My First Blogger Award.....I am so excited!!

Shana gave me my first award as a new blogger.  Thank you Shana, I am thrilled to have received this award.  It took me a little while to figure out how to display it on my blog and make the appropriate links.  I think I got it right.  So I am going to nominate 3 people to receive this award (pay it forward). 

Now for the rules

*Display the award on your blog*

*Link to the person that gave it to you*

 *Nominate blogger's that make you feel all warm & fuzzy!  

*Link to your nominee's blog's*

*And most importantly, don't forget to let them know they have been given the award!*

Now to decide who I am going to nominate...hmmmm, think, think.  I hope all these links work, this is my first time adding links to a blog entry. 

GM @ grammiemommy

Lela @ Paden Family 8

fersher

He is growing so fast and I am missing it!!!!

Here is grandchild No. 4, he is almost 5 months old and is such a happy guy.  He and his mother are both dressed in maroon and grey to celebrate the school colors where she teaches and he attends daycare. 
I will get to see him again at Christmas when he will be almost 6 months old.  I cannot wait!

I Feel Like Marie Calendar

In case you do not know who Marie Calendar is, well way back when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, it was a pie shop.  I think they branched out and had restaurants, but I have not seen one in years.

Anyway, today I baked two (2) cranberry/walnut pies, three (3) pumpkin pies (I know one is missing from the picture, because I ate part of it....am I bad!), and one (1) Impossible French Apple Pie (which is the easiest pie to make because it makes its own crust). 

It was a full day of baking and watching movies while I waited for them to finish baking.   Then of course the kitchen looked like it exploded, so I had to clean up the mess. 

I am looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner with my sons and their families tomorrow.  My lovely daughter and her family will be on Cape Cod with her in-laws. 

Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving.  Enjoy!

A Thanksgiving Tip

He Makes Me So Happy

Seeing this face makes me smile, every time!  This is my youngest grandchild.  I have not seen him since early October, and cannot wait until he visits me for Christmas.  I just 'love' his little self. 

Bored

Can I just say that I am bored.  Yep, I said it.  I know that I used to tell my children to find something to do, that with all those toys and books they could not possibly be bored.  Yep, I am bored. 

Before I retired in 2004, I thought that being retired would give me all this free time to do the things that I had always dreamed of doing.  What I did not take into consideration was that I would not have anyone to share in these magical adventures.  I have come to realize that when you retire, all those friends you made in your 30+ year career would not keep in touch.  After the first 6 months of retirement I had basically stopped hearing from all my working friends.  Do the think 'I died' is what I asked one of my children recently. 

I live in a state where I did not grow up, so I do not have any childhood/school friends here.  Although I am a spiritual person, I am not into organized religion.  I live in the Bible Belt, so there you go. 

I did not dream that my retirement would be so boring.  Now I know why people frequently die after they retire.  I even went outside my comfort level and starting attending exercise classes at the local Senior Center.  After six months of going there 3-5 days a week, I still did not know anyone well enough to say anything other than 'hi, how are you doing'.  It seems that most of the ladies had lived in this town most of their lives and like when I was in high school, there are definite clicks of people.  Don't get me wrong, they are all polite and pleasant, they just are not very friendly. 

So I am bored.  I have looked for a job, but with the economy being in such a state, it does not seem likely that I will find one any time soon.  I have opened my week-end booth at the flea market and have been sewing lots, but that too is a solitary activity.  I do get to talk to customers and the other vendors at the flea market, and that helps.  Am I complaining, yeah, I guess I am in a way.  More than complaining I am stating the facts about retiring without the benefit of a support system.  Being socially isolated is not fun.  It is so not what I lived all my life thinking.  I worked all those years thinking that when I retired I would feel fulfilled and happy. 

Hey this is my blog and I can say what is on my mind, so today that is exactly what I have done.  Hope I did not put a downer on your day!   I just decided to call it like I see it.  I am not unhappy, I am BORED! 

Everything is Sunny

I had a really good week-end at the Flea Market, more traffic than we have had since it opened 9 weeks ago.  It was rainy on Saturday morning, but about 1PM the sun came out.  I was 74 degrees on Sunday and today it is still sunny with temps in the mid 60s.  I got orders for my purses so I will spend the week sewing those orders and finishing some little girl dresses that I had already started. 

The only downer here is that there was a 5 year old girl missing here in North Carolina, and today about 1:30 they found her body in a wooded area in Lee County.  This story just keeps getting more weird as the days go on.  First they arrested the mother's boy friend.  The mother had reported that she put the child on the couch in the living room about 5:30 AM last Tuesday morning and at 6:30AM discovered she was missing.  The boyfriend was arrested and later released when a camera at a hotel in another town showed a man carrying her into the hotel that same morning at 6:10 AM.  Now her mother has been arrested for human traffic, prostitution of a child and child endangerment.  For some reason the authorities think she gave/sold the child into sexual servitude.  The man that was seen on the camera has also been arrested, he has admitted taking the girl, but claims he did not kidnap her.  It is just so darn sad. 

Here are some pictures of my sewing room mess.  I have to get in there and straighten things up, but right now I am only interested in getting my project done so I can get paid for them.  I cannot believe Thanksgiving is next week, I am not ready, can we postpone it for another week?  I thought not, but figured I would ask. 

Can you see the picture of Jerry Garcia next to my guitar? That tambourine sitting on the left side of his picture was given to me by a current member of the Dead back in 1969.  But that is a story for another time. 

Yep, there is a bed underneath all that 'stuff'.  What you cannot see is that there are a couple more bins of material sitting on the other side of the room.  What a mess, but I am having so much fun sewing that it is not even bothering me....YET! 

Rain and more rain

 **Update at 11:30 PM**
Just watched the weather update and they are now saying that 6 inches of rain is a low estimate and we could get double digit rainfall.  Flood warnings are being streamed at the bottom of the screen on all channels.  I think I better build an ark! 

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I live in the path of the storm that was formerly Hurricane Ida.  It started raining earlier today and now they have issued flash flood warnings for the next two days.  According to the weather guessers, we could get as much as 6 inches of rain over the next 36 hours.  I know we need the rain, but do we have to get it all from one storm?

Oh well, I guess it is my opportunity to sew, read and watch good movies, thanks to Netflix.  Two of my grandchildren will grace me with their presence on Wednesday night because their parents have a work schedule conflict.  It is always fun to have them here overnight, but this time will be a challenge because the spare room is covered wall to wall with my sewing projects, that includes the bed!  I think maybe I will let them camp out on the floor in the ready-beds we use for traveling.  They are easy to please, so some hot cocoa with marshmallows and they will think we are camping.  :-)

How I Spent My Week

It has been cold here so I have been spending more and more time in the house.  To keep myself busy I have continued to do my crafts/sewing/mending and I cleaned out the attic.  Well, I did not exactly clean out the attic, but I did go through all those boxes/containers that have been stored up there for years.  I found things I thought I had misplaced, things that made me wonder, why on earth did I ever buy that!  And things that I am so thankful that I found because they have sentimental value to me (not to anyone else, but I love them).  So I sorted through all that stuff, and found lots of things that I can add to my booth at the flea market.  I also found things that belong to my children, so they will eventually get to take those home with them...oh yeah they will!

So the pictures I am adding are 3 of the purses I made this week.  **Scratch that, only two pictures would upload.  Not sure what the problem might be, but I am to busy right now to figure it out.

 

Sewing, sewing and more sewing

I have been reorganizing and going through the bins of craft stuff I have hanging around.  I found lots of material that I forgot I had (at my age that is probably normal).  I had made some purses when I was in Boston over the summer, and thought I would make a few more.  Here are the first two I made late last week.  I think I am going to try to sell them in my flea market booth over the next few weeks.  Hopefully with the holidays approaching, they will sell and I will have Christmas money.  I also found some patterns for little girls dresses and jumpers, so I might try my hand at those too!  Stay tuned, I will post more sewing project pictures as I progress. 

Witches and Goblins and Ghouls

I had fun last night going trick or treating with two of my grandmonsters.  After working all day in my booth at the flea market I was bone tired, but dinner  and a coke brought me back long enough to trek around for two hours in the dark streets of two neighborhoods.  The kids got lots of candy, and had a great time.  Several of the houses were decorated and there were scary things about like a full size gorilla (since it was 75 degrees last night that guy must have been suffering inside that suit), a hot water heater and washing machine, which were very cute homemade costumes, a shark and lots of princesses and pirates.  Granddaughter was a vampire bride, but could not find the appropriate teeth, so she just looked like a bride.  Grandson was a zombie,and did a good job of acting out the part. Here are some pictures.  Fake blood made from corn syrup and red food coloring adorns the zombie's clothes.  Costume was created by my oldest son.