Musings of a Mid East Mom

Soccer and Muslims

2012-02-03T08:58:00.000-08:00

I'm sure a lot of people know about how popular soccer is among Muslim men, but did you know that there are Muslim women who play soccer as well. Many young women who are among the top in their countries are being denied the opportunity to play in qualifying games for this year's Olympics because they wear a headscarf. These women are not new to playing in scarves and haven't suffered because of them, yet the International Football Association is telling them they aren't allowed to compete.

This is a letter I received today.

As elite soccer players compete in the qualifiers for this summer's Olympics, some won't even get a shot to show off their skills: female Muslim players can be automatically disqualified for wearing hijab (or headscarves) on the field.
The International Football Association Board (IFAB) -- a governing body that sets the rules for the soccer trials leading up to the Olympics -- has already disqualified the entire women's Iranian national team after they tried to wear headscarves during their qualifying match. Players on the teams from Jordan, Palestine and Bahrain who choose to wear headscarves face the same fate.
For Rahaf Owais, a staffer at the Jordanian Football Association, the headscarf ban means the end of some young players' careers before they even begin. After seeing some of Jordan's players disqualified for expressing their religious beliefs, Rahaf started a petition on Change.org urging IFAB to reverse its ban on female soccer players wearing headscarves. Click here to stand up for Rahaf's young players and sign her petition.
IFAB has argued the headscarf ban is about safety, but the Iranian players who were disqualified were wearing wraps fastened with specially designed Velcro closures meant to eliminate any chance of neck injury. For players who choose to wear headscarves for religious reasons, the ban of even the safe, new head coverings is discrimination, plain and simple.
Earlier this week, the President of the Asian Football Confederation, Zhang Jilong, called on IFAB to reconsider the headscarf ban at its upcoming meeting on March 3. And now FIFA -- the international federation that runs the World Cup and is a voting member of IFAB -- has piled on and is urging IFAB to change the rule.
Zhang and the FIFA leadership have a lot of influence in the soccer world, so we know IFAB is paying attention to this issue. If enough people speak out by signing Rahaf's petition, IFAB will be convinced the public wants them to reverse the ban and lift the discriminatory barrier keeping some women from competing in the Olympic trials.
Click here to sign Rahaf's petition urging IFAB to reverse the ban on women soccer players wearing headscarves.

Design Wall Monday-ish

2012-01-10T05:33:00.000-08:00

Ok, I know it's not Monday but around here, close enough works.

I didn't get everything I wanted to done last week, so I still have to repair Z.'s quilt, make a few more bags and get the kids pj pants made.

I did, however, finish 5 of these bags and a few crocheted squares for a baby blanket.

I have a tendency to be overly ambitious in my plans and very bad at know how long my projects will take. I'm not the greatest housekeeper but in order to keep this family of 7 going, a certain amount of work has to be done each week. Add to that time cooking and homeschooling and it doesn't leave a lot of time for sewing. I'm so impressed with other moms that get lots done. That's just not me.

I'll try again this week to fix Z's quilt and I'm looking forward to getting some of the blocks for the blocked rainbow quilt done.

We ended up getting a surprise snow fall yesterday. None of the weather sources saw it coming and even when it was falling they kept saying "no accumulation". Our "no accumulation" ended up being over an inch of nice sticky snow perfect for snow ball fights and snow forts. The majority of it fell during our first hour and a half of co-op class so my two little guys kept coming down and giving us updates nearly every 5 minutes. We even ended up canceling the rest of the class day so that no one would be on the untreated road after dark. (We usually do our classes from 3-6:30.) Anyway, the kids had fun while waiting for their parents and enjoyed having a snowball fight with their teacher. (me) The crazy thing is Friday we had a high of 65! I'll take 65 over snowy days unless I don't have to be out in it, which is nearly impossible with small children. H. is only 4 and still has to have me or dh out with him.

When dh retires, I'll happily move to Florida, Arizona or Kish, but my kids keep asking to move to Minnesota- just for the winter!

Better Home Challenge list

2012-01-04T21:08:00.000-08:00

Heather at Needles and Pens decided to go off on a tangent with Judy's UFO challenge idea and apply it to her home. There are plenty of projects that I need to get to around here so I'll jump right in to this one as well. I'll use this list as a project list and as deep cleaning list.

1. Laundry room
2. Pantry closet
3. Coat closet
4. Boys' toy cabinet
5. Kitchen cabinets
6. Stash closets
7. Front porch
8. Pantry closet (This gets messy often so it deserves two spots.)
9. Bookshelves
10. Basement/Family Room
11. Boys' Room
12. Kids' bathroom

UFO 2012

2012-01-04T20:17:00.000-08:00

Well, I didn't get most of the UFO's finished from the 2011 list so they will just get carried into this next year. I got a lot of quilting done last year and having the UFO list helped spur me on. I'm determined to finish all of them this year!

1. and 2. The twin quilt flimsies. I really need to get these done and out of my sewing space this year.

3. Batik Carpenter's Wheel

4. Fall Leaves

5. 6. and 7. My color blocks quilt which I'll work 3-4 blocks at a time

8. Pink and Brown Basket weave baby quilt (The blues next to it are from a quilt I did last year.)

9. Orange and Cream mini. This little thing has been floating around since 2005ish. Time to get it done.

10. Black and Blue mini. Another that's been here since 2005ish and still no picture.

11. and 12. R.'s hand-made quilt. I started this when he was 1 and he's now 6. It's only partially pieced blocks so there's lots to do.

Design Wall Monday

2012-01-02T20:14:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone had a good holiday (both Christmas and New Year's, for those who celebrate).

It's been busy around here the past two weeks. The last couple of years we've gone to visit my mom, aunt, sister and her family but we had to replace our van this year so we couldn't make the trip. The time that would normally be spent traveling was split between baking, sewing and taking various kids to the orthodontist. (By June, we'll have three kids in various stages of braces.)

I baked dozens of cookies and a few batches of brownies to send to my family. Then I decided that I would make a little something for my mom, my sisters and my aunt, which led to these lavender rice bags. I got the pattern at V and Co.here.

I still have one more to make and then I'm going to make them each a reusable shopping bag with these.

I've made a few simple bags that I use all the time for toting library books or my latest quilting or crochet project. I know there are a ton of tutorials out there for bags and I'm awfully tempted to try my hand at some of them, but I want to get these in the mail tomorrow, so the simple it is.

M. has grown 6 in. in the last year and a half. He's now taller than both DH and I. I've had to replace all of his pants twice this year because it seems that now he's all legs. His pajama bottoms are ridiculously short so I decided to make him a few pairs with an extra wide hem using this pattern. Now I can let them down rather than buy or make new ones .

I got one pair made and have at least two more to go. H. begged me for a pair just like his big brother so who am I to say no to an adorable (and incredibly persistent) 4 year old. R., S. and Z. all want a pair, too.

It was really cold today so I made some hand warmers, also from V and Co. for all the kids to use when they came in from break during our co-op classes. I made these with the little bits of leftover fabric from the pajama pants. The kids all wanted to keep them so I'll be making more of these this week, which is fine since they take less than 10 min., although I think I'll make them an inch bigger on all sides.

If I get through all of this, I'm going to work on repairing Z.'s quilt.

I have several posts I want to do this week as well.

It's going to be a very busy week around here.
If you haven't already, check out the other design walls at Judy's blog.

Design Wall Monday

2011-12-19T18:20:00.000-08:00

Only a little more time left until the end of the year. I'm happy to say that I finished the Log Cabin Baby quilt and actually got it to the mom within days a finishing. This is particularly surprising since we don't see each other that often but I decided Saturday to keep the quilt in the car with me from now on just in case and, lo and behold, I saw her Saturday night!

Yesterday, I finished the machine quilting on Rooty Tooty. I had originally planned to use this as a couch throw, then S. claimed it as soon as the top was finished. It's a little bit of a weird size (52"x 73")since I was just playing and was going to use it for the couch, but it should be alright for S.'s bunk bed. While I was quilting it, dh tried to stake a claim to it so he and S. kept teasing each other the whole rest of the day about who was going to get to keep the quilt. I still have to make the binding and attach it before either of them gets it. I've got two Dr. Who DVDs coming from Netflix tomorrow which will be perfect for getting the handwork binding done.

If I finish that this week, then I'll work on one of the twin quilts from my UFO list. They both need borders to finish the tops and I'll have to piece a backing for each. I have yellow borders cut for them but I found out the twins really like pink so I have to decide if I'm going to frame them in pink or just stick with the yellow. If I'm super good, maybe I'll be able to get those finished (at least to the binding phase) by the end of the year.

I, also, have a scarf for the Special Olympics to finish up. H. kept trying to stake a claim to it, so I'll have to make one for him as well. The colors for this year's Special Olympics' scarves are perfect for a scarf for H. since his coat is navy blue with a red lining. I love serendipity!

Check out more design walls on Judy's blog.

In case you're wondering about what happened with the cut quilt, I told A.'s mom. She talked to her and A. still claims she didn't do it. We have a policy in this house that if you don't see it happen, don't blame anyone, so I've decided just to drop it but keep an eye on her from now on.

Design Wall Monday

2011-12-12T06:15:00.000-08:00

Remember how I said a few weeks ago that all I had to do was quilt Log Cabin Baby and then I was going to get Rooty Tooty machine quilted? Hey. I just finished the hand quilting yesterday. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can finish the binding in the next day or so and THEN I'll work on Rooty Tooty. I guess that's the fate of being a busy homeschooling mom. I only get bits of time here and there to work on my quilty projects. :P

I've also had a bit of a dilemma here the last week or so. I have a 9 year old girl that I watch in the afternoons while her mom works PT. She a bit mischievous and chatty and tends to have problems staying focused on finishing her homeschool work. She (imo) acts younger than her age probably since she's the baby of her family and came when her sisters were already teenagers. She and my Z. tend to talk a lot and distract each other so that they both get behind. She's here when we do our co-op class but has chosen not to join in. I'd been allowing her to work by herself in my girls' bedroom while we did our class downstairs. Usually this hasn't been a problem but about a week and a half ago, Z came downstairs and told me she had ripped her bed sheet. I went to see what she was talking about and found this...

The sheet was not ripped it had been cut, and it's a big cut. Apparently the little girl (A.) had pointed out the "rip" to Z. the day before. There was also scribbled ink on her sheet and S.'s and a scribble on their bunk bed. My girls are old enough to know better and Z. was very upset that I would yell at her for ripping the sheet;she had no idea that it had been cut. It became obvious that A. had likely cut the sheet some time during our class when she was by herself. I talked to her mom, we both talked to A., she apologized and bought Z. new sheets from her allowance. We decided as a punishment she would not be allowed to stay in the girls' room by herself for a while. A few days ago, Z. told me she found a cut in her quilt. I thought she meant her comforter so I went to look and this is what I found...

Most likely, this was done at the same time as the sheet but A. completely denies doing this. Z. uses her quilt all the time but doesn't really make her bed so she hadn't noticed before (and she never would have done it herself since she likes her quilt). I haven't told A.'s mom yet about the quilt. DH was home on the day we found out about the quilt and said that I should just tell the mom that we can't watch A. anymore. (A. overheard our conversation and I know she hasn't told her mom about what happened either.) Her mom's my friend and I don't want to create any bad feelings between us so I'm at a loss about what to do.

Anyone have any suggestions?

I know it's a busy time of year, but there's plenty of eye candy and inspiration on the other Design Wall posts on Judy's blog to check out if you have some down time.

Help Stand up to Islamophobia

2011-12-11T09:24:00.000-08:00

I don't know if you are aware of this but there is a reality-type program on TLC called "All American Muslim". Since this program came on the air, anti-Muslim groups have targeted the advertisers of the show claiming it's "propaganda" because the Muslims represented on the program are too normal! How dare TLC show Muslims as being just like everyone else?!?

Unfortunately, those seeking to promote fear and hatred have succeeded with at least one company that they have targeted. Lowe's representatives have admitted to caving in by pulling their advertising from the show, which is really rather idiotic on their parts since there were many loyal Lowe's customers in the Muslim community.

I'm an ordinary, "run of the mill", average American who is also a Muslim. Guess what? So are most Muslims in this country. This is true despite what you hear in the media. We work hard, raise our children, pay our taxes, support and give back to our communities. Basically, we're just like everyone else. Are their bad apples among Muslims? Yes, just like every other group in America. But just like everyone else, the majority of Muslims are good, law-abiding citizens just living their lives.

It would mean a great deal to me if you would sign the petition and pass it on to others you may know so that other companies will not be so inclined to cave to the pressure of a few who are bent on demonizing an entire population.

http://signon.org/sign/defend-our-american-values

If you would like to read more on this, there is a good blog entry here:http://theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/all-american-muslim/0018896

or check out the show here: http://tlc.howstuffworks.com/tv/all-american-muslim

Thanks for your support.

Barely a whisper

2011-12-09T19:25:00.001-08:00

What's worse than a woman who can't talk?
A Mom who can't talk.
What's worse than a mom who can't talk?
A homeschooling mom who can't talk. (especially one that teaches two co-op classes with 7 active, talkative students and who was supposed to have an prospective homeschooling mom come over to chat and see how homeschooling works around my house)

I've had a bit of a cold for a few days. Yesterday, my voice was a little creaky but seemed otherwise ok. That is until I decided to give my mom a call in the evening. Within 10 min. of getting off the phone, my voice started to fade. By morning, it was barely above a whisper. I waited a while hoping it would come back as I got my day going. No luck! I had to call my friend and whisper that I'd have to reschedule. Her response? She made me a pot of soup!!! How cool is that?!?

I decided to go ahead with the classes today but thought I would talk just a bit and let them play "Take Off!" (a fun, geography game) and Mad Libs card game. I actually ended up talking much more than I had intended but it was the quietest class ever! They had no choice but be quiet if they wanted to hear what I was trying to say. By the time we got to the games, my voice was almost completely gone.

We have class again in the morning but it's a quiz and report day* so I'll have very little talking I need to do.

My kids are taking advantage of the fact I can't talk much by playing on the computer right now instead of getting ready for bed since they know I can't yell at them from my computer even though I'm just a room away. :P

*In case you're wondering-Report day started because the kids were starting to talk way too much in class (just random, stream of conscious type talking not on topic or even in the general neighborhood of on topic chatter) so I decided to give everyone an opportunity to talk in class each and every week. We alternate between reports on countries and scientist. The following week they have a quiz on what everyone presented. If it's countries, they have to tell me the country, capital, what the people are called and then find it on a map. For the scientists, they tell me who they were, when and where they lived, what they did and then place them on a time line. The students range from a 3rd grader up to 2 eight graders so it's a challenge to keep things as even for them as possible. I think I'm going to have to make some more accommodations for the 3rd grader since she's struggling a bit with memorizing the info.

Happy Turkey Day!

2011-11-24T12:53:00.000-08:00

Do you want to see my Thanksgiving "Turkey"?

I had sent the kids outside so we could take some pictures to send to my mom. The little boys decided to ride their bikes while waiting for everyone else. H. looked down near the garage door and tried to tell me there was something in a glue trap. My guess is that he couldn't remember the word "snake", instead he said there's one of those "things". Well, we live in an outer suburb with lots of bugs and other creepy, crawlies so a "thing" could mean a whole lot of lifeforms. I assumed he meant a big cricket or a cave centipede. Instead he meant...

This little guy got itself stuck on a glue trap that we use to keep the bug population in our garage down. (Keeping that pop. down reduces the number that come inside for a visit.) It was either looking for a warm place to hibernate or saw what looked like a bug buffet and decided to tuck in. Either way it got itself in big trouble. The entire underside of its body was completely trapped in this super sticky glue. The other kids and dh were coming out at this point and we discussed what to do. I decided that the most humane thing to do would be to try and get it unstuck by loosening the glue with warm water. The first attempt got his lower jaw unglued but on the second attempt it tried to bite the glue and got both jaws stuck and a mouthful of glue. Eventually I got it completely off the trap but he still had glue sticking to his body which made it hard for him to slither. Dh took the initiative and used some gas as a solvent, which removed all traces of the glue that I could feel. We placed him on a log in a protected area and he slowly made his way under the leaves. I'm not sure if it will survive but we did our best.

On an interesting note, S. had just gotten a book all about snakes from the library Last night! We now know that Turkey is an eastern garter snake, probably not much older than a baby since it wasn't very big and babies are 5-9 in. Here's hoping that Turkey recovers from his tough day and has many more bug-catching, mouse-catching days to come.

Design Wall Monday

2011-11-21T19:57:00.001-08:00

I would love to say that I finished the Log Cabin Baby but that just didn't happen. I'm still working on it here and there when I have a few minutes. I'll get there soon enough I guess.

One of the (many) things that took up valuable quilting time is repainting the girls' room. When we moved in early 2007, the girls couldn't agree on a paint color; one wanted pink, the other purple. We choose pale shades (almost matching) of both colors and paint two walls each color. They'd outgrown that color scheme and have been asking since summer to repaint their room. Well, dh was off visiting his parents and that means that the chaos of paint wouldn't interfere so much with our routine. During previous trips, I've stripped the wallpaper off of the bottom half of our dining room walls and repainted them, repainted our bedroom and painted an under the staircase closet that I use as a pantry. (Each project happened on different trips.) DH was gone less than 2 weeks this time and I hadn't planned on doing any painting, only quilting, but the girls can be rather persuasive. It helped that they both quickly agreed on a color. Them agreeing on anything is just shy of a miracle around here when it comes to their room. Besides repainting, we rearranged the furniture including the bunk bed. (Thank God for the help and added muscle of my now teenage son.) They're now very happy in their aqua bedroom with no more "babyish" paint.

Iranian women don't do much baking because there seems to be a bakery on just about every corner (at least in Shiraz). The selections are pretty standard but each place puts their own spin on things. It's quite common to drive out of your way to get to your favorite shop, passing up several others along the way.

Layered sponge cake with whipped cream topping pre-cut into serving size pieces is a favorite as are cookies made with rice flour. Cream puffs are another go-to dessert for when company's coming.
One of my favorites is a puff pastry that they call a danish but tastes something like a donut without the fatty aftertaste you get with donuts. When you go to the bakery, you order kilos of cakes rather than by the number you want. The bakeries often sell candy and/or chocolate by the kilo as well.

DH brought back some of the usual treats from Iran.

Sohan-a kind of crunchy candy with pistachios on top
Little kalooche-bite-size rice flour cookies-the kids love these, R. asked for 4 boxes just for him

Large kalooche-these are kind of like big Fig Newtons but with a date/walnut paste filling -one of my favorites

He also brought back some surprises.

There's a slightly sweet breakfast flat bread spiced with cardamon. (Sorry, I can't remember it's name.) It's so very good and addicting, like a not-too-sweet cookie.
The biggest surprise though was the cream puffs!

My ingenious sister-in-law came up with the idea of putting them in old yogurt containers.They worked out perfectly, not a squashed cream puff in the batch. M. (ds1)so misses these cream puffs which are his absolute favorite Iranian treat.

You can check out more design walls on Judy's blog.

Design Wall Monday

2011-10-31T07:30:00.000-07:00

Once again, I actually have something to show today. Yippy!

I finished two quilts this week. The blue quilt was just a little late. I had all but one half of the binding sewn down by the time of the baby shower on Saturday. I tried finishing it up at the shower but I was so tired, I started making stupid mistakes so just took it home and finished it Sunday a.m. and dropped it off in the afternoon. I, also, gave the batik baby quilt to a new mom. (I finished this one a couple of months ago but have only seen the mom twice, by chance, since her baby was born.) All of the quilts were well received and I got lots of questions about all of the different aspects of quilting. It was a bit stressful to get them done so quickly but I'm glad I did.

I found out on Tuesday that the recipient of the log cabin baby quilt would not be at the baby shower so that took some of the pressure off. I decided to hand quilt it because the machine quilting started to get on my nerves by the end of the second baby quilt. So this is what I'll be working on this week and IF I get it finished, I'll start on quilting the Rooty Tooty quilt for dd1.

Enjoy some quilty inspiration at Judy's blog and have a great week.

Design Wall Monday

2011-10-24T14:09:00.000-07:00

I didn't get as far as I need to on the 3 baby quilts. I've finished piecing all but the last backing. I've started it and everything's cut so it shouldn't take too long. The final quilt, which I didn't have a set idea on colors, held me up. I pulled somewhat at random but didn't like how it looked. DD1 suggested that I group them by colors so I had to set aside 5 of the blocks. The parrots and the pansies don't necessary fit their color group so well, but I really like the parrots and I'm have very few purples. The others I have are just too dark for this quilt. Oh, well. It's a good thing that baby's aren't picky!

I, also, have the binding on all three quilts ready and waiting, which is a first for me. Usually I don't make the binding until the quilting is finished. I still need to sandwich, quilt and bind at least 2 of the 3 quilts by 1:30 Saturday! Nothing like setting big goals with a fast-approaching, unchangeable deadline to bring on the adrenaline!

Time to get moving. Check out the other design walls at Judy's blog.

The cost of eating healthy

2011-10-19T05:49:00.000-07:00

This is in relation to a post on Patchwork Times about the disparity between the cost of healthy food and junk food. This is a bit of a soapbox issue for me.

I maintain a spreadsheet of all of our spending going back for years based on all of our spending so I can assure your my numbers are accurate. Anything edible gets recorded in our food spending category whether it's celery, milkshakes, tomato plants or junk food from a vending machine.

The cost of junk food versus good food issue is one that bugs me a lot. We average $229/week for food which comes out to $4.68/person/day. We eat lots of fresh fruits and veggies, many of which are organic, and 3-4 gal. of organic milk per week. I cook most of what we eat, although we do eat some prepackaged items like veggie burgers. I bake often but I don't make my own bread. I only buy whole wheat bread and rolls. Our garden produced very little this year, probably not even enough to cover the cost of the starter and replacement plants the deer ate. We eat out only occasionally and only at Subway, Ikea (a good, large $9 pizza), Chuck E. Cheese (for birthdays with coupons) and, twice this year, we had Dominos. We hardly drink soda (none for the kids) and no junk juice/sugar water, only 100% juices even for juice boxes. We eat generally only small portions of meat and it's always with lots of veggies. I even mix shredded zucchini, onion and potato into our hamburgers.

According to USDA rates for Aug., our spending falls between the Thrifty and Low-Cost Plans. We used to fall below the Thrift levels before I started buying organic milk and before the kids hit major growth spurts. We maintained these levels even when I was going to school full time while taking care of 3 kids under 6 and pregnant with our 4th. We're all healthy; my kids are above average on growth charts, with the height matching or above the weight percentage.

To get the best prices on the foods we eat, I usually shop at 2-3 stores per week and make only 1 shopping trip per week. I've gotten pretty good at knowing who has the best prices on most of what we eat and can assess each store's "sale" price based on the cost of the same item at different stores. Some books suggest that you keep a little notebook with you to write down the prices at different store but I have enough experience that I just keep that info stored in my memory. I only occasionally use coupons since most of them are for prepackaged stuff that we wouldn't normally buy anyway. I have brand loyalty for certain products but have no problem buying the store brand of other things. After taste testings, I found that some store brands are even better than the name brands I was buying. (If you have a Wegman's near you, many of their store brands are quite good.)

I keep a stocked pantry and when I cook, I usually cook enough for 2-3 meals. Although, now that the kids are bigger, it's harder to make enough for three meals. There are days when they'll eat just about whatever is even remotely edible.
The extras go in the fridge for later in the week or in the freezer to use on days when I'm too busy or don't feel like cooking. We even use these meals when we go on vacation. (We bring dry rice and our rice cooker, as well.)

We sit down and eat most lunches and nearly every dinner together. The TV is in the basement, so no way to watch and eat a regular meal. Every once in a while, we'll have a "picnic" and a movie night.

Eating well can be done on a budget without a garden and having a busy life. It's all about choices.

Design Wall Monday

2011-10-17T05:47:00.000-07:00

I've got lots to show today. I've been a very busy quilter this last week. Why? I've got a friend's baby shower coming up on the 29th and it's being hosted by the mom who I made the wrong color baby quilt for. Remember that?

Well, I never got around to making her another quilt and I'd feel really bad making one for the shower and not bringing one for her. Plus, I finished the log cabin baby quilt top and back. I'm going to be incredibly busy for the next week and a half. I've got a set deadline and have to be finished with all three.

When I was working on another quilt the soon to be recipient of the log cabin baby was fascinated by the different fabrics so I told her mom that I would make the backing pieced with lots of variety. I like the idea and look so much that I'm going to try doing it for all three quilts, essentially making each one reversible. I'm not sure how much of a pain it will be to quilt it. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that it won't be too bad, especially since my machine quilting skills are not the greatest.

The colors and pattern on the front were chosen before the baby was born but they are so appropriate for this little girl since she was born at home in a blackout during a blizzard! (The home birth was planned; the blizzard and blackout just add to a great birth story.) Top, back and binding are made. I need to sandwich, quilt and bind this one. I'm pretty sure the mom will be at the shower as well so I really want to get this done. Besides, her little girl was born back in Feb. 2010. I think it's about time to deliver this one.

The blue nine patch is the replacement for the pink disappearing nine patch that I had made. I was going to do another disappearing nine patch but I was too tired last night and just wanted to get it done. It still needs a blue border which I haven't pulled yet. This one needs a border, back, binding made plus the quilting and binding.

The last one I haven't even pulled the fabric for or settled on colors. I have decided on a bow tie pattern though and I have plenty of 5" squares already cut to choose from.

The week before last I finished binding the batik baby quilt from my last post, so that now ready to give.

Besides quilting, H. had his 4th birthday which required making a cake and a mandatory trip to Chuck E. Cheese.

This week, we've got two dr.'s appointments, a birthday party, a girl scouts meeting and a group coming to visit our mosque (which means dessert lady mode for me). Tops and backs need to be finished today or tomorrow so that I can get the quilting done Wed. and Thur.

By this time next week, I should have three baby quilts in the process of being bound and on the 29th I'll have four quilts ready to give. Wish me luck!

Go check out Judy's blog for more inspiration.

Design Wall Monday (kinda)

2011-09-27T04:17:00.000-07:00

Better late than never, right?

Did you miss me?

I can't believe it's been almost 2 months since I posted. As usual life's been busy, but I've gotten a few things done as well.

Ramadan matched up almost exactly with the month of August this year. Between daily baking and cooking and then dinner and programs at the masjid/mosque, Ramadan related activities took up no less than 5-6 hours each day. Besides the work, I finished handquilting the batik baby quilt, made one scarf for the Special Olympics, crocheted most of an almost twin size throw for DH's birthday and made two simple skirts for myself.

Now that we're in September, we're back to homeschooling. Once again this year, DH and I are teaching (in an informal co-op)not just our kids but now 5 other kids from 3 families. (Biology, English and history for me. Physics and math for dh.) I, also, have one girl who is going to be hanging out with us part-time every weekday since her mom works but still wanted to homeschool her. Mom homeschools in the a.m. then brings her to me and she finishes up whatever she needs to and gets play time with my girls. She's the youngest in their family with both of her sisters grown and married so it's more like she's an only child because of the age difference. She seems to be enjoying herself so far as do my girls. We're still working on balancing social time with assignment time though.

Another friend is about to be put on 3 months bedrest with her second pregnancy. Her husband plans to work from home 3 days a week and take her to preschool/daycare 2 days but he's just asked us if we can watch her at least one of the days he works from home. He's afraid he's going to get too far behind in his work especially since she's a bit of a handful. So there is a possibility that we'll add a 3 year old to the mix once a week. I don't think my house will ever be clean again. ;D

My garden didn't produce much this year. We had really dry weather most of the season until the beginning of this month. Now we've had over 9.5 in. just this month with more rain predicted for the next 3 days. The 4 zucchini plants all died out mysteriously with only 4 zucchinis produced. We got 3 mini watermelons a bit smaller than soccer balls, 3 tiny eggplants, 1 red pepper and 3 ripe full size tomatoes. The only plant that really produced is the cherry tomato. We've gotten over a 100 ripe tomatoes off of it with a lot still developing. We would have had more than 200 but the abundance of rain has caused at least 100 to split open. With the weather being so soggy and cooling down, I picked all of the green tomatoes off of the other two tomato plants. I'd rather they ripen inside and we might actually get to enjoy them than wait and hope the bugs and rain don't destroy them.
Note: The one ripening is supposed to be that weird color. It's a purple tomato, as are more than half the tomatoes on the plate. Notice how small my little eggplant is and they all grew C-shaped.

For this week, I'm hoping to finish up the black, white and pink log cabin blocks and get them to flimsy stage. My best chance of that happening is either Wed. or Thur. when we have nothing planned for the day except the kids doing their weekly assignments. Wish me luck. And go check out the other design walls for inspiration at Judy's blog.

Design Wall Monday

2011-08-01T13:19:00.000-07:00

Yes, I actually have something to share today!

We just got back a few days ago from a week long trip to a family-friendly summer camp and I took along a UFO to work on during down times. I almost got all of the quilting finished, just 1/2 of one of the long sides and the squares on 3 of the sides left to do. I quilted in the ditch around the inside of each small rectangle, along the sides of each square and around the inside of the small squares. I'll finish up the quilting probably today and get to work on the binding. Once I get it done, I'll give it to one of the women in our mosque expecting her first baby at the end of the month.

I was hoping to have all of the quilting done by now but ended up with 11 loads of laundry once we got back. I also had to give the garden some attention. The hot weather has been great for the zucchini and we now have 4 watermelons growing but the tomatoes and green pepper are still slow to develop this year. (No thanks to the deer that kept eating the tops of the plants.) When we left, we had a couple of zucchini about half way along. When we got back, I found this....

It's as long as my three year old's arm from shoulder to fingertips and weighs 4 lbs. The kids were thrilled and immediately started begging for zucchini bread. The little "C" shaped veggie at the top is an Ichiban eggplant. Unfortunately, it didn't get very big. We also had one tiny cherry tomato that S. ate as soon as she saw it.

Remember I was telling you how I see shapes and patterns in the most unusual places. This tree was right outside our cabin window at the camp.

You see the man's face there between the two branch stumps, right?

Go check out the other Design Walls at Judy's blog.

Design Wall/Window Sill

2011-07-12T11:30:00.000-07:00

Ok, I know it's Tuesday, but better late than never! ;)

I finished the lime green block for my Boxed Rainbow quilt. Next up is the dark blue or maybe the red. I haven't decided yet. Sorry about the blurry picture.

I, also, have to make myself a new swimsuit. The elastic in the fabric is shot so that it's way too loose now. That's not surprising since I made the suit more than 3 years ago. I want to redesign it as well since the skirt gets annoying when I'm trying to do the water aerobics class. I think I'm going to cut it more like a long, slightly fitted t-shirt. Z.'s due for a new one as well. Her's has faded from a nice blue to almost silver and it's starting to get too small.

We took the kids swimming a few times last week and H. has finally learned to enjoy the water. He used to scream if you made him get in the pool but Sun. he didn't want to get out after more than an hour. It looks like after Ramadan we'll be spending lots of time at the pool.

We went to Six Flags on Thurs. which was fun despite the heat. The kids had earned free tickets for the Read to Succeed program, I got a free ticket as their teacher so that only left having to get a ticket for dh. We went in the afternoon and rarely encountered any lines. The nice part was that there were plenty of rides for my two little guys unlike Sea World where they were too small for most of the rides. We enjoyed so much that we're considering season passes for next year. It's less than an hour and a half from here. The only downside is that they don't allow you to bring any drinks into the park, which leaves buying bottled water at $3.50 a piece or using the one water fountain we found that provides warm water (not exactly refreshing on a hot summer day). I understand them not wanting you to bring things into the park but they could at least have a few more water fountains with cool/cold water.

Well, I'm off to get busy on my suit. Check out the other Design Walls at Judy's blog.

Patterns everywhere

2011-07-06T09:27:00.001-07:00

Ok, I'm one of those people who sees patterns or pictures all over the place. I'll look at the leaves or bark of the tree and search for faces or forms. Have you ever tried that? Sometimes, you have to let your vision go a little blurry but most of the time, if you look closely enough you're sure to find some. It's kind of like the optical illusion pictures where you see an old woman or a young woman, two vases or two faces, etc.

I also tend to eat my M&Ms is color patterns. Ya know- green, orange, green or red, red, blue, red, red, blue. I'm weird, I know. Anyway, one day I had grabbed a handful of mini M&Ms and eaten a few without paying much attention. I set the rest down to type something, then looked back down and noticed that they fell into a perfect set of 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, each in a different color. See? (Of course, I arranged them for the picture.)

BTW, finding the mini M&Ms in the bulk section of Wegman's grocery store probably has a lot to do with why I gained weight. Before I found them, I wasn't losing but at least I wasn't gaining either. But a girl's got to have her chocolate!

In part, because of hurting my foot on the treadmill, I went swimming for the first time in over a year and the same morning took my first ever water aerobics class. I had been swimming laps and doing some other exercises for a good 45 minutes and noticed that there were quite a few older people arriving as I was getting ready to go. One of the ladies, who had been in the pool about the same time as I had suggested that I stay for the class. Since dh was watching the kids and it was still kind of early in the morning, I changed my mind about leaving and decided to stick around. In my head, I was thinking that the class couldn't possibly too hard since most of the participants looked to be over 65, so doing the class on top of what I had already done would be no problem. Yeah! Apparently, you get out of if what you put into it and since you stay cool in the pool, you don't necessarily notice how hard you're working. That is until you get out! By the time the class was finished, my arms felt like spaghetti. By the end of the day, my whole body was sore. But, I found something I really enjoy doing and, at least for the next few weeks before Ramadan, I plan on hitting the early morning class on days when dh works from home.

Design Wall Monday

2011-06-28T05:46:00.001-07:00

Ok, ok. I know it's Tuesday. But, in my defense, I was out most of yesterday.

And I actually have something to show. Yippy! I got the "boxes" finished for the Bottled Rainbows quilt. Come to think about it, I think I'll rename my Boxed Rainbow. It seems to fit better. Now I have to cut the batting and start picking out scraps. I'm hoping to finish one or two squares per week. It's a quilt as you go design as well as machine applique neither of which I've never tried before. I don't know how much I'll like the process but I do like the colors all together.

I finally got a picture of the shirt I made for Z. I told you the print was kinda in your face. You can't really tell in the picture but it's got glitter all over it too.

Here's an example of the summer pants I make for the girls. It's just a simple elastic waist design with pockets. The girls both really like picking out the fabrics each year and wear them constantly so I know they like them.

These pants are one of Z.'s choices. Often when she chooses fabric, I really question her decisions, but most of the time they look pretty good on, so I've learned to hold my tongue and trust her choices. This fabric was one of those times, but it's really grown on me and I'm considering looking for more so that I can make a shirt out of it. This would definitely be stepping outside my comfort zone since almost every shirt I own is a solid color.

R. and H. have asked for pairs of their own and picked out flaming soccer ball fabric and camo lizards so I guess those are on the agenda for this week.

If you haven't already, check out the other design wall posts on Judy's blog.

Wah!

2011-06-25T19:51:00.001-07:00

Warning! PMS-induced Pity party in session! Proceed at your own risk!

Normally, I love the month of June. The weather's nice, homeschooling is done, we have plenty of time for outings and heck, who doesn't like the month they were born in?

Not this year though!

This year June has definitely been a disappointment! We've had record breaking heat on and off for the first third of the month. The limited rainfall has my veggies growing veerrrry slowly this year. Every last one of us came down with some rhino virus that had us coughing and blowing noses for up to two weeks per person; resulting in a sinus infection and antibiotics for dh. After it seemed that all of the kids were better, over the course of the last week, three came down with stomach problems, which turns out to be a result of strep throat. We now have 4 out of seven people in this house on antibiotics and I'm really hoping the other two kids don't end up with strep. I'll take my chances without antibiotics if it hits me. Me and antibiotics don't mix well. This is so frustrating because we so rarely get sick around here but this has just dragged on almost all month, bouncing from one person to the next.

My birthday present this year was a membership to a fitness center so that we could all go swimming. It started on June 4 and the beginning of our home confinement/quarantine because of sick kids started June 5. Argh!

To top it off, I think I have a stress fracture of my foot from running on the treadmill a couple of days ago. I was fine while running but yesterday it started to hurt just walking around and still hurts today. That's about the only impact running has had on my anatomy. Since the end of March, I've covered over 140 miles on my treadmill at just over an hour per session and lost absolutely no weight! In fact, I weigh more now than I did when I started. How fair is that!?! (No, I don't run the whole time. I combine 4.2 mph walking with 5.0-6.0 mph 1-3 min. sprints.)

I had a friend (a trained but not practicing dr.) tell me to go get my thyroid checked because that can effect weight gain/loss but I haven't done it yet. I hate going to the dr. and haven't seen any dr. since my last 6 week postpartum check up more than three and a half years ago. The last primary care dr. I had left medicine to be a mom nearly 8 years ago and I only saw her once.

I, also, messed around with the layout/colors of my blog and hate how it turned out but can't get it back to the original so now I'm going to have to start over again to try and, at least, make it a little better.

So, yeah, I'm definitely ready to say good bye to June!

Thank you for letting me get that out of my system.

On the plus side,
-we have all our needs met,
-dh has a good job with good insurance,
-I really like our pediatricians,
-we have plenty of entertainment options to keep sick kids busy,
-I've gotten 4 pairs of pants finished for the girls with two others cut and waiting to be sewn,
-despite my complaining, no one here is seriously sick,
-we have antibiotics to treat the strep infections-a privilege that would have saved my grandfather a life time of heart problems after a two bouts of rheumatic fever
-we live in a time when we can learn so much, without ever leaving home

Thank you God for all the blessings, big and small.

Design Wall Monday

2011-06-06T21:43:00.000-07:00

This has been a crazy week and I really hoped I'd have more to share but the only thing I got done quilt wise was cutting out lots and lots of 5" squares. It was a necessary task and gave me a good number of scraps to work with for the Bottled Rainbows quilt. (in the bag in the picture) My goal for this week is to get to actually piece at least a couple of blocks for the quilt.

I also have to get the girls' summer pants made which will take a fair bit of time but will also produce some usable scraps. I made a tunic for Z. this week using the pattern in the picture and a crazy pink and glitter flowered fabric she picked out. She's definitely a girl that likes sparkle. I promised to make her one more tunic and S. wants a tunic in a different style, which is fine by me since the yoke in this one just about kicked my fanny. I'm not much of a seamstress and I generally just learn things as I go so new patterns tend to be fairly time consuming.

Saturday was the quilt show. I didn't get any pics this years since I had R. and H. with me. Having two little boys at an event like that is certainly a challenge. Although I didn't couldn't manage a camera I did get some shopping in since I also celebrated my birthday this week. This is what I managed to pick up while shopping with my little guys.

Anyway, go check out the other design walls at Judy's blog.

Design Wall Monday

2011-05-30T01:03:00.000-07:00

It seems like ages since I've had anything to post for Design Wall Monday. Homeschooling is over for a while, my job is finished for now, dh is out of town so I have some time to sew...finally!

I'm going to work on a Bottled Rainbow quilt. It's a ticker tape design by Rachel Hauser at Stitched in Color. I'm having fun "creating" scraps by cutting into my expanding stash. I've spent some time cutting 5" squares and then setting the scraps aside for the rainbows quilt. This way, I'll have squares ready to go when I don't have much time for cutting. I may be lacking in some colors for scraps though. Lime and tangerine are not colors that make their way into my stash too often.

Never fear! My annual quilt show trip is this weekend. I already had a mental list to look for fabrics for an aqua and red quilt as well as a citrus colors quilt. The challenge will be that this time around I'll have all the kids with me since dh isn't home. Since they're coming with, I decided to go Friday and Saturday instead of just Sat. like I usually would. There's a demo on fabric painting that I know M. will enjoy and everyone else loves to pick out their own fat quarters whenever I go to JoAnn's so I'm hoping this will work. Wish me luck!

Truth be told, I really need to start using the stash more, especially since I'll be losing a big portion of my storage space once we switch the boys' rooms around. My sewing stuff/mess has been in our office but M. (ds1) will be moving into our office which means all of the mess has to find a new home. A lot of reorganization is going to have to happen in the next couple of months.

But as Scarlet O'Hara would say "I won't think about that now." This week, I intend to cut and sew as much has my kids will let me.

Check out the other Design Wall posts at Judy's blog.

Warning ...

2011-05-25T12:37:00.000-07:00

Little boy antics can induce heart attacks in their mothers.

I was fixing dinner and happened to look out the kitchen window and saw this little guy climbing over the gate at the top of our deck stairs. Apparently he couldn't get the latch opened and thought nothing about the potential 10 ft. fall if he lost his balance. I'm going greyer by the day having three boys!

Design Wall Monday-sorta

2011-03-28T22:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, technically it's not Monday anymore since it's after 1 a.m. but since I haven't gone to bed yet, I'm still counting it as the same day.

In my last post I had high hopes about what I would get done. Yeah....didn't happen.

I got lots of 5 in. squares cut but haven't finished a single quilt. I do, however, have one ready to quilt, which is what you see at the top and what I will be working on today/tomorrow.

One of the things that held me up getting more done was "one of those days." You ever have one of those days? Here's what happened ...

Notice anything odd about this picture? Yup, that's right. I managed to sew them so that the pink was facing the wrong direction. I succeeded in doing this not once but twice before I caught the mistake! And to make life more interesting my seam ripper disappeared. After I did that I decided it was probably better to not go near the sewing machine for a few days. I'm sure you'll agree!

Fortunately, I seem to have recovered from my temporary sewing ineptitude.

The main order of business for the week is to finish the pink pinwheels. If I get that finished, then I'll work on the pink and brown quilt. But, I've got a marshmallow roast and potluck dinner for bunches of friends on Friday so I'll have to spend some quality time with my cleaning supplies between now and then.

Check out what everyone else is working on at Judy's blog.

Design Wall Monday

2011-03-07T13:14:00.000-08:00

Yippy! It's still Monday and I have something to show.

I finished up the batik comfort quilt on Wed. I decided to bind it myself because I was really liking how the quilt was going and wanted that sense of accomplishment that comes when a quilt is "finished" finished. I particularly enjoyed doing the hand binding part. I haven't had much time to do anything by hand lately and I was missing it.

And I really liked the binding fabric.

Now, it's time to get moving on the over-due baby quilts. Both moms that I wanted to make quilts for in Feb. delivered 2 weeks ago and the only thing I've done is cut a few squares for one of the quilts. I've been catching up on ironing the last few days and done a first pass at our tax returns so that I should have time this week to get some quilting in. During this the week I'll also go through and double check all the math on the tax returns and,hopefully, get those sent out so I don't have to think about them anymore.

The last pictures are some examples of how hard the last two years have been on the trees around here. Two years ago, we got buried in about 30 in. of snow over a two week period that caused the two of three evergreens in our backyard to loose about 6-8 feet off the top.

Snow falling off the roof of the shed permanently bent the forsythia next to it. (It's still pretty in the spring and summer though.)

The beginning of last month brought more than a foot of very heavy, wet snow which took down a large lower branch from a maple tree and several large branches from the evergreens.

All of this stress on the trees was followed a week and a half ago by incredibly high winds that uprooted our neighbor's tree. All over the area so many trees have been damaged or destroyed just since last Feb. but we're very blessed because, despite all of the damage, no one has been seriously hurt. (At least in our little corner of VA.)
(If you click on the picture, you can get a better idea of just how big the tree was.)

All I can say is that I'm so looking forward to spring!

Now go check out the other Design Walls at Judy's blog.

Design Wall Monday

2011-02-21T07:30:00.001-08:00

Ever here the phrase "The best laid plans of mice and men, oft do go awry."? It was a favorite of my mom's and very apropos of this past week.

The only thing I managed to get done was the quilting and delivery of the first of the two quilts. (purple) I was all ready to get everything done quick and set up on the dining room table to get quilting on Tuesday only to have Z (dd2)come down with a stomach virus which resulted in short bouts of quilting between understandably long periods of taking care of her. I promised to deliver the quilt by Wed. so spent most of the day, after regular clean up, to get it finished. Delivered the purple late Wed. afternoon (1 1/2 hr. drive round trip), came home and decided I was done for the day. Thursday dawned with M (ds1) complaining about not feeling so great. By mid-morning, I was in the same boat. Called dh and asked him to skip his after work exercise. So glad I did. He arrived at almost the exact moment both M and I really started on the roller coaster of this bug. By the end of the night, all of the boys were sick! It made for a very eventful night trying to keep up with everyone. Thank God, dh was home. I don't know how I would have managed without him especially since I was so sick, too. The saving grace of this illness is that it's short-lived and the littlest guys bounced back so quickly. Not to mention that S (dd1) and dh haven't come down with it. M and I are still not feeling 100% but good enough to get on with life.

That means that the batik quilt has to get done this week! I still have to widen the backing, sandwich it and quilt it. I'll let the woman that's coordinating deal with the binding. Unfortunately, I just don't have the time now.

That's what's on my design wall. Go check out other design walls at Judy's blog.

Design Wall Monday..err Tuesday

2011-02-15T04:58:00.000-08:00

I know, I know. It's supposed to be Design Wall Monday but my Mondays have become really busy lately so I rarely have time to post on Monday.

Although I haven't been posting lately, I haven't been idle.

Since my last post I've finished two scarves for the Special Olympics, a scarf for dh, finished a baby quilt (months late, but hey, better late than never) and have finished 2 tops for comfort quilts. Oh yeah, I also started crocheting a blanket. I love the Homespun "Waterfall". Lovely colors and great feel.

The blocks for the comfort quilts were made by a lot of different people with very different abilities and styles. Some of the blocks were nothing more than a simple message while others were beautifully done. This humming bird is incredible as are the other painted bird blocks.(6 in all between the two quilts)

The comfort quilts are taking far longer than they should and keeping me from doing quilts I want to work on. I have to quilt one of them today and take it to the woman who coordinated this project so that she can bind it and I'll try to get the other one quilted tomorrow but first I have to fix the backing.

I decided to do a pieced backing on this quilt and knew it would be tight in the width but, unfortunately, it's a tiny bit to narrow. (Like an inch.) So, I've got to add some to one of the sides before I can sandwich this quilt.

This is my favorite block from the batik quilt.

When I saw the blocks by themselves I really wasn't sure how well these quilts would turn out but I think they look alright. I prefer the batik one more than the purple, which is funny since it has a lot more orange in it and I'm usually not much of an orange fan. The sashing and filler blocks really made all the difference, most of which came from the stash of the organizer.

Well, if I'm going to get the purple one quilted today, I've got to get moving.

Patch Iran

2011-01-17T04:46:00.001-08:00

There is a national quilt guild in Iran called Patch Iran. They've just finished their 5th Annual exhibit. If you'd like to check out some of their work, click here.

Happy New Year!

2011-01-03T09:33:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everyone! I hope everyone had a great holiday but now it's time to get back to work. ;)

I didn't get much done last week. It seemed like every day was booked. I'm hoping for a little more time this week to get some projects finished. I'll be working on the Orange and Cream UFO this month as well as finishing the projects I've mentioned before - Special Olympics scarf, binding the baby quilt, and making the pink and brown baby quilt. In addition to these projects, I'm also helping make 3 comfort quilts for the wife and daughters of a community member that recently died. I don't know the family but there are so few quilters in our community that I decided to offer my help when someone suggested that they wanted to do this for his family. I'll be meeting with her this week to pick up the squares and work out the designs. On top of all of this, homeschooling is really taking up a good bit of my time most days of the week now so it really doesn't leave much time for anything else. I'll just have to see how things go towards getting everything done.

Check out the other design walls at Judy's.

UFO Challenge

2010-12-31T17:56:00.000-08:00

Judy has been kind enough to give me (along with about 168 others) an extra special challenge. When it comes to quilting, like a lot of quilters, I have a touch of ADHD which means lots of unfinished projects or UFOs. So this year we're challenging ourselves to finish one UFO per month.

So here goes:

1. and 2. Quilt 1 and Quilt 2 (kinda like Dr. Seuss' Thing 1 and Thing 2) - Fraternal Twin quilt tops for twins that are now 3 years old and not getting any younger. These need to be sandwiched, quilted and bound.

3. Batik Baby - I started hand quilting this. I'd like to at least finish the hand quilting. If I'm really good, maybe I'll even bind it.

4. Rooty Tooty - S. really wants this quilt for her bed. I tried some machine meander quilting on it which I don't like so I have to rip that out, quilt it and bind it.

*5. R.'s baby quilt - R. is now 5 1/2. It's about time I get this quilt beyond the block stage, don't ya think? The blocks are hand pieced so I don't think I can do much more than get this into a finished top for now.

*6. Orange and Cream - This is just a little mini practice quilt that's been hanging around too long. I need to finish the hand quilting and get it bound.

7. Kids' practice potholders - I'm ashamed to say that these just need to be bound but have been sitting under other projects for way too long.

8. Cabin Baby - This is the black, pink and white log cabin for the baby that was born back in Feb. Time to get this finished.

9. Carpenter's Wheel - This was meant to be a present for dh. Gotta finish this one from block stage too.

10. Falling Leaves - This was one of Judy's patterns way back in 2006. I'll be happy to get this to a finished top.

11. Black and Blues - This one has been around almost as long as the blog. I know it's floating around my stash somewhere but I couldn't put my hands on it just now to take a picture. It's another mini so I should be able to finish the quilting and bind it.

12. Applique Angel - This was a test to see if I'd like to try doing more applique. Apparently I wouldn't since, like #11, I can't find it at the moment but I know it's in there. The goal for this one is to finish it and make it a little wall hanging.

Sometime this summer, I'll be losing my quilting space to ds 1 when we move him into our office/sewing room and move H. in with R., so it's time to get the stash and my UFOs under control.

*I've decided to reverse the positions of numbers 5 and 6. Judy choose number 6 as our first UFO of the year; however, I have so many things going on this month I know that I would not be able to spend much time on the UFO project. I really didn't want to fail/miss out on the first month so I switched to an easier project that is just as old but significantly smaller and, therefore, "doable" this month. I just hated the idea of starting out on the wrong foot this month by not being able to complete the UFO.

Design Wall Monday

2010-12-27T08:19:00.000-08:00

Well, this is the last Design Wall Monday of the year. I think I've gotten more accomplished this year than previous years, in part because of being part of the Design Wall Monday posts. Next year, I hope to do even better. I also want to take part in the UFO challenge;I just need to pull out my UFOs and get the pictures put together.

Speaking of UFOs, my only quilt related activity last week was working on binding the blue baby quilt above. I still have a bit more left to do but I have a good excuse for not finishing it.

Last week, I made a surprise trip to visit my mom and aunt in TN and my sister in GA. My dad drove out to GA from AZ so I got to see him as well. It's been almost 4 years since I had seen my dad and so he hadn't seen my youngest at all. The week before leaving I cooked almost a month's worth of lunches and dinners for my mom, several take-along meals for us and about a bazillion cookies for everyone. I only had time to make one batch of brownies and those went to my dad. My oldest niece commented about wanting some as well so I guess I'll have to send her a batch.

I managed to get a scarf crocheted for dh while we were traveling. Now I need to get busy working on a scarf or two for the Special Olympics (our knitting/crochet groups latest project), finishing up the current baby quilt I'm working on, get busy with the three baby quilts for friends and getting the UFOs together. Oh, yeah. I also promised to post about our trip to Iran last month.

If you're interested in making a scarf for the Special Olympics, you can get the project guidelines here.

Check out the other Design Wall posts on Judy's blog.

Have a great day everyone!

Design Wall Monday

2010-12-13T07:29:00.000-08:00

Well, there's nothing really new to show. I started cutting blues for the baby quilt I owe. I washed the flannels for the brown and pink and really need to get that one started.

The big reason I don't have anything to show is that I was working on the last few squares for the Warm Up America donation. In total, our group made 105 7"x9" squares which is enough for more than 2 blankets. From mid-Oct. to last Friday, I made 27. I'm really proud of what our group accomplished considering we are a very small group and most of the participants are working moms.

Our next project is to make scarves for the 2011 Winter Special Olympics. If you're interested in making scarves for the Special Olympics, you can find out more here.

Well, if I'm going to get everything I need to done, it's time to get busy. Check out other design walls at Judy's site for quilty inspiration.

In the meantime, I'll be looking forward to this -
while waiting out this -

Design Wall Monday

2010-12-06T07:06:00.000-08:00

Yippy! I actually have something to post for today.

Last week, I made this Pretty In Pink quilt for a baby shower that was Saturday afternoon. Saturday morning we took a trip up to Baltimore for the National Aquarium's annual Dollar Days weekend. Who can resist paying $7 versus the $151.65 it would have cost for regular admission. We were running a little late getting there so had to stand in a long line, then wait a little longer for our timed entry. We ended up not leaving until about 2:30. Since the shower started at 3:30, I knew we'd be a little late but not terribly since it should have taken about an hour and fifteen minutes to get home. Except dh accidentally took the long way home. We ended up not getting to the baby shower until 5:30. As usual, I finished just before the shower (in the car on the way home from the aquarium). I was feeling so proud of my self for not coping out and just buy a gift. Until the mom started opening the gifts and I noticed that they were boy related. Eeek! I was sure she was having a girl. :( I knew I had to leave soon to get to another engagement so I didn't think I'd be able to explain to the mom-to-be my faux pas. I explained to her sister-in-law what happened (we're friends) and snuck my gift off the table. Fortunately, she finished the gift opening just before I had to leave, so I explained then promised to make her a boy quilt before the baby is born. She's not due until Feb. so I should have plenty of time.

Now I have another friend who is expecting and she is due at the end of this month. I thought about giving the quilt to her but she has a girl and doesn't really to the girly girl colors with her which is why I had chosen these fabrics for her baby quilt. (I chose these back on Black Friday, well before my booboo.) The dark pink and brown will be used in a two color basket weave with the lighter pink as the backing. These are all flannels which is appropriate for a winter baby, no?

The Pretty in Pink will go to a third friend who's little girl is almost a year old but is ALWAYS dressed in pinks and purples, very girly girl. A plus, I was planning on making her a quilt anyway since I met her after her baby was born and she's lavished praise on other quilts I've made so I know it will be appreciated.

Now to get busy!

Happy Turkey Day!

2010-11-23T13:50:00.000-08:00

Ok, I know I owe a post about our trip to Iran but life's just been too busy the last two weeks to post anything. So, in the meantime, check out this very funny Thanksgiving day e-card

and this one

and one more of singing food for good measure.

Have a happy Turkey day and a fun Black Friday!

Design Wall Monday

2010-11-08T07:18:00.000-08:00

Well, we just got back from a month long trip visiting my in-laws on Saturday night. By last night, most of the laundry was done (but not folded), all of the suitcases were unpacked, a birthday cake was made and decorations were put up for Z.'s 9th birthday yesterday and I made a slight dent in the more than 25 pages of emails that had piled up in my inbox.

I didn't have any quilting projects ready to go so that I could take them with me but never fear. I brought several skeins of yarn to get started on a community service projects my friends and I are working on for Warm Up America. I crocheted 16 7"x9" "squares" last month. I'm a novice crocheter so this was a good project and a great time to work on this. I also brought along some Buttercup yarn to work on a throw for myself. Unfortunately, 3 1/2 skeins into crocheting that I realized that it would be too wide and it was getting crooked so I unraveled it to start again when I get a chance.

As soon as I get a chance, I'm going to do a few posts on our trip to Iran. For now, I'll leave you with a picture of my kids at their last horseback riding lesson there.

Check out more Design Wall Monday posts at Judy's website.

GO! Giveaway

2010-10-01T05:19:00.000-07:00

There's a giveaway for a AccuQuilt GO! cutter at Jane's Fabric and Quilts! Check it out.

Little Mosque on the Prairie

2010-09-28T08:35:00.000-07:00

I just watched the first two episodes of a Canadian series "Little Mosque on the Prairie" and it's quite funny. The series actually has finished it's fourth season so I'm a little slow getting around to watching it.

The series revolves around a mosque in a small Canadian town and the interactions/experiences of the Muslims and Christians in that town.

You can check out episodes here- http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4689644836814333621#.

The official website is here- http://www.cbc.ca/littlemosque/index.php

Design Wall Monday

2010-09-20T05:45:00.000-07:00

Does this look familiar? I'm still working on it. I was really hoping to finish it last week but life had other ideas. Much of last week was spent on-line shopping/price comparing for books to use in our homeschooling this year. DH decided he wanted to do the math, chemistry and physics covering a broad range of abilities, which meant I had to hunt down resources for those levels. (middle school through college, although we already have the college level textbooks) Then there was the actual homeschooling added to the routine and having two big outings/activities for the kids this week. The week just flew by and I only got to do a tiny bit of quilting and zero organizing.

Ah well, I'll just have to try again this week. I hope everyone else had more luck getting in sewing time. You can check out other design walls at Judy's blog.

Design Wall Monday

2010-09-13T07:12:00.001-07:00

I've been making slow and steady progress on the baby quilt. I originally was going to machine quilt it with an all over meander but I tested the idea and another quilt and found I really need to practice more before I do that on a gift quilt. So, I've been hand quilting it on the diagonal. I'm really hoping to finish this by the end of the week.

This weekend we celebrated Eid. Friday morning was prayers as the mosque followed by an unhealthy but fun treat of sticky donuts, danish and cookies for breakfast. We had planned on going to the zoo that day but we were tired (had to get everyone up by 6:30 to get ready on time) and instead just went home, opened presents and relaxed. We got a slow start Saturday and didn't get to the zoo until almost one and it was packed. No parking anywhere. In case you've never been to the zoo in D.C., they have several small to medium sized lots that are gated. They don't charge admission to the zoo but you do have to pay for parking. Outside of the zoo it's almost impossible to find parking so we didn't even try. We just told the kids we'd make one more pass and if we couldn't find parking, we'd have to head home or maybe go to a park for a picnic. We had to circle around a few blocks before coming back into the zoo and lucked out when they opened one of the lots just as we got there. (The 10 or so cars in front of us missed it.) We had a very nice few hours saying "hi" to all of the animals before heading back home to freshen up and head back to the mosque. We were supposed to be showing a movie from Iran on the life of Jesus but there weren't many people so we watched a different movie and had a discussion afterward.

Now that Ramadan is finished it's time to switch gears and get to work on other things-like homeschooling. I still have to order a few more books and this year we're going to do some dissections so I have to order those supplies as well. I also need to get back into my exercise routine and start tackling some straitening and organizing that I've needed to do for awhile but haven't had the time.

If I'm going to get anything done, I'm going to have to get off the computer. I hope everyone has a great day and check out the other design walls at Judy's blog if you have a few minutes.

Design Wall Monday

2010-08-30T13:59:00.000-07:00

This picture is completely unrelated but does show what I'd like to be spending my time doing.

I have been working but don't have any new pictures to post. I layered the baby quilt and started hand quilting on that. I also sewed the half square triangles for dh's quilt but when I went to lay it out I found out that I need to change out a fabric that is too light and change the placement of a few of the fabrics. I'll have to work on doing that next week.

I hope everyone else had a more productive week. Check out the links at Judy's blog

Wear Hijab on 9/11

2010-08-30T13:53:00.000-07:00

In response to a campaign by a group in FL to "Burn the Quran" on 9/11, a woman on Facebook came up with an alternative statement to counter the hatred. People of all faiths are asked to wear a hijab (scarf) on 9/11 to counter the extremist views circulating right now.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=144913692209438&v=wall#!/group.php?gid=144913692209438&v=info

Someone also created a new PSA entitled "My Faith My Voice" which you can view on YouTube here.

Design Wall Monday time again

2010-08-23T08:40:00.002-07:00

Well, I didn't get nearly as much done as I wanted to this week. It's hard to get much quilting time in when you're baking half the day and spending some four hours out each night.

I'm still cutting out the background pieces for dh's quilt. Late on this one since it was supposed to be for his birthday. I have to put borders on the baby quilt. I've got to hurry with that since the baby is due in two weeks and I really want to give it to the mom before hand.

I hope everyone had a more productive week that I did. (Does it count that I made about 30 dozen cookies, 9 dozen brownies and several loaves of zucchini or banana bread this week?)

Go check out the other design walls at Judy's blog.

Two of the many reasons I didn't get much done on the quilting front this week.

Design Wall Monday

2010-08-16T16:51:00.000-07:00

It's Design Wall Monday once again but I don't have much progress to show. The only thing I've done this week that is "quilty" is pull the fabrics and come up with an idea for dh's quilt. He likes bright colors and likes the quilts I've made using black as a background so that's what he's going to get. I'll make them in a star pattern using half square triangles. I'm adapting a pattern I saw on-line but, unfortunately, I can't recall where.

Because of Ramadan, I've been super busy. We're usually at the masjid for 3-5 hours each night; plus, I'm the unofficial dessert lady for iftar. This means that I've been making dozens of cookies and brownies as well as multiple loaves of zucchini or banana bread each night. We started on Wednesday and I've already gone through more than 10 lbs. of flour and 10 lbs. of sugar and about 3 dozen eggs. I'm going to have to go shopping tomorrow to stock up on more flour since I'm just about out. I stocked up on everything else Sunday but didn't make it to the store I usually buy flour from. I would have gone today except a) two of my boys had tummy trouble so it was best to stay close to home and b) I was busy chopping and grating lots of zucchini. How much zucchini you ask? Roughly 17 lbs. or about 26 cups grated and 9 cups chopped. Since the boys are sick (H. and R. have runny noses and R. and M. have tummy trouble), I'm staying home with them tonight so maybe I can get some sewing done after iftar. Speaking of which, there's only about 15 min. left before it's time to pray and break my fast and I want to make a salad. I don't usually eat much salad but I seem to crave them when I'm fasting.

What I wear

2010-08-11T09:31:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago in response to the picture of my dh and I, Jodie asked about the clothes I wear and the climate where I live. First, I live in Northern Virginia, which is hot and humid most of the summer and cool during the winter.

I usually wear pants, jeans or overalls, a T-shirt, an over-sized men's shirt and a scarf. This is my own style and not necessarily reflective of other Muslim women any more than one woman's clothing is the same as every other woman. I have friends who prefer long skirts with a blouse and other that dress in multiple layers. I'm not particularly fashionable but I know others that are very stylish. One thing we have in common is a requirement to wear loose, modest clothing, covering from head to toe except for the hands and face. Those that cover their hands, faces or both, do so more out of culture rather than a religious requirement.

When I'm in Iran, I wear a monto (light weight cotton or rayon long coat) with pants and a T-shirt underneath.

When I was asked this question, it got me thinking about our perceptions of seasonally acceptable attire now versus the not so distant past. You see, growing up I spent a lot of summers living with my grandmother in Florida. She was a real estate agent and every day she would "dress her best" and her best required multiple layers. First she put on the foundations pieces, followed by pantyhose, a full girdle, a full slip, a polyester dress, heels, a full complement of jewelery and full makeup including liquid foundation. As the owner of her own agency, she pretty much worked every day except Sunday and then she dressed for church. She would be out early in the morning until late in the evening, often times running all over town. She dressed like this year round until maybe the last decade of her life when she slowly started incorporating pantsuits and into her wardrobe. One of my aunts dressed pretty much the same way. Now, anyone who's lived in Florida knows what the weather in summer is like. Perpetually hot and sticky, with occasional thunderstorms that result in steaming streets. I can't ever remember her complaining about the heat and only remember her donning a swimsuit a handful of times to take us to the beach.

We seem to have developed a skewed sense of what is acceptable and expected of people, especially women. A man wears a three piece business suit to work and it's completely acceptable but a woman in pants and long sleeves is somehow odd. Next time you're out, count the number of guys wearing jeans versus the number of girls or pay attention to the difference in the average length of the respective gender's shorts.

And, in case you're wondering, loose fitting clothing is far more "breezy" that tight clothes that are short and leave you sticking to everything when the humidity is high.

Ramadan Mubarak

2010-08-11T08:35:00.001-07:00

Assalam alaikum (Peace be on you)

Today marks the first day of the month of fasting for Muslims known as Ramadan. From dawn until sunset, Muslims around the world will keep from eating and drinking but also will keep all of their senses and their manners focused on good things. So, not only do we keep away from sodas, coffee and burgers but also lying, gossiping and cursing, either from our mouths or the mouths of others. No smoking or kissing, either. For all of the things we should keep away from, there are many things we are encouraged to do more of. Be more generous of our time, money and forgiveness. Spend more time with friends and family. Fasting naturally slows you down a bit, especially the first week or so as your body gets used to it again. So we enjoy a more relaxed pace to help us focus more on becoming better people. We're encouraged to spend more time reading the Quran and quietly reflecting on spiritual matters. So, during this month, my family and I will go to the masjid/mosque as many nights as we can to join others in reading a section of the Quran (broken down into 30 parts for the 30 days of Ramadan) and breaking our fast with a shared iftar (evening meal). But we are also meant to continue in our regular activities, so we will begin our homeschooling once again, although, I'll probably wait a few more days for the kids to get used to fasting again. M, S, and Z all fasted last year and will again this year.

FYI: Who fasts? Muslims over the age of 9 (younger kids sometimes want to fast like their big brothers or sisters so they do mini "fasts", like no morning snack but regular lunch time)- Those that are sick, pregnant, breastfeeding, elderly or are on a trip are not required to fast but all except the elderly and chronically ill are required to make up the days of fasting when they are able or give charity equal to each day of fasting to feed a poor person. (The same goes for women on their period. We're grouchy enough that time of month; no need to add to the grouchy factor.)
When do we fast? During the lunar month of Ramadan, we wake up early and eat a meal (sahoor) before dawn, do our morning prayers and, depending on work schedules and time of year, go back to sleep for a few hours. We break our fast about 20 min. after sunset with an evening meal (iftar). This time of year that means from about 4 a.m. until about 8:30 p.m. The lunar calendar is shorter than the solar/Gregorian calendar by 11 days, so the month of Ramadan falls at a slightly different time each year. This makes fasting more equitable for everyone. No one has Ramadan every year in the hottest, longest days, while those living in the other hemisphere celebrate in the coldest, shortest days. It wouldn't be very fair Ramadan was say every January and Muslims in North America only had to fast during winter, while those in Australia had to fast during summer. This way we take turns.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in a comment and I'll respond to them in another post.

Design Wall Monday

2010-08-09T07:20:00.000-07:00

True to form, I finished sewing the binding on the baby quilt one hour before the baby shower. It was well received by the mom-to-be and I had a few requests from other moms wanting one for themselves. Told you I work best under pressure. heehee!

The other two baby quilts are still on my design wall. I'm hoping to at least finish piecing them this week. I also need to get started on dh's quilt since his birthday is in about 3 weeks.

Well, I'm off to go frost a cake and cupcakes for a party this afternoon. I better get moving too; I only have 30 min. to get it done. Eeek!

We interrupt this quiltathon to bring you...

2010-08-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

gardening fun.

I was trying to do the quiltathon yesterday and today along with Judy at Patchwork Times but I just can't get that into it. :( I have to finish hand sewing the binding on the baby quilt for tomorrow and that will likely be all I get done.

Yesterday we go tons of rain along with a good bit of lightening so I ended up keeping the sewing machine off for most of the day. I guess the extra baby quilts won't get done in time.

The extra rain meant the garden needed attention. This is the first year we've every really tried to grow much. A few half-hearted attempts have been made before but only a plant or two here and there. This year, dh decided to make a raised bed. It's not that big, maybe 7'x7' or so. We were REALLY slow to get the garden going. I think we started it in early-mid June. Being that we're inexperienced and weren't expecting much, I planted 7 zucchini plants, 2 or 3 cucumbers, 3 tomatoes, a pepper (only one survived being transplanted), about 8-10 corn, some radish, pumpkin and cantaloupe. Now the first attempt at planting and watering showed that the water wasn't being distributed evenly, so all of the plants were removed and the seeds (pumpkin, cantaloupe, radish and most corn) that were planted got redistributed or lost forever. After about a week the corn seeds started growing along the edge of the bed, so I planted a few more seeds because they proved at least something would grow. :) Then a few days later a pumpkin started growing on one of the dirt irrigation barriers (just mounds of dirt to hold the water in), followed a few days later by another on an adjacent mound but still in the same general plot. This plot also held the pepper and some radish seeds and baby plants. June was really dry and although we watered the garden nearly everyday, we had VERY little growth on any of the plants and figured we wouldn't get much for our efforts this year. Then July came and with it, RAIN!

It's amazing how quickly everything started growing once the rain started. We've gotten dozens of zucchini already with lots more growing. They're so productive that we have to pick them at least every other day or we get giant zucchini. The two biggest ones in the picture are about 9" long and just two days ago they little when dh brought in a zucchini big enough to give me about 3 1/2 c. of chopped filler for stir fry. The cucumbers have taken over the whole bed, wrapping their little tendrils around all the other plants. They're so bad, we decided to stake them to see if we could control their growth a bit. We've gotten a about 8 cucumbers so far but there are tons of flowers and several more growing. The pumpkins have escaped the bed and now have a bunch of baby pumpkins developing. The pumpkin plants shaded out the pepper which hasn't grown much, so we moved it up near the tomatoes. We'll have to wait and see for that one. The tomatoes have just started to really grow. There were only the smallest beginnings of tomatoes last Wednesday, but now, in just over a week, about 8 small to medium sized green plum tomatoes have appeared. I'm hoping we'll be able to pick some in the next week or two. We've even got about 5 ears of corn growing. I wouldn't have even known about the corn or tomatoes if it weren't for the rain. When dh came home last night, he told me that the corn had all fallen over. Apparently the rain and winds were so strong yesterday, that the combination was just too much for the corn. So this afternoon, I was out building up the dirt around the corn and checking up on everything else. The zucchini and cucumbers are what developed in the last two days. Everything we've grown has been grown without pesticides or fertilizers, so it feels good to be able to eat what we pick. And the saving are nice too. Just the zucchini harvest alone will save me a good bit of money since we eat a lot of zucchini, probably 3-4 lbs./week minimum.

The two oldest kids are the ones who started all this growing. They planted sunflowers and flax (M.'s experiment) and have been "competing" to see who's grows fastest/tallest/any other -est they can come up with. Now they can't wait until the can harvest the seeds. They've been plotting to take over the entire backyard with a sunflower maze created out of the seeds they harvest this year!

We now return to the regularly scheduled quiltathon. Thank you for your attention.

S.'s sunflowers
M.'s sunflowers
a picture of the garden last week, now much wilder, taller and greener after yesterday's hours of rain (mulberry and peach trees behind and to the right)
Today's harvest

Design Wall Monday

2010-08-02T20:23:00.000-07:00

Well, I didn't get as far as I had hoped but I did finish quilting the most important baby quilt. Now I just have to get it bound by Saturday afternoon for the shower. I'm going to try doing the Quiltathon with Judy on Thursday and Friday so we'll see if I can finish the other two quilts by Saturday as well. Wish me luck!

Design Wall Monday

2010-07-26T13:10:00.001-07:00

Yeah! I have something to post today.

I have the black and white quilt in the hoop. It's mine own design. That one is for the friend whose baby shower is the first weekend in Aug. The blue one is Unequal Irish Chain from Quilts from the Heart. It's for another friend whose baby is due around the same time as the first. She may be at the shower as well so I'm trying to have it finished to give it to her that day. I'm also still working on the black, white and pink log cabin for the friend whose baby was born back in Feb. Sorry forgot to take pictures of that one.

I was really hoping to have all three quilt tops finished a few days ago. Unfortunately, my sewing machine had other ideas. Notice the sewing machine in the background of the blue quilt picture. Half way through piecing two blocks together, it died. Locking up in the needle down position. At first, I was just trying to take it apart a little to try and figure out why it died and to free the quilt blocks, then it became a matter of curiosity to figure out how it's put together when it became clear that it was dead for good. It's been threatening to give out the last several months, so I wasn't terribly surprised, just a little annoyed at the timing. I had bought another sewing machine on clearance back in April (?) but I haven't had a chance to take it out and get it set up yet. I can't complain too much about the first machine. It was one of the cheapest and lasted for about 3 1/2 years. I'm pretty sure I only paid $85 for it so with tax, that comes out to less than $2.25/month. I've used it to make 7 swimsuits, at least 2 dozen pairs of pants, a robe, at least 6 quilt tops, a robe and quilted one flannel quilt on it. There's probably a few more projects in there that I'm forgetting about but I think I probably got my money's worth for it.

I have a bunch of kids and moms coming for a fun "field" day at my house on Wednesday so I probably won't get the blue top finished until at least Thursday. Because of the limited time, that one will probably be machine quilted. Speaking of which, if I'm going to get everything done, I've got to get going. I hope to post pics of the finished quilts next week.

Sad but true

2010-07-22T06:55:00.000-07:00

I can't remember where I read this but here's a little statement about life today.

In the U.S., the number of words in the vocabulary of an average 14 year old in 1950 was about 25,000. By 1999, it was down to just 10,000. I can't imagine what it is today with the glut of sound bite media and texting mania.

Do yourselves and your kids a favor and read some old classics. If you don't have time to read, pop on a book on tape while you're driving around.

Right now, we're listening to "Pinocchio" and I'm floored at how much more advance the vocabulary is in this children's story than so much of what I've read lately. If you only know the Disney version, I think you'll enjoy the original. So, go pick a classic to share with your kids (or just enjoy on your own). It's a good thing!

Summer BBQs

2010-07-22T06:10:00.000-07:00

This seems to be the summer of BBQs. We've gone to a few this year. This last weekend, one of our friends brought along his camera and snapped not one but two very rare pictures of dh and I together. (Usually one or the other of us is behind the camera.) Unfortunately, dh just finished playing a pick-up game of soccer in 95+ degree heat so he's a wee bit sweaty in the picture. But hey, beggars can't be choosers.

One of the three quilt tops is almost done, just one border left. The second is cut out and the third is about half cut out. I hope to finish all three tops today. The baby shower is Aug. 7 so definitely have to finish at least quilt #1 by then. Keep your fingers crossed for me that I can finish all three by then. We've got a trip to see the in-laws coming up either next month or the month after and I'd like to have all the quilts finished before we go, including the planned birthday quilt for dh. Since we'll start up homeschooling again in Aug. and Ramadan is coming up, we'll see just how much I actually get done. For now, it's time to get my backside moving, so I can finish the tops today.

Did you miss me?

2010-07-09T07:49:00.000-07:00

Probably not.

It's been way too long since I've made a new post. Life has been happening it seems at lightening pace around here. It seems like it wasn't so very long ago that we were buried under nearly 4 feet of snow and yet, we're just finishing up a string of 100+ degree days. Homeschooling was finished for the year and now I've starting looking at resources for next year. Birthdays have come and gone. Our annual vacation to Florida is just a memory now.

It's crazy how fast life happens as we get older. When we're kids, days just seem to drag on. Now that I'm an adult with a houseful of kids, I frequently wonder what happen to my day. The running joke around here is that I ask various kids if they "ate my day."

We had to get the kids passports renewed and part of the renewal asks for height. I hadn't measured the kids in awhile and was shocked that my soon-to-be 12 year old is only 3 1/2 inches shorter than I am and I'm 5'6" so I'm not exactly tiny. That shock was preceded a few weeks early by the shoe shopping trip that revealed that both my 10 and 8 year old girls are now in women's shoe sizes (ironically the same size-6). How did these kids grow up so fast? Ah well, time marches on or perhaps sprints past is more accurate!

I've got a few quilt projects in the works (3 baby quilts, a birthday quilt and finishing the Rooty Tooty quilt) and will post pics as soon as I can.

The picture is from fall nearly three years ago, just after H. was born.

More snow pictures

2010-03-27T00:01:00.001-07:00

Good Intentions

2010-03-26T23:18:00.000-07:00

Ya know I had really good intentions at the beginning of the year to post at least once a week. It's now been almost 7 weeks since my last post! Shame on me!!!

When I last posted we were facing a mountain of snow coming our way. We definitely got it and then some. Our first bout gave us 25 in. followed a few days later by about 10 in. I'm not too certain about the second snow total because we had a lot of drifts with that snow. It took just over 1 month with several days of temps in the 60's and a couple of days of rain to finally melt the last of the piled up snow. One full Month people! That's crazy!

The first batch of snow was so deep that we actually hired a guy with a bobcat to plow our driveway. DH and I tried at first to work on it but we just couldn't keep up. I'd shovel in front of the garage and, by the time I finished one car length, where I started would be covered in 1/4-1/2 in. of snow. Just for reference, our driveway is an L - about 5 car lengths long and one car length long, two car widths leading into the two car garage.

After the second snow, I looked outside and decided I could shovel it. (DH had hurt his back trying to shovel blizzard #1.) It honestly didn't look that deep from the living room window. Silly me! It took just over 3 hours with M's help to shovel the driveway. Because of the winds, half the driveway only had 3-4 inches but the other half rose up to 2 feet all the way down the driveway! Oh, well! It was good exercise.

The kids had a blast in the big snow piles, some of which were nearly 5 feet tall. We even created a sledding hill out of one at the end of the driveway.

I have to say that our electricity and road crews were great! The roads were cleared in no time, although, a few mailboxes and safety reflectors were destroyed on the main road near my house. At least a third of the pine trees in our area lost large branches or were knocked down, including right next to (and presumably into) many of the roads that I normally travel. Whatever fell into the road was removed and attempts were made to cut back the fallen trees on the embankments to the edge of the road. Granted some are still a little too close to the travel lanes but it's not horrible. We lost power for only about 4 hours during the storm. This is remarkable since there were reports of people without power for more than a week and they couldn't go to warming shelters either because their roads hadn't been cleared! Why did we fair so much better? For several weeks during the summer, I watched the power company guys work their way down the main road clearing tree branches well away from the power lines. That preparation really paid off this year.

I found out that one of my friends was without power for 5 days. And, like us, no power for her also meant no water since she needs power for the well pump. No, we're not WAY back out in the boonies. Just far enough out to have an acre of land and dependence on well water.

Oh, and my two friends who were expecting- One had her baby two days before the blizzard. The hospital actually sent her home during the blizzard. Insane! The other friend gave birth to her baby girl at 2 a.m. during the blizzard at home with NO power! The homebirth apparently was planned. The blizzard and blackout-Not so much! (It got so cold in their house by midday that she had to go stay with some of her in-laws for a few days.) In hindsight, the choice of the black and white log cabin blocks for her baby's quilt was highly appropriate! Get it-black out, blizzard and homebirth! heehee! (And no, the quilt's still not done. I've been busy.)

Snow, snow and more snow

2010-02-05T08:57:00.001-08:00

We had snow last weekend, then another 4 inches on Tuesday night and now we've begun yet another round of snow that's likely to dump 18-24" on us. Yippy skippy! The kids are thrilled. I'm fine as long as I don't have to go out in it. Once upon a time snow was fun to play in but now I'm more than content to stay indoors. Thank you very much. You'd think with all of this snowy indoor time I'd have finished up some quilting projects but no. Other duties have to take precedent. Not much of anything as been done sewingwise except for some stash straigthening and the beginnings of an applique block. I don't know what I'll do with it when I'm finished. I just wanted something to play with.

Our trip to the waterpark got canceled because DH hurt his back a couple of weeks ago and still isn't up to a 7 hour drive that includes hauling luggage on and off the roof rack. The kids were really disappointed. As an alternative, we're hoping to take them to Florida again this year. I'm thinking we should aim for the end of May-beginning of June. Maybe I can enjoy my birthday in FL this year. ;)

The quilt's not mine. It's from the Quilters Unlimited Quilt Festival 2 years ago. But the themes right for today.

Design Wall Monday

2010-01-25T09:10:00.000-08:00

I don't have anything new up on the design wall/floor but I did finish one of the two baby quilts. I wanted to have it done before a meeting we had which would be the last the mom-to-be would be a part of before she was due. The meeting was to start at 1 and I finished the last stitch in the binding at 12:55. Nothing like cutting it close! Fortunately, the meeting was at my house so I didn't have to factor in travel time. Unfortunately, the meeting was at my house and I didn't get much of a chance to clean up. Oh, well! All of the attendees were moms or kids. The kids didn't notice-they just wanted to be with their friends. And the moms understood, especially when I told them that H. had decided that 2 a.m. was daytime and couldn't be convinced otherwise until 5:30, then R. was at my bedside before 8:30 ready for breakfast.

The second baby quilt will be the black and white log cabin but it will have to wait a bit. The trip to the water park is in less than 2 weeks and I still have to make the girls' swimsuits, so those take top priority for what little sewing time I have. I can always hand quilt the log cabin on the trip.

If you want to check out more design walls, stop by Judy's blog.

Design Wall Monday time again

2010-01-18T16:41:00.000-08:00

I know I missed last weeks Design Wall Monday but it wasn't because I was slacking. I've been busy here, I just didn't have time to post. As it is this post isn't going up until nearly 8 p.m.

S. turned the big 1 0 this week so a good chunk of Friday was spent baking and decorating the cake then taking all of the kids and one close family of friends to Chuck E. Cheese for most of the afternoon. I love homeschooling. We had most of the place to ourselves since we got there around 2 while all the public school kids were locked up counting down the minutes until their weekend furlough.

My mom had a major house fire that left her house uninhabitable. Fortunately, she wasn't home at the time but she did lose one of her dogs to the fire and one other suffered serious smoke inhalation. The fire didn't make it to her bedroom or office but smoke and water damage took their toll on the contents of both rooms. She lost a lot but has insurance to cover the contents and rebuilding. My aunt has been kicking fanny taking care of things for my mom. She and a friend have cleaned out whatever could be saved, took care of the dogs, buried the one that was lost, took copious pictures for the insurance company and got a contractor friend to come up with a plan for rebuilding, all while my mom was out of town.

In the last week, I've gotten one baby quilt top almost done-"Bubblegum Baby." I just need to put on the last border then it's ready for sandwiching. I was hoping to only have to replace the skirt and pants on S.'s swimsuit but the original material is too faded for the new pieces to look right so I have to make a whole new suit. I've got the skirt and pants cut out so I have to do the rest. Z. will also need a new suit so I got the fabric for that today at JoAnn's.

I got the fabric for the back of Tooty Fruity but that quilt is on hold until I finish the baby quilts and swimsuits. (That's the fabric I got busted on in the last post. But I'm really impressed with how quickly it arrived. They called me in the morning and it was on my doorstep the next day. Go Z & S Fabric!)

Finally, I can't decide which log cabin color combination to use for the second baby quilt-pink and white or black and white. Any suggestions?

If you haven't already, check out the other Design Wall Monday posts on Judy's site.

I'm excited

2010-01-07T21:40:00.000-08:00

Next month, we're heading to Ohio to a homeschooling convention at an indoor water park/resort. The main presenter is John Taylor Gatto-a former New York City Teacher of the Year and homeschool advocate. I can't wait to hear his presentation.

I actually made the mistake of telling the kids the night before last and that's all I've heard from the 4 oldest ones since. (H. is still to little to have a clue about what's in store.) I had good intentions for it. There will be a "Kids Marketplace" where the kids can buy and sell stuff they've made (or toys they no longer want) and I wanted to give my kids time to make stuff if they so desired.

Speaking of making stuff, I now get to add a swimsuit for S. to the list since she managed to put holes in her's the last time she wore it. So, I have one quilt that HAS to be finished by Jan. 20 (progress- fabrics and pattern selected), one swimsuit that HAS to be finished by Feb. 4 and one quilt that needs to be finished in early Feb. Besides all the regular day to day stuff I normally do. The next four weeks are going to be CRAZY!

This is an icicle that formed outside my kitchen window after the last snow started to melt, although we still have some of it sticking around. The icicle is more than 20 inches.

Design Wall Monday

2010-01-04T08:18:00.000-08:00

First off, Happy New Year! I kept meaning to post but have been busy spending time with friends. We got two dinner invites back to back, which is funny since it's been months since we've gone to anyone's house. It worked well for me since I didn't have to cook either night. I took a "me" day on Saturday, which was more than a little crazy - wind chills were in the single digits. BRRRRR!

Shh! Don't tell dh but I went fabric shopping on-line Wed. and at two Jo-Ann's on Sat. Actually, dh knows about 1 on-line fabric order because it arrived while I was out and M. just had to get the mail to look for a letter from his friend. Hey, I never said this was a stash busting year for me. ;) I needed pinks for the baby quilts and I wanted a variety of light and teal blues for the back of Rooty Tooty. Beyond fabric shopping, I haven't been very productive this week but that's going to have to change. I realized that I need one baby quilt done by the 20th because I won't see my friend again until after the baby is born. My other expectant friend may actually be due this month not next. EEK! Not sure how I'm going to get two baby quilts done this month.

Busted! I just got a phone call about my other fabric order and DH answered and heard that I made another order. Oh, well. So much for stealth! :P

The picture is of the pinks that I've bought for the baby quilts as well as a couple of charms I might use parts of. I'm thinking one all pink basket weave quilt and one black and white log cabin with pink centers.

Stash Chaos

2009-12-28T09:06:00.000-08:00

Ok, here are unedited (read: messy) pictures of my stash. (This way, even if I only clean up a little bit, it will look like I've done great things.)

It's spread out between the office closet,

the desk that serves as my sewing table (FQs in the pink and white boxes, misc. bits on the slide out tray, a bag of flannel FQs and a little stack of fabric sitting on the floor), a small three drawer cabinet with two plastic boxes on top-all full, and

a closet next to the tv that has two large totes full of flannels, a box of flannels on top and a hanging shelf of, you guessed it, flannels.

All the flannels were bought with the intention of starting an etsy shop selling sets of coordinated receiving blankets. With five kids around 24/7 that idea hasn't gone too far beyond the buying fabric stage. Although, that was rather fun!

My goal for next month is to get everything more organized. I need to move my regular (non-flannel) fabric out of the large tote in the office closet because it's just too much of a pain to get to there. That's really discouraged me from doing more quilting I think. If something is too much of a pain in the rear, we tend to avoid it. Since my goal for this year is to make/finish at least a half dozen quilts, being able to get to my stash would probably help.

I'm not restricting myself from buying but I really do need to start using what I have.

Design Wall Monday

2009-12-28T08:38:00.000-08:00

Hey, what do you know? It's Monday and I actually have something to show. hee hee.

I finished sewing the main part of the top. Now I just have to finish sewing the border pieces together and attach them. DH saw it laid out this morning and said it looks "fruity" so maybe I'll name it Rooty Tooty Fresh and Fruity. What do you think?

I really want to see how many quilts I can get done this year. After I finish this one, I need to make a girl baby quilt for a friend that's due in Feb. I'd also "Like" to make a quilt for a new friend also due in Feb. but I can't remember whether she's have a girl or a boy. I still owe my niece a graduation quilt. I want to make one for dh and one or two for the tv room. Oh, and I have two quilt tops awaiting borders (already cut) and quilting for another friend. This, for me, is a very full list. I'm hoping that if I stick to posting on the Design Wall Monday's I might actually be able to get it done.

You can see more Design Walls on Judy's site.

Viral Fun

2009-12-27T08:24:00.000-08:00

Ya gotta love when a highly contagious virus hits a big family. The victims fall one by one like cranky dominoes. Having just finished getting H. health after his bout with Roseola, Z. came down with a fever on Friday, quickly followed later in the evening by M. Yesterday was S.'s turn and this morning R. woke up with it. Fortunately, it's not a horrible virus, just a little 24 hour something. R. seems to have recovered the quickest. He was feeling horrible this morning with fever, headache and a bout of vomiting after which he went back to bed. When he got up, the fever was gone and he's now happily watching old episodes of the Pink Panther on Netflix. Go figure! I'm keeping my fingers crossed that H., dh or I don't get hit with it. I could use a little sleep tonight. ;)

Design wall Monday ...

2009-12-23T13:37:00.000-08:00

or in my case, Design Floor Wednesday. I actually had gotten to this point by Monday night but was busy sewing yesterday so I didn't get a chance to post it.

I've gotten about half the rows sewn so far. I need to finish it up tonight though because it's laid out on my office floor and is a pain to walk around and keep H. off of.

This is the first time I've had a new quilt going since Judy started these posts but I haven't been a complete slacker. I've finished two other quilts that I started before H. was born. One for M and one for R. Sorry, no pictures as they are currently being used and abused as any good quilt should be. :)

I was planning on using this quilt in the basement but S. has claimed it for her own since her quilt is "shrinking". (That could have something to do with the 3-4 inches she's grown this year.)

(For those that don't know, Judy at Patchwork Times has been doing a weekly post were people can link their post of what they are working on each week.)

Greetings from Planet Snowville

2009-12-23T13:16:00.000-08:00

We've been knee deep in snow this week (literally) thanks to a snow storm that came through here on Saturday. We got somewhere between 16 and 20 inches from Friday night to Saturday night. The kids couldn't have been more thrilled. They've played out in it for at least an hour and a half each day, which is saying a lot since many days it's only been in the upper 20's to low 30's. I posted last year (or maybe the year before) about how the kids had piled snow on our deck stairs to create their own sledding hill. That was only about 5 or 6 steps up. With this snow, they didn't have to add any snow so they decided to sled from the very top. Kids are nuts! Yesterday, it was time for making snowmen in the front yard. The first picture is R.'s "Alien Snowman". Z's was a "snow bug" and S. made a skinny snowman. M. went so far as to add about a dozen rock buttons, a complete face and even ears onto his and named him "Grampa Ed". (Ironically, my grandfather's name was Ed but M. didn't know that at the time he named his snowman.) Last night, they kept making about stories about their various snow men.
For visual reference, this is a picture of a "Big Wheel" in our neighbors' yard around 2 on Saturday.

And here it is on Sunday morning.

The next two pictures are from Sunday morning as well. Our porch roof and our mailbox.

I had great plans for spending the day sewing but never really got to do much because of "mom" duties, including caring for H. who was cranky from a Roseola fever that made it hard for him (and me) to sleep for a few days. I did manage to get a batch of cinnamon rolls made as a special "snow bound" treat.

Really Good Fabric Sale

2009-10-20T07:55:00.000-07:00

If you are anything like me, you like a good sale. :) A good sale on fabric is even better. Fabric.com is having a Crazy Cotton Print Sale with tons of fabric loveliness for between 2.49 to 4.19 per yard with most of them either 2.49 or 3.99. I have absolutely no connection with Fabric.com. This is the first time I've ever ordered from them because these were such good prices and a really great selection. I spent more than I should have especially since I just spent about $70 at the sewing expo at the beginning of the month. Oh well. I'll just have to watch the other spending for the rest of the month. With my littlest guy getting older, I have a feeling I might actually have a bit more time to use some of these yummy fabrics soon.

Happy Shopping!

Crazy busy

2009-10-09T08:05:00.000-07:00

I haven't had anytime to post lately. We wrapped up Ramadan with Eid which meant more baking and a trip to Chuck E. Cheese for the kids. Then the entire week after we had outside the house plans for every day of the week. Unfortunately, our big Saturday plans got rained out. We were going to take the kids to Colonial Williamsburg but most of that is outdoor stuff and just not rain friendly. Oh well, maybe next year.

I skipped jogging on the treadmill the entire month and when I started again it felt like starting from the beginning again. YUCK! However, I'm getting back up to speed again. I just wish the scale would reflect some of my hard work. I've gone more than 13 miles this week and actually gained a pound. Boo hoo!

I've started a group for my girls with a few other girls their ages. We have our next meeting this afternoon and I'm planning on having them do some hand sewing-simple patchwork potholders. I stayed up last night to make some examples for them and now I'm beat and still have to clean the house and prep for dinner since one on the families will be staying for dinner and toasting marshmallows tonight. I have just about 4 hours to get everything done. I have a feeling the cleaning will be of the not great but good enough variety. Fortunately, the other 2 moms coming have 4 and 5 kids so they know what it's like.

The picture is of the 3 examples I made last night all using fabric I picked up last weekend at a sewing expo. I didn't sew the HST chocolates and cake squares together yet so that I could show the girls the different ways you can lay them out to get different looks.

Iraqi Bundles of Love

2009-08-26T06:39:00.000-07:00

I just found this outreach project that I think others might be interested in. It's called Iraqi Bundles of Love. The idea is that you send a box of sewing supplies or fabric that will get distributed to women in Iraq as a bundle. All of the details are at the Iraqi Bundles of Love website. The basic premise is that we as quilters/knitters/sewing/crafting divas have extras on hand that we may have loved/needed once but don't necessarily love/need now and are willing to share with others or you bought a bit too much of some things Or perhaps you're just feeling extra generous. What you need: a flat rate box from the post office, ribbon to tie the bundle, fabric, yarn, needles-sewing/knitting, thread, elastic, scissors, beads, buttons, anything else you might think of, and $11.95 to ship it to the coordinator. (The coordinator is a soldier in Iraq.) There is a deadline of SEPTEMBER 7. So, please, if you're interested, it's best to do it quickly. To get the mailing address, you have to post a comment somewhere on the Bundles of Love website and he will email you the address.

Just think about how much you like getting packages of sewing/quilty goodness. Now imagine the happiness this could give a woman or girl who is living in financially and environmentally difficult conditions. Sanctions and the war have put a big strain on people there and maybe, a little package like this could brighten their lives a bit. As a note, the timing of this is partially meant to coincide with Ramadan. For muslims, the end of Ramadan (Id al-Fitr) is similar to Christmas in terms of celebration-new clothes are bought or made and gifts are given to the children. Your gift may help a family make the holiday a little brighter for their children.

Thank you.

Ramadan Mubarak/Happy Ramadan

2009-08-22T12:35:00.000-07:00

To all of the Muslims out there-Ramadan Mubarak!

For those that do not know what Ramadan is-Ramadan is the month of fasting for Muslims. From dawn until sunset, Muslims (in good health) do not eat or drink anything, not only that they are also supposed to refrain from gossiping, smoking, swearing, lying and sex. (Of those last items, only sex is permissible normally. All of the others, we shouldn't be doing anyway.)

Why abstain from these things? By practicing self-control over things that are normally allowed, i.e. eating and drinking, we can gain control over the areas in our lives where we may have developed bad habits. We also seek a closer relationship to God during this time by striving to read the entire Quran during the month and spending more time reflecting on God. The Quran is broken down into 30 sections, therefore, we aim to read one section per day or approximately 200 verses. We connect with other Muslims by joining them at the masjid/mosque for Iftar (breaking the fast). At the masjid we attend, this is done potluck style and shared with anyone who cares to join us-Muslim or not. We connect with the needy through acts of charity, donating food and/or money to those who are in need.

The timing of Ramadan is based on the lunar calendar so the dates move forward about 11 days each year. When I first became a Muslim, it started in Feb. This year, today was the first day of fasting. It's likely to be more difficult fasting this year as well as the next several years, since Ramadan will be during the longest as well as the hottest days of the year, but quite honestly, if the people of the Arabian peninsula could do it for generations without the benefit of air conditioning or any of the other luxuries we take for granted, I'm sure I can manage as well. (Imagine having to walk everywhere in 110 degree or higher heat or cook for hours over an open fire in the same heat.)

There are people who are exempt from fasting-people who have chronic medical conditions that require medication, children who are under the age of puberty, people who are traveling, women who are menstruating and women who are pregnant or breastfeeding. For these last two reasons, it's been some time since I've fasted. In the last 11 years, I've been pregnant and/or nursing every Ramadan except for one. Needless to say, I'm a little out of practice. I'm going to try fasting this year even though H. is still nursing but since he's almost 2 he doesn't have that much longer for nursing anyway and he mostly nurses at night. As long as I make sure to get up early enough to drink at last a few glasses of juice or water and drink the same or a bit more after Iftar, I should be ok.

The Washington Post had a nice article entitled Better Health Through Fasting, in case you'd like to read more. (Sadly, some of the comments to the article are idiotic at best and hateful, xenophobic at worst.)

The pictures don't really have anything to do with Ramadan. One is a picture of the heavily laden persimmon tree we had in our yard last year in Iran. The other is what was left of a box of pomegranates after the kids had their share. One of our kids favorite things about Iran is the abundance of pomegranates - some sweet, sour or a mix of the two. The light-colored ones are sweet, or possibly have a mix of both sweet and sour seeds and the darker ones are tart/sour. A whole box costs us less than buy just a few here.

Batik baby

2009-08-21T16:09:00.000-07:00

This is the baby quilt I made for my friend loosely based on Judy's pattern.

Unfortunately, I didn't finish it before she left for Egypt so now I have to figure out some other way of getting it to her. Apparently, the Egyptian postal service charges an arm and a leg for taxes/duties/whatever on items shipped into Egypt. I'm not quite sure how I'll get it to her so we'll just have to see. Looking back on it, I know I could have finished it in time but I kept procrastinating. I hated know that my friend would be so far away and I'd have almost no chance of seeing her anytime soon. So I stalled. Oh, well. I can't change the past. All I can do is have faith that there will be a way for me to get it to her.

The bottom picture shows the backing fabric. The colors in both pictures aren't great but it's the best I can do in our basement.

Luray Caverns

2009-08-20T08:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we took a group trip to Luray Caverns.

The place is gorgeous. Lots of stunning stalactites and stalagmites with audio tours geared separately for children and adults, a cool little car and carriage museum and a fun garden maze. About half the group got caught in the rain trying to make our way out of the maze. (I got a little wetter than most since I went back in trying to track down two kids-one of mine and one new friend.)

We went with a group of homeschoolers we had never met before and had a blast. The kids made lots of new friends and I made some new friends as well.

I don't have any pictures since I chose not to bring the camera. Keeping track of 5 little ones is challenge enough when your on your own (dh had work) without trying to add picture taking to the mix. Click on the link above to see pictures from their website.

If you're in the area, this is definitely worth the stop. R. was asking when we could go again - before we even left!

Quitoes

2009-08-12T12:50:00.001-07:00

What do you do when you have little ones that really want to be outside playing in their sandbox and a yard full of baby hungry mosquitoes and ticks?

DH came up with a great idea. He put up a tent on our deck and put the sandbox inside on a scrap piece of carpet (to contain the sand mess). The boys love it and have a great time playing in there "quito" free.

The tent also gets used some weekends for mini at-home camp outs. The kids and DH set up a mini TV/VCR, comforters, blankets and pillows and have a great time "camping out".

$156,001

2009-07-24T08:23:00.000-07:00

According to a fun little salary poll, this is what my job as stay-at-home mom is worth. It's fun because you can personalize it to fit the work you do and about how many hours a day you do them. If you cook from scratch add more hours there. Don't do gardening, set the hours at 0. You can find it at this link to the salary wizard.

On a completely side note, I scored big time this week. Our local school district holds online auctions to get rid of various items. I've never bid before this week but they hold them frequently and I often take a peek to see what they have. Well this week I won a auction for 19 student desks for the grand price of $1. No, not $1 each, just $1. What am I going to do with 19 desks? I'll keep some for the kids, I've offered some to friends who are about to start homeschooling their kids (again or for the first time), we have a larger homeschool group that meets together that I will offer some to and if there are any left, I'll offer them to other homeschoolers in the area. Not a bad way to spend a buck in my opinion. :) (Although, it was actually $1.60 since I had to pay 60 cents to get a money order because they don't accept cash!) I'm planning on letting the kids pick their own paint colors and we'll spray paint their desks this weekend or maybe next weekend.

Z. 2 years ago

Quilt show

2009-06-10T08:46:00.000-07:00

I went to the local quilt show last weekend with my girls. We had a good time although, I think Z's still a bit too young. She got bored and tired pretty quickly. I let her come this time because she was so upset last year about being left at home with the boys. On the way home, she said she did NOT want to go again next year. She's very much a tomboy anyway, so I wasn't that surprised.

I haven't downloaded any pictures yet and missed taking some because the battery died on the camera towards the end. Instead, here is a beautiful quilt from last year's show.

Click to enlarge so you can really see the detail this quilter put into her work.

Vacation

2009-06-03T22:53:00.000-07:00

Yippy!

We got back from 9 days vacation on Sunday night and here it is (wee hours) Thursday morning and I still haven't fully unpacked/caught up with laundry. In my defense, nearly everything is done. I just have a few more things from the suitcase to put away, fold one load of vacation laundry and catch up on ironing.

We went down to FL and stayed in a rental house like last year. We spent most of our days playing in the pool and relaxing with one day at the Orlando Science Center (kids' favorite) and one day at the beach. After a week in FL, we headed up to Atlanta for my niece's graduation before heading home.

Another blogger was asking about what to bring for a baby while traveling and that got me thinking. I probably travel a lot lighter than most people. All of the clothing for the trip for 7 people fit in 1 large duffel bag. (The house has a washer and dryer so I only had about 4 days worth of clothing for each person plus an outfit for the graduation.) We also bring our own sheets, towels, blankets and pillows. The sheets and towels all fit into a large carry-on size bag. Blankets and pillows were grouped into big garbage bags to fill out the car top carrier. Each person also had one pair of sandals and one pair of sneakers. Sneakers were in a garbage bag up on top as well. Inside we had 2 coolers (1 medium, 1 small) and two small boxes with drinks, food for breakfast and lunch on the way, a few frozen meals, snacks and things like napkins and garbage bags. I also brought the diaper bag, one bag of diapers and wipes, a small bag of activity books for the kids and a small tv and portable dvd player with one case of dvds. (These last few items were essential since we decided to try to make the drive down in one day without stopping for the night like last time. Mapquest says the trip takes almost 14 hours of driving; we made it in just about 17.)

So, anyone else out there take long car trips with kids? How do we compare?

I've traveled 3 times now internationally with children (always with an infant) so I've learned to travel a lot lighter than I used to. The last overseas trip we took for three months was done with just 3 large suitcases, the diaper bag and a backpack (had to add a small suitcase on the way home).

Tomorrow/today is my birthday so I plan to do as little as I can get away with while still keeping up with my kids. All errands were run today and chores will wait. The ironing's not going anywhere. :)

I hope everyone has a great day.

Happy Mother's Day

2009-05-10T08:14:00.000-07:00

Wishing all the moms and moms-to-be out there a very happy Mother's Day.

A pic of me and the kids at a former palace, now public garden in Iran (Oct.08)
A picture of the kids and my mom. Dh is holding H off to the right. (Dec. 08)
One of my favorite pictures of H. (Apr.08).

Stash Project

2009-03-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

Ok, Judy post a stash quilt project idea a couple of weeks ago, and being the slow poke that I am, I just now picked out my fabrics. I went a little different direction that her light/dark suggestion and went with a spectrum of blues, greens and purples to pair with pinks, orangy reds and reds. This will be a quilt for the baby of my best friend, who just turned a year old. I'd really like to get this done, start to finish, in 5 weeks or less since they well be moving overseas for an unknown length of time. :( (Their move is actually very sad, in that, her dh has been without a job for over a year, house got damaged by a hurricane last year that insurance wouldn't cover as well as a tiny little beach house in Galveston that was leveled, savings are gone and still no job prospects.) I love my friend dearly and wish her the best. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll have at least one last chance to see her before the move.

And just for kicks, here's a picture of my little guy.

Oops

2009-03-09T08:16:00.000-07:00

Ok, it's bad when you haven't blogged in so long that you forget how to sign in to your account. I couldn't remember my sign in or password. Sad, isn't it?

You know what's even sadder? I just realized yesterday that I can fit into my 10 year old son's shoes! (And I don't have tiny feet. I wear a size 8.) When did he get so big?

Things as usual have been busy around here. We took a surprise trip to visit my mom, aunt and sisters (plus their families) at the end of December which was fun. We got professional group pics of all 10 nieces/nephews/grandkids ranging in age from 18 years down to 1 year old. The funny thing is that 3 of them were born within 6 months of each other, one to each sister.

I hadn't seen my mom in about 3 years, my aunt in about 6 years, one sister in 6 years and the other in about 1 1/2 years. Everyone was previously scattered much further apart. I was nice to be able to see everyone again and let all the cousins spend some time together.

Beyond that, we've had lots of the normal everyday activities of a big family. With our homeschool year winding down, I hope to have more time to catch up on my blog. At least, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

The picture is of the tilework inside the dome at the tomb of Iranian poet, Hafez.

Hello

2008-12-03T12:28:00.001-08:00

Whew. We're back from a 7 week trip to Iran to spend time with family. We just got back last Friday night-a journey of about 30 hours door to door with five kids 10 and under. Now that's fun! ;) It's good to be home and it seems like we're all back on the right time schedule now. I took bunches of pictures of sights this time around but haven't had a chance to download them from the camera between 8 million loads of laundry and the usual daily tasks of keeping a family of 7 up and running. Just going through nearly two months' worth of mail seemed to take half a day and that doesn't count looking at any of the magazines or catalogues that came while we were gone. I didn't have any internet access this time around so besides snail mail, it looks like I've got almost 80 pages of new e-mail to sort through with 25 messages per page. It'll all get done and looked at eventually.

I would have gotten this posted sooner but our little guy discovered buttons in the last few weeks and how much fun it is to push them to make things happen like turning the computer off while mommy's typing or turning the tv on and off while everyone else is watching. Now that's fun!

I hope everyone out there is doing well and not getting too stressed. I'll write again soon.

Busy Days

2008-09-28T07:55:00.000-07:00

This is picture of the little guy after the first surgery. It was done laproscopically so he only had two little cuts (only about 1/2 inch each) under his diaper and a bandage over his belly button. The second surgery left him with about a 2 1/2 in. scar on his stomach. I'm hoping since he's so little that it will fade in time. Besides the scars you'd never know anything had happened to him. He's as active as ever and has even started walking.

We're in the last few days of Ramadan and gearing up for Eid on Wednesday which means buying new dresses for the girls and and dress shirts and pants for the boys. I've already bought them some small gifts and on Eid we'll take them to Chuck E. Cheese as a surprise after the masjid. We're hoping the make a big present out of going to see their grandparents. We've got the tickets reserve but still have to get them. If all goes well, that means I won't be around until about mid-November. (unless I get a chance to post again before we go) I'm hoping to get at least one quilt top made while we're gone if I can get the pieces cut before we go. I'm pretty sure I'll have time to work on it since we'll be hanging out with the relatives and I can hand piece it while everyone chats and plays. I'm planning on doing a sampler in black and batiks while blocks from a quilt a-long at crazy mom quilts but switching one block out to use a star block from Judy's latest BOM at Patchwork Times.

Between preparing for Eid (shopping, gift wrapping, cookie baking and house cleaning), packing, quilt prep and the regular chaos of running a 7-person household I don't think I'll have much time for anything else right now. Speaking of chaos, the little guy has dumped his bowl of (dry) Cheerios all over the floor and is having a mini-meltdown so I've got to run.

Have a great day everyone.

I'm back

2008-09-19T22:06:00.000-07:00

I know, I know. Long time, no post. But I've got an excellent excuse. A couple of weeks or so after the last post, I learned a brand new word...Intussusception.

What is this strange and exotic new word? you ask. It's a somewhat rare medical condition where a portion of the intestines rolls up inside of another part of the intestines. The medical websites give the metaphor of a telescope being collasped but I think a more accurate description would be to compare it to those kids' toy-water worms or water snakes. You know-the ones that are like a continuous donut-shaped tube filled with water that rolls out of your hand if you squeeze it. Ya didn't know that the intestines could act like a water snake, did ya? Well, neither did I.

How did I learn this fun new word? One night our little guy woke up crying. It started as a little cry but quickly progressed to scream-crying that nothing would pacify that would cycle-2 mins. crying, 30 sec. quiet, 3 mins. crying, 40 sec. quiet-you get the idea. After about half an hour of this, he threw up and seemed to calm down a little but he looked so drained we called the dr. Dr. says take him to the er just in case. Mind you this is 2 a.m. So we wake all the other kids and get everyone loaded in the car and head not to the nearest er but to one further away but better. By the time we get there (3 a.m.), little guy is calm and only throws up a tiny bit as we are checking in. Fortunately, the er is quiet so we see the dr. quickly. She takes a quick peek and orders an x-ray. X-ray doesn't show anything and the dr.s not sure what's going on so she orders ultrasound but they want to wait until the change of shift so a pediatric radiologist will be on hand to look at it. During this time, he's sleeping while nurses are trying to find a vein so that they can get a blood sample and an iv started just in case. Three tries and no luck when the night shift radiology tech comes in to takes us down before he leaves. (At this point I'm thinking that this might just be a waste of time because little guy is sound asleep and seems to be much better now. {It took three more tries before they finally got the blood and IV started.}) It was a change of plans but I'm glad he is the one that did it. Within minutes of starting the ultrasound, I could tell from his actions he had spotted something wrong. And this guy was good, checking and rechecking, asking a senior tech for advice and then grabbing the first available radiologist. Without saying what it was he redid the ultrasound of the radiologist with me following along trying to keep up. This is when I learned this great new word. My little 9 month had a portion of this small intestines rolled up about 6-8 in. into his large intestines (up and about half way across his belly).

At this point, we became the teaching case of the er. The cause is unknown but may be trigger by the lymph nodes swelling up after any kind of illness. (He'd had a little cold for a couple of days. Later findings make me think it was caused by something else.) It mostly happens in boys around 3 mo. to 6 years old. There are two methods for trying to correct this anomaly-1)an enema administered by a radiologist using continuous x-ray to monitor the progress and 2) surgery. Because the enema is deemed less invasive they always try this first. Either way we were told he would be kept at the hospital at least over night to make sure it wouldn't recur. (We called some friends who came and pick up the kids for us.) They performed an air enema and let me tell you, I would not call that the best option. It may be less invasive but I think it's far more tramatic. There were three of us trying to hold him down and as still as possible while he screamed in pain each of the three times they tried. He would collapse back down exhausted each time they relieved the pressure. The x-rays should that the enema couldn't complete push the intestines back in place so he ended up having to have surgery anyway. He had laproscopic surgery around 2 p.m. The surgeon told us that the intussusception corrected itself by the time he went in but half of the appendix was swollen and purple so he removed it just in case. (It wasn't the cause but likely got caught between the two layers of intestine.) We get settled into a room and dh goes to pick up the kids and get some rest. I bounce around between trying to rest, keeping an eye in the little guy (whose snoozing soundly from the trama of the day), trying to deal with being very uncomfortably engorged (He hasn't nursed since 1 a.m. and won't be allowed to nurse again until after the surgeon checks on him in the morning) and finally being incredibly bored since the only thing I brought with me is the diaper bag. It was a shared room with only 1 t.v. so I couldn't even turn that on to pass the time. By 8 a.m., I finally break down and ask the nurse if they've got any kind of reading material I could borrow. She was so great. She knew exactly what I was going through and managed to find me a couple of magazines. Amazingly enough, we left the hospital before noon with a happy baby and a passing post-op warning to come back in if he should any sign of a recurrence but with the assurance that this was very rare.

How rare is it? It only happens in 1 to 4 out of 1,000 kids.
How rare is a recurrence? When an enema works, there's a 10% chance of recurrence within 72 hours. After surgery, there's only about a 3% chance. (Do you see where I'm going here?)

Given these odds, I decided to hope for the best but prepare just in case. I got some little travel-size toiletries and stuck them in the diaper bag. 9 days later, at almost the exact same time of night, he had a recurrence. This time I grabbed a book, magazine and a quilting project along with an extra shirt and the diaper bag. (I forgot to mention that my little angel peed on my sleeve during the ultrasound the first time around and I had nothing else to wear.) We didn't bother calling the pediatrician this time. No point waking her up at 2 in the morning when we already knew what we'd have to do. Woke up the kids and headed back to the hospital. Ultrasound confirmed what we pretty much knew only this time it wasn't quite so bad. (Once again, our friends where kind enough to come and take our kids to their house.) The decision was made to wait for the day time shift change and the pediatric radiologist to try the enema again. (This doc was a much older man, who thankfully was very gentle as well as cautious. It was still tramatic but not nearly as bad as the first time.) No good but the surgeon decided he'd rather take a wait and see approach this time. Around 2 p.m. he showed symptoms again so the surgeon ordered another enema. Back to radiology we went, only this time with the surgeon watching from the other room. No luck again but this time the radiologist pointed out a mass/dark spot that he had seen the first time around and felt is was somewhat larger. So back to surgery, this time with a larger incision so that the surgeon can feel what this mass is and decide whether or not to remove it, but first more waiting for antibiotics and an open operating room. We finally head down to surgery around 8 p.m. Around 10:30, the surgeon comes out to give us the update. He couldn't identify the mass so he decided to remove it but to do that he had to remove part of both the large and small intestines and then form a new connection. We'd have to wait for the pathology report to find out exactly what was removed. We finally got settled back in the room around 1:30; nearly 24 hours after we arrived. Dh finally went home to sleep around 2. (It was a very cramped shared room.)

I didn't sleep much since the nursing staff in this department wasn't exactly attentive. They didn't hook him up to a single monitor despite him being on morphine and post-op. In the morning his i.v. alarm sounded for 40 min. (starting before shift change), we were right across the hall from the nurses station even and no one came. Fortunately, because of being short-handed, a nurse from a different department took over his day time care and immediately hooked him up to the monitors and checked up on us frequently during the day. When dh came later that afternoon, I told him about my annoyance with the night time staff. He encouraged me to ask if we could move to a different ward. I'm so glad he did. Our wonderful nurse stepped right up and got us moved to a big private room on her normal ward. It made the rest of our stay much more relaxed. Our little guy needed alot of holding during his recovery in the hospital so I didn't work on the quilting I'd brought but it came in handy at night as an extra blanket. :)

We had to stay at the hospital for 2 1/2 days after the surgery and wait another week after that to find out that the mass was a diverticula. A diverticula is just an extra little pouch that can form on the intestinal wall. Usually they happen on the lower end of the large intestines in older adults who haven't had the best of diets. His was a rare occurance on the beginning portion of the large intestines that he was probably born with. I believe this is was triggered the intussusception. I also think it was the cause of other things he was experiencing that were different from our other kids. He always had very loose, frequent poops. He was, also, awful about eating solid foods. It could take 45 min. just to feed him about 1 oz. of food. Now he's a much better eater and his bowel movements are much more normal.

So, between helping him recover and taking care of all of the normal everyday stuff, I just haven't had to time to blog.

Oops

2008-06-18T13:43:00.001-07:00

I hadn't realized it had been more than a month since my last post.

We've been pretty busy around here. Passed around a nasty little infection that started out like a cold but progressed to ear and eye infections in nearly everyone so I've been busy passing out doses of antibiotics and eye drops to multiple kids over the last month. Fun, fun, fun.

I came down with it the night before I was planning on going to a huge, homeschooling used book sale so I missed out on that. :( I have one more shot of finding some deals on used books at a convention in the middle of July before I break down and have to pay full price for the stuff I want to use this year. For now, we've started up again using our McGuffey Readers, some math workbooks and DVDs from Netflix for history.

I've been busy doing some clothes sewing as well with tons more to do (pants and skirts for the girls and me). When I get more done, I'll post some pictures.

As my birthday present, Mohsen watched 3 of the kids while Safiya, Husein and I went to the local annual quilt show. We had tons of fun, probably bought a bit more than we should have but enjoyed ourselves so it was worth it. I haven't had a chance to transfer the pictures I took but hope to this weekend if I can get my sewing projects finished.

The little guy just woke up from his very short nap so I've got to run. I'll try and post again this weekend.

Finally some pictures

2008-05-09T21:37:00.001-07:00

Thank you to everyone that has been popping in to see if I've finally gotten around to updating my blog.

First, here are two pictures of the baby quilt I finished back in March. No new quilting has been going on but I did make 2 pairs of pants for the girls as well as a swimsuit for myself and new swimpants for the girls before we took our trip. (I still have to make the girls new tops. The color is almost completely bleached out of the old ones.)

The trip was great. We ended up not going to Disney but still had tons of fun and didn't even get to all of the attractions I had planned. (We did, however, go to Downtown Disney to check out the Lego store and the big lego creations like the sea serpent behind us in the last picture.)

Staying at a rental house was definately THE best way to go. Lots of space, very comfortable, economical and quite relaxing. If anyone out there is planning to travel in the near future, especially if you'll be travelling with kids, you should really consider renting a house rather than a hotel. Just google "vacation rental" and the city or state (or even country) you'll be heading to. Just goofing around, I've found some amazing looking places all over the US and abroad. If anyone has any questions I'd be more than happy to answer them.

I, also, want to say a big thank you to Sue at Quilting Chatter. I had completely forgotten about the Pay It Forward thing until this wonderful box arrived on my doorstep this week full of great stuff. Sue was so incredibly generous. She sent two pincushions, two bags as well as four crochet dish clothes. I haven't had a chance to take a picture yet but will include one in the next post. I feel guilty now because I haven't gotten any takers for my offer to Pay It Forward so I'll offer once again to whoever would like to participate. I'll send you something if you promise to Pay it Forward to 3 more people.

Long time...

2008-03-28T06:46:00.000-07:00

no post. Sorry about that. Thanks to everyone that keeps popping in to see if I'm back to blogging.

I came down with the flu just two weeks after I'd been sick with a cold. (Stunning since I hardly ever get sick and I get struck twice this year back to back.) Then one week later dd2 gets it, followed the next day by ds2 and a week after that dd1. So all of that took close to a month to get through. Then I had a friend's baby shower. I managed to make a baby quilt in one week and a day. (Machine pieced, hand quilted) The shower was at 2, I put that last stitch in the binding at 1. (Pictures with the next post.) And all this week I've been putting in computer time planning a surprise trip for our kids to Disney. (I'll post more on our Disney plans later too.) We plan on putting them in the car and not telling them where we're going until we get there. ;)

We're also surprising them with a trip to the circus next week. They haven't been yet since before they were too little and/or we were too busy. I'm pretty sure that they will think that the trip to the circus is the one and only surprise we have planned. Heehee!

Right now I'm trying to finish up our taxes since we'll be on vacation when they're due, so I'll leave you with funny things my soon to be 3 year said a few days ago.

"I'm gonna get two catapiller poops for my birthday from Chuck E. Cheese's."
(With all the excitement in the world in his voice and yes, I did ask him to make sure he really said/meant what I thought he did.)

Later the same day, regarding fish we just got.
"Ew, the fish went poopy! You have to give him a bath in the bathtub."

Have a great day everyone!

Gratitudes:
1. Kids that keep me on my toes so that life never gets boring.
2. A husband that took a whole week off of work to take care of things while I was sick and recovering.
3. Everyone is healthy again.
4. Having the financial cushion to take a vacation this year and finding great ways to save money on the trip.
5. The forsythias are in bloom and the hyacynth is almost there!

Sick-again

2008-02-21T10:24:00.000-08:00

Ack! I'm sick for the second time in a month. I never get sick but this bout really hit me hard. I actually spent most of the first 22 hours sleeping on and off. Thank goodness I have such a wonderful husband. He's stayed home from work this week to take care of me and the kids. Unfortunately, it seems like 3 of the kids are sick including the little guy. I think we probably picked something up from the doctor's office last week when I took him in for a check up. I hate when that happens! Anyway, I'll be scarce for a little while longer while I get us all healthy again.

I hope everyone out there is healthy and enjoying you day.

"Women & Money"

2008-02-13T23:47:00.000-08:00

Oprah and Suze Orman are offering a free download of Suze's book "Women & Money" until 8 p.m. central Feb. 14. (TODAY) I haven't read this book yet but I have read other books by her and I urge you to take advantage of this offer. She provides wonderful information in a straight forward manner.

Go to http://www2.oprah.com/tows/pastshows/200802/tows_past_20080213.jhtml?promocode=HP14 and click on Women & Money about halfway down the page.

Still here

2008-01-23T22:23:00.001-08:00

I'm still here. I'm so sorry it's been so long since I've posted. I have a post I've been working on but it's been slow going since I've mostly only been able to get on-line when I have a baby either nursing or in my lap. Right now it's about 1:30 a.m. so everyone else is asleep. (Knock on wood.)

One of the things we've been up to lately is snow days. Since the 15th it's snowed twice here. The first was just a little bit that was gone by the next day but the second snow gave us at least 5 inches, a full day of play and there is still snow/ice on the ground. During the day of play the kids decided they wanted to make a snow slide, so they shovelled snow on to our deck stairs so that they could slide down it into a pile of snow at the bottom. We don't have any hills for sledding in our yard so I guess they decided that this would be the next best thing.

Here's a tip for reusing out-grown socks-Not too long ago, I went through the girls dresser and took out all of the sock that don't fit anymore. The frugal part of me decided I should keep them in case I should need them for "something" so time soon. Well the sometime soon came sooner than I thought it would. While the kids were playing out in the snow, I noticed that Z.'s coat sleeves kept riding up. We didn't buy her a new coat this year since this one still seemed to fit back in late Sep./early Oct. Finding out that it no longer fits during a snow fall in Jan. isn't exactly the best timing. Anyway, I sat for a minute trying to come up with something that would keep her little wrists from getting frost bite. (She's a full contact player. Laying in the snow, sticking her hands down in it as far as they'll go, carrying around big chunks of it.) Then I remembered seeing some knitted wrist warmers while following blog links. Now obviously I couldn't knit her a pair of anything right then but I did remember the bag of socks. I went inside, grabbed a pair and a pair of scissors. Snipping the toes off and an oval for her thumb, gave us something very similar with almost no work. As an added bonus, we got to reuse something that still had usefulness left in it and I gave my kids another example of how to be creative with the things you already have.

The other thing I've been working on is M's quilt. I finally got the borders on and have started quilting it. I was going to try machine quilt for the first time on this quilt but my machine seemed to be acting up a bit while I was attaching the borders so I decided to just go with hand quilting. Now I've procrastinated quite a bit with this (and the other 3 quilt tops I've got done) and I realized that I've been avoiding trying to machine quilt since I've never done it before. If I had just decided to hand quilt them from the start, I'd probably have at least two of them done and in use by now. Go figure! We'll see how quickly I can get them done now that I've figured this out.

Ok, I think it's time to go to sleep now before the little guy wakes up wanting to be fed again.

Women's contributions

2008-01-06T09:34:00.000-08:00

This is something I've had running around in my mind for a while now. It started when we were discussing life insurance with a friend of ours and he asked why bother getting a life insurance policy for me. Now, he's a good friend and well meaning, is the father of 4 and has a wife that was stay-at-home but now teaches at her kids school to cover the tuition. I, of course, reply by asking him what he'd do if something happened to his wife. (Hopefully giving him something to think about.)

After this, I started thinking about all of the financial books I had read. Every one of them touted the importance of life insurance for a wage earner while ignoring the financial contributions a stay-at-home wife gives to her family. What contributions could they possible be since she's not bring in any income? Surely no one is depended on them, right? Well, let's think about this for a minute. A stay-at-home mom at least provides child care services. That alone represents a pretty big chunk of change the family is not paying, especially if there is more than one child. What if the kids are school aged? Well, until they're at least in their early teens, according to many states' laws, they still need after school supervision. How about eating? At least at the beginning, there will likely be a good bit of eating out because of all of the other things dad is trying to adjust to.

Another big point to consider is if you homeschool, what will happen if you die? Will dad try to keep homeschooling them? Hire someone to watch them during the day while he works then teach them in the evenings? Or maybe hire a tutor? Will he send them to school? Public or private? Obviously, private school is a lot more expensive than homeschooling and most homeschoolers really don't want to have to send their kids to public school.

These are just some of the bigger, more obvious ways we contribute to the family finances. There are plenty of other some times smaller or less apparent contributions. Many stay-at-home wives/moms are frugal and know when and where to get the best prices on everything from groceries to toilet paper to clothing. If your spouse has to manage the shopping and work then chances are convenience will take precedence over cost. Do you do the family taxes? That's a cost that will change as well. If the family eats out more, chances are good that the food won't be nearly as healthy as if you cooked it so there is a higher chance that the kids will get sick more often.

Without too much effort, it's not difficult to see how the death of a stay-at-home wife would impact the family's financial situation. Could you're family survive this impact without the extra cushion life insurance would afford? How much life insurance would be necessary is up to the individual families but don't let anyone try and convince you that life insurance is never necessary for a stay-at-home wife just because she doesn't have any income.

Lookie what I found ->

2008-01-06T09:04:00.000-08:00

"The Gentle Art of Domesticity" by Jane Brocket, a fellow blogger at yarnstorm (http://yarnstorm.blogs.com/knitblog/). It's not even published here in the U.S. yet and only came out in Britain at the beginning of Oct. Where did I find it? At a library booksale that I almost didn't go to. It was only $4. Now this is normally a bit more than I'd pay for a book at a book sale but I couldn't see how I could pass up such a find.

It's really a lovely book with wonderful pictures. It's a bit hard to describe though. It's sort of a collection of essays on all kinds of domestic pursuits with tips, recipes and lots of eye candy mixed in. Definitely worth the $4. Her blog is just as pretty. BTW, she was railed against in the British media for promoting the domestic arts and setting unfair standards for the poor working feminist who has much better things to do with her time. In my view, she like some many generous women out in blog land are trying to encourage others who stay at home or would like to by showing the value in this choice that doesn't come with an easy to calculate price tag.

Happy New Year

2008-01-01T09:51:00.000-08:00

I hope everyone enjoyed thier holidays. Now it's time to settle in a bit and relax with few obligations on our calendars than in the last few months. The only thing we've got coming up is S.'s b-day. The kids already did their testing for their required grade level so they (and I) have slacked off on keeping up with doing something everyday. We've shifted to a more unschooling mode lately where they do things of interest to them for a good chuck of the day. I do still have them doing workbook pages but let them slide a little about doing them every day. (For those wondering how we've done this, we started back in June so we've already put in more than 100 days of "school".) Having a new baby in the house has really thrown off our schedules for longer than I had anticipated. This is not a huge deal since I know that they are all at or above grade level in most areas and they pick up on new stuff everyday through their play or our daily activities. i.e. They've been earning and saving money and all decided that they wanted to order some fun things from a homeschooling catalog we had lying around. They all practiced reading and budgeting skills pouring through the catalog to figure out what they could afford that looked/sounded interesting. M. and S. were also introduced to calculating with percentages so that they knew how much the shipping would cost. I just ordered their choices this morning and added some learning games that everyone can play which I think they'll enjoy while learning new things.

One activity we've been doing is Mad Libs. There are few things more fun for learning parts of speech than Mad Libs. The kids have really gotten a blast out of those lately. If you haven't done them before, give them a try (you can find some or similar forms like wacky webtales on-line). The key is to be as outragous as possible with your word choices. If asked for a verb don't say something boring like walking or talking, try bob sledding or prognosticating. Need a noun? How about sea cucumbers or kumquats? And they absolutely should be done with group participation.

I haven't made any resolutions for 2008 specifically. I'm still working on my weight. (After 5 kids, like that's a big surprise.) I still haven't finished the quilts that I showed back in Sep. so those are on the list of "to be finished sooner rather than later". I, also, have to add 2 more baby quilts to the list-one to be finished by the end of Feb., the other by the end of April. I'd like to add a few receiving blankets to the quilts, but those are easy and shouldn't take more than 10 min. each. The fabric for most of this was purchased at Jo-Ann's after Thanksgiving Day sale. I may have to add one or two things but I haven't had a chance to compare what I have to what I'll need yet. Along with those I want to try my hand at a smaller version of the strip twist quilt, this time in blues and white-on-whites for a wall hanging. I've just gotten swimsuit fabric for making myself a suit so that I can continue the kids' swimming lessons. Hancock had a great deal on this. ($3.50/yard and then this week it was further discounted to $1/yard so I bought more for making the next size up suits for the girls) Hancock also has a really great deal on the Janome Sew Mini ($40) which I got to teach the girls on. I've read good reviews for it so I'll let you know what I think once we have a chance to get some sewing time in.

It's time for me to get busy with other things. Take care all and have a great day.

Completely unrelated photo of kids and their cousin at the Persepolis ruins

50 things I'm thankful for...

2007-12-25T22:20:00.000-08:00

Ok, prompted by a post by Patty at Morning Ramble, here are 50 things I'm thankful for in no particular order.

1.My family and I are all healthy.

2.The gift of sight so that I might truly appreciate everything God has created.

3.The gift of hearing without which I wouldn't be able to enjoy the laugher of my kids.

4.Baby laughs each of our kids has had their own little baby laugh and now H. is finding his.

5.A wonderful husband who willingly helps out around the house and with the kids.

6.A good job for my husband that provides both a good income and flexibility.

7.Having finished my B.A.

8.Great bosses at dh's job that gave him increased flexibility to adjust his
schedule as needed to take care of the kids while I worked on my B.A.

9.The patience that I've gained over the years since I've become a mom.

10.Becoming a better mom now than I was at the beginning.

11.The ability and strength to follow my heart when it matters most.

12.Taking on the often challenging and rewarding work of homeschooing.

13.Having a husband and family that support the decision to homeschool.

14.My in-laws, despite cultural differences and occassional miscommunication, we get
along pretty well.

15.Finding good books that I can't seem to put down.

16.Passing on a love of reading to all of the kids.

17.Our new house which has just about everything we wanted but didn't think we would ever be able find or to afford.

18.Spring breezes.

19.Watching the waves.

20.Wonderful memories of summers spent with my grandparents.

21.My best friend, Monica

22.The chance to spend a year in Iran

23.The internet, which has really brought people so much closer.

24.All of the inspiring and educational blogs I've stumbled upon in the last year and a half.

25.TV and movies-Yes, there is some junk out there but there are also some very good things as well.

26.Netflix-I just love that I can rent movies so easily and now even watch them on the computer. (Can you tell I like movies?)

27.The willingness to try new things.

28.The messege of life long learning in Islam which says that humans should continue learning new things from the cradle to the grave.

29.Having a wealth of opportunities to follow the path of life long learning.

30.The women that open up their lives and homes through their blogs. Often I just lurk, but I'm so thankful for their willingness to share their knowledge and wisdom with others. They have proven to me time and again that there is so much we have in common and that we can learn from each other despite any differences.

31.The plethora of information and resources available to homeschoolers now.

32.That I was born in just the right time and place for me. I can't imagine how hard life was/is for women in previous generations or those living in very poor countries where the things we take for granted would be considered great luxuries.

33.Modern medicine which gave my niece the chance to hear with a cochlear implant.

34.The smell of brownies baking. (or just about any sweet for that matter)

35.Learning to let things go.

36.The lessons I've learned about accumulating too much stuff after moving 3 times in a year and a half. I'm getting much better now that I've seen how easily things add up.

37.God's influence in my life. I could never have imagined how my life has turned out so far.

38.Being a stay-at-home mom. Yes, there are tough days and evetually I'd like to get my Master's and start teaching at a college but I'm where I'm needed most right now and that what I do is important.

39.That marvelous, relaxing feeling of the sun's warmth on my skin

40.Peace found in quiet moments

41.The diversity inherent in our world

42.Cushy couches

43.The tension-relieving sounds of a rain storm.

44.Chocolate-in pretty much any shape, size or form!!!

45.All of the modern appliances we tend to take for granted. Try to imagine what life would be like without refridgerators, stoves/ovens, sewing machines or washing machines. Eek!

46.The experience I've gained from being a mom.

47.A great imagination.

48.Ice water.

49.Books that educate, entertain or both.

50.Warmth in the winter and air conditioning in the summer.

There's so much to be grateful for in life but these are just a few things to come to mind. Why don't you try coming up with your own list? If you do, leave me a comment. I'd love to see what others are thankful for.

Happenings

2007-12-21T22:20:00.001-08:00

I've been meaning to blog for the past week and I have several things on my mind to blog about but life has been busy lately and although I've been able to keep up with reading other people's blogs, I just haven't been able to post anything here. It seems that the only time I can get on-line is when I'm feeding the little guy and it's a bit difficult to type one handed.

On top of that we've had two celebrations this week. Wednesday was the second Eid (festival) of the year. It's called Eid al-Adha and it is the celebration of the end of hajj (the yearly pilgrimage to Mecca). It's not as big of a celebration as Eid al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan but still big enough. For comparison, celebration size-wise you could probably compare it to Easter in relationship to Christmas. Our second celebration was tonight. Iranian families get together on the longest night of the year (sort of like celebrating New Year's). So tonight we had Mohsen's relatives over for tea, fruit and sweets. It seems one of the main fruits of the evening is watermelon. This time last year there were people everywhere selling watermelons from their packed trucks. I wish I had taken pictures. I've never seen so many watermelons in winter before but, at least in Shiraz, they're everywhere this time of year. The picture above is a selection of some of the things I served this evening-zucchini bread, triple chocolate cookies and cream cheese snowcaps. I also had snickerdoodles and brownies for sweets and we had oranges, tangerines, bananas and watermelon for our fruits. Dh picked up some fresh corn while he was out today and roasted that in the wood stove while they were here. Tea is pretty much a given whenever you are hosting Iranian guests. I'm not a tea drinker so I made myself some hot chocolate to enjoy while they drank their tea.

Despite the rather varied assortment of sweets on our menu this evening, Iranians aren't really that much into sweets so the snowcap cookies turned out to be a good choice. I got the idea to make them from a picture on Quilting Chatter. They looked so yummy that I decided to look up the recipe. The recipes I found for them included either almond extract or lemon extract. Both of these contain alcohol which I won't use in my baking so I substituted orange zest and they turned out quite tasty. I made extra cookies because we have our Homeschoolers' Sewing/Needlework Day on Wednesday. Here's hoping that people actually show!

You'll have to forgive me ladies for not being more interesting tonight but it's (Egads!) almost 2 a.m. and I'm falling asleep at the keyboard. (How'd it get so late???) I promise I will make time soon to write about some things that have been on my mind lately that I'd really like to share. In the meantime, take care all and Merry Christmas to those that celebrate.

Pay It Forward

2007-12-11T09:05:00.000-08:00

I'm once again going to offer up a Pay It Forward opportunity. This one I found at Quilting Chatter. Just like before, be one of the first 3 people to comment and I'll send along something handmade. I'm not sure yet what it will be but I'm sure I can find plenty of inspiration in blogland. I can't promise when since right now demands on my schedule vary a great deal but I promise it will be less than 365 days from now. In exchange for you patience, I'll even try to accomodate any color preferences you might have. How's that? :)

In exchange, you promise to make a similar offer on your blog.

Feeling much better now

2007-12-11T07:54:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling much better now. I've learned a few things about myself, my dh and how technology is affecting social graces.

I only heard from one of the women and that was only after my dh called her dh to find out what had happened. I wasn't about to but he felt it necessary to take them to task for how they had made me feel. Her excuse was that she didn't know that that was the day and she had not gotten either of the two emails I had sent her. Now, I had told each and every person invited 2 weeks in advance, in person. I trusted that they were smart, capable women who could hold a date in their minds or mark it on their calendars without constant reminders. Apparently, I'm wrong.

It seems we've become so dependent on technology that we no longer exercise our memories as much as we should. Have you noticed that most dr.'s offices will now call and remind you a day or two in advance that you have an appointment? My library even e-mails me 3 days before our library books are due as a reminder complete with a list of everything that is due. That's in addition to the printed receipt that you receive when you check out. I don't think it was so very long ago that we were expected to remember such details of our lives on our own.

Technology is certainly changing our social mores and expectations in other ways as well. People get annoyed when told that dh and I don't regularly carry a cell phone everywhere we go. Dh and I share one cell phone of the pre-paid variety. I carry it when I'm out with the kids in case something happens (at his insistance) or when I'm out on a "free" morning in case he needs me. He'll carry it from time to time when he goes out, especially if he'll be out for awhile and going to a few different places but not always. If he hadn't programmed the number into our home phone, I wouldn't even know the number since I've rarely if ever called him on it. Just last week, a man ranted over the fact that my husband was "unreachable" and hadn't gotten into contact with him less than 24 hours after leaving a message with me and he did the ranting at me, much to my annoyance. It seems technology has made people rude in more ways than one.

On a decidedly lighter technological note, there is a great website that helps you feed the hungry while you exercise your brain. Go to http://www.freerice.com/ and test your vocabulary skills. For each correct answer, you win 10 grains of rice that are donated to the UN World Food Programme. How cool is that?!?

The Depths of Despair

2007-12-09T09:25:00.001-08:00

Ok, I'm not quite in the depths of despair but I'm incredibly disappointed at the moment.

What do you do when you extend a hand of friendship and get the cold shoulder in return? Two weeks ago I invited several women that I've known for a long time to come here today for a couple of hours of sewing/knitting/whatever craft and just hanging out. At least 6 enthusiastically agreed to come and had no problem with the day. It's now an hour and a half after we were supposed to have it and not one person showed up! :_( I was so looking forward to this and no one even bothered to call. For the last two years, it seems like I don't have any friends to talk to any more. I thought I had found a good way to start building friendships again but this is just too much. I worked so hard getting the house all nice and clean and setting up a nice assortment of tea and sweets and it was all pretty much for nothing. (Not that I'd complain about the house being clean.) (Oh, and the last sewing session I had set up for homeschoolers-only one mom showed up and she hadn't even brought anything to work on. It ended up just being a playdate to see if her son would be comfortable enough around my kids. This and the other mom not showing up at all just totally threw me off kilter so I probably wasn't as good of a hostess as I should have been. Not that I think I was rude or anything, we had a nice conversation and I did what I could to get her son warmed up to my kids. She even ended up staying the full hour and a half despite initial indications she'd only stay for a little while. But she is Iranian and she's related to many of the women that were supposed to come today so maybe she didn't like my hostessing abilities or I caused some slight offense that I'm not aware of.)

The picture above is sort of indicitive of my mood right now-rather grey and soggy. I don't know if anyone out there can understand how I'm feeling right now but I just had to get this out. Inspired by Patty at Morning Ramble, I intended to post a list of 50 things I'm thankful for but I'm just not up to it right now. I am grateful for a lot of things but lack of good friends isn't one of them. Maybe later.

Black Friday

2007-12-02T01:08:00.000-08:00

I know alot of people out in blogland don't even like to step out their doors on Black Friday but I love it. You see, I love to find good deals and usually I can find some pretty good ones on this day. So, I have a standing arrangement with dh that he gets to watch the kids while I shop in the morning. I don't normally like crowds and/or standing in line to check out but it really doesn't bother me on that day. Now, that being said, I'm not about to stand in line before the stores even open or for an hour or more inside the stores. No deal is worth that kind of time wasting. And the stores this year opened at ridiculous hours with the outlet malls opening at midnight. Sadly, one mother was arrested in the area because she left her 2 year old in the car while she shopped in the wee hours. The news reports said the little girl was taken out of the car at about 2:30 am. That's just insane. I take any nursing baby I have at the time with me when I shop but I would never risk my children's health or safety like that. No deal is worth that risk.

This year the deals weren't nearly as good as some years but I did get some bargains. I only spent money at 3 places this year-Jo-Ann's, Walmart and SuperTarget. I did go to two other stores but at one the line was too long and at the other I didn't like the style of the jeans I had come in for. The funny thing is that at Target, I only spent about $10 on non-grocery items, but, hey, I got pretty good parking on the grocery side of the store and I practically had the grocery aisles to myself. ;) I spent a bit more at Jo-Ann's than I probably should have but it was all things I would use at a much lower price than I would normally spend so I think it was justified. Walmart's only really good deal for us was skate shoes for the kids. No these are not necessary items but it seems that 75-80% of the kids we've seen lately have been cruising around on these and the kids have been asking for months to get some. I wasn't about to pay the $60 or more per pair that I've seen them for but Walmart had them for $20 so I considered that reasonable enough. And the kids love them. They've spent an hour or more most days since they got them skating around inside the garage or in the driveway. They're getting extra exercise and enjoying themselves so I consider it money well spent.

How did my colicky baby do? Amazingly, except for a diaper change and two feedings, he slept for most of the 5 hours we were out.

Our Turkey Day

2007-12-02T00:43:00.001-08:00

I just thought I'd share how our Thanksgiving Day was spent. The weather all morning was so warm that we spent a good chunk of the day outside. DH and the kids took care of some yard work including bagging or chopping up about 8 billion leaves. (the one big drawback of having so many trees) I spent part of it sitting in the sun going through the next day's sale papers to plan my day. We don't celebrate Thanksgiving here. It's not that we're not thankful for all that God has blessed us with; it's just that it doesn't feel right to give thanks by me working all day then stuffing ourselves silly. I'm also descended from Native Americans so that has played into my thinking about how the day is spent.

Growing up we did celebrate Thanksgiving but I think it was more because that's what society expects everyone to do. As an adult I've been blessed to have my DH, who didn't grow up with these traditions. It's led me to question the why of what we do rather than blindly continuing to do them because it's what's "expected". Now, in case, you're wondering, that's a two-way street where I've questions some of his traditions as well. Because if this we've truly become a blended family, taking what is good from each side and leaving out what no longer feels quite right and making something new for our kids. Now that the kids are older, we talked about the origins of Thanksgiving and included some history about both the pilgrims and the Native Americans. Since popular history is written by the victors, I want my kids to be able to dig a little deeper and try to see both sides of history, or at least at this age to understand that there is more than one view to consider.

It's important that we remember to be thankful every day for the blessings both big and small, whether it's a new job, house or baby or just the ability to spend 5 min. outside feeling the sun shine on your face and soaking in the beauty of the world around you. Even more importantly, we have to teach our kids to do the same.

The kids helping with the yard work.
Z. enjoying more time to practise her newfound jump rope skills.
The kids playing on the swings DH made for them.

Creating opportunities

2007-11-21T09:18:00.000-08:00

A while back someone in one of the homeschooling e-mail groups I belong to suggested that if you didn't see an activity you (or your children) were interested in you should be proactive and put something together yourself. So I've done just that.

You see, I used to get together at least once a week with my two best friends so that we could chat and kids could play together. Well, one friend moved back home to TX and the other has become a full-time teacher and so no longer has much time to get together between work and keeping a 6-person household running. I had thought about joining a quilting group but their meeting time falls during our dinner time. I decided a week or so ago that I was tired of having only kids or dh to talk to besides the occasional though long calls to my friend or mom. DH is great, it's just not the same as talking with other women.

I decided to take my que from our foremothers and set up a sewing/quilting/needlecraft group. Women used to get together every once in a while to work on handwork but also socialize and share their talents with others. However, because of people's schedules, I've now set up two groups. One is going to be just me and two other moms and their kids that will meet once a month (for now) during the day time. The other includes women from my masjid (almost all teachers at the school) that will meet once a month on a Sunday morning. I've decided to keep both groups very informal, bring what you want to work on, ask others for help as need, kids join in if they want to but don't have to. I'm doing it at my house so that we can keep it informal, give space for us to work, chat, snack and give the kids a safe place to play either inside or out.

You see, last year were got involved in a sewing class that met at a masjid, but the kids basically had to spend 2 hours in one room with little to do if they didn't want to knit or quilt. With 10-12 kids and 3 moms in a modest-size boardroom that got to be a bit much some days. This way the kids can quilt/knit/crochet/embroider, play board games, color, play with playdough, play in the yard or even watch a movie. It's their choice.

The first meeting with all of the kids will be next week, so I'll let you know how it goes.

The picture is a "Pay It Forward" potholder/kitchen quilt that I made for Patty at Morning Ramble.

My 1 month old

2007-11-16T19:29:00.000-08:00

The first image is a sight rarely seen in my house these days-a sleeping baby. I'm not sure how this happened but I somehow have managed to have kids that just don't sleep. M. was the only one to consistantly take naps-that is until S. arrived. Since then none of the kids have consistantly taken naps and H. is proving to be no exception to that rule. (The little mark on his nose and redness on his forehead are because he was snoozing in his favorite spot, on my right shoulder resting his head against the blanket I had there in case he spit up.)

The second picture comes alot closer to representing good sized chunks of my days, especially now that the little guy has developed colic. He's not a thumb sucker or a pacifier baby so we spend a good bit of time each day going through a cycle of him nursing to feel soothed, over eating, spitting up, crying, me walking him for 20 min. or more, only upright on my right shoulder will do, then start the cycle over again. The funny thing is that he switches the times that we do this. If he's grouchy during the day, he'll have a good night then he switch the next day. Of course, since I've identified this pattern, in true baby fashion, I'm sure he change everything tomorrow. :P S. was a colicky baby too and I spent the better part of her first three months going through my days with her in a front pack carrier. Now she's the least touchy feely kid in the bunch. She's a very reluctant hugger and is perfectly happy maintaining a bit of personal space. Go figure. Compare that with Z. who doesn't really get the idea of maintaining personal space especially where her baby brothers are concerned.

I can definately see that I'm a different mom than I was with the first two. I've learned a lot about myself over the years, gained a whole lot more patience and insight during that time and fortunately, I've learned a great deal from my mistakes and amassed a wealth of experience. Having 5 babies in 9 years will do that for you. :)

It's time to get some ironing done while the little guy is snoozing.

Official numbers

2007-10-30T12:05:00.000-07:00

I've posted before that I usually gain 36-44 lbs. when I'm pregnant. This time around I officially gained 40 on my scale. Right in the middle. So far I've lost exactly 20. Most of the non-baby portion of that was the easy to lose edema. How do I know this? Because my feet are skinny again. My feet and ankles are just about the only part of me that is skinny and it's so nice to have them back to their normal size even if the rest of me has a long way to go. So, exactly how far do I have to go? Well, I started out this pregnancy officially overweight (by a pound) and I'm not delusional enough to think that I'll ever get back to my thinnest but I'd be happy to get to 140, ecstatic if I could make it back down to 136. That adds up to anywhere from 35-39 lbs. to lose.

I was planning on joining a fitness center to help/encourage me to exercise more but don't know if that will work out in the near future since life will be so busy anyway. I have promised the kids to do this since if I join, I'd make it a family membership and pick up teaching the kids to swim where their swimming classes left off. A family membership would end up costing about $40 less than 8 30-40 min. swim classes for the three of them, so that's another big factor. Even making myself a swimsuit like I made for the girls would still end up costing less than the $40 savings and they could have much more pool time. DH has already said go for it, he has no problem watching H. and R. during "swim time" or all of them when I want to go workout. I'm just not sure how much energy I'll have to do it all. Maybe for now, I'll just exercise at home and sign up the fitness center in March or April. Either way, I really want to get back in shape. These last few years I've really let myself gain too much weight and it's just too easy to continue that trend into a very unhealthy situation.