Last Transfer and Princess Five is Staying in NY For 6 More Weeks

Hello Everyone!
 

We had transfer calls this week!! Sister companion and I will be staying here in New City, serving as STLs, it will be sad because we won't be able to do "real exchanges" but we are excited to have a little more to do to keep us busy! I'm so excited to have one last transfer to serve my Heavenly Father and his children!

But some other highlights from this week have been:

Practicing the piano for a half an hour every day.

Watching the blue Jays and squirrels play in our backyard

We have nightly 15 minute conference call for the mission and we were able to share our finding ideas with the whole mission one night.

Our friend Eva is still going strong but as a nurse she has been working non stop, so we haven't been able to talk to her through the week, but we text her everyday! She wanted us to come over this week, but we are sad because we cant go.

My companions mom sent us some shrinky dinks and we've been having fun with those, we made lots of themed ones.

We've been able to contact a couple inactive members, so we are so excited to read the 

Book of Mormon with them and get them where they need to be!

We had to say goodbye to all of our native Korean missionaries, and we were very sad to see them leave.

I hope you are all doing well, and staying safe!

Cuídense mucho por favor!!!
Hermana Princess Five

Whenever people don't answer the phone it pauses on our faces so here are some of those.

Our movie night

A screen shot of our last district council this transfer.

All of our pun shrinky dinks.

(AmericANT, Strawbuggy, cinnabug, hambugger, and atlanTIC)

Online Joint Christian Concert Through Zoom and Youtube - It was Wonderful

Princess Two sent a notice on our family chat about an online Christian concert that a friend of hers was participating in on Sunday March 29 with about 20 different artists. My favorite was Jenn but they were all wonderful. 

I am hoping that they will leave it up on YouTube so others can watch and enjoy it over and over.  I have it posted on this page so you can watch it if you like. 

It was to start at 6 p.m. and they had it scheduled for one person to go after another each taking their turn either sharing an uplifting message and song. For the most part it worked well other than a few internet glitches.

At first I tried to log into Zoom, but you have to download the app and then I noticed it was also on YouTube live. I decided to watch on YouTube. It was so uplifting and each artist picked a different hymn or uplifting song to sing. 

Some were original songs and works from people I had not heard of before. Others were classic  hymns sung by artists I have loved and enjoyed for many years. Several of the performers I have seen in concert. 

I LOVED that the performers were all willing to share their talent on this sabbath, and share their testimonies of Christ and of the Love God has for each of us. 

It was such a wonderful experience to be able to see them all performing live on the same page. 

I hope they do this again and include more artists. I have so many Christian artists that I LOVE and many of them I have posted about on my blog. 

Here is a link to one of my post about my favorite posts. 

Hope you enjoy this as much as I did. Have a Blessed day! 

Quarantine Quilting Still Going On - Princess Three Life Quilt

Just over a year ago, I had Princess Three come and work on laying out her "life" quilt in the order she wanted it so I could work on a life T-Shirt quilt. I have done this for my girls, usually after they serve a mission. Princess Three chose not to serve a full time mission but has done many service missions. 

I kind of hounded her that I wanted to get this done and get some of the bins of t-shirts I have in storage made into quilts so I could move them out and make the quilts as they are usable and the t-shirts just take up space.

She was so good to lay it out and I had plans to get it done by Christmas last year. It didn't work as I had to clean it up when we had visitors, and I had to finish Princess Five's musical quilt. I also had promised my cousin that I would make her a "life quilt" and started to collect shirts for that two years ago this summer so I wanted to get those two quilts finished before starting this one for Princess Three. 

I finished both of the quilts I had started, so this week, I finally started on Princess Three's life quilt. It is slow going as I usually cut the pieces and then stitch them all together later. This time I wasn't sure I would finish the quilt before having to pick it up for company, so I have been cutting and sewing the squares at the same time which calls for lots of thread color changes and lots of cutting and pinning as some squares are made out of three shirts, or a sweat suit down into one square. 

I am about half finished with the cutting and sewing of the squares ,but haven't been feeling all that well the past few days, so it has been very slow going. The top picture is two of my favorite squares. One is the shirt and shorts from her soccer team, and the other is the dance team she was on for many years.

I am hoping to get it all cut by the weekend. Wish me luck! Have a blessed day! 

It Only Took 3 1/2 Years To Finish - Refinishing a Metal Chair and Seat Cushion

In November of 2016, I started working on a chair I got from my mothers home when she died. I remember this chair growing up in our home. I have not idea where the chair came from originally, but it has been in my family for many years.

No one in the family wanted it, and my nephew was going to take it to school for a prop in his drama class as it was really beat up. I decided if it were going to not go to someone in the family, I would take it home and refinish it. I have a little desk in my bedroom that could use a black chair so I took it home. 

If you remember back that far on my blog, here is a link to that post.  Around that time, Princess five had rolled her car and there were lots of crazy things going on in my world. I had also misplaced the fabric from my mothers home that I wanted to use on the chair, as I thought it would be cool to use her fabric on her chair. 

Most of the items I have from her are large wooden dressers, as I chose to get the dressers for the girls as they are functional over her antique decorative pieces that may have been worth more. With that, I thought a little bit of her couch fabric would be a nice touch to make the chair more "hers" and the chair did have a similar color on it at some point, so I was restoring it to what it was like when I remembered it from my childhood.  

I share in the two videos (the first video is in the link above post) how I spray painted the chair in the first, and the second video I did today, showing how to cover the wooden seat, add padding, and finish it off. 

The videos isn't the best as I have been losing my voice all week, so the sound isn't the best. 

I am also not feeling well, so hope I didn't pick up the Corona virus anywhere, but I have been feeling worse and worse this week and today feel like something is coming. I am heading to bed after this and it isn't even 8 p.m. 

Basically, you pick the fabric you want to put on the seat. You can recover the fabric that is on the seat, or you can remove the fabric by pulling out the tacks or staples using a flat head screwdriver and a pair of pliers. 

Once you have the old fabric off, you can use the old fabric as a template or pattern for the new cover, or you can just measure the fabric about three inches wider than the wood piece so that it will cover the padding and wood wrapping to the back where you can staple it on. 

Make sure to staple the edges evenly across from the side and not go around in a circle as you can mess up the top that way. Do one side, then the other, then the other sides like a cross, so that it is pulled evenly over the chair and you don't get bulges. 

I find using a staple gun works better than using tacks as you can do it one handed while you hold the fabric, rather than needing two hands to hammer a tack into the back of the seat.

Make sure to mark where the screw holes are in the bottom of the wood so you can find them under the fabric as it is easier to screw them into existing holes rather than trying to make new ones. 

Also, you may want to tape the screws to the wood of the seat so you don't lose them while working on the chair. I have lost one or more in the past and then you have to find the exact length screw or it can go through the wood, and when someone sits on the chair, it will poke them in the behind. 

If you have little children, you can buy some thin clean plastic at Walmart on the roll, and can put plastic over the fabric until you children are a little older and past the stage of staining the fabric. 

I have recovered dining and kitchen chairs many times over the years. Sometimes if the fabric is just dated and not dirty, I will just put the new fabric over the old, but if it is an old chair, I like to clean off the old fabric replacing it rather than covering it. 

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. 

Have a Blessed Day! 

Stores Have More Food This Week But Are Limiting Purchases

I needed a few things this week so I wanted to go to the store. I tried to think about what the best time to go to the store would be as to not run into many people. I decided to go about 10 a.m. so that the morning rush would be over.

I was surprised at how busy the store was. There were signs on almost every shelf saying, "Please be courteous of others and only buy what you need so others can also get what they need. The shelves had things on them, but were still quite empty. I purchased many things at a higher price than I normally would because I am hoping that I don't have to go to the store for a few weeks. 

I spent just over $200 at Walmart but they didn't have any gluten free soups and their shelves for that type of thing were quite empty. 

I then went to the other grocery store in town and they had limits on most items. I had forgotten to get some rice milk for when the family comes. I went to get that and looked to see if they had gluten free soups. They did because they had a limit of two cans of soup per person. 

I picked up my two cans and at the checkout, I asked when they would be lifting the ban on purchasing the soups. They asked me why, and I shared that it is hard to get gluten free items. They told me to go get what I wanted. I have never paid more than $1.50 for a can of soup. The were charging $2.99 each can. 

I spent about $250 total on groceries but didn't have many bags for that amount. I had four bags of toilet paper four packs. I was happy to be able to get what I needed and be able to quarantine myself.

I hope you are also able to get what you need to keep safe.

Have a blessed day! 

Thou Shalt Not Be Creepy - Quarantined in NY Princess Five

Hola Hola!  

For all those who are wonder, I am great, healthy, and working hard. Even though we've been self isolating since Tuesday, we've kept ourselves pretty busy!

•on Tuesday we had our last district

council.
•my comps mom sent us balloon animals

• I made a scavenger hunt for my companion

•we found one new friend through Facebook this week!

•because we are on Facebook so often, we talk to a lot of creepy people, so we made our own commandment, "thou shalt not be creepy." (Don't worry we are safe about it, and our people blocked list is always growing.)

•we go to the church once a day and so we always drive exactly 11.9 miles, everyday.

• because no one is at the church, we have taken over a little bit and made our very own recording studio where we record Facebook videos for our area page.

• we hit 460 likes on our Facebook page!

•Teaching virtually is actually very time efficient, easier to get members in lessons, and we can teach single men who we otherwise couldn't teach. And, if people decide to not answer our call, we haven't lost any drive time. Also, no one is working and everyone has so much time to talk to the missionaries. I only see positives.

•we wore gloves to go to the store this morning

I would love to hear from you this week! Thanks to those who have been checking in on me to see how I'm doing!

Cuídense
Hermana Princess Five

Also one of the sisters in our district drew us all as animals, I'm the squirrel!