Finished, Finished

Tonight I hand sewed the hanging tabs down for Jenny's quilt.

I don't like hand sewing.

I love Jenny though so I did it. :)

I'm heading to her house to take it to her.

It Almost Forgot

I had a workshop in Huntsville today.

I think my truck almost forgot how to drive 70 mph.

I really don't remember the last time it was out on the open road so that it could go 70.

It's probably been at least 6 weeks.

We survived even though it was iffy there for awhile.

Score!

I was at Wal-Mart today to get a Father's Day card.

It was not a good day to be at W-M for someone who is trying to get out of debt and has red and yellow disease (clearance).

LOTS of stuff was on clearance.

I avoided most of it.

Until I got to the fabric department.

They are getting rid of fabric and most of the crafts.

Sad, sad times we live in. That department is very important in a small town. And it's going away.

All fabric was 25% off.

Not real enticing.

All the clearance fabric was marked down to $1.00 a yard.

I got real excited about that!

I bought the remainder of the bolt for all the clearance fabrics I was even remotely interested in.

I bought some other fabrics that weren't on clearance.

I ended up with almost 83 yards of fabric.

Yes, you heard correctly, almost 83 yards.

It averaged $1.24 a yard.

There's fabric for several lap size quilts and a couple of bed size quilts plus some other stuff.

20 yards of it was tulle for Tres Dias. So it was actually only almost 63 yards of actual fabric.

That's still a lot of fabric.

I will now be making W-M a daily stop to see if they've put more fabric on clearance for $1.00.

Hopefully, I'll get some other fabrics I've had my eye on but I don't want to pay full price less 25%. If not, I'll survive.

My fabric stash is happy...

Finished!

Well, mostly finished.

Jenny's wall hanging is bound. It took all afternoon and into the evening but the binding is on.

I don't like binding. I spent about six hours looking up videos and instructions, watching the videos and trying to figure things out. It is so worth paying the $20 to the quilter to bind it. That's what I'll do in the future. My time is worth way more than $3.33 an hour to do something I really don't like to do.

When she chose that fabric for the binding, I wasn't very impressed and didn't think it would look good. Boy was I wrong! I really, really like how it looks with the light binding.

I still have to sew down the bottom of the hanging sleeve but have no suitable needles and don't feel like getting back out tonight.

Next up - Rowdy's dinosaur quilt...

About Time

I just called and made a doctor's appointment for next Tuesday.

I'm tired of being tired all the time.

I'm tired of hurting all the time.

I'm tired of my allergies.

Hopefully, I won't spend the entire summer in doctor's offices...

I'm so Impressed!

We went to Buc-ee's either the first or second day it was open. When the store manager asked if everything was OK, I pointed out the plastic inset on the fountain drink machine. It said:

Where Beaver's meet for a cold drink. (or something close to that)

He looked at it and said you're right - it should be a plural instead of possessive.

Yeah, of course it's plural.

He said the marketing manager would be in the store later that week and he'd talk to him about it then.

I, of course, thought that would be the end of that situation.

I was wrong.

Steven went in Monday morning for coffee and it was correct!

Of course, I had to go see it with my own two eyes. Not that I didn't trust him, I just needed to see that I had effected change.

This is not a cheap, paper sign, this is a custom plastic insert.

My question is - how did that sign get made incorrectly to begin with? This is a major chain. They are all about appearances. How many people at the many stores in this chain did not catch such a glaring error in grammar? I'm sure it's the same sign in every store.

Life is good - I spoke up and effected change. Think I'll speak up more often...

I'll Be Sorry

I started off yesterday pulling things out of cabinets and organizing.

Today I was cramming stuff into any available space.

Come August, I'll really, really be sorry that I did that but that's what has been done.

I was totally overwhelmed and just wanted to leave.

There are things piled up that have to come home but that will wait until tomorrow so Steven can help load it up and haul it home.

In August, I'm taking every single thing out of my cabinets and organizing. I'm also getting rid of stuff.

I have too much stuff at home and at school.

It's time for that to change.

I'm going to be ruthless at home this summer and ruthless at school in August.

That's my plan...

Last Day of School

It's finally over! It was a long, difficult year and I'm really thankful for it to be finished. Work day tomorrow but that's OK because there aren't any kids. I have tons of things to get done but there's always just cramming stuff in cabinets or hauling it all home (have to do some of that anyway),

Right now, there's almost a whole cabinet pulled out to be organized but I'll get it done, maybe. Right now, I really don't care.

I'll be teaching Math and Science next year. In some ways, it will be easier since it won't be so many diverse things but math is kind of scary. I know it will be OK but it's going to be a lot like a first year of teaching again and I just had one of those last year and wasn't really ready for another first year. Oh well, I get to keep science, which I LOVE.

Does it surprise anyone else that I love teaching science? It shocks me to no end but there it is, I LOVE teaching science.

All through college, I thought I would be a very old fashioned teacher - desks all lines up in rows, everything quiet and very structured.

I'm almost totally the opposite.

My desks are in groups, it's almost never quiet because we do LOTS of group work. I still have to have structure and some quiet but there is lots of working together, which is never quiet.

I'm struggling with classroom management so I'm taking an online class this summer for 6 weeks and hope it helps. I'm also doing a workshop for the science curriculum I use that is supposed to address classroom management for group work. Hopefully, that will help next year.

I'm off to play with fabric to help get rid of the remainder of this lingering stress...