Sewing Masks and Keeping Busy

Charley and I are pretty sociable people. But there was . . . 

no Writing Group Meeting this week

no Conducting Craft Class at the Senior Center this week

and a locked door at our water company which is almost in sight distance of our house, so we dropped our bill into the slot in the door.

I talked to my cousin last night and she is making pretty masks. She sent me pics of hers and I liked them. I have tons of material, so I decided to make a few today to pass the time away.

They are very simple to make. Here is a pic of the pattern that I cut out of card stock. Cut two 6" pieces of elastic for each one, also.

They are reversible, so you cut out four pieces of material for each mask. Bend over the 2" side about 1/4" or so and iron. Sew two sets of the material across the 6 1/2" end of the pattern. Then put the two sets of material together (right sides facing each other) and sew up the 5" sides. Leave the 2" sides open, and turn right side out. Iron and insert the elastic and sew across the ends.

fold over small 2" side and iron

with right sides together sew the long 6 1/2" sides together

after sewing 2 sets of longs sides together, pin them together and sew. Leaving small ends open.

turn right side out and iron. 

Insert elastic into openings on each end and sew all the way across. 

As you can see, I back-stitched the row of sewing to make it secure.

Here are some of my finished masks. They are reversible and washable. You can't tell, but I put different coordinating fabric on the back of some of these. There is a somewhat light solid brown on the back of the one I did above. There is a light gray material on the back of the owl and cat masks and the black one. I'm just using what material I have on hand.

You may have to adjust the measurements a little, depending on how big or small your face is.

I don't know how good they are at keeping out germs, but they might help keep your hands from touching your face so often, which they say is how you spread germs. They might also be good to use when you have a cold or out walking when the pollen count is high.

I hope everyone is healthy and you don't get the corona virus.

Here is an excerpt from the 'winter' section of my soon-to-be published volume two of FUN THROUGH THE SEASONS Recipes, Crafts and Fun Facts for Kids.

SANTA SIGHTINGS

NORAD tracks Santa.

In December 1955, a Sears’ ad printed the phone number of a Colorado Springs store so children could tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas. The phone number was a misprint and children ended up calling the red phone of the Continental Air Defense Command, now known as NORAD. Colonel Harry Shoup answered the phone and a small voice on the other end asked, “Is this Santa Clause?” He thought it was a joke, until the child started crying. The children kept calling, so he assigned airmen to answer the calls and act like Santa. On Christmas Eve, when the colonel walked into the room, there was a drawing of a sleigh with eight reindeer coming over the North Pole. The colonel looked at it for a while, and next thing you know, he called the radio station and said, “This is the commander at the Combat Alert Center, and we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh.”

THE ASTRONAUTS track Santa.

On December 16, 1965 astronauts Tom Stafford and Wally Schirra on Gemini 6 sent the following message to Mission Control and children around the world. “We have an object, looks like a satellite going from north to south; probably in polar orbit . . . I see a command module and eight smaller modules in front. The pilot is wearing a red suit. The astronauts then proceeded to sing “Jingle Bells,” accompanied with a harmonica and bells, which they secretly smuggled aboard.

CLEMENT CLARKE MOORE tracks Santa.

He announced Santa’s arrival to his children in his 1822 poem titled, “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.” He saw a little old driver so lively and quick. He said, “It must be Saint Nick.”

CHILDREN track Santa.

Come Christmas Eve, bake a batch of cookies and place them beneath the Christmas tree with a glass of milk. After midnight, sneak a peek and you might have a Santa sighting of your own.

PEPPERMINT COOKIES

1 cup sugar

1 stick of butter, softened

1 egg

1 ½ t peppermint flavoring

2 cups self-rising flour

2 T milk

Red and green colored sugar

Junior Mints

Mix sugar, butter, egg and flavoring in large bowl until well blended.

Alternately add flour and milk to butter mixture, beating until well blended. Dough will be crumbly. Work with it and shape dough into one-inch balls.

Roll in red or green colored sugar.

Place on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake at 375 for 10 to 12 minutes until cookie is set. Remove from oven and cool two to three minutes. Place a Junior Mint into center of cookie. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack.

Makes three to four dozen.

 

These colorful cookies are sure to delight Santa on Christmas.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a goodnight.

Merry Christmas Time of Year

Hi everyone!

I don't post a lot anymore, but I used to post a lot!

I thought I would direct you to some of my older posts to put us in the Christmas mood.

Do you like to craft?  Go here to see how to make gumdrops for your tree. This is one of my most popular posts this time of year. It gets a lot of visits.

Click here to see all my cookie cutters and learn how to make cinnamon dough ornaments.

Click here to see all kinds of Christmas craft ideas.

Click here to see how to make Scrabble Christmas ornaments. I used to make these and sell them. 

If you look on my sidebar, you will find lots of recipes you could try out on Christmas. Click here to see how to make my applesauce stack cake. Grandma made the best one ever!

On my sidebar is a link to my cookbook on Amazon. It has a pic of my stack cake on the cover.  Cookbooks make great gifts for people who like to cook!

I hope you have a nice Christmas and make lots of memories. Click here for a couple of posts about my Christmas memories.

I read on the internet somewhere that Christmas Eve is the most popular day to get engaged. That is one memory I forgot to write about on my blog. I got engaged on Christmas Eve 1977. Six and a half months later we were married!

I think it surprised our families. We had dated for years and I don't think they thought he was ever going to propose. But I knew better.

What's your favorite Christmas memory?

read Christmas story books

decorate with holly

make angels out of songbook pages

make m & m icicles to put on packages

Merry Christmas.

Getting Your Thanksgiving Cactus to Bloom

I have discovered the secret to getting my Thanksgiving Cactus to bloom!

I had just about given up on getting my cactus to bloom. For two or three years in a row it never bloomed.

I wanted to give them away.

I wanted to put them in a yard sale. (I used to have two - one small and one large)

My husband wouldn't let me, even though I suspected he was partly the reason they never bloomed.

Why did I suspect he was part of the reason?

I had researched online about how to make them bloom. I tried doing what they said, but they like coolness and they like darkness.

My husband likes a warm house in the winter and he leaves lights on at night. I was fighting an uphill battle.

Well, last year I put my cactus on the front porch for the summer and I kept it there until the nights started getting a little too cool for comfort. I didn't want it to freeze. I brought it inside the garage and placed it on our chest type freezer until I had somewhere to put it in the house.

Well, after a few weeks I noticed red buds developing on the tips of the plant! More and more buds developed and they started turning into flowers.  Yeah!

I brought it in the house and it bloomed beautifully.

I did the same this year and it is in full bloom again.

The garage gave it the environment it longed for -- cool and dark.

 

I used to think it was a Christmas Cactus, but it has convinced me that it is a Thanksgiving Cactus. Either way, they are beautiful!

Do you have one?

Does it always bloom for you?

 

Feeding the Squirrels

We enjoy feeding the squirrels around our house. 

Next to chipmunks, I think they are the cutest critters.

We feed them corn, peanuts and hickory nuts.

They've really fattened up over the summer. 

Munching on a hickory nut. 

Nibbling on a corn cob. 

Look close and you will see two squirrels in this picture. In addition to the one hanging on the tree, one is on the ground eating the kernels that have fallen onto the ground. 

That's called teamwork.

They are such acrobats! 

And if you notice, squirrel and hummingbird are friends.

 Maybe I should write a picture book about that.

See what I mean about being so cute! 

The bees in our yard also get fed. In this picture, Mr. Bee is covered up in pollen from one of our Rose of Sharon bushes.

Do you feed any critters in your yard?

Traveling West Virginia - Hawks Nest - New River Gorge Trail

We don't do as much traveling as we used to. But we recently took a day trip to southern West Virginia.

Our first stop was Hawks Nest State Park. If you have traveled there before, you know where they get the expression half the fun is getting there - that is unless you are prone to motion sickness. If you are, then I would advise you to sit in the front seat of the car.

We have been to Hawks Nest many times, but this is the first time we ever rode the tram down to the river.

We wanted to ride the jet boats, but they were all booked up.

 

 So we did the next item on our list. We went on a hike. My husband has a bad knee, so he didn't go with my son and me. He loves to talk, so he stayed and talked to the tram guys.

The hike was beautiful - a path filled with large rocks, rhododendron, foot bridges, caves, snakes . . .

Of course, my son had to climb up onto the first big rock we came to. Boys will be boys.

And speaking of snakes. This is where I encountered a baby snake wriggling under my shoe. I didn't stay long enough to see what kind he was, but he wasn't a black snake.

On the way back down the trail on this neat little foot bridge.

Our next stop was at a trail we had never walked on before. You drive over the New River Gorge Bridge, which is an experience I never tire of, and then travel a local road to a set of trails that take you to a great place for a photo op of the bridge.

I never took any pictures along the trail because we were in a hurry. We even sprinted in a few places. I never walked a trail so fast in my life. It was late and given the length of the trail we were going to be walking back in the dark. Thank goodness for cell phone flash lights!

The first mile and 3/4 was a fairly easy walk. But the last 1/4 mile was a heavy breather. This is approaching the end of the trail. And believe me when I tell you the view was well worth the huffing and puffing. 

This was as far out as I would venture. My son said that I couldn't fall off unless I just walked off the edge. I said different --- You could trip. You could slide. You could get woozy. So I played it safe.

We still got some great pictures. My son even took a few selfies.

After enjoying the view and taking a bunch of pictures, we started back. And yes, it was in the dark. I kept imagining encounters with wild animals, but none appeared.

My son said, "If we see Big Foot, shine the light while I take the picture."
I told him, "Please make it a clear picture."
For some reason all the pics people take of Big Foot are blurry. 😊

Press this link to a list of trails in the area. I would like to try them all out. The name of the trail we took is the Long Point Trail.

 Hope you enjoyed this Traveling West Virginia.

Have you ever been to either of these places?

If not, I hope you get to visit some day.

Pileated Woodpecker

We have downy woodpeckers, red-bellied woodpeckers and northern flickers (woodpeckers) that eat ants and every now and then we have visits from the large pileated woodpeckers. 

We had a visit from a pileated woodpecker yesterday.

He really 'went to town', as the saying goes, on a large stump in our back yard.

Hope you enjoyed watching him.

Do you ever have a visit from these large woodpeckers?

Squirrels Have Found a Home

A while back we built a duck house. Click here to see my post about it.

I would love to see baby ducks diving out of the hole into the creek, but our local ducks have yet to set up housekeeping in it.

But our squirrels have been checking it out.

Last week we saw them dragging house-building materials into the house opening. This is okay with us. If the ducks don't use it, the next best thing would be the squirrels.

I took a few pics this morning.

Viewing the countryside  from on top

Down we go!

Bye - Bye

We call this our Flintstones Table.

scurrying away

You'd think they were flying squirrels

I've read that squirrels have babies twice a year - in the spring and summer. 

Cooking with my Instant Pot

Hi everyone.

My son and daughter-in-law got me an Instant Pot for Christmas and I just now got the nerve to use it.

I'm not afraid of pressure cookers, I've used one all my married life. My mom got me one a few years after I got married. But this one is a little fancy and I was kind of uneasy about using it for the first time.

Isn't this cute. It has it's own little chair to sit on in my dining room.

We're going to my cousin's house today for a get together of hot dogs, potato salad and baked beans. I was making the potato salad, so I thought this was the perfect time to use my Instant Pot to make hard boiled eggs. I had read on the internet that this was the easiest thing to do and perfect to get your feet wet, so to speak, when using the Instant Pot.

Just let me say this, "I will never boil eggs the old-fashioned way again."

I should have timed myself. I had the peelings off of the eggs in probably 30 seconds - and not one messed-up egg. Aren't they pretty?

IN CASE YOU'RE WONDERING. Put one cup of water in the pot. Put your eggs in the little lift-out rack that comes with the Instant Pot. Close the lid and turn the steam valve to the sealing position. Set the pot to manual/pressure, high pressure and use the +/- button to set the cook time to 5 minutes. For an 8 qt. pot, when the cooking time is finished, do a quick release. Which means to turn the steam valve to the venting position. Use a long handled utensil to do this and don't let the steam get on you. When the red float valve drops down, the pressure has been released and it is safe to open the lid. Lift the eggs out and put them in a bowl of ice water. Let stand for 5 minutes. I then peck the ends on the counter top and roll the eggs between the palm of my hand and the countertop. Then - THE SHELLS PEEL OFF SO EASY!

Next I put the cubed potatoes and carrots in the pot. I put in about 1 1/2 cups of water in the Instant Pot and placed 4 cups of cubed potatoes and and about 2/3 cup of those tiny carrots in the pot in a steamer basket. 
Lock the lid in place and make sure the steam valve is in the sealing position. Select high pressure and put the cook time to 4 minutes and press start. When the timer beeps, do a quick pressure release - just like you did with the eggs. When the red float valve drops down, the pressure has been released and it is safe to open the lid. After they were cooked, I diced the carrots. I didn't want to put diced carrots in the cooker for fear they would turn to mush.

I then proceeded to use my potato salad recipe and put it together.

Yeah! My first dish using my Instant Pot!

Always remember, to read and follow all the instructions and safety procedures when using your Instant Pot.

Do any of you have one? What is your favorite recipe or thing you like about it?

This is where I first read about making the potato salad.