staying busy

I generally make my own purses, and I've been carrying around the same one for quite awhile now.  I've had in mind that I wanted a summery tote in patriotic colors, and I wanted to incorporate some Texas Rangers ribbon that I picked up last year, so I started looking around for some ideas.  The Missouri Star Quilt Company has excellent video tutorials on all kinds of projects, so when I saw this tote made with charm packs, I was immediately drawn to it.  I modified it a bit from their version because I wanted it a tad wider and taller, but the instructions lend themselves to adjustments.  I added an inner pocked, and the closure flap.  I will probably go back and shorten the shoulder straps some but want to live with it a week or two first.  If you go to the link, there may be an ad at the beginning, but I think you can click out of it to skip the ad.

I watch Elise during the school year, but David had to go in Friday for a teacher's day after school was out.  Since Lily was out of school, she came over too.  She brought over some paper with the idea of making a cape type thing for her My Little Pony.  As I watched her doing her cutting and taping, I offered to use her pattern and sew it in fabric.  We agreed that it came out well.

And yes, you'll notice that Elise is dressed as Snow White.  She had the dress on earlier in the week when we went to Target, and got a lot of smiles and comments from the other shoppers.  :)

My intentions for this week (though it may take longer) are to clean up the back planting bed and put in some mulch.  I'm doing it with my typical approach...bit by bit, it will get done.  My plans are to be orderly and do one section at a time before it gets too hot in the day, so yesterday I was out there by 7:00 or so working up a sweat and getting dirt over me from head to toe.  Here's the "before" in one section, and an "after" of what I did yesterday (a different section).  I figure there will be about 7 or 8 sections this size.

In other news, you can now call me Madame Plumber.  I had a problem with the toilet the other day, and in looking inside the tank discovered a plastic bar had broken off of the handle.  I took a picture of the problem, went to Lowe's and found a replacement part, and came back home and replaced the handle mechanism.  I know it's a small thing, but it always feels good to do something yourself and not have to ask for help. 

Before and after

As you can see I've added several pictures this time.  I've been having issues with my laptop with the size of pictures I send from my phone and ipad, and also with the USB ports not working consistently to download from my camera.  I went to Best Buy yesterday, and the guy in their Geek Squad was so helpful.  He tinkered with it a bit, and took care of some needed updates (that I assumed was handled automatically).  This may be a temporary fix, but if this can work it's sure better than the price of a new computer.   Who knows, maybe I'll be able to get back to blogging more consistently!

That's it for now, catch you later.