Thursday, March 27, 2025

March Stitches

 

I finished the dress! This is 100% hand stitched. It is the first time that I have made a dress all by hand. It feels good to see what I can achieve.

This month I stitched the skirt pieces together, gathered and attached the floral contrast bit, hemmed the skirt, finished the seams and put in gathering stitches at the top edge of the skirt. I got to this point by the 18th of March.

Next I attached the bodice to the skirt with a backstitch and a running stitch for reinforcement. Then I finished the seam with a blanket stitch.
I sewed the zipper in the center back. 
I sewed the collar and facing on to the neckline. I understitched the collar to help everything lay smoothly.
  And that is it. The dress is done. All the seams are neatly finished. There is nothing left to do. It turned out great!

I, also, had to make a repair in my compression hose this month. I took a few minutes to stitch this hole closed.


"A stitch in time saves nine."
That's is a good quip. I hope you have had a good March and that your projects keep marching on to the finish line!

Sunday, March 23, 2025

To Everything A Season


 Do you need some sunshine today? We have had a cloudy day in the sky but these little packages of sunshine made up for the lack of real sunshine.

The red tips of the peonies are starting to unfurl! They look so promising. 

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

 To every thing there is a season, 
and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; 
a time to plant, 
and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; 
a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; 
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, 
and a time to gather stones together; 
a time to embrace, 
and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; 
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

 A time to rend, and a time to sew; 
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; 
a time of war, and a time of peace.



Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Chocolate Cookies With Peanut Butter Chips Or Chocolate Chips Recipe

 This recipe came from the back of a Reese's peanut butter chip bag. I added chocolate chips because chocolate. 😋 I have doubled the recipe quantities from the original and used a combination of butter and oil.

1 cup Butter, softened 
1/3 cup Oil
2 cups Sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. Vanilla Flavor 
2 cup Flour 
3/4 cup Cocoa Powder 
1 tsp. Baking Soda 
1/2 tsp. Salt
3 1/3 cup Peanut Butter Chips Or Chocolate Chips Or Combination 

Beat butter, oil, and sugar until well blended. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well. 
Add flour, cocoa, baking soda, and salt in a heap. Gently blend the heap of dry ingredients with one another (to distribute the baking soda, salt and cocoa amongst the flour) before mixing them into the butter mixture below. Stir until well combined. Stir in peanut butter or chocolate chips. 

Drop by rounded teaspoons onto ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake 8-9 minutes. Cool slightly; remove to wire rack. Cool completely.
Yeilds about 6 dozen cookies.


Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Meatballs Cooked In Sauce Recipe

Meatball Recipe 

1 lb. Ground Beef

1 lb. Ground Pork (or sausage)

3 TBS. Onion, Chopped

1/2 tsp. Salt

1/2 tsp. Pepper

1/4 c. Breadcrumbs 

1/4 c. Milk or Cream

1 Egg

Mix all ingredients together until well blended.

Form into balls about the size of a walnut.

Bake at 400°F. for 15 minutes on a sheet pan with shallow sides.

      ---OR---

Cook meatballs in sauce. This will add meat flavor to your sauce and dirty fewer pans.

Pour a layer of prepared spaghetti type sauce on the bottom of a large oven safe casserole dish that has a good lid. 

Place the meat balls in and then pour the rest of the sauce over top.

Cover with lid and bake at 350° for an hour. 

  --OR---

Simmer meatballs and sauce in a large pot with the lid ajar on the stovetop for half an hour or until meatballs are cooked through.





Thursday, March 6, 2025

I Spy With My Little Eye!

 


Poking through the frost

Bringing sunshine in their folds

Springs the equinox


I saw these this morning and they made me so happy! I had to write a haiku to celebrate. 

Here is an old post in which you can read about my excitement over daffodils back in 2015. I haven't changed in that regard.

Friday, February 28, 2025

Sewing Projects In February

I wanted to use this flower print for my daughter's newest dress. I left my fingers in the picture for scale.

I didn't have enough yardage to cut the entire dress. I decided to use this blue material for part of the skirt and make a tiered skirt.
After cutting out the pieces I marked the seam allowance in pencil. Since this is a hand sewing project I need the seam allowances marked.

I stitched most of the seams with a back stitch instead of a running stitch. I learned my lesson on using a running stitch on the pinafore last month. I had stitched all the seams with a running stitch on the pink pinafore. My daughter was wearing the pinafore not more than a couple hours before someone pulled on her skirt and burst the side seam. What a pain! (I fixed it straight away, but come on! Really?)

A running stitch might not be solely to blame. The thread that I used was some old mercerized cotton thread so it is not as strong as modern polyester thread.
Anyway, on this latest dress I used a polyester all purpose thread AND a backstitch. 

I finished most of the seams with a self enclosed seam.

Right about this stage in the dress project my son's coat zipper broke. So, I had to switch gears and replace a coat zipper. Sometimes it would not be worth my time to replace a zipper, but this is a nice coat and I happened to have the right size separating zipper. I also had a black or gray separating zipper that were long enough but I decided to use the red one because I thought neutral colors might be more likely to come in handy later.

First, I had to rip the old zipper out.

I basted and stitched the new zipper in place. This job was not fun and I was really happy when I finally finished. It took me 9 days.


I also took care of this little tear while I was at it 

While I was on the mindset to fix coats I repaired this hole.

My three year old has been begging me to fix this hole in the hood of his coat for a month. 
He had been standing in the vicinity a brush fire when a hot ember must have landed on his hood melting this hole.
Now he his happy!

Back to sewing on the dress.

I have finished the sleeves and the base of the bodice. I am working on the skirt now. Hopefully, in March I can finish the skirt, install the zipper, add the collar, and do the hem. Check back in March to see far I get!




Tuesday, February 25, 2025

A Story By Eddie Ogan: The Rich Family In Our Church




I am so inspired by this story! It is a story about sacrifice, gratitude, and finding joy. The way she tells it makes it exciting. She draws you in and makes one feel invested in their goal in a way that makes one cheer them on.

The Rich Family In Our Church 

By Eddie Ogan

I'll never forget Easter 1946. I was 14, my little sister Ocy 12, and my older sister Darlene 16. We lived at home with our mother, and the four of us knew what it was like to do without many things. My dad had died five years before, leaving Mom with seven school kids to raise and no money. By 1946, my older sisters were married, and my brothers had left home.

 A month before Easter, the pastor of our church announced that a special Easter offering would be taken to help a poor family. He asked everyone to save and give sacrificially. When we got home, we talked about what we could do. We decided to buy 50 pounds of potatoes and live on them for a month. This would allow us to save $20 of our grocery money for the offering. Then we thought that if we kept our electric lights turned out as much as possible and didn't listen to the radio, we'd save money on that month's electric bill. Darlene got as many house and yard cleaning jobs as possible, and both of us baby sat for everyone we could. For 15 cents, we could buy enough cotton loops to make three potholders to sell for $1. We made $20 on potholders.

 That month was one of the best of our lives. Every day we counted the money to see how much we had saved. At night we'd sit in the dark and talk about how the poor family was going to enjoy having the money the church would give them. We had about 80 people in our church, so we figured that whatever amount of money we had to give, the offering would surely be 20 times that much. After all, every Sunday the Pastor had reminded everyone to save for the sacrificial offering.

 The day before Easter, Ocy and I walked to the grocery store and got the manager to give us three crisp $20 bills and one $10 bill for all our change. We ran all the way home to show Mom and Darlene. We had never had so much money before. That night we were so excited we could hardly sleep. We didn't care that we wouldn't have new clothes for Easter; we had $70 for the sacrificial offering. We could hardly wait to get to church! On Sunday morning, rain was pouring. We didn't own an umbrella, and the church was over a mile from our home, but it didn't seem to matter how wet we got. Darlene had cardboard in her shoes to fill the holes. The cardboard came apart, and her feet got wet, but we sat in church proudly, despite how we looked. I heard some teenagers talking about the Smith girls having on their old dresses. I looked at them in their new clothes, and I felt so rich.

 When the sacrificial offering was taken, we were sitting on the second row from the front. Mom put in the $10 bill, and each of us girls put in a $20. As we walked home after church, we sang all the way. At lunch, Mom had a surprise for us. She had bought a dozen eggs, and we had boiled Easter eggs with our fried potatoes!

 Late that afternoon the minister drove up in his car. Mom went to the door, talked with him for a moment, and then came back with an envelope in her hand. We asked what it was, but she didn't say a word. She opened the envelope and out fell a bunch of money. There were three crisp $20 bills, one $10 bill, and seventeen $1 bills. Mom put the money back in the envelope. We didn't talk, but instead, just sat and stared at the floor. We had gone from feeling like millionaires to feeling like poor white trash.

 We kids had had such a happy life that we felt sorry for anyone who didn't have our mom and dad for parents and a house full of brothers and sisters and other kids visiting constantly. We thought it was fun to share silverware and see whether we got the fork or the spoon that night. We had two knives which we passed around to whoever needed them. I knew we didn't have a lot of things that other people had, but I'd never thought we were poor. That Easter Day I found out we were poor. The minister had brought us the money for the poor family, so we must be poor.

 I didn't like being poor. I looked at my dress and worn-out shoes and felt so ashamed that I didn't want to go back to church. Everyone there probably already knew we were poor! I thought about school. I was in the ninth grade and at the top of my class of over 100 students. I wondered if the kids at school knew we were poor. I decided I could quit school since I had finished the eighth grade. That was all the law required at that time.

 We sat in silence for a long time. Then it got dark, and we went to bed. All that week, we girls went to school and came home, and no one talked much. Finally on Saturday, Mom asked us what we wanted to do with the money. What did poor people do with money? We didn't know. We'd never known we were poor.

 We didn't want to go to church on Sunday, but Mom said we had to. Although it was a sunny day, we didn't talk on the way. Mom started to sing, but no one joined in and she only sang one verse. At church we had a missionary speaker. He talked about how churches in Africa made buildings out of sun-dried bricks, but they need money to buy roofs. He said $100 would put a roof on a church. The minister said, "Can't we all sacrifice to help these poor people?"

 We looked at each other and smiled for the first time in a week. Mom reached into her purse and pulled out the envelope. She passed it to Darlene. Darlene gave it to me, and I handed it to Ocy. Ocy put it in the offering plate. When the offering was counted, the minister announced that it was a little over $100. The missionary was excited. He hadn't expected such a large offering from our small church. He said, "You must have some rich people in this church."

 Suddenly it struck us! We had given $87 of that "little over $100." We were the rich family in the church! Hadn't the missionary said so? Deep down, I knew that we were actually a rich family.


Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Moon Setting And Sun Rising

 

Last week the moon was full. One morning I saw the moon setting it looked so amazing. The picture doesn't even come close to showing how pretty it was. 

At the same time the sun was beginning to rise.

It was a memorable experience. On one side of road to the western horizon the moon was setting and on the other side of the road to the eastern horizon the sun was coming up.

I imagine that the timing of the sunrise this time of year made this possible. I don't think it happens every full moon.

I like to use the site Date and Time to look up sunrise and sunset times. They have some other handy tools and astronomical information on that site.

Psalms 19:1
The heavens declare the glory of God;
 and the firmament sheweth 
his handywork.