A Christmas Miracle

The children will not go present-less this Christmas after all. I sent the three oldest kids (that would include Stranger) to the movies Friday afternoon and sewed my little heart out while listening to old Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me shows on the computer. The great part was that I actually made some cute things! I made two cute little aprons for the girls, so cute that they will never be allowed to wear them except maybe to Church. They can be their new Church aprons. (I'll post more photos after the "spies" have opened their presents.)


Then I felt guilty that I didn't have anything hand made with love for my big ten year old boy so I made him a quilted pillowcase out of my scrap stash. It's pretty hideous but he'll love it. Have I told you lately how much I hate plaid? Apparently it's coming back in style so I guess it's a good thing I saved those scraps.


Oh and I mustn't forget the hooded towels that the Lookout Man will be leaving on the doorstep. I whipped those out too. It's amazing what a Mother can do with six hours of uninterrupted kid-less time. I did have my two year old here with me but I sat her in front of Finding Nemo and then she obligingly took a three hour nap. Yay for nappers!

The thing I'm happiest about is that Christmas is almost here whether we like it or not! That and the fact that my MIL is hosting Christmas dinner at her house and she believes in having an entire Thanksgiving re-run on Christmas day and cooking it all herself. I can't wait!

Quilt Raffle

Check out the ticker at the bottom of this page. We've raised $525 for foster kids! I hope you're as excited as I am! If you're new here you can find out more about it here. I didn't think we were going to make it to our goal by September tenth but a very kind reader of mine that I have never met before donated $250 this week. I am so grateful! And grateful to all of you who were so kind to buy one or more raffle tickets. Every little bit adds up.

My daughter even came up to me yesterday with five dollars clutched in her hand and offered it to me.

"What is this for?"

Persistence - "I want to win that quilt for my bed so I'm buying five raffle tickets!"

"Oh honey, I can't let you win the quilt because you're my daughter and it would look funny."

Persistence - She pushed the money into my hand and said, "I really just want the foster kids to have it so here." And then she ran away.

Her brother, thinking that he always has to outdo his sister, said, "I don't want to give ten dollars away." I said, "You don't have to give anything if you don't want to," but he decided to give five dollars as well.

We only have ten days to go so if you wanted to buy a ticket then you don't have much time left. All of my family and friends out there (you know who you are) had better get busy and buy a ticket before I have to come knocking on your door. Love you but I need your money!

Houston we have lift off.

The race is on here at the Lazy Organizer to raise at least $500 to benefit foster kids. All you have to do is buy one ticket to win this beautiful hand quilted quilt. Read more about the raffle here. Only three people have entered so far but we've earned $30 from their generosity! Now that I've got the Paypal button working (or rather Stranger has) I'm sure we'll get many more donations. Just one dollar from each of you. That's your assignment for today.

Rebecca was so sweet to post about my cause on her own blog A Not So Desperate Housewife and she also made this adorable button for anyone who wants to use it. Thank you Rebecca!



Not only that but she taught me how to make my own button! You're welcome to it also.

Foster Care Quilt Raffle

Update at the bottom.

I had an idea last week to do a quilt raffle to benefit Foster kids and you guys said you thought it was a great idea. Thank you for all your kind words!

After I posted about the raffle I remembered that my quilt guild made a quilt last year that we meant to raffle off but never did. I completely forgot about it! Isn't it amazingly beautiful? I knew you would love it!

The quilt is queen sized - 90" X 105"
It is machine pieced and hand quilted.
The fabric is 100% cotton quilt fabric and the batting is a thin cotton/poly blend. This is an heirloom quality quilt so please take special care of it if you win it. I will send washing instructions with the quilt when I ship it.

Tickets will be $1 a piece so when you make your donation just enter the dollar amount you would like to donate. If you want 10 tickets enter $10 in the donation box.

This box doesn't seem to be working properly but if you click on it you will go to paypal where you can enter your donation information.

I called a couple of the members, namely Amy and Janette, who did almost all of the work on this quilt single handedly and they agreed to let me raffle it here on one condition. I have to bind it, which I will do this week. I couldn't wait to post the photos though so while you guys are busily buying tickets I will be busily binding the quilt.

They also agreed that we could give the money to either the Foster Care Foundation or the Christmas Box House which is a home the kids go to while they're waiting for a placement with a family.

Here is how the raffle is going to work. I will video tape the drawing and post it in four weeks on September 10th. I will also notify the winner by e-mail which I will have through your Paypal payment. However. My goal is to raise $500. If we haven't raised at least that much then I will postpone the drawing until we do. But I don't think there will be a problem. If everyone who visits my blog in one day buys one ticket then we will have plenty of entries to raffle it off in September.

I am so excited about this! I will post updates on how much money we raise. If this is a cause that you feel strongly about then feel free to post about it on your blog and tell your friends and family about it. In fact does someone want to make a button for me? Or better yet, does someone have time to teach me how to make a button? I'm sure it's easy but I don't know where to start. Thanks!

Update - Thanks to Stranger my donation button is fixed! Aparently the only way to fix it is to add a new line of code to the button which Stranger found out after spending an hour on the phone with Paypal. It took that long for them to transfer him to someone who knew what they were talking about. So now if anyone else has a problem with the Paypal donation button charging shipping the new code is (input type="hidden" value="0.00" name="shipping").This overides your pre-set shipping calculations. I've refunded all the shipping charges of those who have already made donations. Thank you for your patience!

Finding My Mission

I haven't mentioned my new mission before because I didn't want the whole world to know that on top of being rude I am incredibly selfish. I know. Shocking. I do want to change though.

I make quilts. They take hundreds of hours and I do a lot of the sewing by hand. I had someone ask me recently what I do with them. Do I give them away? No. They are too much work for me to part with. Do I use them? No. Well, I hang some of them around the house and my kids all have baby quilts that they have used but here's what I do with most of them. I fold them up and store them in a cupboard.

I have been on a quest for several months to become more giving and selfless. I secretly try to do one act of service for someone every day which means I may get around to it about once a week. But it makes me happy. I want to do more.

I have a burning desire to help foster kids. Stranger and I almost became foster parents a few years ago. We took hours and hours of classes but then they lost our application. We filled out another one but then they lost our background check. By the time we straightened that out I was pregnant and we had just bought our property so foster care was brushed aside but not forgotten.

I decided that once our house was finished I wanted to have a huge Halloween party and charge all my friends and family to come. Then I wanted to donate the money to help foster kids. Can life get any worse for a child than being ripped away from your family or having a family that just doesn't want you anymore? I don't think so.

Now I know that our house will never be finished so the party just isn't happening but I have a new idea. What if I were to raffle off one of my quilts and donate the money to help foster kids? Could I do that here on my blog? Would you, my blog readers, buy a ticket to win one of my quilts? How would you know that I was donating the money and not just using it to buy more quilting fabric for my habit? That's what I'm wondering.

Fontify Your Handwriting

I have been drooling over the book Love Your Handwriting by Heidi Swapp. Well, I've been drooling over the image of it on my computer screen because I haven't actually bought it yet. Do you think she would trade me one for some Organizing Bags?

I decided last summer that I was going to teach myself how to write in cursive. Of course I learned how when I was young but I was never good at it and by the time I got into high school I just stopped using it all together. So, last summer I bought a handwriting practice book at a school supply store and I wrote in it every day until I could confidently write in cursive.

The only problem is that my cursive writing doesn't have any style to it. I would like add something unique to it. My printing needs more personality too. That's why I want to buy this book so badly! I know I will love it. I stumbled upon a very cool idea tonight in my search for it. Rebecca Ludens tells you how to make your own computer font at Fontify.com I think you scrapbookers will love it! I am not a scrapper but I'm going to beautify my handwriting before I Fontify it. I can't wait!

Stuffed With Love

*Edited

Sew some adorable little Valentines for your family and friends. I like to make a basket full to pass out on Valentines Day. They're sweeter than candy!


First of all you will draw some hearts on a white piece of paper and cut them out. Don't make them perfectly symetrical. I like them oddly shaped with lots of character. Make different hearts instead of using the same pattern for all of them.

Place two pieces of fabric right sides together and trace your pattern with a pen onto one side, leaving enough room for a seam allowance all the way around.

Cut out the fabric 1/4" beyond your pattern line. You will sew directly on the line so you need a seam allowance beyond that.


Next you will sew around your heart right on the line you drew, using a sewing machine or a needle and thread. If you are using a sewing machine you will need to stop and turn your fabric after every stitch or two as you sew around the tight curves. Don't forge to leave an inch open so you can turn it right side out.


Clip to the V in the top of the heart before you turn it. Clip right to your stitches but not through them.


Turn your heart right side out using a flathead screwdriver to help push out the curves and points. Then use the screwdriver to stuff it as fat as you can get it.

Once it is completely stuffed you will stitch up the opening.


Add a pin to the back and a button tied on with linen string to the front if you'd like.

Can you feel the love?

*I forgot to mention that it's fun to pin these hearts to a card you are sending someone. It's a wearable love note!

Find more Love, Sweet Love at WFMW.

Join us this week for Smart Habit Saturday to make lasting changes in your life!

27 Mini Snickers Bars Ought To Do It

It just occurred to me that I might need some kind of plan to deal with the invasion of Halloween candy tomorrow. That’s really the scary part of all this Halloween business, isn’t it? Would you be shocked to learn that I haven’t bought one single bag of candy this year? I am. The idea didn’t even occur to me! It’s really wonderful when you think about it. Not only am I not eating sugar, I’m not thinking about eating sugar. I’m not even thinking about not eating sugar! Until today when I finally faced the fact that tomorrow was the BIG night and my blood began to run cold.

I have to confess something. You know how I haven’t been eating sugar for a few months? Well, I did the same thing last year. I stopped on the fourth of July and I stayed away from it for 4 months. Until last fateful Halloween night when I thought eating just a few pieces of chocolate wouldn’t hurt me. I started with the whoppers because no one else wanted them. Then things got out of hand. I think I lost conciousness somewhere between Pay Day and the Milky Way but I didn't stop until I had cleared out every last tootsie roll from a four mile radius. I don’t even like tootsie rolls! Does anyone like tootsie rolls? Come on tootsie roll makers. No one likes your disgusting rolls. Stop making them and subjecting innocent trick-or treaters to your cheap make-believe chocolate! Stupid kids aren’t even dumb enough to like it! Enough already! And you cheap people who are buying it should be ashamed of yourselves!

All those months of sugar deprivation kicked my butt and had their paybacks all in one night. And the next and the next. Now here we are at the one year anniversar-eve of my nine month long breakdown and I’m feeling the need to make a plan. Should I lock the kids in their rooms until Halloween is over and then spend a lot of money on their therapy later? Or should I let them go begging for candy and force them to eat every last piece of it all in one night, resulting in more therapy? It’s going to be really hard choosing between all the therapy options here.

Oh my goodness, I just had the most fabulous idea!!! I could have the kids gather more candy than they can carry, stealing some from other kid's bags if they have to and we’ll come home and make a candy sculpture with it! Are you so in love with this idea! It will be kind of like a Christmas gingerbread house only with Halloween candy and hot glue. I think the sculpture would be far less likely to disappear in the middle of the night if it is held together with hot glue rather than frosting. Oh, except the hot glue would melt the candy. You thought of that before I did, didn’t you.

Never mind, we’ll work out all the details later, like how I’m going to talk the kids into falling for my mad plan. It’s going to be so fun!!!

So what’s it going to be? Am I going to hold strong to my sugar free convictions? Or will I surrender to the powerful evil forces of all that is chocolaty, chewy and charming? (I was going to write sweet there but it didn’t start with Ch so I went with charming. Part of sugar’s lure is that it is so charming isn’t it? Yes, it totally makes sense.)

By the way, we are going to my friend’s house for dinner and then her husband is taking the kids treating while we stay home with the babies, handing out candy. Yes, you read that right, we're going to make the babies hand out the candy. Hopefully my friend bought Airheads again this year because I would never sell my soul for an Airhead, 27 mini Snickers bars maybe but never an Airhead.

For those of you who haven’t seen the kid’s Halloween bags here they are. They cut the fabric designs out from a pattern and blanket stitched them on a dish towel, all by themselves! (Take that you rude 4-H losers! Sorry, that’s a whole different post.) Victor made the Frankenstein, Persistence made the pumpkin and I made the ghost for Lovely. Then I took all of them, lined them with heavy duty vinyl (we wouldn’t want any candy escaping from a week seam!) and sewed everything together.

Special Knits Shawl

Last night I took a few minutes to finish sewing the edging on this doll quilt I made for Love. It’s the same pattern (Special Knits by Debbie Bliss) as her baby blanket but smaller and with beads. I’ve wanted to knit with beads for a while so I’m pretty excited about it. It's been a whole day and Lovely hasn't tried to pull one off yet. I wish I had a better photo. Can you see the beads in the second one?

Doll blankets are so organized! Besides wraping up baby dolls, they are small enough that I can throw one in my purse for the baby to snuggle when we're out. They don't drag on the floor and they are easy to make up. In fact, when I see a quilt pattern I like, I just make it in miniature so it's finished in a fraction of the time a full sized quilt would take but just as beautiful. We have so many doll quilts laying around the house that I grab one every week to match Love's outfit for Church.

This is her baby blanket. Look how tiny and bald she was!


This is a perfect day for knitting because it hasn't stopped snowing. Not that I've been doing any. This was our day to go to the library and then the gym but Lovely has been acting fussy. She's always a happy girl so I'm wondering if she is sick. We stayed home just in case. The kids are playing outside in the snow and I'm trying to keep her happy until bed time. As soon as she goes to bed I'm going to knit something warm!

The Hat That Will Bring Your Baby To Tears

Edited to fix a couple mistakes in the pattern. Is anyone going to try this and tell me how it turned out?

I made this adorable hat last week! I’m not saying I’m so fabulous for making it or anything because my knitting powers are purely accidental. If I stumble upon the right pattern, accidentally buy just the right yarn, remember how to count stitches and the "higher-knitting-power" is appeased, then I can come up with something fabulous. It’s only happened twice. What about the rest of my knitting projects? Well. I basically spend a lot of time turning sweaters into blankets. I wish I had the photos to prove it. Unraveling a sweater that you spent 47,000 hours knitting is really quite fun. The yarn gets all curly kinky ; totally worth all that knitting and counting and ignoring your children.

If you would like one of these sweet hats for your own offspring or to give to someone else then here is the pattern. Please use some natural fiber yarn like cotton, wool or silk. If you make this hat out of acrylic yuck, I will personally come to your house and burn it. The hat, not your house.

Sweet Heart Hat

I used yarn with a gauge of 5 stitches per inch and size 6 needles.
Cast on 76 stitches.

Row 1 through 6 – Knit
7. Pearl
8. k5, (k2tog, yo, k1, yo, k2tog, k7) repeat till you get to the last 6 stitches, k6
9. P
10. k4, (k2tog, yo, k3, yo, k2tog, k5), repeat till last 5, k5
11. p
12. k3, k(2tog, yo, k5, yo, k2tog, k3) repeat till last 4, k4
13. p
14. k2 (k2tog, yo, k7, yo, k2tog, k1) repeat till last 3, k3
15. p
16. k1, (k2tog, (yo, k9, yo, k3tog) repeat 5 times, yo, k9, yo, k2tog, k2
17. p
18. k3, (yo, k2tog, k3, yo, k1, yo, k3, k2tog, yo, k1) repeat till last 2, k2
19. p
20. k3, (yo, k4tog, yo, k3) repeat to last four stitches. k4
21. p
22. k
23. p
24. k2, (k2tog, k5) repeat to end
25. p
26. k
27. p
28. k2, (k2tog, k4) repeat to last 5, k5
29. p
30. k
31. p
32. k2 (k2tog, k3) repeat to last 5, k5
33. p
34. k
35. p
36. k2 (k2tog, k2) repeat to last 4, k4
37. p
38. k2 (k2tog, k1) repeat to last 3, k3
39. p
40. k2, (k2tog) repeat to last 2, k2
41. p
42. k2tog, repeat to end
43. p
44. With 2 US6 double pointed needles and contrasting color, k1 row.
45. Slide these 7 sts to the opposite end of the same needle, place needle in left hand and bringing yarn firmly from last st to first st, k7sts.
46. Repeat this row until a tube of approx 5 inches has been worked.

Next row k2tog, k3tog, k2tog, cut yarn, thread end through rem 3 sts, pull up and secure.

Finish Join back seam. Tie top extension in a knot. Put it on your own baby and make sure you get a photo of the tears. Send it to me and I'll post it on my blog!

Disclaimer: I cannot guarantee that this pattern will work as I made it up as I went along and I jotted it down as I knitted. I’ll have to make another one this week to check the pattern.