Early American quilts, Pho, and February

This girl tackled a school project that I was afraid would end in tears and frustration.

They needed to make a project that was inspired by Early America and she chose to make a quilt!

She chose the patterns from the Underground Railroad quilt sampler.

( I know that might be a fable but the patterns are still authentic from that time period)

I helped her chose reproduction fabrics, made her draw up the patterns ( a little geometry there)

She cut and sewed the patches, I tried to stick to verbal instruction and I think I only fixed one patch.

I ended up finishing the sashing and border because there is where she lost patience.

She asked me to machine quilt it as we were out of time for hand quilting.

She got an A.

This cat/dog flipped the marbles off the board when she got a chance.

Tis the time to make the lunch for the high school.

Egg rolls and my version of General Tsao's chicken.

Cooked up the 40# of chicken and froze it.

Decided to try to roll 200+ egg rolls on Saturday morning. 

I chopped and salted my cabbage and shredded my carrots on Friday

Then on Saturday I cooked and drained the bean thread noodles (above).

Mixed it all in a big bowl

cabbage, carrots, noodles, pork, oyster sauce, eggs (yup there are a few eggs in egg roll) salt, garlic, pepper, soy sauce, ginger, and a bit of red pepper.

Set up my assembly line, five plates, and sit on a rolling office chair.

DH helped out part way through and by 12:30 we were almost finished with the dishes.

Tried my hand at pho (Vietnamese soup) for Valentine's day.

I don't know if the 6 hour broth is worth it...but we do like the broth and noodles

The great thing about this soup is that you can add your own greens, so some of us ate healthier than others of us. One of us didn't even bother to come home for the meal or bed .

Hopefully that changes in the near future.

Shekinah thought she needed to take a picture of our Valentine's meal.

We weren't overly festive.

Shekinah didn't even want to bother with Valentine's for school- I didn't insist.

School suspension (not S) and waiting on calls from counselors keep the "back of your mind" very busy.

Was commissioned to make a leather bag for a friend.

I made two right away.

Even has a zipper hand stitched in the top.

QOTD: The other night Faith asked "so at what age can we date?"  Hope spoke up and said well, "mom was my age when she had her first date with dad."  While I was quickly saying, "It depends who he is."
Dad jumped in with, " well see mom could date cause I was obviously the right guy."

Shekinah sitting at the other end of the table mutters, "Hmph yeah probably a seven-year-old could date if 'he was the right guy'."

Now wait a minute, how did we get on this subject?! and BTW we were a LOT more mature back 35 years ago.  ( I think)