Happy Day After Thanksgiving!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner! We celebrated a day early, on Wednesday, due to everyone's schedules working out best for that day! It was wonderful to have my family around the table enjoying a traditional meal. As we did last year, Rob and I prepared as much as we possibly could on Tuesday so that Wednesday was a 'light kitchen duty' day. The turkey was tender and juicy, with the meat falling off the bones. Even with making double the amount of stuffing, there was not much left over (and I LOVE leftover stuffing!). Even eating turkey leftovers yesterday was fun. Vince did the warming up while I sat and watched old movies and quilted.

Today is Buy Nothing Day! Normally, I would stay at home, avoiding the stores like the plague. I do not buy much at the holidays anyway, but especially today! However, my mother-in-law wants to go out to the craft store to buy some holiday items and I am accompanying her! I have no intention of buying anything. I will bring along my fabric tote bags and prevent her from bringing more plastic bags into the house. (I think she has added at least a dozen to my pantry bag box since her arrival--mind you it was empty of plastic grocery sacks before her arrival!)
I will not have achieved my goals of avoiding driving, turning off the computer and other non-essential electronics or avoiding the stores today.

I do rest comfortably knowing that I am doing my part to reduce consumption on a daily basis by turning off my appliances, not driving my vehicle every day, and not buying everything brand new if I truly need something.

Why Buy American?

With the holidays upon us, some people share the holiday spirit by sharing gifts with family and friends. Why not buy only American Made Products? It is your choice as a consumer.

Handmade, or not, buying products made by Americans will help to support our country. Money spent on American made products help to provide jobs for Americans.

According to MadeInUSA.com,

"Dollars spent on American-made products stay in America and that helps all of us. Patriotic Spending protects stable, quality jobs for Americans. The money they earn comes back to us again when they choose wisely by exercising Patriotic Spending. When the combined buying power of the American consumer is used to purchase American products, those dollars stay within our own system. We call this "Recycling Dollars" and it's a concept that can make our economy strong again.

The power of change is in our wallets.

We are in control of our Country's future every time we make a purchase.

Choose wisely!

You can also check out Etsy.com for handmade gifts. Also remember to check out local craft shows and fairs. Many church groups, schools and sometimes even hospitals host creative crafters showcasing their products.

Buy local and buy American!

Cavallino Rosso Takes home a Trophy

At the local car show yesterday, Cavallino Rosso was one of the top 5 People's Choice winners! She is very proud of her new trophy, she lorded it over Vince's newest acquisition, the 1991 TransAm. He was green with envy as we drove home from the show.

How to Recycle Anything

In my aimless wanderings through the Internet, I stumbled upon this article from Real Simple magazine. It was entitle "How to Recycle Anything". Since recycling is still in its infancy here in Chester County, I thought there might be some good ideas in this article.

What I found was an interesting collection of information, from suggested places that recycle compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CLF), to websites that collect used crayons and remake them into new ones (crazycrayons.com).

Did you know that Crocs can be recycled too? The company will recycle them into new shoes! You do have to send your old ones to California though!

My favorite upcycler, Terracyle, was mentioned in this article. Did you know that Terracycle is now upcycling Malt-o-meal bags? Yup, so Carrabba's class is collecting them too! (along with Drink pouches, cookie wrappers, chip bags, candy wrappers, Kashi packaging, Clif wrappers, Scott products outer wrappers, Huggies outer wrappers, and Aveeno tubes).

I was reminded about St. Jude's Ranch,which recycles greeting cards into new cards. My sister had told me about St. Jude's ranch before, but I had actually forgotten about them. I usually take my old greeting cards and cut them up for scrapbooking or for gift tags. This may be a worthwhile project for my students this year as well!

It is worthwhile to check out the article in detail, as there may be an idea lurking there that you have not thought of. An idea for what to do with those items that are hanging out in the back of your closet or kitchen cabinet, bottom of your drawer, or corner of your cedar chest.

I have reduced or eliminated the purchase of many items because of the packaging they come in. However, it is not possible for me to eliminate all that I want to. If you are like me, I rinse it out and save it instead of tossing it in the trash. I always figure that there is a use for it somewhere, I just have to find it.

Fall Break Day Eight

Well, here it is, the last Saturday of my Fall Break. I did manage to finish this quilt top yesterday. At the beginning of my Fall Break, this top was still in pieces, the letters were not even cut out. I knew that it had been taking up space on my project table for quite some time, but I did not realize just how much time until I looked at the date on the magazine that I found the pattern in. It was from 2007. I know that I have had the fabrics since then because I purchased them right after seeing the magazine! Regardless, finally here it is! I only have to quilt it and then put the prairie points around the edge.





Now that I have this top finished, I decided to start another project that was taking up space UNDER my project table. (Yes, I have a table full of projects and others are in baskets underneath the table) I purchased the fabrics for this project in March when we were traveling through Pennsylvania. This is a shot of the main fabric, it has peacocks and peahens on it! The quilt was one that I saw on display in Burkholder's. It was set up as a kit, but I did not care for the pastel hues of the fabrics chosen. The ladies at Burkholder's were wonderful enough to sell me the pattern and templates for this quilt and helped me pick out fabrics that are more my style. I sat down this morning and started cutting out the fabrics for my first block. I also cut out the six blocks that feature these lovely peacocks!

While cutting out the block pieces using my new templates, I found that I had a bunch of these little triangles left over. So, I thought...well, some bug could make a quilt out of these! So, here is my quilt kit for an Ant!

Fall Break Day Four

Here it is! I have finished Beth's T-Shirt quilt. It will be on its way to her later this week!

Finishing this project has motivated me to work on others! I mentioned the Alphabet block quilt already. I have the blocks stitched into rows and have picked up the border fabrics. I also played around with the fabrics for a quilt that I bought the pattern and fabrics for in March of this year.

I did finish grading papers yesterday and today I carried them to school so that I could grade the workbooks that awaited me there. While I was there, I cleaned the dry-erase boards and the desks. At least the grading and cleaning are finished! Now I only have to plan lessons for next week!

The Start of Fall Break

Yesterday, I had to clean up the quilt studio. There were many items out of place, not the least of which were quilt projects! I rinsed out the drink pouch recycling from last week as part of the studio clean up.

I worked on Beth's T-Shirt Quilt. I would estimate that I have a bit more than half of it quilted already.

I played around with designs for a baby quilt, but finally decided that I did not like the fabric blocks I was working with. Now those blocks have been sewn into panels that will become baby bibs.

Today, I finished stitching the fabric blocks into panels for baby bibs. I also started stitching a long ago prepared project with Alphabet block fabric! I have all of the square in a square blocks finished! I did not work on Beth's quilt today because daylight was gone by the time I sat down to work on any stitching.

I actually spent the better part of today working on itemizing Rob's expenses.

I finally photographed and posted the pillowcases on Etsy. Since some of them are halloween fabrics, I figured they needed to get listed!

Tomorrow is another 'at home' day. I plan to get papers graded and finish quilting Beth's quilt.