Quilt time!

Last year I made my mother this black and white, music-themed quilt using the Yellow Brick Road pattern. I had so much fun collecting the 22 different fabrics! Now I am collecting fabrics that are tool-themed. My Dad and my three brothers all own/work for Southern Maryland Homes here in the county. Here are the fabrics I have so far:

This is my favorite:

I'm not sure if this measuring tape fabric is sewing-themed or tool-themed, but I was able to buy a bolt of 20 yards for $1/yard. If nothing else, it will make a great backing!
The fabric that I would really like is this Screws and Nails fabric. I saw it on eBay for an exorbitant price and it was only a fat quarter size. I need at least a yard. With the arrival of our first Alberta Clipper this week, I am drawn to the sewing room. My sewing room is a former cellar in our basement, so it is quite chilly in there (which is delightful in the summer!). So I need to do some ironing first to warm the place up.

Today is recital day for Ruthie and Lizzie. The entire recital is ensemble music. Ruthie is going to play with three other children in a two piano/four hands piece (this picture is of them practicing in my Mom's studio): Lizzie and I are playing a duet on one piano. My Mom and her brother, Uncle Ron, are closing out the evening recital with a piano/violin duet that is 13 minutes long. Mom says she and Uncle Ron are really feeling their ages (slightly less than 70). But they don't sound it!

Have a great weekend. The leaves are blowing off the trees quickly. I'm off to hunt for a corned ham to make the traditional Southern Maryland stuffed ham for Thanksgiving.

Many blessing ~ Kathie

We had some visitors this week. I enjoy seeing the deer...as long as they stay away from my gardens. Aren't they cute? We've seen three sets of twins this year.

Today was a busy day. We were out the door at 8:30 am for Homeschool Co-op. Our cooking class made 6 pies ~ 2 apple, 2 pecan and 2 pumpkin. They turned out beautifully. The students got to try each of the three kinds of pies and we gave the other pies to the church for a funeral luncheon this afternoon.

One of the dear elderly ladies in our church, Miss Octavia, went home to be with the Lord this week. Miss Octavia had been failing in health for some time, so we are pleased that she is out of her pain and in heaven with her hubby. Mrs. Pat, her daughter, was very close to her Mom and I know she will be lonesome for her in the days to come.

Mrs. Pat asked my girls to sing "This World Is Not My Home" and "When We All Get To Heaven." They did a wonderful job. Here they are in church practicing before we left for the funeral home.
Mrs. Pat also asked the Men's Trio that hubby is in to sing "Marvelous Grace." They sang the best I have ever heard them sing, especially considering they were given one quick run-through before performing!

The Lord really blessed the service. There were wonderful pictures to see of Mrs. Pat and her family. They will be going to Arkansas this weekend to bury Mrs. Octavia.

After the 8 pm funeral, we headed south so we could pick up three sandwiches at Roy Roger's (the restaurant) since we were hungry (dinner was very light). We decided to do one of our favorite pastimes and headed to Solomon's Island. We divided the sandwiches 7 different ways and ate in the pavillion. Our weather today was very warm but it's supposed to get cold weather from Canada tomorrow. This is the pavillion:
Mike taught our children the finer points of ballroom dancing:
Maggie especially enjoyed it:
For some reason, our family has always enjoyed this pavillion. We have gone there and ended up singing. The acoustics under the dome are wonderful!

I enjoy looking at the quaint old homes and the old fashion clock.

All the children had fun on the playground:

Even the bathrooms are nice!

The Solomon's bridge was being worked on, so it took us a long time to get home. We sang every cowboy song we could think of, including all the cowboy Christmas songs. We got home at 10:48. We just finished praying and the children are getting into bed. It's 11:48.

I hope you and yours had a wonderful day too.

Many blessings ~ Kathie

Pumpkin Cake Failure

Well, Maggie tried, and she tried hard, but the pumpkin cake would not work with a dairyfree and eggfree cake.
I'm not sure if you can tell, but Maggie made the bottom bundt cake a spice cake, and the top bundt cake is a chocolate cake. With no eggs and butter in the mix, the cakes are light and therefore collapse under the weight of another cake and icing.

However, as you can see, this flop tasted great!! The chocolate cake especially was delicious. But Maggie wouldn't let us take it to church.

Fortunately we had leftover MexTex dip (aka Seven Layer Dip). So that was our dinner for tonight.
Hope you had a worshipful Sunday. We are having a quiet Sunday because Ruthie has laryngitis. The silence is deafening!

Many blessings ~ Kathie

Making Lumpia

Lumpia is a Philipino (Filipino) egg roll. We ate a lot of lumpia when Mike was stationed in San Diego. All but one of our neighbors was Filipino. We used to enjoy taking our evening walks around dinner time because the entire neighborhood smelled wonderful!

Every time I make lumpia, I always get requests for the recipe, so I'm going to post it here. When I make lumpia for my family, I make a healthier version by baking them on a cookie sheet in the oven at 400 degrees, turning once. Be sure to spray some PAM on both the cookie sheet and the lumpia. For guests, I usually go to the trouble of deep frying them.

Lumpia

3/4 lb ground pork (I use bulk sausage)
8 oz can water chestnuts, sliced
8 oz can bamboo shoots, sliced
1 tsp pepper
8 cloves garlic, minced
1 carrot shredded or minced
2 tblp soy sauce
1 pkg lumpia wrappers

Cook sausage or pork. Add remaining ingredients except wrappers. At this point, I prefer to put the entire mix into my food processor to make all the ingredients uniform size. But this is certainly not required.

Roll the lumpia. We use Orientex wrappers which I find are easier to separate from each other. You may also use egg roll wrappers, but they are thicker and take longer to cook. Your goal is to spread the filling and roll your wrappers so that you have long, thin lumpia. (There are always directions on the package that tells you how to roll them.) Tricky to do, just takes practice Another word about wrappers ~ always buy more than you need. Sometimes the wrappers stick together and you tear a bunch. My children think this is wonderful because they fry up all the torn wrappers and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Yummy!

Deep fry until golden brown. Drain on paper napkins. Ruthie was in charge of the fryer today and she did a great job. It sure helped to have her frying while I rolled.

We like to use a sweet and sour sauce called Hawaiian Style Sweet and Sour Sauce by World Harbors.

So bake/fry up some lumpia and enjoy an "international" dinner!

Many blessings ~ Kathie

Camping at Solomon's

Last weekend we had three good days of light, steady rain. What a wonderful break from our severe drought. But the weatherman told us to enjoy the rain because he could not foresee any chance of rain again for 2-3 weeks. Oh my!

Since I had been wanting to organize an overnight campfire, I decided the time was now or never! So I put out the invitation to our church and several families signed up. At the last day, however, our weather turned cold and very windy, thanks to a hurricane out on the coast (Noel). Nonetheless, all of us admitted later that we weren't gonna be the ones to chicken out!

The wind wasn't bad until later on when we were crawling into our tents, but the cold bothered the wimpy adults. (We had to keep reminding our children to put on their jackets!) We had the best campsite on the whole base. The nature trails were a few feet from our spot, and the playground was within eyesight. And there were wonderful biking trails all over. The children never stopped running around and riding bikes all night. They also had fun playing flashlight tag.

The menu was very basic ~ roasted hot dogs and marshmallows, and plenty of hot water for tea. (...and well, hot water for Dick who drinks a cup of hot water every evening!). Below is a picture of John Patrick. My children have always felt sorry for JP because he is an only child (how does he play capture the flag?!). Tonight they found another good reason to pity him...tonight was his first ever hot dog roast...and JP is a freshman in college!
Charmaine made this delicious BBQ dish. Doesn't it look wonderful? It's ground beef and beans with BBQ sauce, covered with refrigerator rolls. I can't wait to make a dairy-free version.

John Patrick was really good about keeping all the children entertained, but he eventually brought in Sarah and Zachary to help. I don't know what Sarah is saying to Maggie in this picture, one can only imagine the drama:-)
The next morning it was very windy and cold, so we headed over to Doris and Dick's camper (76 degrees inside!) to visit. We just happened to have styrofoam cups with envelopes of grits and oatmeal, so Doris was great about pouring hot water for us:-) We had a lot of fun visiting with them.
We had so much fun that we've decided we must do it again. We'd like to do it on the church property or at our home. Thanks to everyone who came. Sure have a lot of memories added to our memory banks.

Maggie and I are getting ready to start a big cooking day for fellowship dinner at church tomorrow. She will be making a huge pumpkin cake (pictures to come) and I will make lumpia. The theme of the dinner is international since we will be having missionaries.

Have a great weekend ~ Kathie

I am having fun tonight watching Mike teach our two oldest daughters. They are both taking a Math course at the local community college. Both girls are inclined towards writing and English courses, not math! Mike is an instructor at the Navy Test Pilot School on our local navy base. Right now I'm sure he is thinking it is easier to teach radar and calculus-level courses to a classroom full of students than to teach Math to Sarah and Maggie!

It is a good thing you can't hear what the girls are saying right now. They are not saying kind things about numbers and scientific calculators!

Yesterday my children did more schoolwork than usual because we knew we wouldn't get any done today since we were gone all day at homeschool co-op. So I gave three tests simultaneously and hillariously! A spelling test for Lizzie, a different spelling test for Anna, and a phonics quiz for Ruthie. I wondered several times if anyone else has ever done that?

As I mentioned, today was homeschool co-op from 9:30 -1:45 at church. Maggie did a great job teaching eight 6-7th graders about knifes. They made a big bowl of salsa. I forgot to take their picture, but remembered in time to get a picture of the salsa! Doesn't it look yummy? It was amazing how many Moms hung around to get a taste:-) Even Pastor liked it.

Here's the recipe:

4 tomatoes, chopped and seeded
2 green peppers, chopped
1/2 red or sweet onion
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
1 tblp olive oil (opt)
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 tblp rice vinegar

1 tblp mustard seeds

Mix well and enjoy!

I had three enthusiastic children in my ukulele class. It was very enjoyable. I wasn't sure how this class would go, but it's gonna take off! The only glitch in the whole day is the traffic in the morning. Takes almost an hour to get to church!

We got our first frost this week. Nippy mornings and evenings. Superb quilting weather!

Many blessings ~ Kathie

We won!

You can imagine my surprise when I got an email from a friend telling me we won the giveaway from http://www.inashoe.com/! Wow, do we feel blessed! Many thanks to Kim who sponsored this giveaway. We will be receiving the three items on my wishlist from Vision Forum:

This is a set of 6 CDs called Bible Lessons for Manhood from the Battlefield of My Father's Youth.
Next is a set of set of 8 CDs called Family Rebuilders Library.
Our final item is another set of 8 CDs called Family Renewal Library.
I have to admit, it was very hard to narrow down this list. We are going to buy a few additional items. Sarah is interested in filmmaking and feels a leaning towards making conservative, Christian films. So she wants to get all three sets of film CDs.
Mike and I would like to invite a bunch of teens over to watch the set of 30 DVDs called The Culture-Changers. After that, we'd like to take a group of teens through the set of 22 CDs called Christian Worldview Training. So I guess I better get busy selling more on eBay!
This Friday evening we have invited the folks from our church to join us at the local Navy Recreational base for a one-night bonfire and campout. The weather is supposed to be perfect. I can hardly wait! If you live locally but don't belong to our church, let me know and I will send you an invite.
Each year about this time, we have a problem with yellow jackets. This year they are far worse than ever before, probably because of our drought. Anyhow, I have a set of four glass wasp traps that I have used for about 7 years. However, they are hard to clean and fill. So last year I went to http://www.lehmans.com/ and bought a set of 6 plastic wasp traps that you push into soda bottles. I fill the bottles with an inch of apple juice and it works great! Here's a bottle that has an inch of dead bees. Time to empty out and fill up again.
Maggie is experimenting with her sweet and sour nuts recipe for the bonfire on Friday night. She melts butter in a pan, adds nuts, about 1/4 tsp salt, about 1 tblp sugar, and shakes the pan until they are roasted. Maggie has made these nuts many times in the toaster oven, never over the stove. They turned out well and taste even better!
Enjoy these crisp evenings and mornings before they get too crisp:-)
Many blessings ~ Kathie