Sally Dee's Stitch of Love

Many of you may not know this, but I get nearly all of my artistic talent from my mother. I sing because of my dad, but my mom is the reason why I am a crafty son of a gun. All the while I was growing up, my mom was elbow deep in projects, whether it was making homemade chocolate caramels, canning pickles or stripping ever inch of hardwood in our home. But the one craft you could always find my mom doing each fall was knitting mittens. Lots of mittens. More mittens than her three children could wear.

My mom made mittens for little kids who didn't have them. She saw little red fingers all over town and wanted to make sure they got warm. She saw little red wrists on store bought mittens and made her cuffs longer to make sure those wrists got warm. For the past 25 years, my mom, "Sally Dee", as I have affectionately nicknamed her for marketing purposes only, has been making these adorable kids' mittens for charitable organization such as Warm Up Wisconsin and Coats for Kids. And this year, after a bit of arm twisting, I was able to get my hands on 20 pairs to sell in my craft shows. So, here is a sample of what you can see if you come to my shows:

*The Snowflake Boutique, in Redmond, Oregon on November 6th and 7th
*The Prineville Christian School craft show, on December 5th.

 

You can also click on the Selah Signs link at the top right hand side of the page, and it will take you to Selah's Facebook page, which is featuring my mom's mittens. You can't beat the prices or the love that went into these mittens.

Each pair is hand made and one of a kind...and just in time for winter! Take a gander and check them out. When your little girl slips her hands into a pair of those chenille cozies, she'll wear them to bed!

Fun at the (2nd best) Pumpkin Patch

 

 

 

So, I took a wrong turn. I went to the wrong pumpkin patch. This one didn't have the huge pirate ship made out of hay or the huge corn maze that I wouldn't pay $7.00 a person to go through. This patch was serious small town, down to the rusted metal swing set and the pumpkins in the corn field. Yes, it was weird, and yes I was a bit disappointed in my lack of research on the RIGHT pumpkin patch, but this didn't stop my little miss from having lots of fun at the D&D Pumpkin Patch on Saturday. Yes forks, that's right, I am telling you to go to the OTHER one.

But then I realize...Bailey is TWO. And regardless of how many times I whisper to her while she is feeding the donkeys, "Let's go to the better pumpkin patch," anything that involves animals, a farm, picking pumpkins, face paint, and slides is perfectly perfect with her. She didn't need a corn maze. She didn't need a huge pirate ship or horseback rides. She really didn't need the lovely buttery corn on the cob that Mom really wanted from the other place. She just wanted a soda pop, a burger patty, some chips, and time to run around and be a kid. Makes me wonder why we try so hard to create the perfect environment for our child to thrive in. Bailey didn't need perfection and beautiful pictures...I did. My kiddo taught me a lesson this weekend: and that being, "just go with the flow, be happy with what's in front of you, and play like mad."

Rediculous Ravioli!

So, last night, I get a call from my good friend Megan, and while I am talking on the phone in the living room, this is what was going on in the dining room!

 

Jeff, luckily, got shots of the craziness and then immediately threw her in the bathtub for a complete scrub-down.

I think she liked the ravioli.

"It's a Beautiful Thing"

I think that my previous pastor, Pastor Glenn Maiden of North Coast Family Fellowship, could possibly have coined the phrase

"It's a beautiful thing."

If not, he most certainly brought it back from the dead when he came to pastor at my former church in Seaside, Oregon. So, today, I realized that there are a lot of "beautiful things" out there, including seeing my daughter and husband play in the front yard, a lovely tall nonfat caramel frappucchino from Starbucks that my husband surprises me with in the middle of the work day. But when it comes to working in my kitchen, homemade apple butter is most certainly "a beautiful thing".

I started with a bunch of apples that I got from my church. I washed them up real good, used my handy dandy apple corer and cutter I got for $1 at a garage sale, and made apple sauce.

 

Then I added some sugar (okay, lots of sugar), some apple cider vinegar, cinnamon, and some nutmeg, and baked it in the over for a good 3 hours (stir every 20 minutes please!). Once in jars, I canned them and have them to last all winter long (or until they sell out at this year's craft show).

 

It's a beautiful thing!

Bailey and "O-siah"

So, this is what you get when you ask two 2 year olds to stand together for a picture. They have no concept of posing for the camera, or smiling, or whatever.   Finally, I got a little attitude out of Bailey...arms folded across her chest in one, and arms flying in another. But Josiah, on the other hand, quietly refused to even look at the camera.  
 
Frannie and her boys came to visit the other day. It was so wonderful to spend time with her and her boys, and for Bailey to have a playmate for a few hours. And, at one point in time, ALL THREE kiddos went down for a nap! Frannie and I had more than 1 1/2 hours to talk kid-free!