Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is Thanksgiving!  We are travelling this holiday, this time back to Fort Wayne for an extended with Jim’s family.  All of his siblings plus nieces and nephew will be there so it is very exciting!

As part of being thankful for all that we have, we decided this year to put together a Thanksgiving Basket for a family in need in our parish.  I laughed when the news said the average Thanksgiving family meal was going to cost $46.  Are they serious?  They haven’t shopped with me!  And certainly they must be buying ready made goods because after shopping for this basket I can tell you it is much much more than $46!

But I’m a scratch girl.  Thanksgiving must be made from scratch!

We filled 3 boxes full with all the supplies to make an amazing Thanksgiving feast.  We figure the family should have enough food for at least a week!

If not longer!

Enjoy your holiday and make sure to eat lots and lots of Turkey and pie!

~Cathy

The Dream Sewing Space – The Archeological Dig Begins!

Hi Friends!

While the Rye bread was baking I began to tackle this sewing room.

It’s easy to walk into this room, give a big sigh, walk out, close the door and forget about all this mayhem in here!  It’s not my fault though, it’s inherent in my family genes.  No seriously!  It’s true!   My Dad confirmed it to me in September while he was here.  We just have a very hard time throwing anything away! 

Now, the key words there are HARD and TIME.  We DO throw things away friends, lots of stuff.  I have proof, but we also like to COLLECT things and keep them around awhile.  It’s comforting you know?  And then there’s the messiness factor.  I’m a messy artsy creative person! Always have been.  My things and projects need to be OUT in the open where I can see them, but I do LOVE organization.  It is a balancing act, I fly through projects when I’m organized, and yet I have to have things out!  I think every sewer or artist must go through this and each one of us must spend some time every so often to take inventory of what they have and purge, organize, and re-group.  Can’t move forward without it.

So…to organize, here’s the methodology I use.  First, I like to pretend I have four people standing next to me as I do this.  There’s Peter Walsh telling me I just don’t NEED this Stuff, then there’s the Fly Lady helping me fly all the Stuff out of the house , Ty Pennington is there with his bull horn shouting at me “C’mon people!  We got work to do!” and then there’s my Mom who is always coming up with clever ideas to organize things.  She always has some trick up her sleeve!  Then lastly I jump right into my 7 steps to gettin it together:

1. Remove everything from the section.
2. Clean the area
3. Decide what the area is going to be (for this area it is my pressing equipment center)
4. Put back only those items that SHOULD be in this space!

5. If there isn’t enough space then I have to tell myself I either have too much STUFF or the items are just not organized efficiently.
6. Throw garbage away and give extra and unused items to charity or some other worthy person.
7. Move on to the next section.

So there you have it.  Unless I think of something else that’s my 7 steps to getting clean and organized.  As you see the work in progress, I’ve used the bottom shelf to house my embroidery hoops.  The middle shelf has all my pressing equipment including spray starch, needle board, clappers and sleeve board.  Oh…somewhere I have a pressing ham and I suspect that will show up eventually!  I’ll have to move the lint rollers once that gets uncovered!

And eventually the area will take shape:

The pressing station complete I’ve now moved onto the first cabinet. 

So far, the archeological dig has uncovered lots of nearly empty spools of thread…

A dolls hairbrush? A Clown head? and the Lever Control button off of my Mom’s old Singer Touch & Sew!  Now that’s funny!

I hope to get this first cabinet finished on Saturday and move on to the second cabinet.  I’m dreading that one, it’s going to be a challenge!

See ya soon!

~Cathy

In Search of a Good Rye

Do you ever just have one of those days where you just want to make something and you’ll go out of your way to find the ingredients in order to make it?

Well today was that day.  You see, I had this terrible craving to bake a really dense, but great, loaf of Caraway Seed Rye Bread.  I think it could have something to do with getting the call from CCI about Einstein’s first temperament test.  Oh, it was a loooong phone call!  My NERVES!!!!  I’m just so nervous for that darn dog!  I just want him to do good and I oh so needed a little comfort food and to me, homemade bread is just the thing to take the edge off of the anxiety!

I pulled out the Bread Machine from storage and put together all of the ingredients in a mixing bowl.

Plugged in the bread machine, poured in the dry ingredients, followed by the water, butter and honey, pressed start and went upstairs to work on organizing my sewing room!

Oh!!!  The delight!

A nice, dense, rye!  YUM…

~Cathy

What Ever Happened to My Dream Sewing Space?

Oh Friends!

What ever happened to my dream sewing space?  Remember? Jim and I worked really hard to put together my own creative room, a place to control the chaos that can happen sometimes…err…more often then not!

I know what happened, a project here, a side project there, a torn ACL and a move/shake-up of my sewing space.  I just don’t want to think about all these projects that got started and just never got finished!  Gosh!  Where does one begin to tackle it?  Should I even show you all what I’m talking about?

Oh heck…I am sooooooo not the organizational obsessed.  Ready?

Aaaaggggghhhh!!!! So I guess for the next week or so I’m going to be hunkered down in here doing some straightening up and organizing.  I was fairly productive when I was away from this chaos and down stairs on the dining room table.  I concur that a clean space is a productive space!  Just getting clean…now that’s the challenge!

I’ll keep working!  Can’t you just wait to see what I uncover in here?

~Cathy

Turn-In Saturday and Sun-Dogs

We turned Einstein in to CCI last Saturday.  It was a fairly un-eventful drive, pretty normal with Einstein sleeping all 6 hours curled up on his bed in the back of the car, changing positions every once in awhile only to move into a better position to capture the sun upon his fur.

We’d hear him yawn on occasion or see his head pop up to look at the landscape and then thud, his 78 pound frame would plunk back down again.  Followed in mere seconds by his snoring, quite content with whatever this long long drive was all about.

The best way I knew to prepare for this day is to compare this turn-in process like going to camp.  Other CCI’ers describe this as an ‘Off to College’ experience but I tend to think it more of a ‘Sleep-Away Camp’ like experience.

He’ll learn new things, make new friends, go on field trips, sleep in a tent (or kennel) and we’ll see him in a few months…or 6 or 9.

In total, there were 27 dogs turned-in, including Einstein’s brother Excel.  As luck would have it Excel is going to be Einstein’s bunk mate!  I’m sure the two of them are going to get along just great and may be eager to swap their puppy day experiences with each other! 

You know, as soon as we put Einstein in his kennel he ran back to the rear and started barking at all the other dogs.  He was pretty darn excited to be there.  He couldn’t believe his good fortune!  To be around so many dogs!!!  Like manna from heaven!!!

He was barking and tucking back into the back of the kennel when we said our good lucks and see ya soons.  We had to coax him back out to the front just for a picture.  We just hope he doesn’t cause too much of a ruckus and gets back to sleeping!!  The trainer’s said they LIKE dogs that SLEEP!  Funny.

On the drive home the weather was beautiful for a November day, the sky clear to partly cloudy and the temperature hitting 60 degrees.  Perfect conditions for a Sun Dog.

Sort of appropriate I think…

~Cathy

Scenes from the Dashboard – Daylight Savings Ends

Whoever invented this daylight savings time?

November is one of those months that I count the days to December 21st, the Winter Solstice.  The days are shorter and shorter and both on the drive in to work and the drive home from work are nearly in the dark.  It’s always a challenge to drive with the sun directly in your line of sight…

~Cathy

More Fall Colors and Party Prepping

We are having a going away (or Good Luck!) party today for Einstein.  I know what you’re thinking, a party for a dog?  NO.  It’s a party for us, the humans, and Einstein is the excuse to break out the grill, paint the chairs, invite friends over and clean the house…and have a good time on a brilliant Fall Saturday afternoon!

C’mon people!  Lighten up!  Enjoy!  Secretly, I know you all want to have the chance to see him off!  So there!

Anyhoo…the Fall colors continue here in Northern Illinois.  This has been an exceptional season.  And mild weather too!  We’ve only had a few days of threatening storms…

Like that one above!  Usually one of these storms comes through and takes all the leaves off of the trees…and there goes our Fall colors! But WOW!  Look at our Silver Maple.  The Silver Maple is usually one of the last of the trees to turn.  Might be true for all maples but not so sure.  I just know this tree is usually last and we have to get the leaves out to the street by the last of the leaf pick-up dates.  Thankfully we only have one of these trees but Wow…this year it has been so brilliantly yellow!In the front yard you can already see that parkway tree and a few others have lost their leaves entirely! The grass is still green and Jim even mowed, mostly to mulch in some leaves, but to trim too!And the peach tree…still hanging on.  Hopefully it will produce next season, and for all the trouble it gave us this year with losing its leaves and then re-growing the leaves and giving us only 6 small peaches, those second set of leaves sure did turn golden!

And Einstein?  He’s ready to party…More later!

~Cathy

Scenes From The Dashboard – Whistling Straits

When Mom and Dad were here a few weeks ago we drove up to Kohler, Wisconsin and visited Whistling Straits.

I have to confess that I did not know what Whistling Straits was and for a week I was telling my boss I was going to Whispering Springs.  Whispering, Whistling, what’s the difference right?

And for all of you sewer’s out there this is a magnificent place for the wealthy and/or manificently talented golfer to play a round of golf.  I had no idea.  It is also the site of the US Open Championships and will be the Women’s US Open Championships in 2012.  A beautiful location on the shores of Lake Michigan, but the course has been man-made/built to look like some course in Scotland.  Sorry, forgot which one, but it’s the one with all the nooks and crannies and sand traps everywhere.  You can sort of tell from the photo above.

And it was Whistling!  The wind coming off the plains out over the lake made for a very breezy visit!

The day was fun and it was really nice to spend that time with Mom and Dad and hear all about their cruise adventures!

More later…

~Cathy