There is just no end to the uses for aluminum foil...and ofcurse the metal coat hanger holding up the foil.
All this effort for a TV that only gets one channel...........................................

alternative vacation

A couple days ago I was discussing how to have a low cost fun vacation with a friend. The biggest expense for most vacations is the Motel.
Here is how we got around that one year. About 4 months before the actual "vacation" we planned what we wanted to do on the vacation, places we wanted to see, checked the times things were open, what days the attractions were closed. Got maps to everything...Everyday was planned out. I wrote everything down... I also added a few alternative activities for those things that somehow don't seem to work out as planned.
Then I started the preparations. I told family and friends when we were going on the "vacation". But did not tell them where....
I found one friend, who was in contact with several of my family members, and could be trusted with the assignment I had for her. I gave her a rundown of the plans.
Then I cleaned the entire house from top to bottom. Set up timers on the lights....mowed the lawn...get the "vacation" clothes all together, made sure everything we would need was washed.
Took the phone off the hook, to make sure that it could not be heard ringing from outside the house.
Now for the actual vacation...
After everything was in place...we spent a very relaxing vacation at home!
No motel expense...we ate out almost everyday...visited those sites that we had always said someday we should go see, slept late, watched movies, DID NO WORK! that was part of the plan. We never heard the phone ring so we not tempted to answer it...My "trusted" friend was in charge of keeping track of family and friends, and if any emergency came up she would tell me...I had nothing to worry about.
We took no pictures....told everyone we forgot the camera, and just spent our vacation wandering around...which was true..we did wander around, but never too far that we did not sleep in our own bed every night. There was no schedule...if we wanted a nap in the afternoon, we took one, or if we wanted to watch a movie we did.. The one thing we were careful not to do was visit an attraction in the city we live in...Did not want to run into anyone... and we were lucky we never did.
Our fun vacation cost less than half of what it would have had we done the "normal" vacation thing and driven to a destination and spent the time staying in Motels.

Isn't he/she pretty? We saw the bird almost everyday, either sitting in the tree, or flying low over the water looking for fish...It is amazing how they can fly over the water and just swoop down and pick a fish right out of the water.
I often wondered why they are called "bald" eagles. They have all those nice white feathers on their heads. I heard somewhere that it takes 2 years after they are born to get those nice white feathers.
We always knew when he was in his/her tree, as there would be a line of boats sitting in the water while people took pictures.

It is again Spring, the warm breezes are floating through the house, the sun is beating in the windows highlighting all the dust! Time to get rid of the clutter before someone drops in.
Where does all this stuff come from....It seems like it was just Christmas and the house was all company clean...
What I really need to do is take a week off from everything else and just start from one end of the house and put everything back in it's place and pitch all the stuff that is no longer needed or was never needed in the first place. And just work my way to the other end of the house. I am thinking big rummage sale for all the still usable stuff that we are never going to use.
How does all this stuff accumulate? It is like it breeds while we sleep.

The weather the past few days has been hot, hot, hot! Hot I can take, it is windy I can not...my eyes are all red, itchy and watery...All that pollen flying everywhere. Plus it was so humid out yesterday that no matter what I touched it stuck to me....What would be nice is if the humidity dropped, the wind became calm, and everything just dropped all it's pollen over night when I was sleeping and then it just disappeared before I got up...
But that is not a reality...So tomorrow the best idea would be to just stay in the house with the air purifiers on and just look outside at the day.
BUT no such luck....I have to go to the bank, and then get a hair cut, and do a bit more running around....
Well I suppose it could be worse, we could get a foot of snow! At least I do not have to shovel anything. The pollen will be better soon, at least I hope it will..
Need to go find something to put on my sore eyes...........................................

My latest project, adult bibs. So handy really. I messed one up and so it has become mine. It is not this pretty color, but a light green. I have found out that most everything comes out of a terry towel in the wash... so color is really not all that important. Though I probably would not want to have one in white.

My former sewing assistant. Tygger - a Maine Coon/Red Tabby mix

When he held down those stray pattern pieces they never got away. His paws were 1-1/2 inches across. He was 30 pounds of love all wrapped up in a Maine Coon cat. A Maine Coon cat, is really a dog masquerading as a cat. He came when you whistled, and loved to play fetch... He also loved to swim, and a wonderful day for him was when I filled the bathtub full of water and put towels down on the floor and let him splash....

We have to redo our bathroom floor as the tile is coming up, because of water adventures. But there is no way I would have not let him enjoy himself, he loved it so much, and he also loved to sit on the other chair in my sewing room and critique my work.

After looking at Mother's Day cards in the stores, I decided I really did not like many of them. they either have an ok picture and a so so verse, or the whole thing is just not what I want to say. So this year I decided to make a fabric post card instead. I was going to make two, but you know how it is, I ran out of time. So in the end I did end up buying one too.

But this one, I decided should have a Spring theme, so it could fit more than just one day. I put little iron on crystals in the centers of the daisy's, though it does not show up all that well on the picture. Just seemed to make the card sparkle a bit more.

What I would like to do is find enough time to make my Christmas cards this year...not sure if that will happen or not.

A Day to Relax......................

Today when I got up, I decided I was not going to do any work, it was a nice day, and I was going to take a day off. Now if I had stayed home I would have found things that I could have been doing. Like I will take a day of relaxation, BUT, while I am relaxing I will throw a load of wash in the washer and it can wash while I am relaxing, and then I could soak a load of dishes while I am relaxing...And the first thing I know I am working and my day of relaxing is no more. So to end that problem I did not stay home. I did my relaxing outside in the warm sunny weather in a different location...one where my "work" that I know I should be doing could not call out to me.
I had a wonderful day. I kept reminding myself that I was intentionally not doing any work today..It would all be there tomorrow waiting for me, it would not run away and I could get to it then.
After I got home and had supper and watched a bit of television, I sat and caught up reading the 2 weeks of newspapers that I have not had time to read.....again not doing any real work.
Now tomorrow, well technically it is already tomorrow as it is a few minutes past midnight, I will get up and do all the work, that was there this morning...one day does not make any difference at all........
Except that I had a day to do nothing but relax and enjoy the day......

Things are looking up, I have actually finished a project on the day I said I would, and have finally taken my cutting table out of the dining room! It has been up and I have been cutting out stuff since early February.
Now to just be able to keep this going, and finish the rest of my projects by the deadline I have set for them...
I had to run an errand, and when I came back, I could not believe how big my dining room looked with that 30 x 60 inch table gone. Now I just have to put away the boxes of fabric, and finish sewing the projects I have cut out.
Then next on my list will be straightening the sewing/craft room.
Of course it will only get messy again as soon as I start another project, but I should be able to locate a few things that have gone missing since before Christmas.
I have bought so many seam ripper because I keep losing them. After the clean I should have over a dozen or so, maybe closer to 2 dozen, not to mention other tools that are probably buried in the piles.