A couple more random photos from our trip

Sometimes when you're helping a grandchild sew, things get to a more complicated stage and you just have to finish the job yourself.

Here's a photo from last night's taco truck dinner (no people in the photo, just a sense of what it was like there).

Finally, our granddaughter finished the second Harry Potter book today. I love seeing her so engrossed in reading like this.

Sewing with a grandchild

We sent our middle grandchild a sewing project for his seventh birthday in April (you might recall I gave our oldest grandchild sewing lessons for her 7th birthday). Here's a sweet picture of Kent helping our grandson sew his new ninja costume:

Next time, pick a standard size

Remember the dabbling I did with paint and fabric? When I penciled in the grid I used to keep everything somewhat lined up, I used 6 x 6 inch squares—10 altogether, two to a row with five rows.

Only 6 x 6 inches is not at all a standard size for frames. Nor is 12 x 12. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist but holy moly a non-standard frame can get pricey in a hurry.

I managed to find a 12 x 12 frame at Michael’s and with a 40% off coupon, the price was somewhat reasonable. Here’s what the final/final product looks like.

Next time I paint fabric to frame—if there is a next time—I’m going to measure and use a standard frame size for the painting.

Mother's Day

My sons gave me this blanket years decades ago for Mother’s Day. I call it the cat blanket because (duh) it's got cats on it, and also because these days, Wally has made it his own. If he’s not in a proper cat bed snoozing away, he’s curled up on this blanket.

And I thought perhaps this photo showed the cat blanket but alas it doesn’t. I’m pretty sure this was the same Mother’s Day I received the blanket; if so, it’s not in the picture. Sorry for the crummy quality—it’s a picture of a picture. Still, it's a fun picture with both kids in it.

Here’s another picture from the same day—again, not the best quality but you can see Tigger, who was a wonderful cat.

Meant to post this last week

I got new running shoes last Saturday. I have a tendency to forget exactly when I started running with a new pair of shoes, and then run in them for far longer than anyone would recommend. That's led to some knee pain or ankle pain as the shoes just wear out.

So. I got these on May 13, they are Brooks PureCadence 6, and in addition to feeling good when I run, I really like the super bright laces.

Christmas past (but in a good way)

My mother-in-law’s estate sale was this weekend—not that she’s dead, far from it. But since she’s moved into the assisted living/nursing home, there’s no point in keeping rooms full of stuff or a house she no longer needs. So we needed to dispose of  all those belongings, and then get the house sold.

The estate sale industry is pretty weird, at least to me. Getting the sale scheduled was a chore. I don’t know if that’s because the people who do this have other jobs or if that’s just the norm for this line of work, but everything was hard to pin down.

As a side note, the woman we bought our house from used an estate sale company before she moved out. Her parents had lived here for over 30 years, and she’d lived here with them through their illnesses and eventual death, and this place was packed with stuff (including a casket in the basement—isn’t that strange?).

They do a lot of the work, though. They sort and label everything, publicize the sale, and provide staff to work at the sale. Afterwards, they box and donate everything that’s left. In the case of the company we used, they prefer that the family not hang around during the sale. That sort of bothered Kent (what are they hiding?) but it also made sense. I can well believe that people get a little weird watching their possessions or their parents’ possessions going for a song, and get emotionally worked up.

One thing my mother-in-law has always loved is decorating for Christmas. When I first met her in 2002, she was still putting up three or four fully decorated trees along with lots of other Christmas decorations (her Santa collection is impressive). She made a lot of her decorations, and really enjoyed getting everything set up just so. Even as recently as five years ago, she put up two trees. In this last house, she only had room for one and of course now she'll need to display a couple of small items since there's no room for a tree.

Kent was in Tulsa as the estate sale people were organizing everything into categories, and he told me they’d put all the Christmas items into one room. He said it was pretty cool to see all those things together, so I asked him to take a photo. Here it is:

We might be those people

We got this to solve the problem of litter dust going everywhere, not to mention to help hide the visuals of two open litter boxes.It's a kid's tent from IKEA. Yeah, we are crazy cat people.