What a bargain! & Job all done

(I set a tea cup beside so you get a feel for the size)

She said:

A while ago (as in possible two summers ago) we picked up a real bargain at a church rummage sale. A drapery store had donated large roles of fabric to the church for their sale. Each role cost only $6. We picked out a nice neutral earth tone. Now I am making curtain/drapes for our home and the office. My sewing machine has a nifty feature that allows machine hemming. This is coming in quite handy for the job. So far I have just two windows done here. The role of fabric looks like we haven't used any yet! Hard telling how many yards are on this role. I have tested the fabric for wash ability and it passed.

What I do is sew awhile and then read awhile, then clean awhile, then cook awhile, and then begin the process all over. Eventually I hope to get this job done, just as I finally finished the quilting on the miniature quilt pictured above. It, along with it's full sized version and another wall hanging, are on their way to PA for the spring fundraiser for the school where our grandchildren attend.

New Year with he said

He said,

A new year is here. It is hard to believe how fast 2008 went by. Over the last number of years I have been using for my daily readings a Bible designed to be read through in one year. Many times I would skip some of the old Testament passages that were so difficult to follow or shall I dare say boring. Several times I did manage to read the complete Bible.

However, sometime in December I felt the Lord leading me to do something different after I found a book by Tim LaHaye titled "How To Study The Bible For Yourself." After reading parts of the book, I felt this was the way to approach my devotional time with God this year.

One thing that will be new for me is to write something down after each reading. His overall plan is to read some books of the Bible multiple times. Ultimately the complete Bible will be read after 3 years. The book of First John is the one that gets read the most often.

Hopefully he, the author of this blog, can share some insights and thoughts along the way in the future.

Low fat Christmas

This year we have made some adjustments in our favorite Christmas treats that will save us some fat intake that needs to be reduced.

Our fudge is made with Smart Balance instead of butter. And we also use non-fat evaporated milk instead of the normal evaporated milk. That reduces the fat grams to about 1/3 of the usual amount.

Then we love making Treasure Cookies. This year we replaced the butter with Smart Balance and are using non-fat sweetened condensed milk instead of the regular sweetened condensed milk. Again that reduces the fat content substantially.

Now, if only we could do something about the sugar. We don't feel that any of the sugar substitutes on the market today are any healthier than sugar itself. So we continue to use good old fashioned sugar.

All of our changes still produce the best fudge and cookies around. So these changes will remain.

We will be experimenting with our favorite sugar cookie recipe that calls for almond extract. We will be substituting the 2 cups of butter with smart balance and save at least a third of the fats normally used. If you use the lite version you could probably save half again as much.

Walking fitness

We are both using these walking DVDs to try and stay in shape during the cold wintry days. One of us goes 4 miles every day and the other is working up to that by doing about 1 mile each day so far. It is a very easy way to get the aerobic exercise that one needs. Surprisingly going through the same program every day is not hard. As a matter of fact, one can "zone out" pretty easily and think about other things as the body exercises. We have not seen much results yet as far as weight loss goes or energy increase. But we will be patient and keep on until we do.

Pineapple Quilt and Miniature

The above quilt top is finally all quilted and waiting for the sawtooth border finish. A miniature duplicate doll quilt/wall hanging is also in the process of being completed. May enter these in the fair competition if they are done in time. And that's a BIG if!