{Post 1,325} Not Much Going On

I left my sister's house in Ohio on Monday morning.  There was a lot of bad weather predicted for Tuesday in NC, and I didn't want to be driving into it tired from a long drive.

I get so sleepy when I drive.  My car got stuck at the bottom of her seriously long driveway the night before.  I had planned to leave as early as I could on Monday to get an early start on my trip.

Unfortunately, one of the items I left in the car were my ear plugs.  As a result, I only slept about 45 minutes all night.  It was one of those nights of insomnia.  I didn't want to wake up my sister at that hour, but she had made me promise I would not leave without saying goodbye.  At 4 AM I left for NC.  The first couple hours were pretty slow going because of the snow.  Around 6 I pulled over and slept 90 minutes.  I drove a few more hours and then slept for another 45 minutes.  Eventually I made it home.

The next day I spent shopping and stocking up for the storm that was coming the next day.  

Like much of the southeast, we are under the wraps of a lot of snow, sleet, and ice.  One great thing is that we have not lost power.  That is amazing because sometimes we lose power when it just RAINS!!

Above is our front yard yesterday early afternoon.  

Hope you are all doing well.

Snow and Snowball Runner

Yes, we got tons of snow. Here is my little birdfeeder outside my sewing room window. Strange phenomenon today...usually birds of a feather flock together. That is, I have rarely seen more than one species of bird at the feeder at a time...today was different! I saw five different types at once on it with another on the hook waiting for an opening. The snow must have covered a lot of the available food for the little feathered creatures. Glad I got a big bag of bird food at Aldi's last week. Looks like it might come in handy.

My hopeful machine quilting plan for the baby quilt never happened. I got it pin basted today. But I can't find the thread. It is a light lime green. I have a spool of machine quilting thread that color (imagine!) but I can't find it.

I really like this snowball runner. I didn't get pictures yet of my other two runner finishes, but I'm showing this one again. Some day I'll make a whole quilt of this size "ball". I like the way these turn out looking round. I've seen some with corner triangles that are too big and make the balls look strange to me. Next time, no matching corners. And half light and half dark, just to mix it up! The blocks finish at 3-3/4" square, so this is about 11-1/2" x 34" I'm heading upstairs to put it on our sideboard.
In other piecing news, I am working on my last two rows for the Texas Braid quilt. I still have not received the promised bricks from Arizona, and I'm going to wait for them. I was so disappointed that I could not find my quilting thread that I wanted to sew on something for a little bit, so I worked on the Texas Braid. I love working on it...so easy and striking of a design.

Another day of being snowed in tomorrow. We have a house guest tonight. One of the young men who attends college with my daughters also works at the same restaurant as one of them. The roads were too dangerous for him to get back to the dorm, so he is staying overnight here. Interesting turn of events.

~Joan

Groceries Galore

Another big successful shopping day yesterday. The first picture is our sell box. That is a 22-gallon tote that was full and we had an additional box to sell. As Susanna unpacks our stuff, she separates it right away into sell and keep. We also had a full cooler of refrigerator/freezer items.

We used a new plan, and it worked swimmingly. For one thing, we left an hour earlier than usual. Several reasons, but it allowed us to finish up way earlier than usual. We printed 2 copies of each store's shopping list. Right before we went into the store, we divided up what Susanna and I would be looking for, then we met to divide and conquer (I mean check out!). Two of our stores were giving out catalinas (coupons good on your next trip) for free milk, and we scored 4 of those.

We love stocking up on items we use a lot (as opposed to buying things to resell). We got All laundry detergent, 2000 Flushes tablets, Softsoap Ensemble refills, men's shaving gel, Pringles (38 cents a can!), pasta galore, Skintimate shaving gel, Mentos gum, Emerald Isle trail mix, Hall's cough drops, and much more. Susanna unloaded all the bags onto our freezer, so I took a quick picture.

Speaking of pictures, I wish I could download pics from my phone. My DH and I drove up into the mountains of NC/TN to pick up my oldest daughter last night (yippee). I drove up, and DH drove back. We nearly didn't take coats!! We were tooling along in our car when this white stuff started swirling towards the windshield. I said, "Is that POLLEN?" Then it dawned on me that it was SNOW!! It was incredible. We had several times where the road was completely covered, and we had to slow down to 25 MPH. My hallucination of the snow became a reality when we saw a huge truck with a SNOW PLOW on the front. Wow!! We made it up there and back safely, arriving home very late, but glad to have Elisabeth home.

~Joan

Snow Day Tomorrow??

That's a home school joke--we don't have "snow days" here at Shiloh Academy. This picture was taken just a few minutes ago, about 9:45 PM here. Those white things are snowflakes falling towards my camera. The big white dot at 10 o'clock in the picture is the moon. Real snow, right here in NC. Who would have thought?

~Joan

Snowy Update in Pictures

I took the picture below from my sewing room window this AM. I had the flood lights on, but you know snow lights up well. It has been raining since about 4 AM, and I was afraid it would all be gone before my children got up to see it!

Not to worry, I guess. The picture below was taken 3 hours later, and you can see...it's still there!

The picture below is taken from the front door towards the street. Where did the natural areas go? Below!! The lumps that are beside the sidewalk and then go to the right beyond the trees are monkey grass that outlines our natural area on the right. Our house sits partway down a hill from the road. That's our big ole 15-passenger van up top, near the road.

Enjoy your day, no matter the weather...

~Joan