Quilts

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Brandi over at Mountain Morning is doing a book give away. I really, really want this book! To play the game and get entered in the drawing I need to do a post about quilts. When I first read about the post I figured I couldn’t play, I don’t have beautiful quilts like Country Mom, I have made a few quilts, but I wouldn’t consider myself a quilter. However the other day when I was making my bed I realised that I really do have some quilts that are special to me. So I thought I would share, and enter myself into the drawing at the same time.

This first quilts sits on my bed. I made this the summer after I graduated from high school, I was at a crossroads in my life and I remember sitting over this quilt thinking and planning.

It was the first time I have ever really quilted, I had tied many quilts, but this was the first real “quilt”. I remember my Mom showing me how to do the stitches. This quilt has been on my bed as a spread, or a blanket underneath for most of my 10 years of marriage.

This next quilt was made for me by my aunts when I got married. I went with my Aunt Beki to pick out the fabric and at my wedding shower everybody there tied a little bit. I like that the women who were so influential in my life worked on this quilt. For a long time it was the spread on my bed, then it was the blanket underneath.

Now it is the official snuggle quilt!

This quilt was made for me by my Mom before I was born.

I has followed me my whole life and is still used for many babies who happen to be at my house for nap time.

I love that the lace is still there, but worn thin from many babies and washings.

I made this denim patch quilt when I was a teenager.
It is so heavy and warm, perfect to sleep under on a cold winter night.

I love the character of the denim.

This quilt I inherited from Dadzoo when we got married.
His grandma patched and quilted this.

It is a nice light weight quilt with a light flannel back.

Someday this will sit on my son’s bed.

I made this quilt for my baby boy.

I did all the stitching on my sewing machine

I was so fun to make a BOY baby quilt after 4 girl baby quilts.

I made twin quilts for my two oldest daughters when punk #2 arrived right on her big sisters heals. (they are 13 months apart)

They are very faded from many washing, but I hope that someday they will be as loved as my old baby quilt.

My favorite quilt, the one that means the most to me I don’t have a picture of, I don’t even know where it is. My little cousin had a baby when she was 17. She placed the little baby girl in a home with a mother and father, she wanted her baby to have the best. She is my hero. I pieced a quilt for her and the family (cousins, aunts, uncles and grandma) got together and quilted it. We sent it with her (the baby) when she was placed with her new Mom and Dad.

I would love to someday piece beautiful quilts. I love that woman of old took their scraps and made works of art that were functional too.

(I have many more, but I didn’t want to make this post too long.)

Father and Son

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I think the best way to teach children the basic skills of life is to have them work right along side you. I try to keep the girls next to me when I am cooking and cleaning. I haven’t been super great at that the last little while, but recently I had a great reminder.

I am very grateful to Dadzoo’s grandpa, he learned many basic skills from watching him. When things would break around the house grandpa would come to help fix them. From his grandpa Dadzoo learned the basics of machinery and construction. Dadzoo is a wonderful handyman, I don’t think there is anything he can’t do. He has fixed washing machines and dryers and my dishwasher more than once. He can do basic automotive repairs (he doesn’t like to work on cars and would rather pay someone else to do it, but I like the fact that he could if he wanted to) he can do electrical work and some pluming. He finished two rooms in our basement and had built me rabbit hutches, chicken coops and shutters for the house. If there is anything he doesn’t know how to do, he finds out and tackles it.

About a week ago Dadzoo’s car died on us. He couldn’t drive to work so he did a “work from home” day. The nice thing about that is in between projects and problems he can putter around the house and do odd jobs and such. My dishwasher had been having a slight problem so he needed to take the door apart to figure stuff out.

Baby Boy punk couldn’t stay away. The second the tool box was brought out he was right there investigating what was going on. Dadzoo was wonderful and patient, I really enjoyed watching Father and Son bond over a tool box!

When the investigation was over and Dadzoo went to put the door back together he gave Baby Boy punk a tool to “help” with. You can see that he got right to work on those screws, just like his Daddy.

He did notice really quickly that his tool wasn’t exactly the same as Dad’s.

And turned to the tool box to find the “proper” tool.

He came back with this: a screwdriver, just like his Dad was using. (Smart kid!)

Then promptly got to work helping his Dad screw in those screws.

Skipping a Trip, what I learned

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In July my family went on vacation and because of lack of budgeting I ran out of money for our regular grocery shopping. I decided that I was only going to “shop” out of my own pantry and see what I could come up with. I was really kind of fun to see what we could do, it was also a learning experience for me.

My religion teaches us to store food for emergencies, whether it be personal emergencies (job loss, medical bills) or something bigger and larger (economic disasters, weather related disasters or earth disasters). I have been plugging along the last year creating a food storage, it is going slowly, but surely. It takes a lot of time, space and money to store one years supply of food for 7 people. I try to store what I cook and I have been learning to cook from items that can be stored. It has been a fun year of learning and growing in that area, and in doing that, other aspects of my life have changed too.

Skipping a shopping trip was a great learning experience for me. I learned that we really can eat out of our small garden. I learned that I need to store more veggies in case we need our stored food in the winter. I learned that I need to store cheese and potatoes. I learned that keeping chickens in the backyard really is a good thing. I learned that I need to store more bottled tomatoes.

All in all, I learned where I can tweak my storage. The biggest thing I learned: I can really feed my family with the stash of food I have stockpiled in my basement.

I would like to encourage everybody to try this. Skip your regular shopping trip, see what you can do, see where you can improve and stop relying so much on being able to “run” to the grocery store, there may be a time when that isn’t possible. If you do, please blog it and leave a link my my comment section, I would love to see how you all do.

NOTE: this doesn’t count if you go shopping then start, you have to completely skip a trip. For example, I go grocery shopping twice a month when Dadzoo gets paid. So to do this I would skip my mid-month shopping trip so I really am out of the food I would usually buy.