That Sewing Room!

It's sad when you remember a book that you read to your big kids and want to get it for the grandkids and find out it costs anywhere from $900 new - $13 used paperback.

It's almost as bad as the book "Who's Got the Apple?"

So after I declared war on this room, I got a phone call inviting me to have

a stand at a holiday Stop n Shop.

Aaak!

I said "yes" and worked like a crazy woman on Monday and Tuesday.

+

I still have a pile that needs to be sold online or somewhere.

I donated a huge pile of fabric (shh, don't tell my mom)

I gave her a bunch of fleece that I wasn't getting used.

Threw out the pile of cut up jeans.

I still have some quilt orders to make and those brown bins still have fabric in them

I even found fabric to quickly make leggings for the child who had "none to wear".

This stand is set up at Choice Fitness for a Monday morning opening at 7AM.

I took a nap this afternoon.

Oh and I stocked up on groceries, the nice thing is that I had room to put the stuff when we got home. I might have gone a little overboard on tea. 

QOTD: Shekinah tossed a rude comment to one of her older siblings, who of course tossed it back with relish. She blandly stated, " I'll take that as a comment."

Challenge Week #3 and QOTD

Most of this week was spent in getting leather ready for a craft show on Saturday.

I did OK, it was quite a small show, got some great tips from Jayna at https://www.jaynahandmade.com/

I did take some time with the grands. Avalon is learning to get around...see Hudson barricaded off in the corner with his cars. She kept "helping" him play.

Pom-poms and pipe cleaners were fun for awhile.

Sunday lunch-time photo shoot.

The cold and the fact that lunch was waiting made us hurry along.

Daddy's wedding suit is going into storage, Zeke tried it on first.

And the closet...

I even went to Wal-mart and the only non-perishable we picked up was 

the chicken dipping sauce they carry.

Earlier this week I had Faith with me and she BADLY needed

a can of mandarin oranges, but so far I'm sticking to the food in the house.

Back when we did our adoption paperwork, we had to list the value of our

property. I felt a little silly figuring the food in my pantry, but apparently we  could 

live on the food in the house for about a month...if we didn't need milk and eggs.

I declared war on my sewing/leather/office room.

This is the one corner.

And to be fair, this is the other 2 corners.

Sigh!

QOTD: Me going over the schedule for next week: "Monday, nothing, well except cleaning the sewing room. Tuesday, chiropractor in the AM, date with a hunk, and flea and tick."I was about to mention "dentist for dad on Wed" when ...

"do I get to go along on Tuesday?"

 "Who's the 'hunk' ?" 

  "That's not nice, isn't that like calling someone 'muffin-top'?" 

"I'm assuming the flea and tick is for the dog?"

So the culture gap is that huge?

After I explained that , "no I'm not going out with _______" but instead was going out with their DAD! and "hunk" was a compliment in my time.

"Well I'm never going to call my husband a hunk!"

"Cutie Patootie maybe but not hunk!"

Challenge Week #2

I don't know...this doesn't look a lot emptier.

I know it's missing a bag of chick peas, a box of pancake mix, a box of tea.

We have two more weeks so maybe it will get emptied.

It does feel funny to not go for groceries.

This past week was interesting. On Wednesday we did a stand-by at a

never-ending chimney fire. I heard mutterings about things being built funny.

Then Saturday when the temps hit 21 degrees at 7 in the morning.

It was a perfect day to be the EMT-in-waiting at a horse event.

It was not a volunteer position so it was ok.

I just have not been that cold in a long while. 

I was fairly productive, I stitched leather to keep my hands warm.

Finally replaced DH's wallet that he lost on our China trip.

Sad QOTD:  " I don't want you to call."

Challenge week #1

Beans, chick peas, and quinoa.  Well, you know, 1 cup of beans translates into about 3 cups. This might be slow going

But the good news is that I actually went to the grocery store for supplies for a fruit salad 

(Was for a youth group event) and the only extra I bought was chips for lunches.

Let's see, I gotta use up some bread crumbs and groats this week.

Ok, this dog might be a bit of a mess, but she loves her littles.

The clean-out-the- closet thing has inspired me to try to get rid of some other stuff too.

Half of these pin cushions are sold, some of Shekinah's too-small dresses are gone and some of 

the toys that get sat in a corner are in new homes as well.

Shekinah loves finding money under the door mat.

I also managed to finish two wallet bags this week.

They boast a wristlet and and a cross-body strap, as well

as credit card, money, and phone pockets. They are for sale,

check my Leather by Christine Weaver page on Facebook 

And the newest news! Look what Vashti found at her house!

Yes, she has a new sister named Brielle Shalom. She weighed 8#

November Challenge

I know it's not yet November, but it seems to be the month of challenges..."No Shave November and the writers thing....umm I forget what it's called. I'm not going to do any of those. I'm going to try to empty out this:

It's my pantry/ closet thing.

No I'm not just going to clean it up and organize it.

I'm going to challenge myself to not buy any non-perishable food items until the week before/of
Thanksgiving. (it's ok Parker I have enough pizza cheese and bread flour)

I'm not sure I can do it, but I'm gonna make an effort.

I'm starting out with the oatmeal canister a bit on the low side and 

I know the cinnamon is low

and this is also see-how-many-things-can -be-pumpkin-spiced month.

I might break down and buy cinnamon cause along with the pantry

I have a freezer that could use a good clean out.

It has pumpkin in it.

We'll see how it goes.

Thankfulness

Yes, I'll post more China pictures one of these days--but dresses need to be sewn and

other things need to be finished.

Meanwhile, I'll be thankful that this piece of steel didn't hit my husband's eye-

Instead it hit his bicep, didn't need stitches but gave me a scare.

We attended a fund raiser the other Saturday and Shekinah got her first horse back ride.

She says she liked it, but thankfully isn't begging for a horse.

I'm trying to post more "process" photos on my FB page about my 

very small leather business attempt.

There is another craft show in November that I plan to attend,

I'll try to post info in case someone wants to come out and see the pieces up-close and in person.

I was thankful to look out in the kitchen and see these two making brownies.

Zeke needed them for an event and Shekinah was helping or instructing.

We have quite the crop of pine cones this year and a strong wind blew a bunch of them down.

I noticed a neighbor was selling them along the road, since we don't live close enough to a road to do that --we burn them. They make excellent fire starters.

Apparently they are fun to collect, if daddy is helping you.

Our Trip I The Food

We left for a trip to tour China on Sept 2. We wanted to visit the cities in which some of our children were born. I didn't blog much while we were gone because the internet was a bit funky even with Nord VPN and I really didn't think we needed to advertise that our house was empty for that period of time.  I wasn't sure how to blog about the trip...chronological, order of importance, or what?So lets do order of importance-

FOOD!

We arrived in Seattle when our bellies were telling us that it was lunch time.

The flight from JFK to Seattle was 5+ hours and the only food that was served was stuff you had to pay for. We had snacks. So the first McDs that we found sounded like the best place to eat.

We only hit McD's for ice cream one time on the entire trip.

Airplane food well, it is what it is.

We flew Hainan Airlines so the food was Asian for the most part.

 

The first morning in Beijing we thought about going to the buffet in the hotel, but it wasn't included in our room price and we figured we could find something for less than $7 per person.

We did.

Mr Lee's had a bunch of people slurping soup and we joined them.

The tables at most restaurants aren't big enough for six people.

No, Shekinah didn't have to stand, she just was grazing at Daddy's table to see what they had.

For kids who don't normally use chopsticks, I was impressed.

I still don't know what the thin green strips were, it was pickled and garlicky

I just wasn't sure if we should eat it( wasn't sure if it was raw or not). We steered clear of raw fruits and veggies if we didn't know if the water was clean at that establishment. We did however forget to tell them "no ice" here and had drank most of the juice before my jet-lagged brain remembered.

Shekinah managed to get soda with most meals.

Coke and Sprite were usually our choices.

We ate at quite a few round tables.

When our tour included a meal, our guides had restaurants that 

accommodated a larger group.

The room was usually separate from the main room.

Probably so our poor eating skills weren't so noticeable.

Sometimes you just spear the food, it doesn't fall off so quickly that way.

We didn't usually leave too many leftovers

We did surprise them at how much rice we consumed.

After our first meal when we cleaned out the bowl quite promptly,

he made sure he ordered more the next few times.

snow peas, celery and mushrooms (I  think tree ear?)

tomato and egg (bottom right) and the stringy things were potatoes this time. (Beijing)

Sometimes there were long stringy things that looked like pasta but were mushrooms.

The stand-by staple in this country...even for the locals apparently.

The selection was better than we have in the US.

Oh and the serving sizes were twice as large as at home.

Half-way through the trip we bought a pack of disposable bowls and disposable chopsticks.

Couldn't find any packs of  plastic spoons or forks.

We thought we could probably down-size our kitchen table at home and have more room in the kitchen.  Wonder how long they would eat just ramen noodles?

Actually I know the answer to that. ....about two weeks then they say

"We're hungry, just don't buy noodles!"

They sell applesauce in bags too!

The price is 29 RMB not dollars.

We got pretty good at dividing by 7 as the US dollar 

was worth about 7 RMB when we were there.

This stuff was about the same price or more than we pay at home.

We loved this market. We found it after our first breakfast and  found they had this 

deli/kitchen thing at the back. 

It was doing quite a bit of business in the morning and we ordered

"sun-gu" (3) and pointed at one kind

"liu-gu"(6) of another .

She cut one of those English muffin things in half and threw in an egg and some sauce

hoisin maybe? Whatever it was, I'd love to be able to copy.

The brown bread with green sprinkles (chives) was chopped into little squares and  put in a bag.

You ate it with a toothpick.

This one was full of chives/onions, it wasn't quite to our liking for breakfast.

but this one....ummm!

Cooling off and waiting for some of the best parts of the day

food delivered to my table while I wait!

Our dishes all came wrapped in plastic wrap.

Did they have a  dish-washing service?

Quite a few times we found evidence of broken cups.

Some places the guides rinsed our dishes and theirs with hot tea and dumped the "rinse water"

in a dish provided. They didn't do it everywhere I wasn't sure of the protocol.

Was it to clean the dishes or to warm them?

Some places we had two sets of chopsticks, one was to select your food from the dishes

the other was to eat with. A few places put serving spoons in the bowls on the lazy susan.

Some places you used one pair of chopsticks for both duties.

Here's a pretty bowl of 'shrooms. They had an interesting texture.

Flavor was good.

Rice!!  One place served only a tiny bit of rice close to the end of the meal.

That time we had many vegetables and not a lot of meat.

Kung Pao chicken

chicken or pork of some sort....just call it yummy

Hope's dish before she dug into it and filled her hollow leg.

More 'shrooms (not the same meal)

Tofu....actually was good

bok-choy

Not to mock our guide, but this is the fast way to consume a whole lot of food without putting most of it on the floor.

The place we found ice cream

We did break down and eat Burger King on one of our last nights.

Daddy complained that there was no "regular" chips

Breakfast!! Steamed buns, fried rice, noodles, home fries, 

steamed black bean something (center)

and many cups of tea.

We had breakfast included with some of our rooms

and it was sort of nice to just go downstairs for breakfast.

Shekinah decided pumpkin congee wasn't the best, but I actually 

liked it with some pickled vegetables. 

Oh and fried spring rolls.  They were similar to what I make.

This was the meal with little meat. The white loaf stuff close to the center was 

fish of some sort. The two dishes in the front had mushrooms in them. The breaded-fried sweet potatoes to the right of center were very good. This meal was described a "very local"

The setting was different than most of the places we visited, it was outside of the city and probably 

has more of a story behind the Mao  memorabilia museum that was also there.

The tea making set up....but the nice bags of tea cost extra...so we stuck with Lipton.

Now I'm hungry !

This meal was served at the Chenzhou Orphanage

Chicken wings, steamed egg, beef with hot peppers, corn with peppers, shrimp...

There were deep fried green beans and I think there was brown butter on the steamed eggs

Very tasty.

We didn't read the packaging very well....oops

Shekinah thought it was meat packages....like tuna

She was gnawing away and said, "How do you eat this ! It's mostly bone!"

First chicken foot that I ever bought. 

Elvin our wonderful guide in Guangzhou.

He made sure we all ate plenty.

Guangzhou noodles. I still need to find a good recipe.

Now walnut steamed buns...I think we have those 

figured out...except the bread, what makes it brown?

walnut, sugar, and butter?

One fail....meat on a stick

I figured that as crazy busy as they were, we hit a good spot

Well....no

We ate one meal at a dim sum restaurant.

Faith sat beside the tea making station and we needed to figure out how to make it

Thank goodness for photo menus and Google translate.

We got this, but not the piece below

that was ordered by one of the guides....the rest of the bird was good.

Then when they said "no MORE noodles" we bought oatmeal and bananas.

Classy restaurant...same as here, you can tell by the number of pieces in your place setting.

scallion pancakes....mine never looked like that

We splurged and ate the raw fruit.

watermelon and pomegranate before the seeds developed.

Oh and Italian cuisine in China.

"red" fries and burger with goose liver

Some kind of pasta that included an egg on top...it was good

whatever it was called.

Faith ordered the last chicken sandwich they called it a

"mama burger" and was huge. Shekinah had ordered the same thing, but they came back and said they only have one. Shekinah reluctantly ordered a burger, we didn't spend a lot of time reading the description.

She waited and waited....some of us were finished eating till her food came.

Then it came!!!

HUGE and  with red bread

Not sure yet what the red was...beet juice?

Two burgers and an egg, bacon, lettuce, tomato, and cucumber

with fries.

Thankfully they had thoughtfully cut it in half.

It was an excellent burger, we all got a piece of it. 

A grapefruit on steroids?

We weren't sure what it was when we bought it at the grocery,

Google translate didn't help.

We knew it needed to be peeled so it was probably safe.

It was indeed a grapefruit...not quite like the ones we have here but pretty good.

  Hmm, what is next in importance?  Gotta think about it.

QOTD:  "No it's teal and raspberry, NOT red and green."