What A Month

I was going to title this post 'what a week' but I haven't posted in over a month, er the title stands.

So, you ask, what have I been doing? Let's see:
   1) Studied for my finals for my Bible college class. Took the final...made a stupid mistake and only got 99.68%. God is keeping me humble, I guess.
   2) Went sketching with a friend on Wednesdays. Last week we sketched at a local public fishing hole.

   3) Tried to help hubby get his garden tractor unstuck from the mud more than once. Went down in the mud on my knees 2 or 3 times this last time...Very undignified! Gave up and he got it unstuck himself.
   4) Finished piecing another quilt top. I must have been mad to try this one. It required 3 L-shaped set in seams. Auugh! But the good thing is that I got those seams right the first time and didn't have to tear them out and do them again. Victory! Will put it on the quilting frame to work on this winter.

   5) Also started to do some art with pastels. Lots of fun. I'll share some in the future. Haven't taken photos of  them yet.
   6) And of course, blocks for another quilt top are on my desk.

Bye for now.

Budgets, Quinoa, Pinterest And Maybe A Lawn Sale

On budgets, first the background:

   When my husband suffered a stroke in April of 2015, six months before his planned retirement, - Don't fret, he's recovered near perfect again and we're very grateful - we were very close to paying off the last credit card and putting savings in the bank. Plans change. He was forced into retirement early and a new budget came into play. Needless to say, it has been more of a learning experience than  I wanted but learn I have.
   We both qualified for Social Security so we at least had income, although short of which we were used to. However, we have managed in spite of household repairs this year that had to go on credit. Furnaces and refrigerators don't break down in the best of financial situations. 

Now, the present:
 
   With making standard bill payments, the only area of the budget that can be juggled is the food budget. One can get quite inventive. This morning I put some hot water in a jar of molasses to dissolve the contents in the bottom and used the resulting liquid along with more water to cook a batch of quinoa. Some raisins and a pat of butter was added to the quinoa. Yum! Why didn't I think of this before? Reminded me of Maypo cereal I ate as a kid. Now if I can just figure out what to do with that package of chia seeds I bought a while back.

    Mind you, there is plenty to eat in the house so we aren't going hungry. We just have to think outside the box. It's like playing a game.
    Pinterest has a boat load of recipes that boggles the mind so I've been adding lots of recipes to my boards to try out.

And lastly,the future:

   Finally there is better weather forecast for this week so we can finally have our lawn sale. Unless,of course, if the weather doesn't co-operate!
 
   Thanks for visiting. Hugs!

  




    
  

Another Restart

I've been so neglectful at tending to this blog. Perhaps it's time to post again. I realize that I really miss blogging so I'm giving it another try.

 It may be that I've lost followers because of my inattentiveness. I may have also lost contact with those followers because Blogger no longer issues their blogroll to follow. Bloglovin was clogging up my email with things I didn't want to read so I stopped accepting emails from them.

And I'm not the only one slacking off. I've noticed that most of the blogs I follow haven't posted very often either.  In fact, I decided to cease following some.

On a brighter note, I noticed on my stats on this blog that I had almost 400 hits from Pinterest viewers last month. Cool, huh? So, I'm trying again to make a go of my blog.

So you ask what have I been doing since I last posted in October? My answer... quilting, sketching and not much else. Oh, this is bad. Maybe I'd better think of some new projects.

I can't post this without some pictures to share. First a local spot that an artist friend and I went to sketch.

Fort Brewerton, Brewerton, NY

Plus last fall we had a flock of turkeys visit our yard and I got a few photos.

Hopefully, we're having a lawn sale next week (if it stops raining long enough) but I hope to post every week after that for the foreseeable future. Thanks for visiting and come back to see what I've been up to.