Isn't it cozy?

I came home from my parents' home to find my bedroom looking like this.




Actually I knew all about it, I was just amazed at how much Barry and Master K got done while I was gone. They moved the furniture out of our bedroom, ripped out the ceiling, added new ceiling joists, and were in the process of hanging more drywall when I got home. As of this afternoon, the ceiling is all drywalled and they are working on the walls now, so these photos are out of date.

Our bedroom was the largest room in the house until Barry made the family room in the basement, and the span of the ceiling was way too much for the joists even before there was a fire in the attic (in the 1940s, we think). So the ceiling was very saggy. Now it's not, it's very sturdy and straight! Just the floor sags, now, so when you stand in the middle of the room, the ceiling is higher than it is when you're on the edge of the room. Oh well. It's going to be very nice with all the added insulation.

We're not sure what colors to use, or what to do about the floor. I don't want carpet. I wish we could keep the old flower-printed Congoleum flooring, but it's not in good shape. We're thinking we'll just expose the old wide plank floor, clean it up well and then paint it. I love painted plank floors.

Finished by Friday: Roller Shades for my Office

So what did you finish this week? Big or small, let's celebrate, because it's something that has been moved from wherever you were storing it, to where it can be used, eaten, worn, ridden, carried, cuddled, given away, sold or otherwise enjoyed.

Here are a couple of things that I finished this week:

First is a very bad photo of the windows in my office, through which the afternoon sunshine streams - wonderful in the winter, when we need the passive solar heat, but not so great in the summer. Besides, it's hard on the dolls in my office, to be in direct sunshine. I found some beautiful fake silk fabric at Wal-Mart, and I made roller shades to go in the windows. I did not line them, so that lots of light still comes through; it just takes the edge off. I already noticed a difference in the afternoon heat. I know you can't tell by the picture, but the fabric is nearly exactly the color of the background of my gorgeous wallpaper, sort of gold-brown-green.



And then here is another old lawn chair which I re-fabricked (I just made up that word) in the striped printed duck that I used for a director's style chair a couple of weeks ago. This is one of those Titanic style deck recliners that makes you feel like you're in a hammock, sort of. The old oilcloth had mildewed, and then the stick that holds one end of it had snapped, so I replaced it with a piece of an old broom handle, and replaced the fabric. That's Master K there, demonstrating it for you. He says it's comfortable.

It was a crazy week, spent largely trying to catch my breath after a week away, so I'm especially proud of having a couple of things to show off here!

We are having a quieter than usual Independence Day. Barry is drywalling and Master K is helping him, Miss B is working at the nursing home, I'm working too, and only Lil Miss A and I took a break to go to the Eitzen Family Fun Fest parade. It lasts an hour and a half! She came home loaded with several cavities' worth of parade candy. Now she's at Vacation Bible School. We may go to the fireworks display in Lansing tonight if we still have any energy left by that point.

What's for Supper? - Salmon Stuffed Potatoes

Salmon Baked Potatoes
from Bruce Carlson's The Great Midwest American Wild Critter Cookbook
6 medium baking potatoes
1/3 c. milk
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoonful salt
1/2 teaspoonful paprika
1 T. lemon juice
2 T. butter
1-1/2 c. salmon
1/3 c. minced onion
buttered bread crumbs

Bake potatoes. Saute salmon and onions in butter. Split potatoes and scoop out inside and mix with milk, egg, salt, paprika, lemon juice, sauteed salmon and onions. Return to potato shells and bake at 325 degrees for 25 minutes. Sprinkle with bread crumbs.

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How I changed it:
1. I didn't have fresh or frozen salmon, so I used canned skinless boneless salmon.
2. Nearly any recipe can be improved by adding cheese, in my opinion, so I added a couple of tablespoons of crumbled Mindoro Blue cheese to the mixture, and I topped the potatoes with a slice each of longhorn cheese rather than the bread crumbs.
The Verdict:
Meh. Not bad. I can think of more delicious things to do with a coupla cans of salmon, though. Barry liked it.

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This is an interesting cookbook. I think I will list it on eBay because I'm not sure I can handle having it in the house. I might throw up. For example, there are recipes for pickled deer heart, fricasseed raccoon, little critter stew (uses whatever little furry things you can catch), and most horribly, Fire Department Squirrel Stew ("serves about 5 tons of hungry firemen"). Ugh.

Cookie jar and teapot, back together again

I had each of these once before, years ago. They are a cookie jar which went with Diane Mott Davidson's "Tough Cookie," and a teapot that went with "Sticks & Scones," special giveaways that went to independent bookstores that carried the books as new releases. Not many of either were made. Anyway, I had bought mine, brand new, from a bookseller who had been storing his and not using them and got tired of it. They're so cute, I really loved them!

Then Miss B took up the bassoon. As my friend Pakistanamerican says, it's hard to love a rented instrument, and I agree. So we bought Miss B a bassoon. I sold my cookie jar and my teapot as part of the fundraising effort. Together they brought about $250, a good chunk of the funds we needed. I was a little sad, but of course glad to do it for my daughter.

Fast forward a few years: I have been watching for more of these, and they do come up on eBay now and then, but quickly get snapped up. But I nabbed a buy-it-now listing of a whole stack of DMD hardbacks with a bonus teapot that wasn't even mentioned in the title. That one was about $15 plus shipping! And most of the books were also author signed. I swapped out some of the books in my collection for some of the author-signed ones, sold all the extra books, and ended up breaking even on the deal.

Then just last week I saw the cookie jar come up on eBay. I watched all week with bated breath. Surely it would go high once again. But it didn't. I got it for the minimum bid of $19.99 - and I had a free shipping coupon from eBay.

So there they are again, side by side. The teapot is even autographed by DMD on the bottom of it! And at the price I paid for each, I don't feel guilty.

Oh, and guess who isn't even planning on playing her bassoon next year? She dropped out of band (a busy schedule, I do understand, really), and no real interest anymore. Sigh.

Rimshot, please

From Woot Weads* the Wire:

ST. LEONARD, New Brunswick (AP)—Some 12 million honey bees were released along Canada’s largest highway on Monday after a truck transporting them overturned, police said.

-- Wildlife officials warned of the threat posed by these so-called "Canadianized" bees, which can be lethally mild-mannered and reasonable.

* sorry about that, Woot.

Four more quilts made by my grandma

Here are four more quilts from my grandmother, Frances Burger. I should have explained that she was a quilter for many years, but in the 1960s, I believe it was, she invested in a quilting machine, a big ceiling-mounted frame and a heavy-duty sewing machine. They were living in the town of Rosalia, Kansas, having moved off the farm by that point, and their lot was large, so Grandpa pulled an old frame house onto the back lot and put it up on blocks, then knocked out an interior wall to allow the full length of the house for the quilting setup. She went into business machine quilting people's tops. In between, she quilted quite a few of her own, and we, her family, still have a bunch of them, which we treasure. She preferred an allover ocean waves stitch. She tended to quilt her tops quite densely, and as a result they tended to be sturdy. (As she got older, her quilting got a little less dense; the older quilts have held up the best.)

First is this sweet old scrappy quilt. I am guessing the fabrics were pieces of shirting or maybe dresses. Mostly sombre colors with those splashes of red in there and the pink sashing. I remember this quilt being something to cuddle up with in the back seat when the car was cold, or to haul along on a picnic to sit on. (I may be wrong. My memories are frequently faulty. Maybe they are someone else's. Or maybe I just make them up.)

The old sweetheart is frayed and threadbare, but still pretty.


Next is this one, which Mom and I both looked at and thought might have been pieced by someone else, as it just didn't look like a "Grandma quilt" to us, but then Mom looked again and saw a piece from a dress she used to wear, so we knew. All those curves, ack! I do not piece curves. Grandma didn't do them very often, either, but here she went curve crazy.

This quilt is not in bad shape except the binding is worn out. That's an easy fix.

Next we have a quilt that is fairly typical for near the end of my grandma's quilting career: Very bright colors and a crazy patch in strips. She loved piecing crazy quilts, and as she grew older, her love of color led her to piece wilder and wilder crazy tops. This one is so bright it might keep one up at night if it were on a bed, but I still love it, because it's Grandma's. Mom says it may well be the last quilt Grandma was able to machine quilt, as her ocean waves looked to be getting away from her a little and it still needs to be bound, and there are lots of thread ends and the occasional straight pin waiting to stab the unwary. There was quite a bit of the backing fabric still with the quilt and I plan to use it as binding.


And last, my favorite of the four: Another crazy patch, this one in much more subdued colors. Mom said Grandma made it especially to go with their living room when they bought a new couch. I remember how excited we all were about that couch: It was a lovely olive green velour and was NOT easy to get into the house. Overstuffed, mountainous, very 1970s. Anyway this quilt graced the back of the couch for years. Unfortunately, one particular fabric of which it was pieced did not hold up well to time, so many blocks have a piece that has disintegrated. But it's quilted so sturdily that it is still quite usable. The binding is a fabric that is a little bit shiny and almost bronze in color, very pretty!

Mystery Block

Does anybody recognize this block?

It came in a lot of quilting fabric I bought at a garage sale once. It's hand pieced, and does not look particularly easy, but I'd like to make more of 'em and make it a quilt.

Or maybe I just make it a lolcat... er, lolquilt.

Homeplace photos

Here is the street where I grew up. My folks bought this house new in 1957 and have never moved since. When I was young, it was wide open with little baby trees in everybody's yard. Now it's a shady, cool, green neighborhood of mature plantings.

That's looking up the street in one direction...

... and that's the other direction.

And here is my childhood home.


This picture is for my niece and 2 of my nephews. Remember the birdhouse you made Papa and Nana once? At last it has a bird family living in it. There is a pair of chickadees having babies in there. I never saw any babies, but I sure heard the papa chickadee, every time we stepped into the front yard. He'd shout "Dee dee dee dee dee!" and then if we didn't run away terrified he'd say it again: "Dee dee dee dee dee dee dee!"


And last of all, here is My Papa. He's 80. I love him so much and am so thankful he is still around. I didn't take a single picture of my mom this trip; I wish I had!