Creative Homemaker

I belong to an online email list, (which shall remain nameless so the secret remains just that.) One of the ladies/quilters there has been a wonderful contributor to the list; often sharing fun patterns and free designs, much to the delight of all who read the posts. Recently, she has been missing, she has cancer and has undergone many difficulties in her recovery. It was suggested that we send her quilt blocks.  This heart pattern is what we chose. Then someone suggested that we send her a quilt, since she won't be able to sew for a while.  I volunteered to sew the blocks together if someone else would quilt it.  The little squishies started piling up in my mailbox. :-) I loved looking at all the fabrics from other quilters' stashes. The Heart Quilt project was born. We soon overwhelmed the original list and a sister site was set up to handle to overflow. Our first quilt is finished, with another quilt on the way to another member who has experien...

My sister "Silver" and her family have decided to try an experiment—living on their food storage only, from now until Christmas. She has been very industrious to “put up” and can lots of things this summer and fall. She made this decision when she was looking at all her neat rows of canned goods. (I must admit that I sit in the garage on our swing which we brought in for the winter and admire my shelves too.) I think this is a fantastic idea! Of course that is one of the reasons why we store for the future, to use in the event of an emergency. So if we have not planned ahead and purchased everything that we need in that event, how do we know if we have been wise in our preparation? King Solomon said, in Proverbs 6:6 “Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, which, having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest. How long will you slumber, O sluggard? When will you rise from your sleep? A little...

I was reading Proverbs chapter 31 the other day and was thinking, oh yeah, if I had servant girls, I could get all that done in one day too. Because the proverbs 31 woman had maidservants and I didn’t, I named my appliances so that I could feel like I had “servant girls” working for me too. I have Drucilla the dryer, Christine the crock-pot, Minnie, the microwave, Denise the dishwasher, (sorry my Dear Friend!) Olivia Oven, Brenda blender, and poor old Wanda the washing machine. My original Wanda, (17 years old) died last year, and was replaced amazingly enough by a lady of the same name. She is not new working for me, but had a one-year warranty, as she has had some operations in the past to fix this or that. She worked fine for me up until about 3 months ago when during her spin cycle there came a terrible screeching noise. I ran and shut her off and waited. I had a full load of laundry in the tub, sopping wet. How was I to get it all spun out if I didn’t just run it? S...