It's been a month already.....

since I last posted. The holidays are over with, the older kids are back in school and its just me and Emily at home again. My studio list is darn near two pages long with projects (that's single line entries too thank you very much), I need to go fabric shopping and I am craving a flea market day like you wouldn't believe. I really want to overhaul my website, add more content, get some of my patterns ready in e-format that can be instantly downloaded. I think I will work on the layout and color scheme and post some examples and get y'all to vote on them. The current site looks like this blog. I want to do something with a classic background that is punctuated, and routinely updated, with hip color schemes. Hopefully I'll have some options up soon for your perusal.

loves,
Shannon

Whew!! Is it Christmas yet?

I am sooooo ready for Christmas to get here already. I'm scrambling to get everything done, the cards are just going in the mail today, the packages to Grandma won't go out until just a few days before Christmas because her photo flip book I ordered won't be done until the 18th! To the left is the photo collage I used for our Christmas card this year, just a bunch of fun, mostly silly pictures of everybody throughout the year. Hannah and Emily are sporting their old fashioned chenille slip dresses I made for them. We were getting ready to make a trip up to Belton and visit Bubba at college. Belton is not too far from Fort Hood, there is a beautiful lake up there and every year they have one of the largest trail of lights in the country. Nature in Lights is 800 acres and miles of trail of nothing but light displays. We waited in line 2 1/2 hrs just to get our car in the gate, then spent another hour driving through. It is worth every minute to see the amazing displays, most are animated and 2 stories tall. It is an awesome sight! I will be busy as a bee this next week finishing up all my sewing projects---I'm clearing out my stash making some CUTE stuff for the girls. I'll post some pics when I get them done.

Home for the Holidays-- Part 2

Yesterday was hectic beyond all belief. My man had to go to work, get his crew set up and going, leave work to attend a meeting with me at lunch time, drive the 50 miles back out to the job, wrap up his crew early and drive the 50 miles back to our house in time to shower/dress for the banquet. The attire for the men was to be dark pants and a white shirt. My man has nothing white, he wears all dark colors, and he said he wasn't worried about it, he would wear what he had. I tried to lay everything out for him: his dressy jeans (there are no slacks hanging in his closet), a nice gray pullover and his black Doc Martens. He calls me at 4:00 pm to tell me to go ahead and bring his clothes, razor, aftershave, etc to the CHURCH with me---he's running late and would need to get ready there. <<<PAUSE>>> Why can this man never be on time for anything? Why does EVERYTHING run on construction worker time? Doesn't he know how %$^#$## embarrassing it is for me to always be late, unprepared and just generally discombobulated? Oh, I forgot---he lives in Phil World where there is no time, he is always sophisticatedly dressed and dusted with a fine finish of sawdust. <<<START>>> I was not happy with the idea of personal hygiene being conducted in the church bathroom. As I have come to realize though, there was simply nothing I could do but accept the fact that I married a man who marches to the beat of a drummer I would like to kill. Butterflies raced through my stomach as the MC called us all to our tables and announced that the serving was to begin and my man was still no where to be found. Perhaps he had fallen into a commode in the men's room or some horrible shaving accident had befallen him. The urge was too much for me to resist, I began to whine to the other women at my table----, "I can't believe he is doing this to me!", "why isn't he here yet?", "look, all the other husbands are dutifully in place, he just has to make things difficult!!!!" My eyes caught a shimmer of purple coming from my left--well, shut my mouth and call me Betsy, it was my man in a full tux with tails sporting a glittering purple vest! Good Lord in Heaven the fairy godmother has been waving that wand around. Tears welled in my eyes as I thought about the enormous sacrifice he must have made in his day to pull this off, that he loved me so much that he would don the last thing in the world he would ever want to wear. He approached our table, "Good evening ladies," he said with his brilliant green eyes locked on mine, "what may I bring you to drink?" I never felt more like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty or Snow White or any other non-Disney princess than at that moment. I savored the night and found myself looking at him as I haven't in years. After the evening came to a close I asked him why he had gone to such lengths (and endured the ribbing from all the other men at church!), he told me that his sugar plum fairy was worth it. We returned home to our children, (who wanted to know where Daddy was and who was this man I had brought home with me) and put away all the trappings from the banquet. I went about my evening routine and went to join him on the couch to watch the Cowboy's play (if for some reason we will not be at home during any pre-season, regular season or post-season game it gets recorded and watched the moment we arrive home), the clock must have struck midnight whilst I was in the bathroom, for there on the couch my carpenter reclined. His shirt was untucked, his feet were up on the ottoman and I loved him with all my heart.

Home for the Holidays Banquet

Our church has an annual women's banquet, Home For the Holidays. There are 36 hostess tables, all uniquely decorated and ready to pull off a night of elegance for all us rural folk. This is my first year to be a hostess, I chose to not use a lick of red or green in my design, I wanted to be the Sugar Plum Fairy. I used lots of white satin and chiffon to make the table cloth, yards of purple tulle, some of Moda's Decadent Victorian (thank you April Cornell for knowing I would need purple this year), silver rimmed dishes and tons of gaudy ornaments from Garden Ridge. Everything is all set up and ready to go for tonight. My man will be our waiter and son, Steven, has been assigned to the feisty red hat table. Lisa, I have your place card all ready, I will expect you there promptly at 6:00 pm. Anna, I'm counting on you to help keep Lisa from eating with her gloves on. I'll post more tomorrow....

Happy Thanksgiving!

This was one of the oddest Thanksgiving's we have ever had. Pretty much everything went wrong that could, my one goal of having the house finished before company arrived was no where close to being met and we waited HOURS to eat because we are the most disorganized family there is.

The guests began arriving on Tuesday evening. Gramma was greeted by various power tools and carpentry related items laying about the yard and front porch. After gingerly picking her way through all of the debris she entered our abode and, I am sure, just loved our decor of eclectic furnishings mixed in with 5 gallon paint buckets and discarded pieces of tile. The deck was at least nearly complete, I did get the firepit built and we did make something that resembled a s'more.

The food preparation began well enough. I started baking pies on Wednesday. It was a beautiful day, Gramma and the kids play outside and watched movies all day while I wiled away the hours rolling out pie crusts and drinking endless cups of highly caffeinated coffee. I baked a pecan pie, a chocolate truffle pecan pie, pumpkin pie, pumpkin gooey butter cake (Paula Dean's recipe) and the man picked up a chocolate cake from Parker's Corner Market (our only resource for food purchases within a 20 mile radius.) The pecan pies turned out gorgeous. This was the first year I made the chocolate truffle pecan and it will definitely make the list for next year.

The side dishes went together flawlessly: homemade Southern Cornbread Stuffing, my caramelized sweet potato casserole, mashed taters, green bean casserole & dozens of double rise rolls. I bought two turkeys this year (we haven't had any leftovers in the last few years, so I thought I would move up to multiple birds), they were all injected with Creole Butter and rubbed down with herbs and spices, ready to jump into that vat of sizzling peanut oil. My turkey fryer was in storage (have I mentioned that I don't have a garage???) and the man left out to retrieve it. Thirty minutes later I receive a frantic call, "Hey, didn't you pay the storage bill this month?" No, I hadn't and yes, we were locked out of our storage unit, and, no, they weren't open for him to pay the bill, and, yes, he had to drive all over the state of Texas to find a turkey fryer. Thank God for Wal-mart. By the time he got home from the store with the darn fryer, everyone was here, everyone was hungry & all my side dishes were done. He had that fryer put together in record time, I heated the oil on the stove to cut down the time and he had bird #1 frying away. The Cowboys were just into the first quarter when the meal was finally all ready.

All in all the day ended well---everyone got plenty to eat, I have enough leftovers to last until Christmas, my firepit was a huge hit with all the kids, Phil came to my rescue and my Cowboys whupped up on the Jets.

Rafflemania

Every year our Parent Teacher Organization heads up the fund-raising event of the year, Rafflemania. The premise is simple--each class makes a themed basket that is then raffled off. There are dozens of classes and hundreds of people purchase tickets to win. When I attended the first PTO meeting of the school year and heard about this I thought, "that sounds easy enough, I'll volunteer to do the basket for my daughter's room." It has been a ton of fun, the most fun was getting to see every one else's baskets. (Basket is a misnomer, there isn't a single "basket" in the bunch!)

Our basket is Extreme Makeover: Liberty Hill Edition. I put together a bunch of talented tradesmen to do a complete room makeover for the lucky winner. They will get the whole HGTV experience. We will swoop in, clear the room, and turn it into a masterpiece of woodworking, paint, fabric and decorative accessories. I limited the winner to choosing a living area, bedroom, dining room or office--no kitchens or baths. Yours truly will head up the makeover and do the "design" portion of it. I got the local paper to cover it with a full spread before and after photo shoot. I think I'm more excited about it than whoever wins it will be!
This basket was my favorite! It is all things made in Texas. There is over $2000 worth of goodies packed into this baby. Food, iron work, art, books---it would take a whole day just to go through it all.






This is called Autumn Splendor, it is a bookcase (yes, you get to take that home too) filled with great fall items.




















This was my favorite girly basket. There was an XBox 360 basket, a Wii basket, a Disney pop up tent stuffed to the brim with DVDs and board games, a lawn care basket with a huge riding mower in the middle of it, a basket to enjoy the night sky with a firepit and a very large telescope (you know I put tickets in that one.) I was amazed at the creativity and the generosity of our area businesses and parents for all the fantastic donations (Tractor Supply Company donated the $2500 riding mower, the get big kudos in my book for the that.) This event will raise tens of thousands of dollars for our schools. I will be posting every step of the room makeover, I hope to have it done before Christmas so they can enjoy it for the holidays.

Trading s'mores for sawdust

My original plans for the weekend consisted of cleaning (as it always does) and testing my ideas for the s'mores extravaganza. I was all ready to start churning out backyard culinary marvels and have Lisa over for the formal festivities, when the man came home Friday night and announced that we were building the deck after all. We would get started first thing Saturday morning, bright and early. I can barely type at this point, my arms have never been so heavy, I will have the most muscular back of all the girls in my guild and my legs feel like jello. Have I ever mentioned that my husband is a machine when it comes to getting things done? He's like an old John Deere, hard to get going, but once he's up and running he just won't quit 'till the whole thing is done. He and son #2 sent me to rent this ominous looking machine in the first photo, they used it to pummel through our limestone that passes as soil. They dug 18 holes for the posts to hold up my deck.

Photo #2 is a sneak peak, but I don't want to show much until it's all done. I know that he is planning on using whole logs from huge cedar trees to hold up the roof. He told me I needed to pressure wash all the bark off of them "when I had time" this week. Sure, babe, no problem, I'll get right on that.

While we are outside slaving away, the three youngest decided to entertain themselves by turning our tomcat, Prince, into a prancing metrosexual ballerina. I wondered why he came back outside with every hackle raised, poor guy, he was already castrated once and now this....