Early Fall Ramblings

I still can't quite believe summer is over and we're well into fall. How does time seem to fly by faster and faster with each passing year? I can honestly say I feel like we packed about as much as we possibly could into summer, though, so I don't have any regrets. Just trying to keep up, though, kept us hopping. I think we both lost weight over the summer, because we just didn't have time to eat a regular meal on some of those busy days. I love looking back at the photos, and thinking about the treasured family time we had.

And it seems we're just as busy now that it's fall!

How can you not smile with so many babies around. This photo was taken after our family pics a few weeks ago, so the kiddos were tired out, but still as sweet as can be. We can't get enough of them. Arms full of babies... what can be better?

The surroundings up at the cabin are gorgeous and fall-ish. We did our annual maple leaf cuttings, and brought them home to decorate with. (By "we", I mean Bob, with me pointing out just the perfect colored leaves to cut).

There is always wildlife to be seen at or around the cabin. This porcupine was just a few feet away from us, and didn't seem to mind that we were there at all.

Lots of family dinners. This picture is totally representative of what they're like. Babies everywhere in high chairs and walkers and laps.

What you don't see in the photo above, is to the left of that picture is the kid's table, which Grandpa was at, helping to get food down the older grands.

We had the perfect amount of apple-pears this year. There was a bit of a freeze in the late spring, which thinned out the harvest quite a bit. Towards the end, we just picked all of the remaining apple-pears and boxed them. We delivered them all around, and ate plenty!

A perfect specimen. (That goes for the hand holding the apple-pear as well as the apple-pear itself)

Of course pumpkin harvesting had to happen so that we could set the pumpkins out on the porch to decorate. The grand kids helped harvest the small crop that we had this year.

Such perfect times. I can't imagine not having photos to remind us of the sweet, happy moments in life. They have a way of slipping away from the forefront of our memory if we don't have the photos to look back on. Or is that just me?

Grands #3, #4, #5 and Christmas DeJunking

I know I've said it before, but I'll say it here again: I love this time of year. I do love the holidays and all that go with them. And I hate to wish them away, but by the time January 1 rolls around, I am more than ready to get all the Christmas decor put away and my house back to a nice fresh, blank slate. It makes me feel like I can take a big deep breath for the first time in a couple of months. Again, don't for a minute think I dislike the holidays. I LOVE Christmas and everything that goes with the celebrating of it. But, I also love January.

Having said that, I made up my mind that this would be the year that I truly would purge old decorations as I was putting things away. My holiday closet was getting far too crowded and hard to maneuver. There are shelves built in it, but way too much to fit on those shelves. And so much of the boxes are full of things that I haven't used in years. I bet I decorate with about a tenth of what is in that closet. Ugh. Something has to go.

And part of the closet goes back under the stairs. We have Christmas trees of all shapes and sizes stowed away in there, and I haven't used or looked at them literally in years. I think it's time I roll up my sleeves and empty that cavern. It's kindof frightening, honestly, but someone has to do it. It seems like it's some sort of a combustible fire hazard.

Every year I say I'll go through everything, and every year I end up just stuffing the same things back into boxes and stacking and positioning everything just so, so that it all fits (somewhat), and then closing the door until the next time. Not this year. No sir. And this quest of mine happens to coincide with some really great "grandma-nesting" time, so I really am slowly accomplishing this Herculean task. As I take boxes out to put things back in to, I look through the contents of the box, and set things aside that I haven't used in years. When I'm done, we'll have a Christmas Decor Giveaway with my kids. They can take whatever suits their fancy from the piles, and then I'll give the rest to Deseret Industries. Sounds like a perfect plan. Trouble is, as I was beginning to go through the painstakingly long process of going through each box (I'm not going to divulge here how many boxes I actually have, but it's wayyyyyy too many), Grandbaby #3 was getting ready to come! So of course I left my boxes and bags in the basement, and readied the house for the older, two-year-old sibling of Grandbaby #3, so that he could have a sleepover with Grandma and Grandpa whilst his baby sister was coming in to the world. And in case you haven't had the experience yet, I will tell you that when you're watching grandbabies, that's pretty much all you want to do. No work gets done, and that's as it should be. In fact, I didn't even think once about the mounds of Christmas decor strewn about my basement as I happily played with Grand #1

And then Grandbaby #3 made her arrival, and it became even more apparent that nothing else in the world mattered. Just our three beautiful grands. It doesn't get much better than that.

New Year's Day came and went with a slight celebration. We were happy and tired, and just curled up on the couch together with one of my other daughters, her husband and her sweet baby (Grand #2). We shuffled around in our sweats and slippers and enjoyed every lazy bit of it, holding and playing with Grand #2.

The next day, after our house guests had gone, my grandma-nesting kicked in again, and I carved out an hour to get down there and do just a bit more. But then Grand #1 and Grand #3 were calling to us, and we went over and made a visit and soaked up their sweetness.

That night I promised myself that I would work on my Christmas decor project the next day, and would accomplish great things with the heap. And I did get a couple of hours in before we zipped off to the temple for some much needed peace, perspective and renewal. When we got out of the temple, we got word from our son that his wife was in labor with their twins who were expected on February 18. We zipped down to the hospital, and a few minutes after we got there, two beautiful, perfect, healthy baby girls were born! Talk about our cup running over! We were (and are) so full of joy that we can hardly contain it. Grand #4 and Grand#5! And we still have two more to come, in February and March. We go through the motions of our days with such a big smile in our hearts and on our faces!

Yesterday, as we made visits to the various families, we thought how lucky we are to be able to see and visit all 5 (what?????) grandbabies in one day. They all live pretty close by, so we can get our baby fixes often.

And now back to reality. The basement. Today will be another day where I can get only a couple of hours in, but I'll plug away at it -- all the while watching my Christmas Decor Giveaway pile growing bigger and taller, and enjoying the luxurious space (one can only hope) of my holiday closet. And I'll have the 5 (+2) best reasons to have a huge smile while doing it. Wish me luck!

Quiet Book Group

What do you do as a group craft when you have two daughters and two daughters-in-law who are pregnant all at the same time? Quiet book pages! We thought it would be fun for each of us to work on a few different quiet book pages so that we could share them with each other and at the end, we'd all have a fun quiet book for the little kiddos in the family to play with.

I made a quiet book when my own kids were little. We had a quiet book group way back then, with 10 people in it. So, we each made one quiet book page (10 times over), and then passed them out to each other. It was so much fun to have different pages in my book that were made by my friends in Huntington Beach. I just wish they had written their names somewhere on the page, because this many years later, I have no idea who made which page.

Fast forward to the present day. I still have that quiet book (although some of the pages have seen their day). I went through and kept the pages that were still in good shape, and added the ones from our new family quiet book group, and it is bursting with fun pages. My, there are four talented girls in my family! They worked so hard on the pages they handed out to each of us! And they are so darling! I can't wait to sit my grandbabies on my lap and go through the quiet book, page by page.

It was fun to be together last weekend to work on the quiet books. You should have heard those sewing machines whirring! We're hoping to have few more 'quiet book page parties' to continue to add to the books. How cute are these four girls in the photo below???? The one in the back, with the dark top on, is due on January 1, the one on the left is due on February 8, and the one on the right is due with twins on February 18. And the second one from the right is due on April 8. They are all as cute as can be, and we are so anxious to meet these five new grandbabies!

The nice thing about this type of quiet book is that after we sewed the pages together, we (meaning Bob) punched grommets through the pages, so that they can all slip onto rings, and the book can be added to at any time.

We couldn't have done it without Bob. Some of the grommets had to go through many layers of fabric and felt, and he muscled through his part of the pages. Such a good guy!

And here are the pages that we each ended up with...

Can't wait for the next round!

Quick and Snuggly Baby Blanket

We make a lot of baby blankets around here. We love to visit the new mommies in the neighborhood and give them a little blanket for their newborn. It's a wonderful way to get to visit with people, and best of all... we get to see and hold the new wee ones!

I've gone through a few different versions of baby blankets, and I think I've found the one that we'll stick with. It's cozy, soft and simple. And it's warm, but still easy to fit into a diaper bag. Sometimes those big puffy quilts are just a little hard to pack around with you.

Basically, to make these baby blankets, you will start with a yard and a half of a cute printed cotton fabric. And also a yard and a half of a coordinating minky fabric. Wash and dry both pieces of fabric first. Very important to pre-shrink so that you don't have any of that happening afterwards. The two pieces of fabric will likely shrink at different rates, so that would make for a mess of a blanket if you didn't pre-shrink. After the fabric has been washed and dried, square up the cotton fabric so that the edges are all nice and straight and square. Lay the cotton fabric on a large flat surface, with the right side (print-side) facing down. Take your piece of minky, and lay it on top of the cotton fabric, right side up. Try to get one of the straight, factory edges of the minky lined up with at least one of the edges of the cotton fabric. Because of the usual width of the minky fabrics, you will have a good amount of excess. Smooth the wrinkles in the minky, so it's all nice and smooth. Then, cut the minky 1-1/2" smaller than the cotton fabric, on all sides.

After you've trimmed your minky to size, you will fold all of your cotton edges over the minky.

I fold it once, about 3/4 of the way to the minky, and then fold it once more, over the edge and onto the minky. And then pin. And I mean pin. Pin often, like every 2 inches. I know this sounds like overkill, but minky moves and slips a lot. If you don't pin often, you may have some slippage, and your blanket could be a bit skeewampus (if I can borrow that technical term from my dad).

When it comes to the corners, fold up the corner edge into a little triangle, and then fold up the rest of the edging, just as you've been doing, and continue on down the side of the quilt. Hard to explain, but look at the photo below for an idea of what I'm talking about. And don't forget to pin the corner down well.

And now for the sewing. Use a straight stitch and sew all the way around the fabric, fairly close to the edge of the pinned fabric. Take your time, and keep an eye on your presser foot so that your edge is about the same all the way around.

And voila! You are done. Easy as pie. In fact, I like to make several at a time, assembly-line fashion. It doesn't take that much longer to make more than one.

The possibilities are endless. I always find my pieces of cotton fabric first, and then find a minky to match. There are so many darling fabrics out there... makes it hard to choose!

I like to keep a stack of boys and girls quilts at the ready, so that whenever we have a minute to make a visit, I've got a blanket to take.