Eventful Weekend

So much happened this weekend, yet, I feel like I didn't get much done.  And truthfully, I didn't get much done off my to-list, but a lot of stuff that needed to get done, got done.

First of all, I got my sweater punkins made:

I first saw these from Rachel at My Happily Ever After, who found the tutorial over at Small Fry and Co.  They do such a good job with it, I'm not gonna go into the gory details of it, but whether you are a seamstress or not, these were so easy to make.  I tried to find sweaters at the Goodwill that I didn't think anyone would wear, but I still had a hard time hacking up a perfectly good sweater.  But they made great centerpieces for my dining room table.  And I still have lots of sweater left of the gold and white ones because I only used the sleeves for those!

And we did a big cleaning of the house.  Hubs was especially excited about that.  He's a clean freak.  I am not.  But I'm trying my best to keep it clean so we won't have so much work to do at Christmas.  That's really what took up most of my time on Saturday.  Between that and the preschool Fall Festival at church.  We aren't preschool workers, but our youth were helping to run booths, so we were also helping.  I also put on about 12 quarts of vegetable soup for my Mother-in-law's birthday party on Sunday.

So skip ahead to Sunday, after church we finished throwing together the birthday party.  This included making 2 dozen cornbread muffins and decorating a giant pumpkin pie with whipped cream.  The whipped cream melted and made a mess of the pie, but luckily it was store bought and I didn't feel like I had too much invested in it.  Everybody said it tasted good.  But we had a lot of fun and a lot of food!

Hubs's mom (and dad) blowing out candles.  That's her mother on the other side.  Can you believe that Hubs's grandmother will be 90 next month?!  (Don't tell her I told...)

Me and Emma, my middle niece.  She is a girl after my own heart.  She wanted to know what projects I was working on and was thrilled about my sewing room.  She's also the one who always makes sure I can come to her birthday parties.

Then on Sunday night we had our crazy bunch of Middle Schoolers over for Small Groups.  We decided that the snack for that night was going to be pancakes.  Hubs made about 50 pancakes and they were all gone by the end of the night.  Along with some ice cream, about half of the left over pumpkin pie and a few bags of chips.  They will eat you out of house and home!  And did I mention, that we had chocolate and strawberry syrups and whipped cream for the pancakes?  They took over that.

That's our pastor's daughter with her mouth open.

And her mom and dad lead High School Small Groups

They're crazy, but I love them!  

Awkward and Awesome

I've been following Natalie at Blonde at Heart for a few months now, I think, and what initially made me fall in love with her blog were her Awkward and Awesome posts that are part of a link party.  (Click on the picture to go to the original link party.)  After reading the awkwardness and awesomeness of her week, I fell in love with Natalie's love for style, friends, her youth group and most importantly, God.  It's so much fun for me to find great God-fearing women who live all the way across the country.  Anyway, I thought it would be fun to link up myself, so here goes:

Awkward...

~Asking a coworker what the password was to one of our machines.  Not so awkward until we both finally realized that it was right above the screen where I entered the password.

~Dropping tube caps several different times all over the floor.

~This here is both awkward and awesome.  Awesome because I made a cute checkbook wallet with an ID window to match my new bag:

Awkward because I miscalculated my seam allowances and top stitching, so that even though it looks cool, nothing, not even the checkbook fits.

Oh well, lesson learned.  I'll just have to make another one. 

~Really Awkward:  Getting accidentally "felt up" by your 21 year old brother while you were playing monkey-in-the-middle with him and his girlfriend...at church!  But it was kind of awesome because Sam got really embarassed.  He got more padding than anything anyway :P

Awesome...

~There were 84 kids at our church's Wednesday night youth service!  I can't wait until I switch jobs so I can be a part of it!

~Date night with Hubs last Saturday night

~Two and possibly three Etsy orders in one week!

~My new bag! 

I really liked the general shape of the Made by Rae Buttercup Bag (there's a free pattern behind that link), but I liked the depth and the two pleats and straight lines at the top and sides of These Ickady Bags on Etsy, with the one big panel like Sew Spoiled's Ladybug Bags.  So I just piled what I liked from each one and drew up my own pattern for it.  I love it!  PS. if you love it too, I have it for sale in My Etsy Shop.

~Two days off next week that include another date night!

 

~Most awesomest:  Get ready for a long metaphor here...Having God knock your bowl full of milk and Cheerios out of your hands (I love my Cheerios in the morning), having a big cry over the spilled cereal, having several women (some who I know offline, others who I know online) coming to help you clean up the mess, then after those dear women have given you hugs and left, you look down into your bowl and realize it's full of peanut M&M's instead of Cheerios.  My heart is so full right now because of some of the things God is doing for me.  

I encourage anyone reading to at least think about what has been Awkward and Awesome this week.  It's made me not take my self too seriously (which I really didn't do in the first place :D) and it also made me realize that there are so many more awesome things than awkward.  Count your blessings y'all!

Glorious Weekend!

This past weekend was one of those that you hate to see end.  God knew that I have been having a hard time here latetly (of course He did, He's God, He knows everything).  There's been a number of different factors between my job, happenings at church and just not getting to see my husband enough.  I was off on Friday, Hubs unfortunately was not, but that gave me an opportunity to go to All About Fabrics in my good ol' hometown of Williamston.  Williamston, like many good southern towns, was big into textiles.  There are at list 3 different textile mill buildings all in one place.  But like many good southern textile towns, the mills have been closing.  A company called Phoenix of Anderson bought one building, though, and moved in their wholesale cost fabric store! 

It's a massive expanse of fabric at wholesale, or below, prices.  Most of it it heavier weight fabric, like upholstery, canvas, outdoor, and vinyl, but there are some good selections of flannel and fleece.  If you're looking for quilting cotton, you're probably better off going to the fabric store when they have a sale, but if you use designer quilting fabric, they have a pretty good selection (I don't like to pay designer prices when there are other things that are just as pretty).  So I went Friday when I had a lot of time.  I decided to head straight for the zippers, because I needed some.  They sell Coats and Clark zippers for $0.50 for zippers under 20 in and $1 for zippers over 20 in.  I had roughly $11 worth of zippers by the time it was all over with.  So I decided to move on.  I headed for the back where they sell remnants by the pound.  I needed some heavier weight stuff for my market bags.  Decorator remnants are $4.50 a pound, so I gathered up a zebra print, a turqoise damask on white fabric, a white polka dot on pink fabric, and a grey and yellow damask (I still don't know what the obsession with yellow and grey is, but as long as it will sell, I'll buy it).  Then I decided to look around a bit more.  I found velvet remnants for $4.00 a pound.  This will be perfect for putting in the jewelry rolls.  I also found, in all it's shining glory, cheetah print micro plush for $5 a pound.  I bought the 3 pound mass that they had there (only one!).  When I measured it at home, it was roughly 5 yards of 60 in fabric!  That will be lining the jacket I wrote about in the last post instead of flannel.  When I was done (read afraid to spend any more money), I went to the register to have all my stuff weighed and tallied up.  I set my mass of zippers on the counter top and prepared for the girl to start counting.  Instead she picked them all up, put them on the scale, then wrote "Pound of Zippers--$2.00" on the ticket.  Are you kidding me!?!?!  I bought 21 zippers for $2!  That's how much I pay for ONE 7 in zipper at Hancock!  I went back the next day and got another pound of zippers.  My zipper collection is ridiculous right now.

Friday I also got my hair highlighted by one of my best friends.  Tabatha's in cosmetology school and I went up there to get me some awesome highlights.  She did a great job!  I'll have pictures soon.

Between Friday and Saturday I finished the wholesale order.  I'm gonna take some more pictures before I ship them off because I have extra fabric of some of them.  I'll put those in my shop I suppose.

Saturday night, Hubs and I went on a date for the first time in a while.  We went to Texas Roadhouse (because Hubs says they have the best ribs ever) and then Yogo Express in Anderson. 

  We also picked up some bones for Ike Beast at Tractor Supply Company. 

Sunday was the most amazing because Pastor Joe, our senior adult pastor, preached.  Preacher Mark, our usual pastor, was on vacation.  Pastor Joe talked about seizing the opportunites that God gives us to witness to people and to draw people in to church.  One of my favorite quotes was, "Church is not a country club, it's a hospital."  People who know God and feel they have a good life don't need church like people who are searching for something more and hurting.  It's our job to take care of those people.  He also talked about how when we are in line with God, He will give us the desires of our heart.  Exclusive of that, on Sunday night, Tyler, our summer youth pastor, talked about the same thing.  When our desires are God's desires, then God gives us what we want.  This has helped me make a big decision that I've been struggling with.  After church Sunday night, we went to Zaxby's and went bowling with the High School Youth.  We normally take care of the Middle Schoolers, but the high school, and high school leaders begged us to go.  It was a lot of fun and very encouraging.  I honestly haven't felt God in the church like I did Sunday in a long time.  It was nice to know he's there.   

Wow.  That was a lot.  Anything good from your weekend?