Friday, October 2, 2015

Project Jeep Cherokee

Three weekends ago, my husband and I bought two Jeep Cherokee XJs.  Here they are here:
At first we thought we'd use the white for parts to fix up the red one. The red one is a 1998 Limited 2WD with nice buttercream leather seats. It needs a little cleaning on the inside and some body work on the rear end because it looks like the previous owner backed into something. So, we planned to use parts of the white body such as the bumper and lift gate to fix it up and re-paint it. However, when we got home, my husband looked the white one over really well and determined that it's motor wasn't a total bust as the car dealership suggested. Soooooo, we are going to keep and fix up both of them! 🙀 The red one will be mine, and he is going to turn the white one into what I call a "redneck, country boy, mud riding mobile."  The white jeep is a 1999 4WD with a slight lift and towing package. It appears as if its previous owner was going to turn it into a rock crawler. It's totally trashed on the inside. Eventually, we will replace the entire interior, add metal bumpers, and a rack on top. It will be a very slow work in progress, though. Our first priority is to get the problems with mine fixed first because we need it to tow our boat back and forth from the lake. This week it is at a garage getting a new rear end. Next week, we will be taking it to a friend who owns a body shop to have the frame straightened. After that we will replace the lift gate with one we got from a U Pull It junk yard for $75!  Two weeks ago we went on a little scavenger hunt at some local junk yards to find cheaper parts. It was a creepy experience for me. 

This last one with my husband is the one we took the lift gate from. 

At first, I was very skeptical about the whole project, but now I am rather excited about it. I can't wait until we get all the body work done with my jeep so we can put new tires on it. I am going to try to post our progress on here to record our little adventure. So, hopefully, I'll have something new to post soon!

Until next time,
God Bless!


Friday, July 31, 2015

My Newest Project

Here are a few blocks for the baby quilt I'm currently making. 
When finished, this will be the first item in my inventory for the Etsy store I hope to open in one year!

Friday, July 17, 2015

Finally Finished

As promised, here are the pics of the finished Tshirt quilt. 




Thursday, July 16, 2015

Long time coming...

I'm almost finished with this little jewel after almost two years of working on it! All I have left to do is pin up the binding and sew it up! 


Finished photo to come!

Monday, July 13, 2015

Artist's Roll-Up Tool Pouch

Two springs ago, I attended the NAEA Conference in San Diego, CA. While there I received tons a free samples like this awesome roll-up tool pouch from Dick Blick. 

My art students saw it and love it. So, I decided to make a couple for two of my seniors who are currently at Arkansas Govenor's School. 

Here is my progress:







Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Finally...

Getting around to finishing up a colleague's tshirt quilt. 
Basting it at the moment. Will begin quilting tomorrow. Second day of summer break, and I am actually able to start crafting! Woohoo!

Friday, April 3, 2015

Falling Behind

As I knew I would, I fell behind on posting everyday. But, today I am off for Good Friday and decided I would get back on the horse and try again. So, let's start with just a few pics. Last weekend I visited Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. Here are some of my favs. 


I also visited the Wal-Mart Museum and took a picture of Sam Walton's desk frozen in time. 


It was a great little day trip to end my spring break by. 

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Revisiting an Old Friend

I got this little jewel out and worked on her some tonight while watching Downton Abbey. It's been a while, I am going to try to work on it more to get it finished. 


Epic Winter Weather in the South!

I have now been out of school for three days straight after a small two day work week last week in which I was out two days for ice. Monday and Tuesday of this week we had sleet and ice. Today we are supposed to have sleet and then snow, LOTS of snow. My poor kiddos are not going to know how to act when we finally get back to school!  Needless to say, it will be a big adjustment when we finally go to school for a full week. 

I am not going to complain, though. It has been nice to be able to clean my house and cook decent meals for dinner. I could seriously get used to this life-style. Oh, how I wish I could be a stay-at-home wife. I am a homemaker at heart.  I love taking care of my home and family. It is nice to simply worry about cleaning and cooking. I completely understand why my female ancestors wanted to get out of the house and lead a cultural revolution that would spark a change in mind-set about female roles, abilities, and intellegience levels, but I must say, they messed up somewhere along the line because they ended up making a woman's role two-fold. All they really did was cause us to have to work two jobs and make a much lower grade of pay for it than men. Oh, I could go on and on about this subject, but I'll stop here and leave you with some of my favorite verses from my Bible study today:

1 Peter 3:12-17 
For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, And His ears are open to their prayers; But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.” And who is he who will harm you if you become followers of what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed. “And do not be afraid of their threats, nor be troubled.” But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear; having a good conscience, that when they defame you as evildoers, those who revile your good conduct in Christ may be ashamed. For it is better, if it is the will of God, to suffer for doing good than for doing evil. 

Psalm 76:11-12 
Make vows to the Lord your God, and pay them; Let all who are around Him bring presents to Him who ought to be feared. He shall cut off the spirit of princes; He is awesome to the kings of the earth. 

Proverbs 19:8-9 
He who gets wisdom loves his own soul; He who keeps understanding will find good. A false witness will not go unpunished, And he who speaks lies shall perish. 

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Sketch Doodling with Prismacolors


I've had quite a bit of time due to the winter weather over the last few days. So, I was able to play around in my sketchbook. 

The Truth Shall Set You Free

My daily devotional this morning was about placing trust in men and women. The scriptural reference was 2 Kings 25:24. In this passage it talks about Gedaliah's mistake in putting trust in untruthful men. The author of my devotional made some really awesome points about trust that I wanted to share with you:
• Truth is spoken and lived by trustworthy men and women. 
• Experience and the practice of always acting on truth equips us to recognize the truth. 
• There is a great temptation for us to reject truth when it is unpleasant. 
• Truth does NOT change whether it is believed or not believed. 
• Only truth sets free and sets the right course. 
• By the very nature of God, speaking falsehood and turning from truth is sin and brings unhappiness and hurt. 
• Expect truth from upright, truthful persons who have demonstrated their character over time. 
• Accepting truth from an unproven person (friend or leader) can mean disappointment and consequences that affect a lifetime. 

We've all been a victim of the sin of untruthfulness, whether we've been dishonest or someone has been dishonest to us.  Let God's word be a guide to us to rightly discern truth. With His power and guidance through the Holy Spirit we can and will be set free. 

Taken from The Devotional Daily Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers. 

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Fort Smith, Golf Cart, Altus, Wine, and Valentine's Day

On Saturday, the hubs and I went on a little road trip to Fort Smith to trade in our old golf cart on a new one. Fortunately, this process was smooth and took only about 20 minutes!  We got a really nice, slightly used golf cart out of the deal. 


Please ignore the what should be a rookie mistake of placing my finger in front of the lens! Ugh! It disgusts me to see it there. Anyhow, our old one is on the right and the new one on the left. Nice, huh? I think so, too. 

Well, on our way back through we wanted to stop in at Altus and visit a couple of the wine vineyards. We've never been before, and wanted to check it out. We tried Weideker, first, but they were all booked up for Valentine's Day and not offering any tasting tours. So, we ended up at Post Familie where we sampled several wines, but ended up with our standard Moscato faves, strawberry and parachute. On our way back down the road to I-40, we came across this awesome little Catholic Church and hillside view:



All in all it was nice little Valentine's Day road trip! 




 


Monday, February 16, 2015

Snow Day 2015

A nasty little ice storm blew through my neck of the woods last night, and left us with solid sheets of ice over everything. So, we got a snow/ice day tomorrow. Since, I have another day to prepare for work, I spent this one doing fun things. Like snapping some pics of the ice:



And a little sketchbook doodling with ink and prismacolors while catching up on TV shows: