Church Christmas Party.

Our church has an adult Christmas party every year. By adult we mean 13ish and up, aka not likely to run around the room and put your hands in all the food.(just in case you wanted to know why Naomi was at an adult party, thats why)
Anyhow, Naomi had picked out some fabric that she wanted made into a dress. So together we picked a pattern and I was able to finish it just in time for her to wear it to the party. I twisted her hair up and lent her my pearls(she has pink pearls but my white ones went better with the blue dress)and my silver shoes. She looked lovely, very elegant. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of her at the party but these were taken right after.

This is Naomi tired of my fumbling with the camera trying to get it to take a proper picture. No, it was not posed.



This is me and my party outfit, which I also made.

Here we have Bishop Epps in his new miter presented to him by the Landon family. This miter is for the much loved season of Football. (for the full story see dads blog http://frjonathan1.blogspot.com/2009/12/bishops-special-miter.html and for a video see moms blog http://landonfam.blogspot.com)

Fish

I have some new digital fish. Feel free to feed them.

College Bound

In case you didn't already know I have been accepted and am enrolled at West Georgia Technical College, a college not to far from the house. I am starting this January, with 8 credits. We will see how it goes for the first 2 quarters, and wait and see where the family will be moving next summer before I make any solid further plans.

The Morning After

Curlers are very effective in my heir. Because I decided to sleep in the things (see former post for this one to make much sense) I went to church the next morning looking like a version of Shirley Temple.

Ok... so this picture is not actually the morning after but it's funny anyway. There was hair spray paint at the party and Jon told one of the girls there to have fun with it. She made what hair he has look like a psychedelic rainbow. This is the aftermath of the clean up of that.

Halloween Costumes

Our church threw a All Saints Eve party, and we were there with hair curlers in. Haha. Well, I had hair curlers in anyway.

Naomi was originally planing to go as little red riding hood, until I found a pair of lime green, fish net stocking on clearance in Wal-mart. I also happened to have just enough lime green fabric to make her a pair of longish shorts and a vest. Don't ask me why I got such a crazy color fabric, but I did and it turned out for the best. So she went as a frog princess. Mom embroidered cat tails on the vest and a frog sitting on a lily pad on the pants.

Naomi went trick-or-treating with a friend and not to the party with us.

Jon-Paul made a cross out of some scrap lumber we had, borrowed an alb and my purple bath robe, put a wreath on his head, and went as Jesus. He painted on a beard with some of my mascara. He doesn't look to bad with a beard, if he does say so himself.

He won the costume contest for the adults. The prize was a 20 gift card for Wal-mart. I of course thought that mine was the best but there is just no competing with Jesus.



Originally I planed on going in my PJ's and calling it a day. Then I got the idea to put my hair up in pink curlers too. A martini happened to work its way in at about that time. Then I searched through my moms make up and found blue eye shadow and the reddest lipstick I could stand. I was transformed into a 50's housewife, or as Fr. Epps put it, a once desperate housewife who had just given up.

Here we have us in the costume contest, with none of us looking at the camera.

Flower Petals or Fish Tails?

This pattern is called Flower Petal Shawl but the pattern repeat is called Fish Tail Lace. I have seen a lot of flowers in my time and I can't say that any of them looked like a fish tail but there you go. It's really quick to knit up and after the first few rows I didn't even have to look at the pattern. However it does take a gobbzillion pins to block out, and several of my pins bent themselves for the cause.

It's acrylic yarn, and not terribly soft, but it is still pretty. I used a strand of dark blue and a strand of hunter green held together, it gives it a lot of color dimension.

This shawl will be a christmas gift for a friend of mine. I don't think she even knows about my blog which is why I can post this now.

Fetching

Fetching, a really easy pair of wrist warmers. I made these in about 3 days while I was stuck in bed with some form or other of the flu or some similar bug.
When I first saw the pattern for these I didn't like them, because they were knit in a terrible chartreuse like color that was hard to get over. After a while though they kinda grow on ya.
These pictures make them look blue but they are really a green teal.

My Diploma

Finally after much fuss and stress, a little bit of hair pulling, and page after page of a mind numbing history book. I am an official high school graduate!

1011

Yeah yeah...break out the virgin margaritas (sorry guys still under the drinking age) and start the party. My tiny little blog has topped 1000 hits.

Recipe for Pork Roast

I got this recipe from a friend and was asked for it by another friend. It is very good. So as promised here it is.

Pork Roast

Pork Roast - big enough for your family or however many you are going to feed.
Onion - cut in quarters or finner if you like.
Jalapenos - 1 or 2 depending on how big they are and how much kick you want, I usually use canned (4oz) because they keep 'til I'm ready to use them.
Salt
Pepper
Cumin - about a Tablespoon
Oregano - about a Tablespoon
Garlic - as much or little as you like.

Put the roast in a crock pot and rub it with the salt, pepper, cumin and oregano. Toss in the onion and jalapenos. Add just enough water to cover the bottom of the pot. Cook on low 4-6 hours, until you can shred it. Stir it up with the juices, and let it set for a bit to soak them up. If you used fresh jalapenos you can take them out and set them aside, or chop them up and mix them in with the meat.

Bean and Tomato Stew.
(I guess thats what you would call it. I have always made this recipe to go with the pork)

Canned stewed tomatoes
Canned beans - red, kidney, black, pinto, white, chili...whatever kind you like.
Italian spices - to taste.
Garlic - to taste.

For my family 3 cans of beans and 1 or 2 of tomatoes is plenty. Set the proportions to fit the numbers you are feeding. Throw it in a pot and cook it 'til it's hot.

Serve it together with rice in a pita or tortilla. My preference is to spray the tortillas with Pam and brown a few seconds each side before serving. It takes time, but the taste is worth it.

My New Baby

Meet my new baby. Some friends of ours had a brand new sewing machine that they didn't use and they somehow found out that I didn't have one of my own. (My serger is my own but the sewing machine I used was my Dads.) So they decided to give it to me, along with a box of threads and pins etc. everything you would need to start sewing.







They also gave me a standing embroidery frame that they had been trying to get rid of for some time. I always thought it would be cool to have one but they are so big, and they don't work well with small projects, so it was not worth the cost to buy one. The only hitch to this one was it was not put together and it had no instructions, only a picture to work from. I took me all of 2 minuets to put together.

This project is one I have been working with off and on for some time. It's slow going due it its complexity, but with a large frame like this I can use both hands so it should come faster. :)

Herbs

Fresh herbs from my garden. Lemon Thyme, basil, rosemary, and sage. The brown stuff is basil seeds.

Study Partner

Bruce helping me study by pinning me to the chair and not letting me be distracted by other things.

Counting Sheep

As a knitter I love most anything to do with fiber. (The kind that you can spin or knit with anyway. Not that I have anything against celery, but thats a different post.) So I was really excited when Grandma let me dig through her fabric stash, and I found a light-weight blue flannel with sheep all over it. What flashed through my mind was how cute a pair of PJ's this would make.

I had enough of the fabric to make a pair of long pants, a top, and a bath robe. The robe is my favorite. It's light enough to cut the chill of the AC but not to heavy that is is unbearable in the Georgia weather.

Thanks Grandma.

Dice Dice Baby

With a happy 18th birthday to Jon Paul I present The Giant Orange Fuzzy Dice. They are his birthday present from mom and me. Mom bought the supplies and I made the dice. We picked orange so it would match the orange plaid in Sandy. Sandy is the 1977 Volare (FYI).


I made Bruce help because he likes to sit on my chair, and so you could see how big they really are.

Girls in White Dresses

My latest finished sewing project.

Not Quite Knee High

I had a bunch of wool sock yarn. Can you guess what I decided to knit with it...? YES..SOCKS! Knee high socks to be exact, for those cold days when your feet are freezing but you don't want to put on shoes, or when you go up to the mountains to play in the snow.
I had two skeins of black (one for each sock) and several random skeins of browns, greens and blue. So I doubled up one of the other colors with a black, to get the random stripes you see below. The black all through gives it that speckled look, instead of clean sharp lines between the colors. This worked until I ran out of black. Then I added about an inch of tan ribbing to the top and called it quits. They come to the widest part of my calf, not quite knee high sock, but close enough.
They are finished but for weaving in the ends, of which I have to many because I didn't think, and joined the colors the wrong way. Oh well.

New Shawl

So this is my new shawl. I wanted something quick and simple to do, I had a ball of cream colored cotton, so I made a shawl. Its just a basic triangle with little flowers around the edge, something I could do with out a pattern. I kept going until I ran out of yarn. It's just big enough to go over my shoulders. Will I ever actually were it? Who knows.


It took my whole arsonal (and then some) of pins to block it. I don't know what I am going to do when it comes time to block my PNW shawl.







Artfully draped over the chest and dresser. Or maybe not...I tried.

Happy Birthday to Meeeeeeeeeeee!

Today we got home from a month long vacation to see Grandma and Grandpa in Oregon, very grungy and tired. Today is also my 20th birthday. I am no longer a teenager and, as my Dad puts it so nicely, have entered into my 3rd decade of life. My first present was that I got to have the first shower.
We are going to wait to celebrate 'till Saturday when Dad gets home. We are going to a tea shop in town that I have wanted to check out for some time. It should be fun.

Bowling

Yesterday Naomi and the cousins got a bowling lesson while I took pictures.

Naomi


Savannah


Matthew

Are Women Born Like This?

You don't say??

Lily and Lizard

We had a little green lizard hanging out on our porch this afternoon. Here he is on the window by the door.




Here he is showing off for the camera.


When I was planting the garden this year we had a pot that I didn't know what it had had growing in it. So I dug it up, and found several rotted flower bulbs. I threw them all away except for one that I thought might still be alive. Turns out it was a pink lily. Very pretty.

Don't Forget to Pack the Knitting

On my trip to Alabama last month (lots of fun by the way) I arrived at the house I was staying at and got settled in. After dinner, with some down time on my hands, I realised that I had forgotten to pack a most important item. That it was still sitting on my bed, at home, all nice and neat, ready to be taken out to the car. I had forgotten my knitting!

I did have a book with me, but after two days of no yarn I started to see the effects of withdrawal. So I told the Tom-Tom (GPS) to take me to the closest Wal-mart. I then made a bee line (why it is called that I don't know. Have you ever know a bee to fly in a straight line?) back to the craft section. Most of the yarn was acrylic, but you take what you can get. I wondered what I should make. I wanted something simple, that I could do while watching TV or talking with my friends. A scarf was out, I have to many of then already. Also I wanted something that I could do without a color change, I didn't want to carry around multiple colors of yarn. Then I remembered a pattern that I had seen online that I wanted to try. So I grabbed a couple of skeins of Red Heart, in a variegated color called cherry chip, and the longest circular needle that they had.

Back at the house I found and printed out the patten, borrowed a measuring tape, worked a little math and cast on. I cast on a quickly as I could, desperate to feel the yarn flowing through my fingers and the swish-click of the needles. I crammed a bazillion stitches onto a needle that needed to be 6 in' longer. However, the only shaping in the pattern a was a series of decreases, it would get smaller as I worked.

About a 2 weeks later, and with an additional skien and a half into it I realize that this is not looking right. It was taking way to much yarn and not decreasing fast enough. So I double checked the gage. What I thought was 5.25 stretched itself out to be 3.75. That's what I get for not taking the time to do a proper gage swatch. So I frog the whole thing,(for those of you not familiar with knitting lingo, frogging is when you "rippit rippit" out, opposed to tinking, which is to unknit each stitch) take all my measurements again, and start over. Eventually I get this.




Can you guess what it is?
I'll give you three guess'.








No is not a dog bed, Charlie is just the model.






No...try again.






Nope.






It's a vest!






Now I have two extra balls of this yarn. I think that I will make fingerless gloves to go with the vest.

Mini Rose

Just after Valentine's Day I bought some little tea roses that had been marked down. They were almost bloomed out and one of them about died on me, but I planted it in a larger pot and set it outside and it managed to come back with a vengeance and give me one little rose bloom. Is a beautiful pink-orange color.

Trip to Alabama

In about an hour I will be headed off, by myself, to Alabama for the week. I will be using the excuse of visiting colleges to visit friends. Haha, yes I actually will visit the schools too. I have 4 on my list to see, and have a whole list of questions to ask. For two of them I have a scheduled tour, and the other two, well, I'm just going to show up and we will see what happens. This will also give the family that I will be living with the chance to see if they really want to put up with me for the next couple of years.

Bible Cover

I have another finished project. (another perk of not having a job) I recently bought a new bible with the NIV translation on one side of the page and the Message on the other. I like the fresh look of the Message, it gives a different view of the scripture but its not a translation. So I bought a book with both. A $37 book for $15 plus a little for shipping. The dust cover was a little worn and it has a small mark on the bottom, but so what, I can make a cover of my own, and that's just what I did.









Ta Da.

Work V. School

I have resigned from my job. I like the word resigned better than quit, because it was not that I disliked the job, but because I had other things that needed seeing to. After just over a year of working in the Kroger bakery I decided that I need more time to finish my school work and college searching.
The changing weekly schedule at work made it very difficult for me to get into any steady pattern with school, and with me that means that nothing of very much significance gets done. Just in these last two days I have managed to get done twice as much as I normally do in a week. Let us pray that I can keep it up.
We had just gotten new management also. Not fun, we will leave it at that. So in some ways I'm not sorry to have left. But I will miss working with some of the people there. They even threw me a little going away party, and asked me to keep in touch.
To keep from going completely mad with books and computers, I have agreed to watch some neighbor kids for about 45 minuets one day a week, in the space between when their Dad goes to school and Mom gets home from work. The oldest girl I have been giving some sewing lessons to. There is also a thrift store near by that I can volunteer at, I can set my own hours and still keep up the almighty job experience.
The plan is to be done with my school work by the time we leave for Oregon. I hope to start at college by the fall semester. But there is a lot for me to do from now 'till then. Most especially to decide where to go. I was kind of hoping to have some time to get to know my new siblings by staying, and going to school here as long as I could but I think that it might just be easier if I move out and go to one of the others I was looking at and make more room in the house.

College Count Down

I have been looking at colleges for some time now, and I have manage to narrow it down to a number I can work with. Here is a rough list in case you want to know. Here is my list even if you don't want to know. So if you happen to not want to know, don't read it. There are still a few possibilities that I am looking at but these are the main ones.

I have had several offers of a place to stay in these and other areas. For which I am very thankful, as I will be very unlikely that I can stay with my immediate family for the whole of my college years, and I would like to avoid dorm life and cost.

My criteria for each college is.
*Room and Board. Preferable for little or no rent or help around the house.
*Is there a CEC church near by?
*Is there family and/or friends near?
*Major. Dental Hygiene or Dental Assistant.


They are not in any particular order.

Pierce College
Lakewood, WA

Has Dental Hygiene. I would stay with my Aunt Trish and family. Have friend in the area.

Wallace State Community College
Hanceville AL.

Seems like a very nice college, and has dental hygiene. There is a family that I can stay with for rent free. They have 3 young ones so I could be a mothers helper as much as my schooling allowed. I also have friends my age in the area that I met at the convocation in FL this summer.
At the end of this week I and my sibs are going to help the family that has offered me a room move into their new house, so I will get a chance to see the house and visit some of the schools while I am there.
The down side is that Wallace is an about an hour and a half drive from where the house is. Wallace does have housing (and none of this co-ed nonsense) so if the commute gets to be to much there are other options that I can look into.

Lawson State Community College
Birmingham AL.

Central Alabama Community College
Childersburg, AL

These two are possibilities that are much closer to the house.
Hopefully I could get my prerequisites and or dental assistant here first before (if) I go to Wallace. There are a couple more in that area that have the same possibility. Again hoping to check some of them out this weekend and see if the credits will transfer.

Griffin Tech
Griffin GA

Gordon College
Barnesville GA

One of these two is where I will most likely go for two or three semesters while the family is still in GA, and before I go elsewhere.

When Georgia Freezes Over.

Check out a slide show of snow in GA. See if you can guess which ones are from our yard. This was last Sunday, and its supposed to be 70 degrees tomorrow.

The Resume of Jesus Christ

The Resume of Jesus Christ

Address: Ephesians 1:20
Phone: Romans 10:13
Website: The Bible. Keywords: Christ, Lord, Savior and Jesus

Hello. My name is Jesus -The Christ. Many call me Lord! I've sent you my
resume because I'm seeking the top management position in your heart.
Please consider my accomplishments as set forth in my resume.

Qualifications

* I founded the earth and established the heavens, (See Proverbs 3:19)

* I formed man from the dust of the ground, (See Genesis 2:7)

* I breathed into man the breath of life, (See Genesis 2:7)

* I redeemed man from the curse of the law, (See Galatians 3:13)

* The blessings of the Abrahamic Covenant comes upon your life through
me, (See Galatians 3:14)


Occupational Background

* I've only had one employer, (See Luke 2:49).

* I've never been tardy, absent, disobedient, slothful or disrespectful.


* My employer has nothing but rave reviews for me, (See Matthew 3:15-17)



Skills Work Experiences

* Some of my skills and work experiences include: empowering the poor to
be poor no more, healing the brokenhearted, setting the captives free,
healing the sick, restoring sight to the blind and setting at liberty
them that are bruised, (See Luke 4:18).

* I am a Wonderful Counselor, (See Isaiah 9:6). People who listen to me
shall dwell safely and shall not fear evil, (See Proverbs 1:33).

* Most importantly, I have the authority, ability and power to cleanse
you of your sins, (See I John 1:7-9)


Educational Background

* I encompass the entire breadth and length of knowledge, wisdom and
understanding, (See Proverbs 2:6).

* In me are hid all of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, (See
Colossians 2:3).

* My Word is so powerful; it has been described as being a lamp unto
your feet and a lamp unto your path, (See Psalms 119:105).

* I can even tell you all of the secrets of your heart, (See Psalms
44:21).

Major Accomplishments

* I was an active participant in the greatest Summit Meeting of all
times, (See Genesis 1:26).

* I laid down my life so that you may live, (See II Corinthians 5:15).

* I defeated the archenemy of God and mankind and made a show of them
openly, (See Colossians 2:15).

* I've miraculously fed the poor, healed the sick and raised the dead!

* There are many more major accomplishments, too many to mention here.
You can read them on my website, which is located at: www dot - the
BIBLE. You don't need an Internet connection or computer to access my
website.

References

* Believers and followers worldwide will testify to my divine healings,
salvation, deliverance, miracles, restoration and supernatural guidance


In Summation
Now that you've read my resume, I'm confident that I'm the only
candidate uniquely qualified to fill this vital position in your heart.
I will properly direct your paths, (See Proverbs 3:5-6),
and lead you into everlasting life, (See John 6:47). When can I start?
Time is of the essence, (See Hebrews 3:15).
l

Pop Tab Purse

For a couple of years now I have been collection pop tabs. For no particular reason. You know the kind that come off the top of soda cans. I had no idea what to do with the things until the family went to see the Coke museum in Atlanta. Poking around in the gift shop afterwards I saw several purses made out of these pop tabs. An ingenious idea if you ask me. I had never seen the like before. So I took a look at the price tag, bad idea. They ran from $40 to $70. No way am I going to pay that much for something that I can make myself with a little bit of work. I even had all the tabs I would need.

So I take some of this.



A little bit of fidiling gets me this.



Sew it together and I get that.



A little more and I get a wonderful birthday gift for Naomi. Ta Da.