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.