A Tiny House

Shanda asked me to help her make Talia a little cloth house for Christmas. She picked out the fabric she wanted for it. Here is the finished product. I am mainly putting it here so that Shanda can get a good look at it in Colorado Springs, but others might like to see what I have been up to.





Here are the occupants of the little house.












And this shows the front of the house. The zippers on the side open to allow a little girl to play inside of the house thought he door opens as well.

Happy Halloween

Although it was a little early for Halloween, I wanted to start out with the scariest incident of the month. When we were traveling home from Phoenix, We saw huge clouds of black smoke up ahead on the climb out of the Valley.













We were shocked to see this truck that had been pulling an RV totally engulfed in flames. Our hearts and prayers went out to whoever this misfortune occurred to.













We enjoyed being with the family on Sunday, Oct. 26th for Drake's 9th birthday. As you can see, cake decorating is no challenge when you have just received a new Lego set for your birthday.




















Halloween was celebrated again with the families in this area at Deren's and Liz's place. We furnished a crock pot of zucchini soup and chocolate covered donuts and some games for the children. I am including all of the pictures since it is hard to get children to all look in the right direction in the same picture.



In this first picture Garth is holding Kasen who is dressed as a baby lion. Drake is mostly hiding in the wonderful cloak that Liz made for him. Addie is a mermaid in a costume made by her mom.



















Guy and Garth are relaxing.













THE GROUP WHO DRESSED UP!













Back row: Drake, Kasen, the lion is held by Kalen, Marcus the Ninja and Sheridan the Aviator. On the front row we have Addie the mermaid, Mitchell the baby giraff and Caleb the dolphin trainer.


























Garth dubbed us as Jack & "O" Lantern. He designed his own shirt.


WE HOPE YOU ALL HAD A VERY HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

COUNTING TODAY THERE ARE JUST 55 DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!

What We've Been Up to During Oct. 2008

Having just returned from over two weeks of travel, I felt I should document our activities. The day after celebrating Mitchell's 2nd birthday, we loaded up our Windstar and traveled to LaVerkin where we visited with my mother (Ruth Nielson). On Friday morning (Oct. 10th) we saw her and then traveled the 6 hour trip to Prescott, Arizona where the Haltermans graciously allowed us to stay with them. This included a shopping trip with Kendra to start looking for fabrics for all her projects and our visit with several of our friends in Prescott. We saw Ethel Taylor, Ruth Allen, Allison Stanford and Dave and Alice Lange. We are amazed how well Alice is doing.

















On Saturday we traveled to Phoenix, Arizona with Kendra and the children. It was fun to be with them again. On Monday we started in to serious work on the many projects we wanted to get done.




One of our most enjoyable thing was to be able to spend some time with our 3 lovely Arizona grandchildren.


Kira came home with a Principal's Award for her first quarter grades. Naturally we are very pleased grandparents.






Tessa loved having us there to give her more attention. She loves music and had us all dancing when she would push the buttons to get the music going on the toy on the refrigerator door.














Trenton looks so handsome in his cowboy costume that he wore for one of his school activities.



















Kira is a great big sister. Here she built a baby "jail" to keep Tessa from going up the stairs or from going in to disturb her mother while she was giving voice lessons.
















I set my sewing machine up in the living room.










After finishing a little orange skirt for Tessa's birthday, I made up the cover for this fabric chair for Kendra's loft reading area. She bought "Dick & Jane" fabric because those are pictures from the first reading books.








We enjoyed being a part of Tessa's first birthday celebrations and helped Kendra clean up, set things up and host the party for many friends and relatives.
















































Some of the projects we did included;


Family Room cafe curtains.




















Living Room curtains
























Halloween costumes for Kira, Tessa and a helmet for Trenton. (Kira is the White Witch from Narnia and Tessa is Lucy. Trenton is wearing Caleb's knight costume for Peter but I made him a helmet.)









Drapes for the sliding doors in the dining area,


















Roman Blinds for the kitchen windows.

















With some help from Barry, Garth built a locker unit to be used in the pantry room.












Here is the finished product.




































Perhaps the biggest project that both Garth and I worked on was the reupholstering of two chairs for the living room. I think you will agree that they looked much better after we finished with them.




















And so ends our report. We had a great time but are are happy to be home again.

Peach Days in Southern Utah

Greetings everyone! We traveled to LaVerkin on Thursday, August 28th, to spend some time with my mother, to have a belated birthday dinner with my sister - Quinta, and to attend my 53rd class reunion (Hurricane High School)



Eight of us gathered at Mother's house on Thursday evening for a belated birthday meal for Quinta who turned 78 on July 3rd. I prepared the meal and LuDeen made pies and furnished ice cream. Going around the table to the left you will see Garth, LuDeen, Marsha, Eric (Spencer), Quinta, Randie and Fred. It is always great to get together with my brothers and sisters and their spouses. We missed Corrin and Janice.

On Friday we took Mother's fiber optic's Christmas tree over to her apartment for her to enjoy and to brighten things up a bit. We had tried to take it to her earlier but she hadn't wanted it.

I also took her two new dresses. She is wearing one of them in this picture.
































Saturday was reunion day. In the morning, Garth delivered me to the parade route in Hurricane where I met some of my classmates and we rode on this trailer. I am actually on the other side of the trailer 2nd person from the front of the trailer.











In the evening we met at the American Legion Hall in Hurricane and had a delicious meal of dutch oven cooking










For our program we tried to follow our graduation program. Since I couldn't find one of the songs I sang in, I did a couple of songs from the operetta that we did our Senior year titled, "Kentucky Sue". I had the title part and sang, "I Want a City Feller" and "Kentucky Sue".














These are my classmates who were present. I am on the front row, 2nd from the right. Out of our graduating class of 53 we had 9 men and 13 women present. It was a fun time.

Caleb's Birthday - A Day with Addie & a Chair

HAPPY 5TH BIRTHDAY, CALEB

We were privileged to join the Hardings to celebrate Caleb's 5th birthday. Since they had a big party when the Reynolds were still here, I made him a chocolate cake this time.













A DAY WITH ADDIE





Friday was a fun day for us. Garth picked up Addie after lunch and brought her to our house in Springville. She had been telling her mother for some time that she needed to come to our house and, "Help Lita make me some dresses".


First she wanted to put together a puzzel and she chose this Snow White puzzle.

She wanted to watch a movie and after it was established that we didn't have Ella Enchanted, she settled for Snow White.










I then let her choose the cloth she wanted her dress out of and, with a bit of help, I sewed up a dress for Addie and one for her doll.






















































A CHAIR FOR TALIA




This is another project that Shanda came up with while she was visiting but I had to wait until I was in Colorado Springs - when the patterns were on sale at Joanns - to get started.

Shanda had this grey green fabric and I cut out and sewed up the cover. It is filled with pillow forms that I also cut out and sewed up then, yesterday - August 23rd - I cut foam rubber and used batting and put the chair together. I thought you could better see the size if I put someone in it and Mr. Bear was the only one available who would fit.