Gifts We Appreciate in 2020

In 2018 the Shankster received a gift from our best friend in Holland.  She is always sending us thoughtful cute gifts. But this is another gift that we never thought we would be so thankful for in 2020!  If you noticed all the gifts were separated or packed in napkins.  Very cute, festive and funny(100 dollar bills) napkins.

I had all but forgotten about these until rummaging thru the closet to find who knows what, only to find these gems.  NAPKINS!  Who would have thought you go thru as many napkins or paper towels as you do in a day?  Evidently we are nuts for paper towels and napkins.

SO a big thank you to G & L for the thoughtful gifts you sent even tho you had no idea we would be using the napkins instead of keeping them for souvenirs.  ( I did keep a few for that reason)

And for some reason I am hoping I don't have to use the 100 dollar bill napkins...Even if they are just Napkins, it still seems wrong to me to wipe ketchup from my mouth on a 100 dollar bill...and so I couldn't imagine wiping anything else with it! 😋  Have a wonderful day.

And Just like that...CoronaVirus 2020

Not much else can be said, its here and we have been staying in for at least 3 weeks maybe a bit more. Homie isn't at all happy as it was a good winter for golfing, not a lot of snow and that is how he loves it in the winter, he can golf to his hearts content.  But this put a halt to that, I mean he could have went, but I said no, he is 93 and with the Shankster's health the last few years, and my asthma, I figured the best thing was for him to stay put. It's tough being the parent to a parent, but here we are.

I am happy that I went to at least one yard sale last summer and remembered this little package in the closet, as we couldnt have survived without some paper plates or napkins! This was one of the best $2 I ever spent!

We will be enjoying our meals in isolation with the most festive of plates and napkins for a while!

2020

Its been a few years since I have posted.  I thought about just picking up where I left off, then thought to try and sum up what has happened in these few years (sort of a reason as to why no posting).  I then thought why not just start posting as if time hadn't gotten away from me as no one reads these posts but me?

So I think I will just start with a bit of catchup from the last few years, if for no other reason than for myself to remember.

2016 was a bad year the the Shankster. Started off with him getting knee surgery, his second on that knee, and the pain never seemed to go away. For months he was miserable constantly requesting some answers and feeling as he had an infection, until a random dentist visit required an antibiotic to which he felt some instant relief to the leg...not the tooth.  To which his primary then decided to try another antibiotic for a possible infection in his leg, and bam! go figure... it worked! But that good feeling was short lived as I think the stress of that year caught up to him and he started 2017 with severe stomach pain.  We spent the entirety of that year getting tested and tested and going to specialists and trying different drugs, creams and getting procedures done only to get told by 2 different doctors to not come back as they couldn't do anything for him. (Yes I am serious)

We were still in the thick of procedures and new doctors in 2018, when Homie suddenly had a stroke. It was a bad one that left him unable to speak or write. After a couple days in the hospital, the Shankster and I brought him home and started working on getting him back to par..(golf term as he is an avid golfer!)  

We were told the VA would have him come in and get help with speech. We never got a call from them until 4 weeks after the stroke.  By then I had worked with him to get his writing back and his speech. I sang with him each day several times a day as even tho he couldn't talk, he could sing. He got his speech back fairly quick, but still had trouble getting an entire sentence out.  The Shankster took a golf ball with a cup in the corner of the room and gave Homie his putter, and told him to just try it a few times.  It didn't take him but 2 weeks to go back to the golf course.  

The Shankster then spent the rest of that year and 2019 trying to get hold of whatever is going on with his body.  He had lost 40 pounds in 2017 as he was only eating apple sauce, Boiled apples, yes I said boiled apples and yes it is as nasty tasting as it sounds but hey he had to eat SOMETHING, and for some reason this tasted good to him or at the least it made him feel like he was eating something different... he would also eat salad with no dressing, eggs, occasional oatmeal and cereal. He used Almond milk only, but was still miserable with pain and incredible heartburn and could not keep anything down.  I bet in 2017 alone he was at the ER about 6 times feeling as tho he was having a heart attack.  He was put on 3 different medications just for his stomach and was taking each 3 times a day.

 I started doing some research to figure out what the doctors couldn't, even with all the testing, MRI's and CT Scans, as no one needs to suffer like this each and every day, when they are hardly eating anything, and we found he was allergic to wheat, and iceberg lettuce for starters. (and saying "allergic" may not be the correct word, but we found he has a major intolerance for certain foods/oils/ingredients) So I started experimenting different foods veggies etc..trying to see what he could and couldn't handle. I found that he could eat Swiss Chard, Romaine lettuce & spinach, without pain or heartburn.  So I started growing our own swiss chard because man it is expensive, and that is what he uses in his salad that he eats every day. He doesn't eat meat but occasionally has wild caught salmon. Since a diabetic I still have to watch his intake of sugar, and we figured white sugar was his enemy, but he can do brown sugar with no spikes.  OH and the Swiss Chard also seems to aid in keeping his blood sugar low.  He eats the stems and all.  I think the stems are the part that helps with lowering of blood sugar.  He only uses brown sugar on cereal when he has it.   I am happy to say he had gotten off his diabetic medication in 2017, probably mostly because he lost all the weight but he didn't eat anything either!  But he is now off all stomach medication also!  We are hoping and praying 2020 will be better.

That isn't all that has happened since I last posted, but I think it was enough to keep me busy with too much on my mind where I couldn't sit and write.  So I will leave it there, and ponder what will be my next post of 2020? 
But I will leave with a couple of jokes told to me by my grandsons.

What kind of dinosaur loves to sleep?
A Stega-snore-us

Knock Knock
Who's there?
Cow says
Cow says who?
No silly, a Cow says Mooo!

Thanks again for stopping by!

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

 The Bad news is we had to run to the ER again for the Shankster tonite..only the millionth time this year, so no big deal....

The Good news is its 8pm and we are home and the chances of us having to go again this year are slim, so last time to ER this year....... WHOOPEE!

The Ugly?

Who knows what 2017 will bring, after this crappy year we are hanging on to our bootstraps!


Come on 2017...bring it on!!!

 

Jeans, Jeans, Everything Jeans!

I love Jeans.

 I say, if I can, I would like to leave this world in a Sweatshirt and Jeans. My favorite clothes.

So its a fact, I have a lot of Jeans scraps. I hate to throw things out and would have probably become a Hoarder of the worst kind if not having to come to my parents home to care for my mom. I really had to downsize....and that is saying it mildly. At around the same time, I also came to a realization when I helped clean after my Aunt Lissie had passed, and found that it really isn't that necessary to keep all the butter containers you use just because you think you may need them in the future...and I was following that path...so immediately went home and disposed of all butter containers... :)

With that being said, when I sew, I do think its ok to keep some scraps you may use in a quilt or another project, as long as you can keep it contained or at a minimum or just organized.  So when I saw how many jeans my dear hubby would go thru, I thought wow, what if I could use these in some other ways somehow.. I mean there are just so many yard sales one person can have and clothes just never seem to sell that good at a yard sale for me.

I first made a jean quilt for my first grandson of jeans from my maternity jeans, my sons jeans and my dads jeans.

 I realized then I would love to make my own Jean quilt for my bed some day so that is when I started keeping any jeans we were done wearing and cutting them into quilting squares.  (After several years of this I finally have enough squares!!)

 But what do you do with the other parts of the jeans? I started keeping the zippers in one pile, and the waist bands in a pile and so on...

 


When I cut the jeans up I find that I want to make use of every possible piece or I feel I am just wasting the jeans when I could easily have donated them to someplace where another could use them . So by keeping those other parts, I have found ways to use them, like in the touchy feely book I made for Cayson, the zipper so he could learn to use it and the pockets for holding things he can feel or unsnap.



My mother used to braid area rugs or baskets with fabric scraps so I thought why not use some of the seams of the jeans or just other scraps that was left for this? So I have a pile of these also.  Here is what I have so far.

I decided to make an area rug of the waistbands.  At first I went for just a small size but now I think I will keep going with it because I love it. I also think it would also make a good cover for an ottoman. So many choices but I love how it turned out so far and I like keeping in the tags when possible.

 I also recently made a book cover for my Tablet.









I am not a cheap person but I just don't have the means to buy what is out there for a cover, so I just recycled a used notebook cover to glue the jean fabric onto.  I have lots of buttons for embellishments, and just got silly with it for fun. I like it, & its useful and I placed a large pocket in the back to hold a cloth to clean the screen or to put my hand in it to hold it up while playing a game (which I found useful as I play games at nite when I cannot sleep) I placed larger buttons on the front at top and bottom to hold a band to keep it closed if I ever take it out of the house on a trip.  (which I have not done since 2002, but Hey... ya never know)

So Jeans are a useful fabric in so many ways, if you are wondering what you can do with old jeans, and you like to sew or be creative in any way, get busy with jeans.

Once again, Thanks for stopping by!!

Olaf Blanket

It seems like my posts are becoming farther and farther apart.  I started the year thinking I was not going to slack off, and I got a good run for a few posts, but now it seems like months have passed since my last post. And I am not sure what happened.

Ok with that off my chest I wanted to show off the 2 blankets I sewed for 2 of my grandsons in 2014.  It seemed like Olaf from the Frozen movie was their choice of themes for Christmas that year and wanted all things Olaf.  So DIL was sure I could provide a couple of Olaf blankets. I don't know why she thought I was such a miracle worker.  But it became my mission to find Olaf Fabric. It was hard finding Olaf material that was worthy of a couple of winter blankets.  Most I found was either cotton, or flannel which was good for Pillow cases...

but I had my heart set on fleece. I had all but given up and was wondering around a supermarket of all places and there it was a OLAF No~Sew Blanket.  So very inexpensive also, I only paid $8.99 for each, I had to get 2. These boys are in a room together and close to age so for things such as this I usually get the same design. I alter each in some way so they each know which blanket is their own. I Loved this find as I always double layer my blankets, it makes them more warm and soft, and the boys seem to love that. So these No Sew Blankets are just the ticket as it takes all the decision making of what to use as a back layer out!  Yes I can be a lil bit lazy....Or you could say I just try to make it as easy as possible.

I usually try to make my own binding so that was all I needed to do and to then sew the front and back together. I have lots of scraps and lots of jean scraps. I decided to make my binding out of jeans. I had blue jeans for one boy and black jeans for the other this way they know which blanket is their blanket.

There are tutorials all over the internet so I won't go into that here but its really simple once you get the hang of it or find a simple tutorial.  You can easily buy binding, and I have but I like to make blankets and quilts and since this was a no sew blanket I wanted to make it my own as much as possible.

I think they came out fine.  The white lines on the side where you are supposed to "cut" and tie since it was supposed to be a No Sew Blanket, I think worked out ok, boys don't know that, just looks like its a design element. :)

~~Thanks for stopping by~~
 

Felt Board Project

Once again I will say here that I am not a professional when it comes to sewing...but I do like to sew and I do like a challenge.....sometimes.

  DIL gave me a good challenge as she is homeschooling 3 boys, with another to start soon, and finds it hard some days to find an activity to keep one occupied while busy teaching the other since they are at different levels. She thought if I could make a felt board with some story pieces that it would be fun for the kids and also help them with creativity, or at the least keep one busy while other is learning Math!! 

Ok I thought, Sure how hard can this be?  I went on a mission for Felt pieces and something for a board, and found there are lots to choose from in this department! I had all kinds of ideas for the board itself , cardboard, frames, artist canvas and the list goes on, I think this is your personal preference or just what you are willing to pay.  I wasn't up to paying a lot, since I figured the felt may run me a bit. So I found in the Craft department just a sturdy board in the poster board area that was thick enough and large enough and was just 50 cents!  


Its been a long time since I have purchased felt and I was surprised how many different cool colors there are. I mean there was even a tye dye color, I loved it, I think I got that one just for me....I had some large sheets of white felt that was given to me, so I used white Felt for the front, and used a Flannel Sesame Street for the backing.  The Flannel was leftover that I used for making the boys a blanket once so used this just for fun for the back,  they like it and it didn't cost anything.  I find if you can use something you have that works well, go for it.

I didn't spend much money on this, as I had the scissors, glue, Flannel pieces, spare buttons, White Felt, so all I had to buy was the colored felt and board!
Each day I worked on this, I got another call from DIL with new ideas. Boys loved Mr. Potato Head so she wondered if I could incorporate that somehow? Sure why not? I mean I am already out of my realm here so keep those ideas coming...which she did, she then thought since the boys are so much into Super Heroes could I also find a way to do that? SURE...I said.

What had I gotten myself into?

I drew a Mr. Potato Head from looking at pictures on the internet, this would help me cut the "Potato Head" part from the felt. It also helped me in the designing of the Super Hero Costumes and other dress up ideas that were in my head. 

I actually had a lot of fun with this. I made several Potato Head Bodies, and then eyes, lips, arms, ears and mustaches then you have to have the accessories, like the shoes, glasses, hats, crowns, or whatever you think of.  The Super Hero part was also fun, I just knew after buying the boys Spiderman, Superman and Batman costumes and toys what they looked like and just went from there. Even a couple of Swords.  No Pressure, You just have to figure it all on a Potato Head Body!

I also made a House, Trees with Apples,Clouds, Grass, Sun and Birds! 
And I made a lady Potato Head, with a skirt,  purse and earrings on her ears!!! (boys thought she was funny)

There is also a lot of help on the internet, I found out after, that I was not the first one making their own Felt Board with Story Pieces! So if you are looking for an inexpensive way to keep toddlers entertained and also help with creativity Create your own Felt Board!  Its easy and fun.