starting sew simple

I have a feeling I am going to learn to appreciate the HARD work that goes into being a seamstress.

Cutting. Measuring. Pinning. Measuring again. Phew.

I got my beauty all set-up tonight. Check her out:

I'm pretty sure if Paris Hilton were here, 

she would say, "that's hot"

Ok. Maybe not. 

She'd probably actually ask, "what's thaaahht?" 

Side note: I don't think Paris would ever visit Delaware. 

I got the thread from the spool to the bobbin. Soon after, I was ready to go!

Ta-Da!

A pouch? 

...the stitches are beautiful!

Magnolia, I love you.

Married Christmas!

Our 2nd married Christmas together.  

This is how we celebrated:

We got a real tree, a beautiful Fraser Fir.

we decorated...

and baked... 

we even took a little walk in the woods Christmas Eve (day)...

             

we didn't forget about Santa & his reindeer!

Just the two of us: stockings & gifts

 (early!)

We enjoyed Christmas Day with Mark's family. 

A refreshing breakfast followed by gift exchanging, movie watching

and great family fun!

Barb outdid herself by making a dinner spread that was de-lish. 

I love this man. 

He is my hero. 

He may or may not have given me a wonderful gift today. 

It may or may not  have been A SEWING MACHINE!!! 

I hope one day I will be as talented as my grandmother who sent me something I have wanted for years, a Christmas tree skirt. 

Beautiful, Gramma!

We hope your Christmas was filled with love and joy! 

Ring, Ring

Gooood Morning, December!

I woke up this morning around 3:15 to a ringing cell phone. My husband answered and I overheard three words, "salt. ice. load"         ...Oh Boy, it has started. 

The Help

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving (duh) and although I was going to cook everything except for the state (ahem) green bean casserole, I am pleased to have three wonderful women helping with the cooking.

  Thank you Barb, Katie, and Rachelle for your help!



to brine or not to brine

that is the question.

It's t-minus a week before Thanksgiving (help me rhonda) and I still haven't decided if I want to brine my turk or slather it with a fresh butter and herbs mixture. I have been reading articles about people who LOVE their turkeys that sit in a bath all night, "I brine a turkey every year because it’s the right thing to do", says Pioneer Woman. On the other hand I have my uber-talented step-father, who just so happens to be a chef, and he says, "fresh herbs and slow cooking is all you need".

Oh brother. Somebody please decide for me before I end up buying two turkeys and doing both.
(My family did that once; one was smoked and one was cooked.  On the day it was a huge fiasco, but it's quite hilarious to think about now).

                                                      brine                    OR                    roast

either way, it better look like this:

 

OH BABY!



reading material

Help!

I keep picturing a beautiful winter evening curled up with a cup of tea (more like hot chocolate) and a good book to read...

So, I'm looking for a few book recommendations.

No HP, please!
Non-fictional OR fictional.
I like things to stay pretty realistic; nothing in space.
A good love story, perhaps?
My favorite book is Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers, fyi.
I do like the author Sophie Kinsella, but I think I've read most of her books.

thanks a million!

Welcome Hayden Putnam!

My brother and sister-in-love welcomed their first child into the world last night. 

Even though we are miles away, I could feel the excitement, 

love, and peace in Lance's voice. 

 Look at this precious little guy

So sweet. Congratulations, Lance & Jennie!

ALL our love!

Old Blue

We welcomed a new member to our family. 

Meet: Old Blue

1986 Ford F150 and his proud new papa, Mark  :)

What I like about OB:

    It fits in our garage. It has power locks and windows. It has mirrors on the visors. The leather seats. The seat belts.

What Mark likes about OB:

     It's blue. It's a truck. It's a ford.

We both LOVE it.

Yabba Dabba Doo!

Happy 50th Anniversary to The Flintstones!

(random note of the day)

If You Give A Girl A Blog

If you give a girl a blog, she's going to be very excited to post often.


After she posts a lot, she'll realize keeping a blog is more of a commitment than she realized.


Then she'll probably find other things to do than tend to her blog.


While finding other things to do, she'll probably get lost in other websites like Pottery Barn, The Pioneer Woman and Ann Taylor LOFT.


After looking at the websites for awhile, she'll probably hear her husband say something like "how's the post coming?" or "what's for dinner?"


When he asks these questions, she'll remember to go back to thepioneerwoman.com to find a recipe for dinner.


While making dinner, she will think how cool it would be to take beautiful pictures of everything she cooks and bakes so she can have an interesting blog.


Chances are that if she is thinking about her blog, she will probably want to go upstairs to write a post.


So it goes...
(not like Vonnegut)

blog?

oh yeah, we have a blog...


Today is Monday and I am totally encouraged to post more than once this week.

Excited Hallers

What are we excited about??

A little sunshine + sunglasses...

traveling to a different state (not IN.)  :=)

and just enjoying the great outdoors...

Did we mention that we are going to be doing all of this with ALL 7 of the people in this post?? INCLUDING ARI!! eeeek!

Michigan, here we come!

Feng Shui

So our living room wasn't exactly "feng shuing" (is that how you would say that?) and it was bothering us, so we decided to rearrange a little bit:

It's definitely fenging and shuing now.

We decided to hang Marks guitars (acoustic in other picture) and we love how they look, not to mention reminding him to play for me. :=)  I LOVE when he plays his geetars!

Oh and in case you were wondering, this is what the room looked like at one point...

WHOA! 

more house

The upstairs:

This is the loft area upstairs with our shelves/desk and my awesome garage sale chair. 

This is one of the spare bedrooms that is currently Marks area for whatever. Growing up in a house built in 1901 made me appreciate any and all closet space and all of the bedrooms have walk-in closets. PTL!

guest bath

Our room

The bathroom we painted and did a little work on

I mean who doesn't love two sinks? 

After many weeks of promising posts, I finally put the house pictures up. Hope you all enjoyed them and we love having guests, so please feel free to stop by anytime! 

Welcome!

Our HOME! 

Note* We do not use the satellite, we are going until winter without cable. 

Guests welcome any time!

This is when you first walk in the door, our dining room which will some day hold many family dinners.

There are two ways to the kitchen, through the little hallway to the left which also leads to the half bath and laundry room or straight going past the front hall closet

My LOVE: the green kitchen :)  

Our living room that we are in the process of livening up with rearranging the furniture and pictures of friends and family. 

 

Any better?

What about this background??

AND, I took pictures and I am on the hunt for our camera cord that has wandered off...

Happy Friday!

I realized it has been three weeks since I posted about the many posts that "were" coming. I blame it on the unpredictable Ohio weather...ha!

This weekend I am going to post pictures of our house and other fun things that we haven't shared on our blog.

I also am experimenting with blog backgrounds. Tell me what you think about the different backgrounds you see!


Enjoy your weekend!

Coming soon...

Lots and Lots of New Posts coming soon! 

Am I Weird?

My friends have always told me, "Jill, you're weird." I never really thought twice about it until yesterday when I opened a container of butter that had mini-packaged sticks in it (8 little sticks instead of 4) and got REALLY excited. I mean, how cute are little sticks of butter, right? Well I guess I am weird and get excited over silly things that most people don't even think about. 

Here are some reasons why I am weird:

   I usually take a whiff of paper fresh-out-of-the-copier.

   The sound of tires on rocks is cool.

   I like the smell of polyurethane, gas, and paint (definitely unhealthy).

   I enjoy cleaning.

   I can eat the same thing everyday for long periods of time (also unhealthy).

   I have red hair.

   I have cankles...kind of. 

   I LOVE sponges. If you ever need a gift idea, I love, love, love sponges!!

   The color of my first car was "wood". 

   I have had 2 sips of pop in my life. 

   Sometimes, I snort when I laugh. 

So who cares if I am weird. The sermon this morning was about committing our lives to Christ and how being a Christian and living a life for Christ can be very countercultural. It might be a stretch, but I found that me being weird and a believer are tied together somehow. Our culture portrays a lifestyle that is not centered around Christian beliefs. Instead, we are tempted to live a fast-paced life worshipping earthy things and ourselves instead of our Savior, Jesus Christ. We can commit ourselves to work, working out, shopping, etc., but why is it we cannot make commitments to spend time with the Lord, pray for others, praise God in good times AND in bad and serve in our Churches and communities? 

I guess where the connection comes in of my weirdness and being a Christian is that that is how God created us. He created created the earth and the people and He has given us a book on how He wants us to live. And even though that may be "weird/countercultural/different", in the end, it is all for Him. 

So yes, I may be weird, but God created me and all of my weirdness. 

So Why don't you marry it?

We cannot believe it has already been 6 months since we tied the knot! :) :) Our first few months of marriage have been wonderful and crazy at the same time. We have gone through many transitions and have learned a lot about being married. Although marriage IS wonderful, it is not always picture-perfect. We argue, bicker, and get on each others nerves; living with someone of the opposite sex is not an easy transition. Males smell and women are moody. Males snore and women take too long to get ready...BUT despite all of our differences, we are still very much loving being married and loving each other!

In only 6 months we've learned SO much and we're so excited for what we will learn about in the future.

God has provided for us in so many ways. AWESOME is the Lord most high!

I love these verses from Ruth 1:16-17. "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go, I will go, and where you will stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me."