Friday, January 27, 2012

Prayer Warrior Friends... I Need You!!

My prayer warrior friends, I really need you right now.  I have never posted anything negative or personal on my blog, but I have an issue that I need prayers for.  I KNOW that my God has this under control and I KNOW that His will for this situation will be done.  I need prayers for strength, for courage, for wisdom.

Without going into details, there was a situation yesterday at my oldest son's high school where he was involved.  The school never contacted us about it, he told me about it when I picked him up from school.  We did not think it was a serious issue.  But this morning, it became serious and legal. We are contacting a lawyer and I'm going to bat for my son.  Rich asked me to what extent do we want to fight this?  I told him that I don't want to lose my home over it but there is an injustice to my child going on and I refuse to sit by and let it happen.

I will be back next week with more details and hopefully a resolve on this situation.  I think the school thinks that we are going to accept it and move on, but this Momma bear will make sure her child is vindicated.

I am a very emotional person that too many times, lets my emotions get in the way and I'm also very NON-confrontational.  So please pray that I can be firm, have the courage to say what needs to be said and not let my emotions interfere.

Thank you dearly, friends!  I appreciate you and your prayers so much!  Sorry I don't have anything fun or prim, or pictures today, just a heavy heart.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Yesterday Once More's Anniversary Giveaway!

Be sure to hop on over to the blog of our senior writer for A Primitive Place magazine for a wonderful giveaway!  Dan Weaver of ~Yesterday Once More~ is hosting an awesome giveaway of a year subscription to our beloved A Primitive Place magazine!!

The deadline to enter is Monday, January 23, 2012 so get on over there and enter!  Or not... and give me a better chance of winning.  LOL!  Just kidding!!  I want everyone to know about this wonderful magazine... primitive goodness abounds!!  I so look forward to every issue and still pour over past issues.  The crew has done an outstanding job and I thank them all for giving us an exceptional quality primitive magazine!

Oh, and one more thing.  I just love following the blogs of Dan, Linda, Kimberlee, Kris, and others.  I think of them as friends and with every issue that comes out, I enjoy seeing what my "friends" have been up to.  The great writing, beautiful styling and pictures, awesome project tutorials... I appreciate the time and energy they put into each page.

So if you haven't heard about this amazing magazine yet, what are you waiting on?!  Get on over to Dan's blog and try to win a subscription.  If you don't, then you must buy one.  Dan has the details on his blog sidebar.

Enjoy your week~

Blessings to you from Berry Homespun Primitives~

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Antiquing in Wagoner

Chilly here today, our coldest day of the winter so far.  We even have an inch of snow on the ground from last night, our first of the season.  A fire is steadily going in the fireplace, heating up the home.  I set up a little table by the fire with my sewing machine so I can spend the week making some more of these...

I appreciate all the advice and tips I received from so many of you.  I think my little sawdust quilt pillow turned out cute.  I still need to hand stitch the opening where I stuffed it with a sawdust pillow, you can see it on the left in the picture above.  I found a way to make it work and it truly is something that the pioneers would do... I'll be back later with details on how I did it.

My friend Katie and I went to an antique mall in Wagoner, a town where we had not been antiquing yet.  I found this mini strainer for $2.  It's only about 3" and so darn cute!  I have never seen one so small.

What would one use such a little piece for?  To strain into a mason jar?  It really looks tiny with the rest of my strainer/sifter collection.

I was so excited to find this awesome slaw cutter at a great price!  I have been looking at them all year long but the prices have been more than I want to pay.  I haven't found any that are hinged like this.  We found 3 hinged slaw cutters in that one little mall!

It had a $20 price tag, marked down to $10!!  So I grabbed it!  I just LOVE old wood patina.

This lovely (not!) sewing basket was marked down to $2.50.  I'm not into dragons, especially ones that are falling apart...

But... the inside of this sewing basket is a beautiful worn blue velour fabric and looks much better displayed like this...
The jar of antique buttons was part of a Christmas gift from my niece (we draw names).  I love the little size of it, so cute!

I'll be back soon with a post about RAK's: Random Acts of Kindness.  =]

Time for me to get hopping.  My middle school daughter has a basketball game in a town 1 hour away!!  =/  That's not even round trip.  It's gonna take us a good solid hour driving on the interstate with a speed limit of 75 to get there.  Yuck!!  That's all I have to say about that.  But I will do anything for my baby girl so it's time to get the cupcakes baking.  I bake treats for the team for them to have after every game.  Just a little something to show that we love them and support them.

I hope you all are staying warm and cozy inside your homes during this winter storm blast we had last night.  I noticed on the radar that it started way down in Oklahoma with us and went straight north all the way to Canada, it was a huge stretch as it swept across the US.  My first thought was of you, all my blogging friends... hoping  you were safe and warm in your homes.  Bundle up girls~

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Quilt squares

Hi friends!  I'm glad to be back amongst you all again!  Rich had his Christmas break planned out with some things he wanted to get done.  That was fine and dandy with me because I told him I had a plan too... catch up on my blog reading.  So I spent the past two weeks reading about 500 posts and catching up with you all.  I have never, ever seen my Google Reader so bare!  Now I enjoy blogging again.  =]

Before I get into what this post is about, I just want to say that you all have turned into some of my most treasured and loyal friends.  I appreciate you and love you all!  I'm thankful that I can come here happy and you are happy with me, sad and you are sad for me, asking for prayer and you are there.  THANK YOU for being that kind of friend to me these past couple of years.  What a joy and a blessing it is to share life with you all!

Now that the sappy stuff is outta the way, let's get down to quilting, hehe.  I am not a quilter.  But my friend Katie over at Willow Creek Homestead and I went to an outside sale that her dad was having.  Katie's dad holds these sales for charity.  All the money is donated to wildfire victims in his area.  We had an outburst of wildfires last year and many lost their homes.  Jim was blessed to not lose anything although the fires came up to his place and burned most of his land.  Now he is helping his neighbors that lost everything.  One of the things that we picked up was a huge box of quilt pieces and squares.  We sat down and went through it piece by piece, splitting the whole box.  Here is my stash:

Even splitting it up, I ended up with almost 70 squares of various sizes plus 2 full quilt tops!

My favorite are these smaller 7.5" squares that are going to make some adorable little pillows.  One of Rich's buddy at work is bringing him a bag of sawdust for me tonight, yippee!

Just look at this stack!

There were about 4 different sizes of squares, lots of blues.

These are the 2 full quilt tops.  Not sure what I am going to do with these yet.  I have a friend that has a long arm quilting machine so I'll probably be visiting her.  =]

I'm not sure of the age but the squares are definitely hand stitched and made out of old clothes.  You can tell that most of them were made from men's shirts.

Oh, and I forgot to count how many diamonds there were because I already had them in the sink getting a bath.

Now I'm asking advice from you.  I probably did this wrong so PLEASE correct me if I did.  I'll take all the critique and advice you want to give.  =]  To clean these pieces, I put them a sink of hot water with Dawn dish soap.  I stirred it occasionally, soaking for an hour.  Then I soaked them in hot water to rinse.  That's what the above picture is from (you can even see the steam in some areas).  They were very, very dingy.  Then I'm going to put them in the dryer on delicate for a bit.  I'm wondering if maybe they should be washed and rinsed in cold water?  What do you all do?  Please help!  =/

Thanks for stopping in for a visit.  I appreciate you coming by.
Have a delightful week~