Rummage Sale Find

Twice a year my church has a huge rummage sale.  They have everything from clothes to glassware, furniture to books, and much more.  The sale lasts from Friday morning to late Saturday afternoon and is always a big success.

It takes lots of people (all volunteers) working lots of hours to put the sale together.  Not only do they get everything sorted, set-up, and priced right before the sales, they also work all year long gathering and sorting out all of the donations received.  It's a really big undertaking!  The proceeds from the sale fill several different needs, with much of it being given to our church Crisis Ministry, where it's used to buy food that's given out daily to those in need.

The spring rummage sale this year begins this Friday, and the rummage volunteers have been working steadily for several weeks now.  I know several of the volunteers, and so it happened a few weeks ago that one of them mentioned to me that they had received a sewing machine in their donations.  They had tested it and knew that it did work.

Well I have been contemplating getting another sewing machine.  I know, I have two already!  But, since I have two granddaughters near me who have been learning to sew, and they both want to sew at the same time, (and I'm not ready to let them work with my new machine!), I had been thinking that an extra sewing machine would be nice.  I could set them both up to work on their projects together.

So I made arrangements to take a look at the machine.  It turned out to be a Singer, and they only wanted $20 for it!  It didn't have a lot of fancy stitches, or a case, but it was in good shape and wasn't that old (about 1992). Perfect for beginners!  It seemed like a really good deal to me, so I took it!

When I got it home I hooked it up and took a test drive.  It runs great!  The stitching is really nice and it's lightweight and quiet.  The only thing it needed was a disc to hold the thread in place on the spool.  I found one online for $4 and ordered it!

The girls haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but I'm hoping to have them over soon to see what they think.  Marissa has been telling me she wants to make some doll clothes for her Raggedy Ann doll!

It pays to shop early at them rummage sales!

Birthdays On The Way

Time just flies by!  It seems like I just posted yesterday, yet here it is right at the beginning of May and I've only posted twice this month, the last time being two weeks ago!  I don't know where the time goes, wasn't it just Christmas??

Anyway I have been busy with granddaughters, projects, volunteer work, reading, doctor appointments, etc.  So it's about time to work on some blog posts!

I do have a few birthday's coming up so I have started some work on those projects.

Granddaughter Kayla's birthday comes first in May, so I have been busy working on her gift request. She's already told me what she wants! I'll put that picture up when I have it ready to go.

Meantime, about 2 weeks ago, I decided that I wanted to work on a table runner for spring - though it seems we have bypassed spring and gone straight into summer with temps in the 90's!  Anyway, I decided to make a "quilt as you go" runner out of scraps. I've looked at a few ideas on making them and decided to try one.

I thought I would make a beginner one for myself and if it turned out well I would then make one for the daughter-in-law who has the 2nd birthday in May.  It turned out to be a really easy project and I had fun making it. I was surprised that it took a bit longer than I thought it would to make, though.  I really like the way it turned out and I'm getting ready to make the birthday gift, second one.

I put it all together with a variety of quilting strips that I had left over.  They were all different sizes and colors. I didn't try to match them, only tried to make them all look "spring like."  I was a little concerned that it looked too much like Easter, but when I put the maroon binding on, it changed the whole color scheme, and toned down the "Easter" look.

And here is what the back looks like.

And now, back to the birthday projects!

Pizza Party

Well I haven't gotten anything more done on the quilt I am making so I still don't have any pictures of it yet, but I do have a couple of other pictures to post.

While I was busy cleaning house today I was thinking about a specific quilt that I want to make, which got me thinking of pizza.  Yes, there is a connection!  Anyway, I decided that pizza sounded good for dinner.  I didn't want pizza from a store, or a pizza place. I don't really like that kind of pizza, I wanted some homemade pizza.

So I found a bread recipe that would work and got the dough rising while I finished up my cleaning.  When the dough was ready I got busy making the pizza.  This is where the pictures come in!

Pizza dough ready for the toppings.

Ingredients waiting to go on the pizza

All topped and ready to go into the oven.

And just after I put it into the oven company arrived.  Bff Marion, our friend Evelyn :), and Marion's men all stopped in to visit.  Luckily I had enough dough and ingredients to make more pizza's.  We ended up having an impromptu pizza party!

There was also enough dough left over for me to make some nice warm cinnamon rolls for dessert!  We had a fun time.

Now I know you wanted to see how good the pizza looked when it was all done.... Sorry, we all got so busy eating and visiting that I completely forgot to take pictures of the finished product... nor did I get any of the yummy cinnamon rolls!

A Lot Of Little Busy-ness

I've been busy, but not really with anything specific.  Just a lot of little things to do.

I've started on a quilt and it's getting close to being all pieced together, but I haven't taken any pictures of it yet.  I'm actually making it for the spare bedroom.  I usually give my quilts away, so I'm kinda excited to be making one that I will actually be keeping and using!  I'll take some pictures soon and get them posted. At least as soon as I get the top all put together!

Next I have to make another raggedy ann doll for granddaughter Kayla.  She is expecting one for her birthday which is coming up soon... so I have to get busy!  I'll probably start working on it within the next week or so.

Another project that I am working on is spring planting.  It's that time of year and I have been working on getting tomatoes and other veggies planted.  It's been fairly windy recently so I haven't planted as much as I would like because I'm afraid they won't do well with all the wind.  It has died down the last couple of days though, so I'm hoping to get more planting done.

I've been doing a bit of reading lately also.  I just recently went to the library and checked out a whole stack of books!  I've been slowly working through them, just because I've been in my reading mood!

So that's about it.  Nothing specific, yet I'm staying busy.

I'll be working on pictures for the next post so you can see my sewing, and gardening progress!