Category: Family

With a title like that you would think the sleepover was at our house, but it wasn’t. This past Friday, my daughter had her first sleepover at O’s house;  one of her best friends.

I’m very particular about who my daughter hangs out with and there’s no way she’s sleeping over anyone’s house unless I know the parents well. There’s too many bad things that can happen for me to be slacking on that. My daughter, and her friend, have known each other since kindergarten and I know the parents fairly well. I knew my daughter was in good hands.

Her parents took them to watch Independence Day fireworks in downtown Baltimore. They were being set off at the Inner Harbor. O’s dad is a Board member for an organization and they always have something on Independence Day. Because of  O’s dads hookup, they were in a prime location with all sorts of goodies and entertainment.

You want to know something? It’s the first time my daughter and me have been separated for a night and it felt… strange!

My daughter and her friend stayed up past 12:00 a.m. I know this because my daughter texted me via Apple’s  iMessage to see if  I was awake. No, I wasn’t awake. I went to bed shortly after she texted me (around 10:30 p.m.) to tell me that they had arrived back at her friends house safely. Hey, it’s a mommy’s job to make sure her child is ok. 😉

I will say that I did get a lot accomplished while she was gone. A lot of cleaning was accomplished! I wound up the evening watching Lord of the Rings (for the umpteenth time) while knitting.  The next morning I was able to go to the gym without having to have someone watch my daughter. My daughter is 11 years old. She does not stay home by herself.

The past few weeks have flown by. This past weekend, I had a small birthday for my daughter and her two best friends. It started at 10:00 and ended at 4:00 p.m. My daughter, and her two friends, had so much fun and so did I. The party started at the movie theater where we saw Malificient. We all loved it and then I took them to the Disney store where they were able to pick out one item for themselves. The final stop before returning to our house was stopping at a restaurant to bring home food and while I should have been tired with all the running around that we did, I wasn’t. I didn’t go to bed until well after midnight. Not too bad for a person that had only received three hours of sleep. 😉

I’m exhausted, around 7:00 a.m. I was outside cutting grass with our manual lawnmower. It’s a nice workout, and something I’ll use when I know I can’t get to the gym. Once the grass was finished, I moved on to the next chore of the day… installing a new bed. Oh joy!

My parents purchased a futon bunk bed for their lovely granddaughter’s birthday. It arrived yesterday, and today my father and I installed it, with a bit of help from my daughter and mom. Six hours later… yes I said, six! It was finally installed. I will say, the directions left a lot to be desired. There were only two pictures and they weren’t the clearest. To further add to the annoyance factor, the sent too many of the wrong bolts, and the diagram picture was labelled incorrectly. Thankfully, I’ve always done well with putting items together and it’s the bed is finally complete and my daughter is sleeping in a brand-new bed.

My daughter’s room was also rearranged, much to her delight, and I must say it looks really nice. Tomorrow, after church, we’ll be doing some fun things for her room. She’s already asked if we could do a few fun crafty projects to make her room look like it’s from a “preteen magazine!” Part of the things she would like to do is make a bedspread for her bed. She’d like it to include machine embroidery. That’s doable! She also mentioned curtains. I told her we could add applique in a funky young theme. Boy did her eyes light up, when I said that. Of course, this will give me another excuse to use my brand new Brother ScanNCut.

In other news…

Yesterday, I had my ScanNCut cut a Dire Wolf. They are featured in the book Game of Thrones. I haven’t watched the series yet, only read the books. I tested out the design on paper. I loved how it turned out. Tomorrow, I’ll turn this into an applique design, but having the Brother ScanNCut, cut it out on fabric.  I’m thinking I’ll apply the Dire Wolf applique onto a pillow. I won’t use my embroidery machine for this task. My regular sewing machine is what’s needed. I’ll use satin stitch to tack the design onto the pillow form.

Last weekend, I promised my daughter that we’d go to the Disney store within the mall (the next Saturday which is today) to purchase the dolls Elsa and Anna; from the movie Frozen. The mall doesn’t open until 10:00 a.m. However, some department stores (within the mall) do open at 9:00 a.m.

Disney is not one of those stores that opens at 9:00 a.m. They don’t open until 10:00 a.m. As we approached the Disney store, I noticed there was a line right outside. Uh oh! I thought, this is not a good sign. Turns out that the Frozen costumes were being released today. There was a line for that. Also, there was another line for those wanting to purchase regular items within the store.. After being in the wrong line for a few minutes. The kind ladies in front of us told us which line was which, we moved on to the “regular store” line.  Being that some of the dolls (like Elsa) are in high demand, we still had a wait. At least we weren’t subjected to a raffle like those within the costume line.

They had a Disney employee come out and check on people in line. She assured me there were plenty of dolls, so I should be able to purchase what I wanted. I must say, that she was very pleasant. She checked back one more time and told everyone that it would not be too much longer before the store opened. She also informed us that they’d be letting five people in at a time. Elsa was not in stock but we were able to snag Anna. Much to my daughter’s delight. You were only allowed to purchase two.

Machine Embroidery -Frozen

This past week, I have not had a chance to embroider anything, it’s been so busy! Therefore, I’m unsure if I’ll be able to embroider a “Frozen themed shirt” before the movie tomorrow evening at our Lutheran church.

My daughter’s eleventh birthday is next week.  Earlier today I went ahead and purchased the iPad mini for her from Best Buy. I ordered it online and took her with me to pick it up from our local store. My was she excited!

Since I’m transitioning to digital books I thought it was wise to switch her to the same format. She loves to read also. So why the early birthday gift? My daughter’s birthday falls during the school week. Since she stays busy with classwork I thought I’d let her have her “big gift” today. It would give her more of a chance to enjoy the gift. This gift, wasn’t a surprise, since I asked her would she like an iPad mini as a gift. While I’m typing this post, she’s sitting beside me reading a digital copy of one of the books in the The Dork Diaries series.  I’ve already perused the book series so I know that it’s age appropriate.

Online security:  Keeping your children safe

I’ve always loved Apple’s parental controls and so I’ve enabled that on her iPad mini. Additionally,  I’ve installed McGruff Safeguard. This replaces the standard internet browser and can be tweaked to ensure that your children’s time on the internet is a much safer experience. Of course, the number one way to accomplish this is to continually check to make sure that your child isn’t stumbling upon inappropriate sites. There is so much out there, it makes sense to be cautious.

Of course, there will be a few crafty surprises on her actual birthday, but I’m not mentioning them here since she does (occasionally) read my website.

Sending early birthday wishes to my lovely daughter.

This was taken a few hours ago. You know… I don’t have too many photos of us together and when someone does take a picture, it’s normally out of focus and blurry, just like this one.

Sighs, well I do have a picture and hopefully I’ll get better ones soon. I love my daughter and she’s the number one person in my life. We do a lot of things together.

I’m really enjoying the addition of the Big Berkey in our home. It makes the simple act of drinking water so much easier. Earlier I was using a tiny filtered pitcher and the occasional bottled water, but now I just fill up at the Big Berkey.

Our Big Berkey Filtration System is placed on the center island in our kitchen and I must say it is receiving a lot of attention from my daughter and myself. Not only do I use the water to drink, I also use it during cooking. The Big Berkey holds 2.5 gallons of water. I fill it three times daily and while I could have purchased a larger Berkey (even though the Big Berkey is suitable for four people) this is the most convenient. Standing at about 19″ tall, it’s a nice size and I didn’t want something even taller crowding our counter space.

Initial impression

The water filtered through the Big Berkey tastes great. Installed correctly, I’m not experiencing any weird taste in the water. Initially, I did not install it correctly and the water tasted like tap water. Why was this happening? The rubber washers had not been installed on the black filters and so tap water was dripping into the filtered water area. That was easily remedied by installed the washers onto the black filters. Problem solved! Now our water has no after taste and none of that  chemically taste that I could always detect in tap water. Also, the water didn’t have the “plastic” taste that I could spot in bottled water. Regardless of the brand, if the water is in a plastic bottles I could taste the plastic.

Loving the Big Berkey!

It’s safe to say that I’m loving the Big Berkey, the initial cost might make some pause. I spent $286 for the unit that also has cylinders to remove fluoride. But, if you purchase bottled water, it won’t be long before the Big Berkey pays for itself.  Before the Berkey, I only carried freshly made juices to work and that was due to the fact that I hated how bottled water tasted, but thanks to the Big Berkey I’m now bringing water to work  in my stainless steel water bottles.