Visit over. :-(

My son and his girlfriend are getting ready to go back to school this morning.  We will miss them.  It will only be a few weeks until our son comes home again for Christmas though.  I hope that we will get to see her for spring break, but I guess we will have to see.  I am not good with all this distance, but there's not much I can do about it.  If we moved south to be closer to our son, we'd be farther away from everyone else.  :-(  I hope that circumstances bring him near here again in the future, but there's nothing I can do about it if they don't.  

Can you all believe that Thanksgiving is over, just like that!?   I can never believe when this season gets here.  It seems like it sneaks up on me every year!  I think over the years I have gotten a bit more wisdom about taking things as they come and not stressing too much about it.  We'll see I guess.  So what did we do this week?  We got together with friends and family.  We feasted.  We played games.  We ate leftovers.  We watched movies.  We put up the Christmas tree.  We bonded.   We visited.  We played charades.  We looked at old photos.

Now it's time to look forward to the Christmas season!

(note:  Family Christian has extended their doorbusters to today!  We went and bought several yesterday.  )  So if your kicking yourself for not buying that little people navitity ... here's your chance ... also they need some help getting to 100% of their goal money raised to fight human trafficking.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Have a wonderful day! We have snow on the ground today so it is the first white Thanksgiving for our visiting southern girl.  Fun times!  :-)

Having fun!

We took the town tour today and we went and met with the homeschool group.  We practically took over the Fazoli's.  It was awesome.  :-)  We are enjoying our son being home and the process of getting to know his girlfriend, who is very sweet.  Since we homeschool, we cancelled school for the youngest this week.  If his big brother is home, he's not in school.  The big brother is away at school just enough time each year so we can get our school work done here with this rule. They are playing Mario right now and we are baking gluten free chocolate chip cookies.

Tomorrow, I may go do a little shopping  I've recently started doing some reviews and things for Family Christian Stores and I've learned some interesting things about these stores.  First of all, they are nonprofit.  They give all of their profits to charity.  This week, it is a charity working to free people who are victims of human trafficking.  That's something we don't like to think about when it's this time of year and we are sitting in our homes feeling thankful, but with this promotion, we can go shopping for a gift for someone and help someone else at the same time.  That's a win-win.

Also, this week, they will have some great things for sale   For example, they will have the Little People Nativity for 21.49 STARTING tomorrow, November 26, 2014, which is the best deal I've ever seen on it.  I've always wanted one ... so this might be my year.  :-)

Today, is one month away from Christmas, can you believe that????!!!!!

Today's the day!

My son is coming home for Thanksgiving and is bringing his girlfriend so we get to meet her!  We have a low key, but fun (I hope) week planned.  I wish I felt better.  I'm still feeling some pain and soreness from my surgery last Monday.  I have had this exact surgery before and I bounced back much more quickly the last time.  This time, the last couple of days actually have been worse, but I think that is because I have been trying to do too much.  :-(    Oh well.  A little bit more cleaning and some cooking today and then I will relax as much as I can this week, while visiting and talking.  :-)

Looking forward to Thanksgiving!

This photo is unrelated ... I think I might try art-journaling something similar again ....

Chair re-do!

A few years ago, we bought a used dining room set.  It has steel chairs which will never, ever, break, I'm pretty sure.  Over the years, we have recovered the padded seats in the chairs many, many times.  My daughter says that we have covered them in progressively uglier fabrics (until now!) but in my defense, this paisley fabric that looks so awful now, was prettier/brighter back when we put it on a couple of years ago.  Now it looks all gray.  Anyway, we went to the fabric store the other day and bought a couple of yards of 2 different chevron fabrics.  We wanted the lighter blue but they only had one yard of that, so we got a dark blue and went with a mismatched effect- light blue on 2 chairs and darker blue on the other 2.   I love them now!  This whole makeover cost around 11 dollars because Hancock fabrics was having a sale.  Awesome.  :-)

You'd think.

That I would have enjoyed all this free time, recooperating from surgery, getting to do a ton of art journaling and crocheting and Words with Friends.  It was great for a while, but it has gotten old quickly.  Yesterday afternoon, I just got weary of everything.  I should have taken a nap, but I just switched rooms and activities yet again.  I tried very, very hard to take it easy yesterday and except for some cooking, dishwashing and compulsively cleaning the bathroom a bit, I was successful.  As a result, I do think that I feel better this morning.  My surgical site still tugs a little and is kind of itchy, but I feel okay otherwise.  Here is some of the art from during my period of confinement to the house, the past 2 days.

New car!

I got a new to me vehicle this past weekend.  I'm very excited about it, but since surgery has made me not feel too good, I am resisting the urge (today anyway, not so much yesterday) to get out and drive it someplace.  Yesterday, my daughter and I went and got our new glasses and now I'm trying to get used to no-line bifocals in the glasses and monovision (2 different prescriptions for 2 different eyes) when I am wearing my contacts.  It's crazy.

Surgery yesterday, laziness today.

Using this tree photo, 

I was experimenting with trying to draw a tree from a photo.  This is before I blurred it with a wet paintbush.

And this is after.  I didn't get the proportions just right, but I think it looks okay.  

I did this very early in the morning, yesterday, before we left for the surgery.

And I drew this last night.  It's not done.  First I drew with a marker, then colored, and then went over to blend colors with a wet paint brush.  Later, I will do some outlining and write some words. 

Current new scrap-ghan.  I am too frugal, to buy yarn, so this is the best option for me.  :-)  

I had surgery yesterday, a small thing, but it always is a big deal, because you have to get up early and go through all the procedures, but it turned out okay.  Everyone treated me really well and it was over quickly from my point of view.  Of course, I was  asleep for 2 hours.   My husband was the one to had to do all the waiting and he was a trooper.  I had a little discomfort when I first woke up, coming out of the anesthesia, but no real medical issues.  Now that it is over, I can concentrate on getting ready for my son's visit and Thanksgiving next week!  Yay!  Also, I have the day off today.  I am very much looking forward to art journaling and crocheting without feeling guilty about my idleness.  Of course, I do a lot of art journaling and crocheting normaly, but I feel guilty about not doing other things and now I won't have to.  :-)

A little bit more art from this week.

November art and a picture.

Ephesians 5:20

This is taken in my mom's yard.  I know that October gets all the publicity for fall color, but I think November has it's own kind of beauty.

1 Peter 3:8

A closeup of the poppies I shared last week.

Ephesians 5:19

John 1:9

Scrap-Ghan.

I learned to crochet in August and this is my very first crochet project.  It's pretty much done.  My daughter is going to give it a border beause of the uneven edges, to kind of even it up.  It's approximately 48 x 56 inches.  I am very happy with it.  When I look it at I can see all my rows but I also know that my mom contributed to it (the big gray row about 1/3 of the way down and the big green row about 2/3 of the way down) and also my husband, youngest son and daughter have done some of the stitches.  We are saving it from completion until my oldest gets home from school for Thanksgiving and then he can learn to crochet and do at least a couple of stitches.  :-)  You an't see how bright it is in these photos, but it is very bright and cheerful looking and it makes me happy to look at it.  I am hooked now, on crocheting and will do more projects, after resisting it for so long.  :-)  

Sometimes the pace just picks up!

I have so many things going on this week!   I have doctors appointments 4 out of the 5 days of this week!  It feels like everything is just ramping up and Christmas is going to be here before we know it.  We've got a harvest party, craft sales, thanksgiving, my son coming home and then Christmas parties and events after that!  I'm also having a small surgery on Monday, which I hope does not make me feel too bad.  Whew.  It seems like everything just kind of happens at once doesn't it?  Finally, my daughter and I got our eye examinations yesterday and we found out that my eyes haven't changed much, but she does have astigmatism and that is probably what has been causing her headaches.  I'm glad I finally got that done.  I procrastinate so badly about eye appointments, I am not sure why?

 One thing about jumping on the Christmas bandwagon this soon, is the flavored coffee creamers that come out this time of year.

Also peppermint bark.

 

Keeping busy.

We are keeping busy.  My son has finished the world history curriculum that he started last year and wanted to finish this year, so we may be looking at getting him another subject, to replace it.  His main educational need at this point is to learn to spell, so that is probably what we will get started on now.  I also promised him either violin or piano lessons, so we may get started on that.  We may also put this off until January.  Since he's been doing a lot of subjects with his sister, he really doesn't need much else.  His dyslexia/dysgraphia combo brought with it giftedness in other areas, so in many ways, he's really advanced.  

I went to see my mom yesterday and she's doing much better.  When I compare how she seems now to how she was when she first moved her there, versus now, theres' a huge difference.  She has friends now and most of the time, she seems like she is comfortable there.  She did get a little upset last week when her sister and I visited together, I am not sure why but the last couple of times I have been there by myself, it's been really a nice visit.  We have been working on the scrap-ghan together, which is fun to do and it is an ice breaker for conversations with the other residents as well.

We are getting excited about my son and his girlfriend visiting for Thanksgiving and thinking about what we will do when they are here, how we will manage to visit all of the relatives and eat all of the dinners.  :-)  That's a good problem to have.

  

Recent art journal pages.

Homeschool Thoughts Today.

I've recently been put into a group on Facebook for Homeschoolers in Kentucky.  I didn't exactly ask to be put into the group, a friend just put me in.  I have found that since I have been homeschooling all of these years and basically have a plan for what I am going to do for the next couple of years, I don't feel the need to seek out support in these kind of groups.  However, I have discovered that I can BE support in these kinds of groups.  I've moved into the older woman/mentor position.  I don't know how much wisdom I have to impart, but I do have a kid in college, so when these moms are worried about testing and whether they will ruin their kids, I can reassure them.  I personally have felt pretty sure from the beginning that we would do okay.  My youngest son and I got into an interesting discussion yesterday in the kitchen.  He was telling me about one of the many, many subjects that he relentlessly unschools himself about, which was something about gravity and black holes and how a space ship could use the gravitational fields of planets to speed up its progress through space.  It's an interesting example of how, though I have been homeschooling him for the past 10 years, he knows a ton of things that I don't know.  He and I discussed the questions about elementary curriculum and elementary testing that I was seeing on this new Facebook group and I shared with him some information that I had been reading about, about how kids learn and when to teach some things.  He's recently done the PSAT and hasn't got his scores back yet and is feeling very smart and confident.  He said, that  these new homeschooling moms should just teach them some math and read to them a lot because that's the best way to learn the proper use of language, through great books.  I agree.  We also discussed how there is now evidence that waiting on math is a good thing.  Oh how I wish I had some little ones to homeschool now.  We would have so much fun!  That's what I keep telling these moms, have fun, treasure this time, read to them a lot, help them learn about what they are interested in by providing the materials for them to look at themselves (library!).

Art Class Yesterday!

My daughter painted Elsa.

We had a great art class yesterday.  One of the members of the homeschool group is an artist and has a sister who is an artist and runs an art studio.  She basically let us have the run of the place, let us use canvases, paint and paint brushes, let us look things up on her computer and print them out on her very nice color printer so that we could try and paint them.  Then she went around giving valuable advice on how to make our paintings better.  It was awesome.  

My son did this bear.

I painted a tree, while looking at a painting on Pinterest.

My son painted this sword.

I painted this tree across 4 tiny canvases.