Just a Plethora...

Wow, it's been just over a week since I posted last!  Don't know how that happened...

Let's see... What did we do?  

Oh!  I won $90 worth of T-Bone steaks from a radio program!!!  All I had to do was be the 33rd caller!!  If you ever listen to Van on WHO radio, he was hosting the Wheel of Meat this past week in honor of HyVee's 90th anniversary. 

Then of course, the next day, they gave away $900 worth of meat....  Meri tried for it but wasn't the 99th caller. Bummer.  She had her deep freeze ready.

I took Leon with me to pick up some free bricks from freecycle and we stopped by my favorite metal bridge and went for a walk.

As soon as he heard my cell phone picture snap, he spun around and insisted that I delete it.

Um of course I just did!...

As soon as I sent it to my FB messenger for safe keeping... ;)

Also last weekend, Robb and I bought a used minivan!  It's so purdy...  

A few quirks with it, but we're getting it to our car guy soon to iron out any tiny imperfections.

I can NOT tell you how much stuff I've hauled in it already!  I missed my old van SO much!

A friend of my sister-in-law, lives nearby and was cleaning out her late mother's house getting it ready to put on the market.  She had three boxes of sewing things that needed to go somewhere and offered it all to me.  It felt so good to feel NEW(to me) fabric!!  Ahhhhh

The pile of dirt that had been gifted to us last fall is now cleaned up and a big circle of bare ground underneath is all that's left.  With my new van, I hauled 4 garbage cans full of the remaining dirt over to Meri's new garden.  Her garden will take more than that...  So I checked with city hall to see if I could get some of the dirt they have stacked around the yard waste place.

They said SHURRRE!!!

Woohoo!  4 garbage cans full later and Meri still needs more.

sigh.  It'll be a bigger afternoon that I thought.

Meri has put me on a 2 week quarantine due to the wedding we attended so it's been quiet.  She mowed her own yard yesterday but I did some socially distancing dirt moving for her. 

I miss my girls...

On Friday, Meri invited Leon and I over for a "socially distant" pool party.

She was having one with her friends on Saturday also and wanted to break in the pools.

Leon had a blast and splashed around like he was training for the Olympics.

Reedus and Ellie watched enviously from the doorway.  Meri is talking about putting up a fence some day, so then they could come out during a pool party in the future...

Then unfortunately a bug or garbage from Leon's feet got in the water and he flipped out.

So we went home.  I made a net for Meri to clean out the pools before her party on Saturday.

A pool party is always a great time until someone tracks in grass...  or a bug hits.

We used to make these all the time for our above ground pools growing up.  Not too many people have wire hangers anymore, but I found one.  Probably from a dry cleaners.

Worked at a church cleaning with a couple other women this last Saturday morning.  A woman in our church had just been moved to hospice and we wanted to make sure the church was clean for a possible funeral/memorial service.  I climbed a very tall ladder and rigged up a big pole to clean at the very front of the sanctuary.  But something needed to be done to get those dead flies and way up high cobwebs.  And that's why God sent me to this church anyway.  To reach high places.  That's what Polly said anyway, years ago...

The woman passed away that very evening so our timing was good.  But the memorial service might not be for a couple months.  The family hasn't decided yet.

Then on Sunday afternoon, I took the time to clean out three of my 4 sewing machines/sergers.  SO much fuzz and lint under the sewing plates... It took probably ten qtips to clean it all out and a tweezers to pull out a few rogue pins that were inside my Janome...

And I figured out my problem with the white thread serger!  See the mess on the right?  Yeah - it's not supposed to be that way...  So now it's looking like on the left!

Do you know what the secret was?  I had in ball tip needles which work best on knits...  This is cotton...  So now I know...  I need more needles. of both kinds...

AND the last time I'd used the black thread serger, it was for some rolled hem work.  But I put in the 2nd needle again and tried it out before I remembered the rolled hem thingy.

It looks like of cool!  I took a picture of the settings to remember this if I ever make 40 table runners again.

Well, back to work.  Things have been busy.

Have a wonderful week!