Hearts and Pinwheels for Amour

I've been working for weeks on the floating wall I mentioned in my post "Floating, Spinning Wall part 1" a few weeks ago. I started making the larger pinwheels. I had them cut and stuck together weeks ago but haven't had the time to make them up.

I rented a few movies and got started much later than I wanted but I finished all the large pinwheels. I have lots of medium to small wheels that need to be done. Tonight, Princess number five watched a movie and punched out all the edges for me after I cut the corners.

Making a pinwheel is easy. You take any size square piece of paper. Cut it in about 1/2 - 3/4 way to the center of the paper.

Punch holes in the corners of one side of each paper. Make sure you punch the hole in the same side either right or left it doesn't matter except that you do the right on each side or the left on each side. Punch a hole in the center of the paper. I fold it gently in half and only use the tip of the hole punch to make that hole.

I don't use a regular size hole punch. It is too large and the eyelets that you can buy don't fit with that large punch. I have a few smaller hole punches that work well.

Gather each corner and push an eyelet through the hole left by the punch. Once all four corners are placed on it, place the eyelet through the center of the hole in the center. Use an eyelet setter to set the eyelet. Then, I used medium sized brads to put through the center and twisted the brad ends around the stir stick straw I mentioned in the post listed above.

The straw will then be threaded onto fishing line and hung. I will post photos of the wall when it is up an finished. I hope it will work. They will at least look cute I think!

Map Hearts for the French Door "Frames"

First off, I have to say how much my girls liked the turkey soup on yesterday's post. I froze it in a gallon bag and then took it out to see how it would be for the wedding. Each girl had at least two bowls and each commented on how good it was so I think I am safe to use it for the wedding.

For today, I am just going to show you what I have been working on. I had my sister doing a program I wanted to support her in tonight and Princess number 5 danced tonight as well. Princess three and four were helping with 4-H and I spent most of the night writing and addressing our Christmas letter for the year so I could mail it with the wedding invitation and get both off my "to do" list.

With the help of my printer (it isn't always helpful) I was able to get them all printed off with color photos on cute Christmas paper. They are all stamped and ready to go. Check that off the list!

While I was printing those and composing the letter, I was also able to make photo discs of the scans I did this summer with the girls at Walmart that I posted about in the past. Here are links to the two posts on those: Scannathon times five and Scanning all photos for cheap and quickly I have 4 discs of photos scanned of my mother's life through her getting married. She has LOTS of photos but now everyone of my siblings will have all the photos in somewhat order and in an easy to use format. With the help of my computer (it doesn't always want to be helpful either) I was able to make the almost 50 copies needed to give everyone the set. I am VERY happy that I was able to get both those thing off the list. I need to make labels and cute packaging for them but at least the majority of the work is done.

Last night I was up late working on cutting out some hearts and maps to go inside the door frames of the french doors as I will be putting a picture of Princess number one as a baby on the left spot and then have a map cut out of where she was born in the center spot and then a picture of Prince number one as a baby on the right and a map of where he was born in the center slot of the door as well. It took some time to find the maps, center them and cut them. I was blessed to make a new friend who just opened a scrapbooking store in our town. She let me borrow this sizzix machine so all I had to do was to center the map on the die cut and crank. I was able to make about 50 hearts and map hearts for the doors.

Things are coming together as I keep working on them. I am blessed with some amazing people in my life. My heavenly Father sure listened when I told him where I needed help. I have had people come forward offering to do just the things I needed help with. I am so blessed.

Tomorrow, I hope to finish the pinwheels for the hanging wall. It will be fun if it works out as I would like it to but we'll have to wait until the wedding day to know for sure as the doors and fans are already in the city of the wedding so I can't try it out before hand. Here's to hoping!

Bulk Turkey Soup for the Wedding

First off, I am going to remind you of my post "taking stock in Turkey Soup" as to how to make stock. I wanted the soups to be from scratch that we are serving so I let you know last week that I had baked 3 turkeys on the same day. I boiled them down and made stock last week and froze it.

I pulled out my large pressure cooker and dumped one of the large soup stocks into it. I used a roaster for the second bowl of stock.

Normally when I make my home made turkey soup, I leave meat in the stock but it is usually dark meat and is a bit shredded. It tastes wonderful to me but doesn't look like the turkey soups you buy.

This time, I strained the turkey out of the stock and froze it to use for turkey quesadillas. I then used white meat from the turkeys cut into chunks for the soup so it would look more like a store bought turkey soup.

I had all three girls start peeling carrots and potatos. I still had these boxes from the food bank. I had one left of carrots and 4 of potatoes. The girls peeled 1 full box of carrots for the soup and 2 of potatoes. They peeled and I cut. I also used 2 stalks of celery. I had two gallon bags of meat and added that as well.

So, I used 3 turkeys for the stock, about 13 lbs of potatoes, about 8 lbs of carrots, two celery stalks and 2 gallons of cut meat. I added water to fill both the huge pressure cooker and the roaster and let it boil until the veggies were soft. I then let it cook and double bagged it. It made 9 gallon bags of turkey soup. I froze it and a friend is letting me store it in her freezer until the wedding day. I still have one more soup to make.

A wonderful friend is a blessing and made all the rolls for the sandwiches. It is finally starting to come together.

Dance the Day Away (and some Night)

Went to support Princess's number 3 and 4 in their competitions last week. It was a great day and there were some very good dances that I enjoyed watching. They had a drill down between 1, 2, and three A groups and all in all there were probably 5-600 hundred girls. Sweet princess number 4 took third in the drill down.

She is taking after a large line of sisters that have placed in drill down. I think they are just used to following directions.

Both girls were in three dances. The competition was most of the day and I got to take some great video and pictures at the same time. I am getting fairly good at holding the video in the left hand and taking photos with the right.

Here are some of those photos. In one above, they are both standing on their head and Princess number three is revolving while on her head. Fairly impressive as I can't even stand on my head.

Runnin', runnin', and Runnin', runnin'

"Lets get it started" seems like my theme song this week. I worked for I can't say how many hours on the doors. I begged some help Friday night to load them into my Suburban and my wonderful friend and her family (mostly boys) helped as my family was all out of town. They came over about 11 p.m. and loaded. By the time I finished up the few other projects there and loaded them up and got gas and drove the several hours to Princess number one's apartment, it was after 4 a.m.

We fit 13 doors into the back of my suburban. I would have placed bets against it. I was worried that if I didn't take them this weekend when I was headed to the city of the reception anyway, that I would have to take them up on a trailer and I was worried about bad weather and construction with a trailer. I was VERY grateful for help loading and that they fit in my car. I had help unloading when I arrived the next day from Prince number 1's brothers. It was nice to finally meet them.

I got most of the door knobs on but couldn't find one i've had for awhile. I also didn't have time to finish putting the hinges on and I am not sure I have enough hinge pins or hinges so I think I will buy a few packages and I can return them if I don't need them but at least I'll have them if I do.

I wanted to take a picture of the doors lined up as they look really cute but I didn't want to remove the tape and paper off the glass as I thought it would protect it during the move and I also didn't have my camera but could have used my phone but with the five people that came to move the doors, they worked so quickly that I didn't have time to do anything like that.

So, perhaps it is just as well that I didn't get pictures as this way, you will get the "full effect" when you see it as it looks on the day of the wedding. It is looking really cute.

I coulnd't hold my laugh in when I went to drop off the doors at Prince number one's parents home and they opened the garage and they had doors all over as they were painting closet doors for use behind tables etc.

After we finished adding my 13 doors plus, their garage looked similar to mine. They now have all the trees, all the doors, their doors and as you can see in one picture a roaster for one of the soups. I am sure they will be just as glad to have this all done! Perhaps we can all get our garages back!

I know it will all be worth it on the big day but until then, I'll keep "runnin' runnin' and runnin', runnin'."

Who Needs Sleep?

I was up all night last night due to some paper work that I needed to get done. I had a few hours of sleep during the morning and was up and working hard on wedding stuff. I baked three turkeys together which made a huge mess of my oven and took lots of time to clean. I also boiled the turkey down for soup and turkey salad. In between there, I went to watch Princess 3 and 4 dance at halftime.

After that, I went to a workshop where my dear friend has been painting all the doors for me. I took my dremel took and used it to distress the edges of some of the doors. It took almost an hour to do each door. That was masking =1 hour, painting ? hour and distressing = 1 hour times 13 doors. I didn't get to finish them all as I needed to get home and finish the turkey stuff.

I have two doors left that I want to distress but will have to do that later as one still needs the other side painted. I also have the four french doors but since two are metal, I don't want to distress them but think I will use paint to "highlight" the edges rather than sand them. Since some of the doors may have had lead paint on them I wore this beautiful mask. I was there until almost 2 a.m. and then worked on the the turkey soup stock and salad.

I will be so grateful for the holidays after the wedding. I want to sit and do nothing! OK, so that is a lie because if I did nothing I wouldn't be able to handle it as I have had to be so busy with kids and being single with not much help, there isn't much time to sit. I may have to try it......

One Turkey, One Turkey, and One Turkey = 111

Today was a bit stressful as I seek to get things done for the wedding and I have had a headache every day but one for about two weeks. Sunday and today were almost more than I could take. As I overdosed on Tylenol, Coke and psudaphed, I tried to get some things off my "to do" list.

I got a few things done but it seemed that I was two steps behind. Good news in that we went to a college day and Princess number 3 got a full tuition scholarship to the college of her choice! Way to be Beautiful!!!!

However, after talking for a few minutes with the bride to be, I realized I had forgotten to pay my bills that were due a few days ago. :-( So I started working on that and about 2 hours later, I finished that.

Good news on the flip side is that Princess number one got her wedding dress altered and back for her bridals to be taken on Saturday. Princess number 3 and 4 performed last night and tonight at halftime and did a great job.

I then got to bunko a bit late where I enjoyed a great meal and wonderful friends. Someone had started rolling for me but once I arrived, I was on fire. It was a 111 day. I got three bunko's on one's which means you roll three dice and they end up all as one's. I also won every time when rolling ones (I didn't roll the first one) as you can see in the picture. I had 7 bunko's which doesn't often happen.

I was able to pick a wonderful prize which I show here.... Oh, almost slipped. I am giving it to Princess number one for Christmas so I'll just show you the bag it is in.

I called the insurance company on the wreck princess one had a few weeks ago and notice our claim number was 111 in the middle. I was paying the bills and was "freaking" a bit about the two credit card bills when I glanced down to see 111 on a billing number for one of the charges. I was paying another bill and the number 111 was in the phone number and I had another situation when I started laughing and my daughter asked what I was laughing about and I showed her another 111.

I think God is trying to tell me to "trust in Him" today as I let myself feel stressed with the headache and wedding worries amongst other things.

As I was leaving bunko, somehow turkeys came up. My friend said she had 5 in her freezer and asked if I wanted one. I told her I just got two donated yesterday but needed another for the wedding. She told me I could have one of hers. I asked if she was sure and she told me that she went shopping with her family out of town to this really amazing store and they gave you a turkey for every $100 you spend. She said they had already gotten their turkeys and didn't need another so they gave her their two, plus her one and the man behind them spent $100 and didn't want his turkey so he gave it to them. She already had two in her freezer so she cooked one for thanksgiving and still had five.

She pulled out this huge turkey and it was a $25 turkey! Thank you dear friend Steph and the stranger man in line for donating a turkey to Princess number one's wedding. I also need to thank the sweet angel that donated the two turkeys yesterday. Turkey salad and home made turkey soup are on the "to do" list today!

I have never cooked three turkeys at the same time but here's to trying something new. It kinda goes with the 1-1-1 = 3 turkeys! It has just been "one" of those days!

So funny, I posted this and was going to close down the pictures I had open and it was the turkey full screen. I noticed it weighed 21.11 pounds. It is "ONE" of those days!