Anna finally bought a Jeep!  She is enjoying having her own car again.  She couldn't decide between another pickup truck or a Jeep...but this one finally won her heart.  It's hard enough parking with 5 cars in the back yard...I'm not sure where the twins will park once they start driving their own cars!

 We went to Florida to spend Thanksgiving with Mike's parents. This picture was taken in Grandma's neighborhood.  I remembered to upload my pictures in reverse so they would be in chronological order...but they got posted the opposite way.  Oh well.  We took this picture just minutes before we got in the car to come home.

 Family pictures.  It's hard to smile when you're staring at the sun and waiting for the camera's timer.

 My hubby and children went on many boat rides.  They usually left during daylight and came home after sunset. 

 The beach has many fascinating creatures.

 My children enjoyed Grandma's golf cart.  Since Grandma and Grandpa live on a little island, there is no fear of fast cars.

 Ruthie and I took many rides on the bikes.

 On our way to the mall for Black Friday shopping, we passed this animal hospital.

 For some reason this entrance door caught our fancy.  The other side of the building had a door marked Dogs & Exotic Animals.

 My pictures are really out of order!  This was taken on a boat ride.

 Eating pie and Tofutti ice cream on Thanksgiving Day. 

 Grandma has a nice big table so we all can sit comfortably at meals.  We ate like royalty...as usual.  Thanks, Grandma!

 Allen caught this animal off Grandad's pier.  When we tried to get close to it, it would squirt a stream of water at us!  We threw him back in.

 For years, Mike has told us the story of how every Thanksgiving holiday, Uncle Herb (Grandad's brother who lives in NJ) would come up to Connecticut and bring lox and bagels.  Mike has been trying to revive that tradition ever since.  He finally got his lox and bagels.  Grandad was pleased! 

 When we got to FL, we learned that Grandma and Grandpa are planning to sell their FL home and move closer to Dwight and Linda, about 3 hours north.  Grandpa misses his tractor and wants some land to mow.  They are looking for a little farm.  So we tried to make the most of the beach since this will probably be the last time we come to this home.

 Grandma does her grocery shopping off the island at a Publix.  Behind the store is a large pond with two alligators, a large turtle, and birds.  We stopped many times to see how they were doing.

 Grandma and Grandpa eat breakfast out in the lanai most mornings.  Grandpa watches the morning news and does his crossword puzzles.  

Coming home from the beach and looking for Grandpa's pier.  We had a wonderful time.  We left Maryland on Sunday morning and drove nonstop, arriving in Florida around 3 am.  We stayed until Saturday morning when we left to visit Dwight.  After an hour catching up with him, we headed home to MD, arriving around 5 am on Sunday. 

When all was said and done, we decided our children are now too big to be bunched up in a mini van for that many hours.  We need to rent a bigger van for long trips. 

Hope you and yours enjoyed your Thanksgiving holiday as well.  Many blessings ~ Kathie

We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
He chastens and hastens His will to make known.
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to His Name; He forgets not His own.

 Little Clara loves to sit on our laps and play or read.  We love that!

 This past week Maggie made 5 Layer Greek Dip.  It was delicious.  The recipe is a cinch...hummus, then tomatoes, black olives, green peppers, cucumbers, feta (we used goat feta) and dill.  We got the recipe from here.  I had to add the picture of how our dip was supposed to look:-) 

 This afternoon Allen, Lizzie, and I made a quick stop at Apple Basket store and saw this weird antique.  Anyone know what it is?  Added later:  It's an antique egg poacher!  I googled "antique egg poacher photo" and saw many wonderful examples.

 The handle moves and lifts the three rings.  There are little drain holes on the bottom part.  It sure has our curiosity!

 Speaking of curiosity...Maggie and I went to Silver Springs yesterday for her acupuncture appt...and as we were sitting at a light, we came up with the sudden inspiration to see what this store is all about.

 We're always on the lookout for hard-to-find ingredients.  We didn't buy anything...but we sure had fun looking!

 This "Special Gunpowder" is actually green tea!  I'm not sure why it's called gunpowder.

 This is yam powder or flour.  We also saw lots of casava flour. 

We were walking down the aisle when there was a strong fishy smell.  I turned around and saw all the refrigerators full of dried fish and eels...and some other unidentifiables...but best left unidentified!  Yuk!

Last weekend our church had special evening services (Sat thru Mon) with BJU evangelist Mike Shrock preaching.  His sermons were based on II Peter 1:4-8.   

"Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.  And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Each of the young men represented the seven characteristics we should be adding to our faith.  As usual, Mike Shrock was very energetic and kept us entertained while teaching Bible truths.  He is already scheduled to return next year.

The first three days of this week were wonderfully warm and sunny...but today the weather has turned cold and rainy.  We are thankful for our fireplace.  Tomorrow we will be cleaning diligently in preparation of hubby's homecoming...and Anna's get-together.

Just one note:  To all my friends to whom I recommended pinterest.com:  I apologize for my recommendation.  I enjoyed three days of collecting wonderful ideas and recipes...but since then that website has had profane and obscene pictures.  I'm not sure why it changed so drastically, but I'd support anyone who wanted to start a godly pinterest! 

Many blessings ~ Kathie

Review for Janome 712t Treadle Machine

This blog post is an attempt to answer the many questions I receive about the Janome 712t.  The "t" stands for treadle.  Yes, this is a green machine...it runs on physical energy.  Let me first say welcome to the folks from sewmamasew.com.  Most of my questions come from their excellent website...specifically their forums.   

First, a few quick answers:

• Yes, we still love our Janome and consider it the best treadle sewing machine on the market, bar none.  We've had it for two years.
• Yes, we did have to adjust our cabinet so that the Janome would fit in it...and yes, it was scary to saw off parts of the cabinet!
• Yes, we consider the Janome to be extremely smooth...even when sewing in reverse.
• Yes, we would buy another Janome before buying any other treadle  sewing machine.

What to look for when purchasing a cabinet and treadle for your Janome machine.  See the two round circular metal discs?  There are two metal plugs protruding from these discs that fit into your machine.  This is how your machine attaches to the cabinet...just these two metal plugs.  The key here is to make sure you get a cabinet that has these plugs exactly 9-1/8" apart.  I have never seen a Singer cabinet with a different size...but I have seen many other brands with much wider plugs. This measurement is from the center of the disc to the center of the disc.

The White company makes beautiful tiger oak cabinets...but the plugs are 7-1/4" apart...and only White treadles have 7-1/4" plugs.  My hubby tried hard to put my Janome into my beautiful White cabinet...it just wouldn't work.

The cabinet that I ended up putting my Janome into is a Singer cabinet...bought for $75 locally on craigslist.org.  That seems to be a typical price here in Maryland. 

In the above picture, if you look closely, I have circled (in white) a piece that my hubby had to saw off to make the Janome fit.  If you look even closer, you will see a long white line that I tried to use to show where hubby sawed off the length of wood.  You can see the rawness of the cut.  Those were the only two cuts he made.  However, he also had to yank out the beltplate on the end.

In the above picture, you can see the drawer that keeps me from being able to put the Janome down into the cabinet to close the top.    

The beltplate is the black metal piece you see to the right of my Keystone machine.  I'm sure the plate is meant to keep the belt in line, but so far my Janome has done just as well without it.  



This is a picture of my Keystone machine.  The metal "plugs" are a little easier to see here.  You can also see the hole where the electrical cord went into the machine.  My Keystone used to be electric...until I took off all the electrical parts and made it a wonderful treadle machine.  I did not have to make any adjustments whatsoever to fit the Keystone into my Singer cabinet.  Sometimes that happens...but that is more the exception than the rule.

Here's a better picture of the beltplate.  

I took as many pictures from different angles as possible.  

Many folks don't know but you are supposed to release the belt each time you are finished sewing for any length of time.  Otherwise the belt will permanently stretch.  The above picture is showing the release pull.

Here's a closeup of my treadle.

Here's a closeup of my cabinet. 

One last comment that I just remembered.  The Janome has the thread on the back of the machine like you see in this picture.  Nothing unusual about that...but that also keeps the machine from fitting inside the cabinet.  If you want, you can keep a screwdriver in your cabinet and take the threadholder off each time, but since I already can't fit the machine in my cabinet because of the front drawer, it doesn't really matter.  But I wanted to let you know that in case your cabinet doesn't have a drawer.

Hopefully I have answered some of your questions.  I do not have the gifts of teaching or photography (or even blogging!) so this is difficult for me to explain. 

If you still have questions, please ask me by leaving a comment or sending an email (located on my "complete profile" page).

Enjoy sewing!

Kathie