The 5 Arbuckles.com

Our school has a program that rewards students for good behavior.  The student is given a star.  Jemma has collected 100 stars since school started.  Tomorrow she gets to have a pizza party with 3 of her friends and play on the school X-box for 30 min.

Will got his learner’s permit today.  If that makes anyone feel old, I’m very sorry.  I figure I must be on to the next season of my life.  I think my car insurance just doubled also.

I’ve become a big fan of Pinterest.  It’s one of those things you can spend a ton of time on.  I try to limit myself.  I pin a lot of recipes and craft ideas, but there is a lot more things you can look at on Pinterest.  I made this pizza roll last week and the kids loved it.

I didn’t see this idea on Pinterest, but I do get my creative juices flowing from a different idea I saw on Pinterest.  I have different  Valentive shirt I want to make that I did get the idea from Pinterest.

Jemma gave this shirt I made to one of her friends for their birthday.

It came to Jemma’s attention recently that I have a lot of undone projects.  I think this bothers her.  She asked now many unfinished quilts I have and I said I had 3 downstairs.  I didn’t know how many I had undone up in the long quilt closest upstairs.

She decided to make up a contract.  It says that I don’t have to cook or clean and everyone else will do those things while I sew.  Everyone in my house has signed the contract.  I don’t know if they read the fine print to know what it actually says.  But until they figure it out, I plan to take full advantage of the contract.

I made the quilt for my dad’s cousin.  Her and her husband spent 5 years in Zambia, Africa.  Her blog is the Gregersen blog over on the right side of my page if you are interested in reading about her adventures.  The shirts are for Jemma.  I picked them up for $2 a piece and she wanted them decorated.

We put  a new front door in right before we left for Wisconsin for Christmas.  We have been planning on replacing this door for 2 years.  We finally ordered the door over fall break.  We had to special order our fiberglass door since it had to be 1/2 inch shorter than a standard door.  Go figure!

We bought a door with a fake wood grain to it and Bill stained it.  Our old door had cracks in it, so bad that you could see through it at times.  Bill just discovered that the very nice storm door that we used to have on the front of the house is now 1/2 inch to tall.  Now we’ll have to replace that at some point.

When we moved in almost 5 years ago the previous owners never used the front door, so there wasn’t a key to get in.  Now we have a key for the front door.  We also have a door in the back of the house that doesn’t have a door knob.  We have started talking about what we want to do with that door.  Hopefully it won’t take us 2 years to replace it.

My niece turns a year old Jan. 5th.  I made her this shirt.  Jemma helped me pick out the colors.  We had a lot of fun putting it together.  Happy Birthday Samantha!

Since there wasn’t any snow and the temp was 38 degrees one day we went to the woods and had a weiner roast.

The boys and Bill had been out in the woods helping my dad cut wood and clear brush.

No weiner roast would be complete without smores.

We spent Christmas dinner at my uncle and aunt’s house, the Cedar Falls river runs past their back yard.  There was about 1/2 inch of snow on the ground that morning, but it melted off early.  With the little snow that was on the ground, Justin kept asking if we could go sledding.  There wasn’t even enough to sled.  I did buy sleds in WI and brought them home in case we have enough snow this winter to sled.

This is only the second time I can remember that we didn’t have snow on Christmas day.  The first time I remember not having snow was when I was 13 years old.

Every day in the newpaper my parents get, it has a crossword puzzle and sudoko.  My kids and my mom spent a lot of time doing them together.

My mom gave Justin and Jemma latch hooking kits to work on.  Jemma had never done one before, so she got a really small one and finished it.  Justin has done one before, he just needed to be reminded how to do it.

I finished piecing my Cozy Grinchmas quilt the other night.  I hope I can get it quilted during January, since I don’t think I’ll  have time to do it during break.  I really liked this pattern, it went pretty quick and I can use it again with other theme fabrics.

I found this idea on pinterest.  I haven’t done a ton of looking on pinterest, I’ve heard it is addictive.

I made this quilt a couple of years ago, and haven’t quilted it yet.  I made up the pattern for this quilt and taught it as a class.  I base it off the “Elf” movie.

Jemma and I have also made 3 different letters for gifts.  One for her friends birthday, one for a teacher gift and one as a Secret Santa gift.

I thought about what I gave as gifts last year and I think I made goodies to give as gifts.  This year I did more crafts.  I’m thinking that I either cook or sew, but I don’t have enough time to get both done during the Christmas season.