll be worth a try!  It's so nice to have it back in working order.  I really needed to have repaired it earlier.

The picture looks kind of dark, but when I zoom in, I can see the dials good. I have some new projects coming up that will need to change color of threads, so that should be interesting!  

Last evening we were invited to Far Side's for supper!  How nice it was.  Had home made pizza (yummy) and played cards.  A nice evening with good friends.  Hooch went with to play, or should I say, give Chance a hard time!  Hooch even found a lost ball for Chance.