My oldest son attended his first formal dance (Homecoming) and had a great time. 16 years is not as long as you think.

My little sister Holly was in town for a few fun filled days, and I was so happy I was able to be here for all of the fun. (miss you Hollers!)

I found a red race car bed for sale dirt cheap. My two middle boys both want it. I think I need to hurry and find another one or there may be fist fights.

I hate all of the driving. Period. Everything else is great, except the stupid driving part. But I will keep my complaints on that subject short as I prefer to dwell on better and happier things.

We found a fantastic house and our offer was accepted. We are set to close next month.

 Due to a our cell company changing hands, we had to get new phones. It wasn’t hard at all giving up my old pink phone for a new Glyde phone. I love the slide out keypad for texting, maybe a little too much.

  This move has enabled me to get rid of tons of stuff cluttering up my life. It felt so good to see it all go. A life less burdened with needless junk is a happier life indeed. And one that is easier to clean too.

I think I’m going to make quiche tonight. Consider yourself invited to dinner if you have a notion to join us.

Any ideas for dessert? Maybe peach cobbler…

Heidi and I spent Tuesday afternoon making numerous batches of strawberry freezer jam, and I spent the morning making 26 containers of peach cocktail using an entire 1/2 bushel of peaches and over 6 lbs. of red grapes. It’s one of my favorite recipes. Yum! I spent today using the other 1/2 bushel of peaches to make a ton of peach freezer jam, and then filled a bunch of freezer baggies with plain peach slices for later use in pies, cobblers and such. As for the peach cocktail? I can’t tell you how much I love this stuff, and if I had not already filled our new chest freezer to capacity yesterday with all of my freezing exploits, I would be on my way right now to buy another bushel of peaches to make into even more peach cocktail. Oh how I love it!

Peach Cocktail
3 quarts fresh peaches, peeled and sliced
3 cups orange juice
1 to 1 1/2 cups sugar, to taste
1/2 cup lemon juice
about 2 lbs. rinsed and stemmed, seedless red grapes
1 (20 oz.) can crushed pineapple, undrained
In a large bowl, combine orange juice, sugar, and lemon juice, mixing to combine. Add peach slices, grapes and crushed pineapple. Stir to mix. Ladle portions into desired serving size freezer containers, and freeze. Serve partially thawed, it tastes fresh, delicious and just like Summer year round!
Or, if you want to eat this without freezing first, you must chill this for AT LEAST 24 hours (if you’re just freezing it first though you don’t have to chill it first). But you really do have to chill this mixture for AT LEAST 24 hours before eating it if you’re not going to freeze it first, it has to marinate to let the flavors properly combine. Otherwise it just doesn’t taste as good.

Last Saturday my two oldest girls and I caught an afternoon matinee of “Disney’s High School Musical” done for the stage in a local production here in town. If you have seen the movie, the stage play holds no surprises, but it was a lot of fun to see it all done live. While I thought they really did a great job with their casting, I was beyond impressed with the girl who played Sharpay. She did every single song, dance, and scene in a pair of 4-inch heels. She was all over the place, and never so much as even stumbled once. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her and her stilletto clad feet, her mad high heel skills were amazing! All in all, we had a fun day together,  and I was happy to be able to spend some time with two of my girls. I had never been to this theatre before, and I would love to go back and catch some of their other productions later this year. I’m all for supporting your local arts, and besides I love any chance I can get to get out and have some fun with my family.

Our entire life is packed up in boxes. If only the mountains of boxes shoved into the storage shed looked as nice and neat as the ones pictured above. Oh well. We are kind of settled into our temporary digs and trying to adjust to our new schedule and such (and let me just say how sick I am of driving….).

I will most likely be absent from my blog in the meantime as life is busier than ever before, but I will try to post if I can. Just don’t hold me to it, no guarantees here.

Still trying to figure out what we want to do with our housing situation. We thought we knew what we wanted to do, but right now it looks like we will be going in a different direction due to some urgent family matters.

Hope you are doing great, and I’m sorry to be missing out on all of the blogging fun!

It’s official.

Today we signed all of the papers.

Today we sold our house.

 It’s been an interesting year.

And I wouldn’t trade any of it for anything.

I’m looking forward to what lies ahead.

I first saw a knitting pattern on ebay for a kitty hat several years ago, and instantly fell in love.

I mean, what’s not to love and adore about this hat?

I knew I had to have it, but I wasn’t alone in my obsession and the bidding got downright maniacal. So I went in search of the (at the time) hard to find, vintage, out of print pattern elsewhere. Never mind that I am a horrible knitter. Bad. Very bad. Nevertheless, I had to have that pattern. I was determined. I mean, duh, we’re talking about a kitty cat hat in all of its classic, retro, adorable glory. There was nothing left to do but find that pattern. And I did (woo-hoo!). But sadly, I never managed to work up the courage to try my hand at knitting it (boo-hoo). Now, here I am, kitty hat-less, despondent, with a life left in ruins. Ok, none of those things I just said, but I have always regretted never attempting that pattern. My little girl would have been so cute in it! Heck, even my little boy would have rocked it, that hat is to-die-for adorable! So imagine my extreme happiness when this sweet giveaway was announced…

(click on the pic for more info)

There is still a chance for me and kitty cat hat happiness! And (bonus!) hers are so much cuter than the one I had originally seen. So of course here I am, posting about it, so even more people try to win it, lessening my chances for eternal kitty hat bliss. Seriously, could that hat be any cuter? (Her adorable little model sure doesn’t hurt either, what a little doll baby!)

I tried my hand the other day at making some of those really fun reversible fabric headbands. After only ruining one (you would think I know better than to try to sew AND pay attention to my kidlets…), I managed to go on and make 3 others correctly. I’m still hoping to salvage my first mangled attempt with a few snips and some more sewing, but if not, life goes on doesn’t it.

I looked at several sites, and found a great pattern template ‘here’ that you can print out yourself, sized in adult and child. As for instructions, I skimmed over a few other sites to make sure I got the general idea, and ended up making them the way I felt most comfortable. I ended up ‘here’ and ‘here’ when I was looking for more tutorials, and felt these were also worth reading to get the whole idea. There really is no right or wrong way to make these, just your way.

In making my headbands I used regular cotton quilting/printed fabric, a mid weight fusible interfacing to give them shape and body, about 6-7 inches of 1/2″ -inch elastic per headband, and I added a sort of scrunchy sleeve to cover the elastic band at the back. As for assembling them? I did it my own way, and it all worked out, these have a lot of leeway for mistakes, and are not hard to unpick if you are not happy with the results.

And yes, I used Hannah Montana fabric for one of the headbands. What can I say, she is very, very popular right now with a certain daughter of mine. I can only surmise that this Hannah thing started at school, since I know we never watched her show here at home, and don’t own any of her music. Which makes it even more unsettling when I hear this daughter of mine singing some of HM’s songs. Despite my best efforts, we have been infiltrated.

6 years.

That’s how long we have lived here.

We moved into this house on Labor Day weekend, and now 6 years later, we are preparing to move out of it.

We are set to sign the papers on friday. After everything that has happened, I know we would be ok if this all goes belly up at the last second, but I really doubt it will. It looks like we are really going to move this time

so far so good…

Now if only we could find the right house for ourselves to buy, I might feel better about all of this. So far, we aren’t really sure what the plan will be.

This is shaping up to be more and more interesting every day.

Or crazy. Either one.