Sunday Praise

2 Samuel 22:47

The Lord lives!  Praise be to my Rock!

Exalted be God, the Rock, my Savior!

Aprons for Gifts

Hi Friends!  I know I have not been around much.  But it is almost time for school to start here in Michigan and we have been spending some time with the Grandchildren before they are all back in school.  But the rest of the time I have been sewing and spending some time with some friends, even met up with another blogger for dinner and a nice long talk, a first for me.  That is, a first for me to meet another blogger, I can talk a long time any time given the chance.   And she, Mama Sparks, was great fun to get to know and I hope to spend more time with her in the future!  You can visit her blog here, she makes wonderful quilts, you will love following her!  I also went to the Grand Rapids, MI quilt show yesterday with my best friend and another fellow quilter.  It was the first time I have ever gone to a quilt show and was very impressed with the quilts.  But recently I have been stitching up some more aprons for gifts and even one for myself!

This is a fun tutorial that you can also follow over at Maureen Cracknell Handmade blogspot.  Maureen calls them the Fabric Lovers Apron because you use 1/4 yard of five of your favorite fabrics.  The one above is mine and I will admit I shopped for fabrics that would look cute in my kitchen, and look, they match my moccasins hubs bought me while on vacation. The next two I made for house warming gifts for my best friend's daughter and daughter in law.

Think maybe I need a cloths line?

How do you take pictures of gingham so that it does not hurt your eyes when you look at the picture?  I must have taken twenty pictures in different settings and this is the best I could get.  I have two more aprons almost finished in the same fabrics as the last two.  I plan on putting them away for spare gifts.  I encourage you to check out this tutorial and make one for yourselves! 

Linking up with:

Join in the fun and have a great Friday evening!  Blessings from our home in the woods.

WIP Wendnesday

Work In Progress for those who do not know what WIP stands for.  I have many.  But I will just give you two this week.

I finished the July block for the Raspberry Rabbits QAL.

July Block (Pink dot is my ironing board cover)

Yesterday evening I finally decided what I wanted to cut my 30's fabric up for.

I have been mulling it over in my mind for a while and decided "just start already".


I have been watching all the pretty Great Granny Squares for weeks now and I just could not resist any longer.  I really need a design wall, but since I do not have one I tacked the largest piece of flannel I had along the top of one of my cabinets in my studio and I have cut out the start of the first two blocks.

I am pretty happy with the layout. I think I need to make some of the design boards that Lori at Bee In My Bonnet has a tutorial for here.  It would be so much easier to move all these little squares from my cutting table over to the sewing machine with.   I need to finish a project that I am working on for a gift and then I plan on sitting down and sewing these first two.  I still need to cut the background strips for these blocks.

I have been enjoying my sewing time these last two weeks.  The canning has slowed down a bit until tomatoes start ripening more quickly.  Check out everyone else's WIP over at Freshly Pieced and get inspired!



Hope you are all having a great week!  Blessings from our home in the woods.

Birthday Celebration

We went to our fourth grandsons birthday party this past weekend.

This sweet little guy turned four yesterday.

Gotta love this face!

The birthday boy's Mother, my daughter, along with a couple other family members were painting the children's faces.

Still loving this face!

And here are some other faces to love!

There were other painted faces but I did not get pictures of all of them.  These are our grandchildren and the others were not so willing to have me snapping pictures of them.  But there were some really sweet faces running around this park.

Time for a few presents.

These two older brothers like to help.  There is one more older brother in this family but somehow he escaped picture taking.

Found a turtle on the way to the party.  

Last but not least, Grandpa holding our youngest grandchild.

Was a great day! Blessings from our home in the woods.

Sunday Praise

Exodus 15:2 The Lord is my strength  and my song:
he has become my salvation.
He is my God, and I will praise him,
my father's God, and I will exalt him.

Filling the Shelves and Sewing

Yes, just as the title says I have been filling the storage room shelves with canned goods and getting some of the sewing projects done that have been piling up around my ears.

I might have mentioned earlier in the season that we down sized our garden this year.  Well as always there is one thing that produces more than others each year, and since last year we did not get any cucumbers or pickles out of our garden I been replenishing the pickle type canned goods this year. Hubs would probably not be happy with this picture of the garden.  It has some grass flourishing between the rows.

I wanted to point out the two large plants that are growing around a quarter of the garden were supposed to be this.

They indeed are not Zucchini plants but some type of winter squash.

We like winter squash so this is ok, but we also like zucchini and I have a ton of recipes that we enjoy during this time of the summer.  Also, my chickens think shredded zucchini is some kind of delicacy.  So it seems the saying is true "you cannot believe everything you read".

I thought this next picture of this particular jar of dill pickles was a good one.  I tried turning off my flash and using a half a dozen settings and I have determined that taking pictures of food in jars just is not that easy.

On the sewing front I can only show you one of my finished projects.  This apron has already been gifted so there is no giving away the gift by posting it.

This was a late birthday present for my middle daughter, her birthday was in May.  I am having fun making these aprons.  And yes to my youngest daughter there is a late birthday apron being made for you also, just in case you are reading and become dismayed.  

So you see I have been busy and these are the reasons I have not been posting much of late.  I truly have a lot to share but some I just have to keep under wraps for now.  

Linking up with Farmgirl Friday.

Thanks for stopping by and blessings from our home in the woods!

Sunday Praise

How true this is!