Missionary Bake Sale?

Well, not exactly . . .

Just trying to raise some much-needed funds for my super-expensive school projects which will allow me to finish my classes and graduate in May.

May 8, 2014 to be exact!

Yes, after three years of wanting to quit, I am really going to graduate this spring.  If I pass my Collections class.  (Making a collection of clothing designs, not a "passing-around-the-hat" class. Although it's kind of turning out that way.)

So it's a "Help Loralee Graduate"  Bake Sale.

Mark your calendars for Saturday, October 5, starting at 9:30 a.m.  (We can make different pick-up arrangements with advance notice.)

We are going to have cinnamon rolls and orange rolls with cream cheese icing ($4.50 a plate), delicious white-chocolate-craisin-pecan "artisan" bread ($6), honey-wheat bread ($3.50 a loaf), angel-food cakes, and the ever-popular pies (see below).

You can pre-order anything—in fact, that would be preferred ;-) but here are the official pre-order items:


Peanut Butter Pie 
Total decadence!  Uber-rich, creamy filling with just the right amount of peanutty goodness, topped with Reeses crumbles
and freshly-whipped cream.  Yum!
$9.50

Coconut-Cream Pie
For coconut lovers: a creamy, luscious filling made with real 
coconut milk, and piled with toasted coconut
$9.50

Banana-Cream Pie
The perennial favorite, rich and creamy, studded with perfectly ripe bananas and topped with fresh whipped cream
(Lindsey not included)
$9.50

Angel-Food Cake
A beautifully white (and virtually fat-free!) cake that goes great with just about any fruit or topping you can think of 
$7.00

And, just to be different, we're going to have some savories—which will be frozen for one of those days when you just don't want to think about dinner::

Chicken Pot Pie
Perfect comfort food: tender chunks of chicken and veggies loaded inside a flaky, home-made pie crust.   Yum! 
frozen, and ready to bake
$14.50

Chicken Enchiladas
A North family favorite! Eight enchiladas covered in home-made sauce and topped with cheese.  Frozen, for you to bake when you don't feel like making dinner.
(if you prefer corn tortillas, let us know)
$15.00

Baked Ziti
Pasta tossed with Italian sausage and marinara sauce and covered with a blanket of cheese.
Frozen, for you to bake when you just don't
know what to make for dinner. 9 x 9" pan
$15.00

The official bake sale will be on Saturday, October 5 from 9:30 a.m. to noon.
Please order your pies and savories by Sunday, September 29  so we'll know how many to make.  Just leave a comment on this blog-post, or send us a facebook message to let us know what you want. : -)

See you on October 5, and Thanks!!

Ten Reasons I Like My Husband

He puts the trash cans out on the street every week so I don't even have to think about it.  ♥

He still likes me even after I called him a dork
(—for sneaking up behind me and saying "Boo" and startling me half to death.  No, he didn't jump out and yell, "BOO!!"  It was just quiet and sneaky. ♥)

He would (and did) drive out to pick me up at the train station just because he thinks I don't like to take the bus.  Or maybe just because he likes me.♥

He is making me a present. ♥

He goes and does the things he's supposed to do even though I am in the background tempting him to stay home with me.  ♥

He let me sleep in while he got the kids up and took them to school. ♥♥

He arranged his schedule so we could go to classes "together," and didn't complain when it turned out that I remembered my class time wrong so he actually has to wait at the school for 1 1/2 hours before his class starts.  And he still drives with me every week (which means I don't have to take the bus). ♥

He wrote me a story. ♥

He ate the dinner that I made by just throwing whatever I could find into some pasta—and really late in the day besides—and said it was really good (even though it was only just tolerable . . . maybe). ♥

He holds my hand in the car while we're driving. ♥

No, it's not his birthday, our anniversary, or a holiday.  It's not the anniversary of our first date, first kiss, or the day he proposed.  I just really like Bruce.  In fact, I think I'm in love with him!

At last I can stop suffering and . . .

The first three weeks in school have been stressful.  Surprise!

On week two of Comm. 1010 we were given a group assignment: Choose a case study/problem and, as a group, come up with solutions.  Make an in-class presentation of your findings and turn in a written report.

Let me tell you, I hate group projects!  At our first, in-class meeting only three of our five-person group were there.  But that was OK.  We chose a topic, divvied out the work, scheduled another meeting . . . everything we were supposed to do.  And I emailed the missing members to tell them what was going on.  By the end of the project we had changed topics (from "How to Support our Troops" to "Language Barriers in Customer Service") and only two of us actually did any work.  We got lots of apology/excuse emails from everyone, but no one showed up for meetings, and no one did any work (just Patricia and me).  We emailed the teacher and he said to move forward without the others and do our best.

So Patricia did the powerpoint and I wrote the report.  Patricia speaks English as her second language and although she speaks very well, she is still not very confident in it.  I discovered (with two days left until D-Day) that all the research she had done was simply on improving customer service, and not the language-barrier stuff I had looked up.  So on Thursday, before it was all due, I sat looking at her powerpoint work, and the information I had collected, and the information the teacher had emailed us.  Uh-oh.  It looks like instead of "report" it is really "research paper."  I was totally at a loss how to pull it all together.  So I made a last-ditch attempt to get some help from the other girls.  Nothing.

Finally I wrote the report on—not customer service, but how frustrating the whole project had been.  At 10 p.m. Thursday night Miss B emailed me and said not to worry; she was writing the report right then and would email it to me for editing.  >sigh<  I had just finished writing the report.  But I told her to send it along.  The poor girl is a terrible writer, and it was obvious no research at all had gone into this.  Basically her report said, "Bad customer service is a bad thing."  Yep.  Since she had made at least a tiny effort, I added her paper to the appendices of the report I'd written.

The conclusion of my report?

 "Oddly enough, you could say that Patricia and I were the victims of poor customer service. Having paid for this class, and having put in good-faith efforts with our team:

• We were very frustrated.
• Our problems did not get solved.
• We fear misunderstandings and hard feelings from group members will arise when their names are not attached to the project.
• We have formed some negative opinions.

 Without more help from our group, more help from the teacher, or more time, we are unable to find a satisfactory solution to our problem.  We are open to suggestions from classmates, our teacher, the department head, or even academic services."

I wonder what kind of a grade that will get me?

Well anyway, having to do all of that last week had me pretty darn stressed out.  And on top of that I was still trying to come up with a theme for a cohesive, ten-piece line of clothing for Collections.  Over the first three weeks of class I'd probably showed Eugene about ten drawings, but out of each set I made he said only two to three of them looked like they belonged together in a collection.  Aaaaaaaaargh!

So, while I was trying to figure out the customer service project, I was also trying to come up with a theme and draw ten designs.  I really wanted to have them drawn and approved by class last Friday so that I can start patterning, draping, and sewing mock-ups this week.  That way I have at least some chance of getting everything done in time for my L.A. fabric trip and, finally, for the show in April.

But what to use as a theme?

?????

I finally came up with this:

I would show you my "inspiration" pictures, but my flash drive is a booger right now. :-(

So I made designs using pleats (crisp, straight lines) and color-blocking, (mostly in black, white and gold) for the "strength," but very feminine shaping overall for the "softness."  And then I fretted about whether Eugene would say that these six pictures weren't really cohesive, and I'd have to start over again.  

But when I told Eugene my idea, and showed him the six designs I'd sketched, he thought they were really cool!  Hooraaaaaay!  So, at last, I can start making my patterns and get sewing! (If only I'd get off the computer and get to work. ;-) )

Magic Refrigerator

Sometimes when I am hungry or munchy I will go look in the fridge and/or the pantry for something to eat.  You do that, don't you?  And then, when there's nothing appealing about what I see, I close the door and go away for a minute or so.  And then I find myself going back to take another look.  As if by closing and then reopening the door something delicious would magically appear.

Hmm. We seem to have inordinate amounts of sour cream.

Admit it; you do that too! (I mean looking in the fridge over and over again, not stocking up on sour cream.)

But now there's a new magic refrigerator in my house.  Well it's been here for a couple of years, but it works just the same as the fridge and the pantry.  This magical creation offers food for thought—sometimes.  Sometimes it's just fluff.  Often.

Anything new?  In the last two minutes?

Unlike the refrigerator, there is a slight possibility of something new appearing on facebook.  But I spend a lot more time here than I do in the fridge.  It is my go-to when I am bored, when I don't want to clean house or fold laundry, when I don't want to do my homework, when I'm too tired to go to bed . . .

And it can be a colossal time-waster. So sometimes I think I'll just delete my facebook account.  But every time I think I'll quit the habit, I remember my friends whom I never see or hear from except for on facebook.  What a dilemma!

Instead of figuring this out now, or doing my school reading, or putting away the rest of the groceries . . .
 . . . or looking at the computer any more, I think I'll take a little nap. :-)

Forgotten Treasure

I will not give you a play-by-play of the last two weeks.  I'll just say that we've had school shopping, a choir retreat, school registrations (for two college students and two schools for the kids), lots of doctor appointments, and school actually starting up.  Busy!

So the house has suffered for a while, but yesterday I finally got a chance to really clean up.  Yay!  (By the way, we have living room furniture again.  My friend Scerinda contacted me and said her mom told her to beg me to take her two couches.  Well, no begging required! We picked them up and they are in really excellent condition.  And we got a matching chair and ottoman too!)

This picture was obviously taken by a tall man, looking down into the living room from the kitchen.

Anyway, my bedroom is always the last to get worked on, but we are finally cleaning that too.  And while I was going through some papers I found this little treasure from long ago:

Dear Mom, Michal is so mean when he baby-sits! He calls night-gowns trash. I wish he never baby-sits! He only plays on the computer or naps! He neve(r) cleans! He tells us to do this, that, this, that, and this blah, blah, blah blah!

Hahahahaha!  :-D  Hilarious!

I remember finding this note on my pillow one evening when Bruce and I got home from . . . somewhere, and I thought it was pretty funny.  I didn't need a signature to guess that it was Kaylie (who was probably five or six years old at the time).

As I got ready for bed that night I found this second note on the bed:

Dear Mom, things are well now. It's better without Michal.  Well I better be going lots of love Kaylie

I'm not sure where Michael went that made things get so much better, (or where Kaylie had to get going to) but what a relief that it all did get better! ;-)

I love coming across these forgotten treasures!