A Birthday, Recipe, Doilies and Happy Reading Material

I am guilty, guilty of neglect and for that I apologize to all of you, especially the faithful who continue to stick by me in my absence and consider me a blogger friend. It is not my intent to make you wait so long for a posting. I have been busy attending to many matters that just consume my time and drain my energy. By the end of my day I am beat. I have more responsibilities now that my husband is gone, and it is only a painful reminder of how much I miss (and still love) that man. I am coping as best I can and trying in earnest to be grateful for each day that I wake, knowing it is another day that I am here by the pure grace of God, to spend precious time with my children, grandson, extended family and good friends. I am truly blessed and for that I am also grateful. Please, don't live another moment without thanking God for all he has blessed you with, because it can all be taken away in a heartbeat.

I start out first by saying that I see I have acquired more followers and for that I thank all of you who find something of interest here. I try and thank every new person who comes along with me on my life's journey, but I see that some of you don't have blogs where I can tell you "Hello", so I hope you come back and read my greeting right here. for those of you who do have blogs I will return soon and come visit your blog. I am always interested in what is new with everyone. We can always learn from others and besides, it is great to have more friends on here.

In the month of March we saw our little Holden turning 1 year old. We celebrated a few days early the first weekend of the month with a Birthday Mustache Bash at my daughter's home. She is a scrapbooker and made all the decorations including the banner hanging on the fireplace. You can find her link to her etsy shop here (she does special orders). The party favors were baby food jars of candy kisses decorated with a picture of Holden thanking people for coming. They are pictured on the right front of the table below. I should have taken a close-up, darn! There was plenty of food, complete with a cupcake tree with her cupcake wrappers, mustache cake, balloons and lots of presents. We had a crowd of family and friends.

Holden and his mommy.

Lots of nice presents.

Not quite sure what to do with that mustache cake.

It was requested that I make dill pickle roll-ups. For those of you who have never had these, they are a simple and fast bite-sized treat. Just have some thin sliced ham. Pat ham slices (both sides) dry with a paper towel, spread with softened cream cheese, place dried dill pickle spear (use a paper towel for drying these as well) at one end of the ham slice and roll it up. I have used very thin sliced whole ham as well. It doesn't have to be lunch meat ham, but that works best. Let's just say I never have any left overs.

Slice with sharp knife and secure with toothpick. There ya have it, very simple and yummy.

In the evenings I watch a bit of tv and always have some crochet close at hand. I wanted to use up some small leftovers of crochet thread and so I sat one evening and concocted these tiny little dollhouse doilies, no patterns, no two alike, just off the top of my head.......

I sent a couple to my blogger friend Teresa here for her dollhouse.

Then I got into the doilies hot and heavy, there seemed to be no stopping, and the frenzy started. It began when my mother asked me to iron out her doilies that I made for her years ago. I admit to not wanting to iron anything at this point, soooo..... as one knows, if you wash them and while they are still damp you block them out, it is just as good as ironing. I actually find it less bothersome to block them rather than starching and ironing. I have this soft particle board that I got at a lumber yard years ago and I cover it with freezer paper, shiny side up. I start blocking by pinning one spot with stainless steel wig pins (called t-pins, used by beauticians for attaching wigs to dummy heads) and then I go to the opposite side and stretch the doily in that direction. I work my way around one side to the other, gradually adjusting the doily to make it uniform and even as possible. You might have to remove a pin here and there to make it more even, but do what you need to and make it as symmetrical as possible. All the following rose-colored doilies are the ones I made and did for my mom.They kinda look a bit peachy in color, but artificial light at night hardly ever does anything justice.

Next I got the bug to just randomly make a doily, right off the top of my head, I guess that would be considered designing. I did try and write the pattern, but I will be the first to admit that I am not very good at doing that. I also made the doily a second time using my screwed up pattern, heaven only knows how I managed to actually get it to be the about the same. I will admit to doing a bit of pattern tweaking to get the end result. I'm just glad that other people don't write patterns the way I do.

The above pic is the start. I have to admit it turned out better than I thought it would. The next 3 pics are the progress and the finished doily.......

The finished doily on the blocking board. Now I made a second but the edge was blocked out differently, here it is......I stretched it out more tightly to give it pointier outer loops.

Then doily craziness just took over and I was crocheting up a storm. The huge one laid out diagonally on the board is 48 inches long and 17 inches at it's widest point. It pretty much took up a lot of space when I blocked it out. I made it for my bedroom dresser. this one took me about 3 days of crocheting on and off.

The remaining pics are the rest of the doilies I made. I kinda burned myself out on them for now and once again picked up baby yarn. I will share that project the next post.

Now for the books I have been reading and wanted to share with you......some of you may already have read these since they have all been on the new York Times best seller list.

It hasn't just been doilies that have grabbed my attention, but reading some spiritual books as well. Books with insight and facts on death, faith and of course God. I highly recommend these 3 books for anyone who has lost a loved one, or has doubts about the after life and heaven. I don't see how anyone can read these books and not be inspired to change their life for the better. If you won't read a book that isn't rated then I give each one 5 stars. I found them hard to put down and I intend to read them all again. I don't know where all of you stand on your beliefs and faith, but I know all things happen for a reason and I know they are meant to bring us closer to God. I have changed my views on several things and one being abortion. I won't get into these things on this blog and I realize for some people religion is a private matter, but on the other hand you should not hide your light under a bushel basket either. I leave you all to your own beliefs and devices. I end with only good thoughts. I love you all. Have a great weekend. ♥