Two In One

5:30 rolled around with no supper on the table or even the finished end in sight. Mama had two things in mind, squash and spinach, both hardly even filling enough for sides. Yet we most definitely wanted those. The squash was still on the vine so it couldn't get any closer to being 'fresh off the vine', while the spinach was withering in the drawer.

One of the over-abundant veggies was ready, but the others weren't quite 3" long, and yet an early death was in sight. Let me state this upfront: Mama and Daddy are the only people in our family who like squash. There you go, the cat is out of the bag. Away with the healthy front of the second sentence. However, being southern, we will eat most anything fried! And eat it with a vengeance we will, too. There was the ticket away from the mushy, squishy, over-cooked vegetable. Fried was the answer, so I put my plan into action. Out of the house, I made a bee line to the garden and guess what I found! A squash with two heads (so to speak). They had grown together! It made my day. Instantly I thought of a blog post. I know. I know. It shouldn't have taken me an hour to cook 'em up for dinner, but I had to take pictures for the blog like every other good blogger (I was disappointed because the pictures didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, but, oh, well).

By the way, I love fried squash! And what we had last night was delicious, if I say so myself. Now that the fresh produce is rolling in, I suggest you cook some up, too!

"Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it." -Proverbs 15:17

~Molly Elizabeth

Floral Beauty

Our flowers are blooming and the smell of spring rain is hanging in the air right now. It is all so beautiful! I am going to share a few of my favorite pictures that I took the other day in a random streak of photography enthusiasm. Hope they make you as happy as they do me :).

"28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." - Matthew 6:28-29

~Molly Elizabeth

P.S. These photos are non edited.

Williamsburg: Six Years and Still Going Strong!

You might ask us why, after six years, we are still going to Williamsburg. The short answer would be, "We love Williamsburg!" But, there is more to it than that. We go every year with a group called the MOMYS group (Mothers Of Many Young Siblings). The group is composed of Christian homeschooling families from all over the country. Some come to see Colonial Williamsburg, some come to just hang out and spend time with the other families, and some come to do both (that's us!). What we did this year (generally speaking) was very similar to last year. And no, we don't get tired of it. Walking the streets of Colonial Williamsburg in period clothing, catching up with old friends and making new friends, and doing English Country Dancing are the some of the reasons we keep going back.

This year two other families from Savannah came with us, the Heritages (who came with us last year), and another family from our church, the Boatrights. We were also very excited to have Granddaddy join us for the week. Benjamin and Andrew came the last few days, as did our friends from Richmond, the Martins. The Martin girls stayed a few nights and jumped right into the swing of things. We had so much fun being Colonial all together!

If you've wondered what we've been doing for the last two months, the pictures below will give you some idea. We make all of our own period clothing, and as always, there were new things to make this year. Molly Elizabeth grew and needed new outfits, we wanted to make a few things more period correct, and we were outfitting the Heritage family with their own set of period clothing (they borrowed some of our old things last year). We sewed like crazy up until the day we left and really thought at the time that we might never want to sew again. But, after spending a week around so many beautiful examples of period clothing, we left more inspired than ever and determined to make our clothing as authentic as possible.

As always we wish the trip had not gone quite so fast, but at least we have wonderful memories and some beautiful pictures for you to enjoy along with us.

The week always starts with an All Together Get Together (ATGT) where we meet all of the families and then have a dance. This was taken after the dancing (L to R: Susan Liana, Molly Elizabeth, Anna, Courtney)

Walking the streets of Colonial Williamsburg.

The lovely Mamas

(L to R: Miss Jane, Mama, Miss Kay)

(photo credit: Anna Heritage)

Agh! What did you do??

(Mama and Granddaddy in the stocks)

Some of the guys went to Military History Through The Ages which was held at Jamestown. Here Benjamin is sword fighting with a Medieval weapons scholar.

Mr. Boatright, Hunter, Daddy and Granddaddy at Jamestown

We had fun one day doing a photo shoot. Here are a few of the shots:

Susan Liana

(photo credit: Anna Heritage)

Clay

Molly Elizabeth

Sisters

The boys posing with style...

(L to R: Hunter, Mr. Heritage, Christian, Andrew, Clay, Kevin)

The girls being girls...

(L to R: Hope, Molly Elizabeth, Susan Liana, Anna H., Ruth, Courtney, Anna M.)

Counting the days until next year...

~Molly Elizabeth and Susan Liana

Decorating Hats

I love hats. I love decorating hats; working with the ribbon just makes me happy. Every time I see a promising hat at a thrift store, I can't help but pick it up and add it to my collection (I have quite a few now). My latest find was red and purple (yes, a Red Hat Society hat); mama walked right past it. I bought the hat, because what was under the red and purple was beautiful. The above picture is what it looks like now. You have to look past the decorations and see the potential in the hat itself. Hats are like people-it is what's underneath that counts.

Wrap a ribbon loosely around the hat, twisting the ribbon a couple of times, and tack it down in a few places. It always takes me awhile to make ribbon fall naturally. Play with it until you like the way it looks.

Make a bow and tack it on top of the band. I chose to place the bow at about 4 O'clock (if the center front was 12 O'clock).

I next made a couple of yo-yo's (I only ended up using one, but I was making it up as I went along, and I thought at first I would use two). To make a yo-yo, run a gathering stitch along the bottom of a length of ribbon and pull to gather. Shape the gathered ribbon into a circle, tie off your thread, and sew the ends of the ribbon together.

I stuck an old clip on earring through the hole in the yo-yo...

for added interest and to tie the colors together.

I made three more yo-yo's, one out of the same ribbon as the hat band, and two out of a third colored ribbon (it usually looks better when you add that third color) and sewed them together as you see here.

Sew the red yo-yo to the other three...

so that it looks like this.

Sew into the middle of the bow, and you're done!

Why not try re-decorating an old hat of your own? You might be surprised at how satisfying it is.

~Susan Liana

College Outside The Box

Clay's new film for the College Plus! scholarship competition has just been released! Just 3 minutes and 17 seconds; nope, you won't be wasting your time. Quite the contrary, it is informative, funny, and creative! The video with the most views wins an iPad, so feel free to watch it more than once. :)

Do you have to go into debt to pay for college? Watch Clay's video to find out...

http://www.collegeplus.org/scholarship/vote/videos/claygibson

New Years

No. We didn't go out and party on New Years Eve. No. We didn't watch the ball drop. No. We didn't 'hang out' with friends...until the next day. It sounds like we didn't do anything. But guess what! We did do some fun things! #1: we had a pink ham, black eyed peas, cabbage, and cornbread! The traditional meal for everyone except us. Daddy asked for this meal and so that is what we fixed. I guess I'm out of it because I was clueless as to the fact that it was a tradition for New Years Eve. Sorry. #2: Most of the family played a new game Benjamin got for Christmas and so we had a very peaceful, relaxed evening. #3: At midnight we had sparkling grape juice! Oh, I love sparkling grape juice!

New Years day we had some friends over to shoot, play games, eat, and have fun! We shot for four hours. We played Taboo. We got rained out of our supper on the patio. We had great fellowship. And we had fun trying on hats! The whole day was a great opening to 2011!

We started off with pistols...

Who cares about ear plugs?

I do!

Camera wars!

A different side of my sister :).

...and we finished with rifles.

Molly Elizabeth

P.S. Unfortunately we didn't get pictures of when everyone was here for dinner.

Same Song, Second Verse

By the second day we were over it. We were surrounded by staples, batting, shredded fabric, and the ghost of what had once been our lovely red couch. At this point we were wondering what had possessed us to tackle a whole couch as our second upholstery project. We also asked ourselves why we had chosen to squeeze it in between a week long trip to New Orleans and company arriving for Thanksgiving (one week). We had allowed ourselves two days (yes, we know; we're idealists); it was the second day and we had one piece back on. However, there was no turning back at this point; we picked up our staple gun and went back to work.

This is the before shot. It is a little bit hard to tell in the picture, but the fabric on the cushions was shredding. Notice the white patches of exposed batting across the front.

A close up of the fabric off of one of the cushions. Do you see the seam I took across the middle to close up one of the first holes?

When we took the back off we found a product that forever changed the way we'll finish a project: curve-ease. This metal strip is used to finish an edge and replaces the much more tedious method of sewing it shut by hand. Just stuff your fabric into the open teeth, and hammer shut. Done.

All things do finally come to an end. We finished...on day five.

The finished product!

As you can see we redesigned the couch a little bit (we can't do things the easy way). We took the skirt off of the bottom, revealing the legs, and made the back one solid piece (instead of three individual pillows). We love our new, brown couch!

With every do-it-yourself project you learn something new. We're glad to have added to our knowledge of upholstery. It isn't something we want to do everyday, but would we do it again? Definitely.

~Susan Liana

Note: we didn't actually do any work on the couch on day three (Wednesday). I had to work and mama was doing some other necessary things around the house. It was a much needed break.

P.S. I know that it has been a month and a half since this event took place, but please remember that very shortly after finishing we had company arrive for Thanksgiving, and then we had more company, and then another set of company, and then we decorated for Christmas, and then, well you get the picture. I just didn't want you to miss the opportunity to see our brand new couch. :)