The Many Adventures of Gus

I've come to realize that Gus is one very lazy dog (most of the time). We love it! She is just the perfect dog for us. She always seems to sleep in some interesting positions:

On the couch.
Oh my legs.
Still or again, I can't remember.
One ear hanging over.
In some position that I can't even begin to explain.
Curled up in a ball on the chair.
Sprawled out on my side of the bed.
Making sure Nuge stays asleep as long as possible...on my side of the bed.
Hey, why does HE get to sleep with her all the time? No fair!

But she also knows how to play rough too:

Sometimes she plays the hard way.

Other times, she plays the lazy way.

With a cup...
Or under the bed...Sometimes even attacking the shorts.

Or trying to catch Nuge as he runs and jumps on the couch. Her body is too awkward for her to get up there on her own. Maybe one of these days.

Zoo, Food, and Organization

So as you read previously, my dad had surgery and has since been at home recovering. The doctor told him to get out and get moving to help him heal faster. Him, my mom and my niece went to the Fort Worth Zoo and invited Nuge and I along for the ride. This will be mainly a picture post, because we all know that pictures are more interesting than actual words. So here ya go:
Well if he had turned around I could have gotten a better shot.Nuge's favorite.Nuge with our beautiful niece, who hates her Aunt CayCay by the way.On the termite mounds.Nuge said "no" when I asked him if I could have one. :( boo on him!
So after the zoo, Nuge went off to work. I made him dinner! Potatoes Romanoff! So good and so easy!
You got your ingredients (3/4 cup of milk, 2 cups of water, a can of Cream Of, and Au Gratin). It called for Cream of Mushroom, but that stuff always makes me sick and I hate mushrooms, so I used Cream of Chicken and it was perfect!
Brown your meat. With seasonings.
Drain fat, then pour everything in. Just dump it all in there nice and good.
Bring to a boil and then cover and let simmer for 25 minutes. Yep, that easy.
I was going to make Brussels sprouts but I picked up one bag and it was broccoli, so I put it back and picked up another bag and it was broccoli, too. Apparently, God wanted us to have broccoli instead. So I put frozen broc in the pot with some minced garlic, salt and pepper and water and let it heat up and come to a slight boil as the main meal was cookin. Real good stuff.
Wash it all down with those awesome cookies and there ya have it folks, an awesome, easy and delicious meal.

And one more thing:
I have a hard time staying focused on my weekly chores. I can't stay motivated to clean (but I still do it). So I decided to make something a little more fun and loud that will, hopefully, keep me on my toes. I call in my Colorful Cleaning Caldendar!
I bought some magnets from Hobby Lobby and measured out construction paper with the days of the week and chores (obviously). Hung em up on the fridge and it's nice, big, and colorful. I can rearrange the chores depending on if company is coming or not. I can add stuff or take away. It was fun to make and has really helped me stay organized.
Up close. I have doing dishes and cleaning the kitchen 5 days a week, as well as laundry 3 days a week. I also have trash and recycle done the night before pick up day so I can remember to do it. I tried to not put "big chores" all together and to break them up throughout the week. And if I have anything going on later in the day (like LifeGroup on Wednesdays) then I obviously don't want to be scrubbing potties before I head out, so those are on different days. I think it's fun and it lets me know what needs to be done. So far, so good!

And of course, can't leave you without a nice picture of Gus!
Silly puppy!

Hospital, party, quilt, and Gus

So I know everyone is dying to know how Keziah liked her quilt. But before I get into that, I want to thank everyone for all the prayers, phone calls, texts, comments, and e mails that my family and I received while my dad was in the hospital.

For those of you that don't know, Wednesday morning, at like 4 am, my mom text me to say that she was taking my dad to the hospital. Now my dad never wants to go to the hospital, so I knew he was in serious pain. Turns out, he had appendicitis. He got to the hospital's ER sometime after 4am, but did not go into surgery until 5:30pm. So they put him on some meds for a while so he could "rest comfortably". Now, my dad has had more knee surgeries than any other person I know and his pain tolerance is really high. I have never seen my dad in so much pain. But they wheeled him into surgery and 2 hours later, he was out. The surgeron said he had gangrene all over his appendix and sourrounding areas. So, of course, he took it all out and cleaned it up real nice. My dad then spent the next few nights in the hospital draining out the fluids and healing.
Saturday, the day of Zia's party, he was relased to go home! He is now doing much better. So thank you for the prayers. They were definitly answered.

So on to the party for my favorite 3 year old. Here is a picture of Keziah.
And her sweet baby brother Kohen.
He's starting to be able to move around pretty good and his laugh is contagious! I love hearing him laugh.

I also baked the cake, but since my cake decorating skills aren't top notch, I won't post the pictures here. That, and I didn't take any of the final product. But here are some of Keziah and her quilt.
She just opened it and Kim is telling her that it's from Caren and Nuge.
"Thank you Carewen and Nuge."
I think she really liked it!
So while Zia is opening her presents, I got to the play with Kohen.
He is so sweet!
And what post would be complete without some pictures of Gus?
So while I'm baking Keziah's cake, Nuge and Gus sleep. Lazy bums!
Can't believe how big she is getting. The vet said she would be about 65-70 pounds!!!
Now see, Gus is a smart dog. I'm doing laundry and this face cloth falls on the floor. What does she do? She makes sure I'm not looking, then she RUNS off to the living room and starts to play with it. Now, she knows she's not allowed to be chewing on this stuff and she runs before I even have to time to see what she has in her mouth. I get into the living room, she rolls over on her back (I didn't get a picture) because she knows this is the one position that is hard for us to get her out of, and clamps down on the cloth. What a sneaky, smart doggie!

Very first quilt

I hope this will be the first of many posts about my sewing.

My friends, Kyle and Kim, have a daughter, Keziah. She will be turning 3 this month and her birthday party is Saturday. I will be baking her a princess cake but I also wanted to make her something. What do you make a 3 year old that will be special and not outgrow?

I decided to make her a quilt. Now, I know it was pretty ambitious of me to choose a quilt as my first major sewing project, but I have a friend who does quilting so I had all the confidence that she would not let me make a crappy quilt.
It all started with the fabric. First off, let me explain to you that I'm not a very good decision maker. I had talked to my friend about having a sewing party and so we were throwing ideas around, but I just couldn't make up my mind. I made my sister go with me to Joann so I could look around. Well when I'm in Joann, I'm like a kid in a candy store. Sewing has endless possibilities and I had no idea what I wanted. When I decided to make Keziah a quilt, picking the fabric was not as hard as deciding on what to make. So my sister and I picked 2 polka dot fabrics, 2 heart fabrics, and 2 butterfly fabrics. We also chose a nice pink for the backing.
Ok I forgot to take pictures of all the steps, so just pretend I spent over an hour cutting out squares, sewing 2 together, then 4 together, then laying them out so I can get the quilt to look the way I want it, and then sewing everything together. And Tricia and Catherine helped too, so we had a really nice assembly line going.
So now, I sewed on the border. So pretend Tricia cut out pieces to make the border and then sewed them together. Now I'm sewing the border to the quilt.
Then it was a group effort with the ironing. We ironed it flat so it would look nicer. Those are Tricia's hands but it's my shirt and Catherine is taking the picture. Team work guys, team work!
Then we laid the backing on the table, then put the batting on top of that, then the quilt on top of that. We used safety pins (while making sure not to scratch Tricia's new table) to pin all the layers together. We put a pin in each square and then on the bordering.
This is Tricia using her awesome, heavy duty machine to make the squiggles on the quilt. While she's doing this, Catherine and I are happily licking beaters to the awesome cookies that she made! Catherine, I'm going to need that recipe please! This process took Tricia a whole 7 minutes to do. Maybe longer, maybe shorter, but the point is: SHE'S AWESOME!!!
All the while, Gus is trying to get her afternoon nap. That's kinda hard to do at Tricia's because she has 5 kids, ranging from 14-5 (or 6, I can't remember) and 2 dogs. Everytime Gus got to snoozin, the kids or dogs wanted to play with her.
So then to make the edging, we cut pieces out of the scrap fabric. Since we didn't take cutting pictures with the squares, here's a good shot of me cutting the edging.
While I'm doing the cutting, Catherine is taking out the safety pins while trying to fight off Gus from taking a nap on the quilt.
So now it's time to sew the front side of the edging on. Pretend you saw pictures of Tricia sewing the edging pieces together and all of us ironing. Team work!
Now this part I thought was particularly tricky. After sewing one side of the edging on, you fold it over and sew along the line for the front part. I can't really explain it, but it was hard for me.
1.) I can't really sew in a straight line very well.
2.) It was really hard.
3.) I can't really sew in a straight line very well.
This part took the longest, I think. If not, it sure did seem like it. Tricia offered to do it for me, but I wanted to do it. I should have just let her. I mean, who would have known, right?
But in the end, it was all worth it. It took 3 of us 5 hours to do this whole thing from start to finish, give or take a few minutes. Not too shabby huh?
I can't wait to see Keziah's face when she sees this. I'm going to see what kind of left over fabric I have and maybe try to make her a matching something or other.

So there it is, my very first quilt. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be and it wasn't as overwhelming either. I had a great teacher helping me and Catherine was a big help too. Thank you ladies for everything. And thank you, Tricia's kids, for wearing out Gus. She's been sleeping since we got home and has hardly moved. :)