Happy Birthday Mr. McHacker!

Happy 30th birthday sweetheart, I love you!

Menu Plan 1/11 - 1/17

I'm trying to get back into the habit of menu planning. It all fell apart during the holidays.

Mr. McHacker and I are going to try the Special K Challenge for the next couple of weeks. I'm not sure how well we will do, but it's worth a try.

Breakfasts - Special K

Lunches- Special K (Or if we just can't handle another bowl of cereal, we'll have a small salad).

Suppers-
Monday - Chicken Spaghetti

Tuesday - Pizza (I know, not good for a diet, but we're going to a friend's game night.)

Wednesday - Read Beans and Rice with Sausage

Thursday - Leftovers

Friday - Frito Pie

Saturday - Digiorno Pizza Party, (I was selected as a House Party host, so Mr. McHacker get a pizza party for his birthday! I'll post more about that next week) veggies with dip, cheeseball, birthday cake

Sunday - Turkey soup (from the freezer)

Want to see lot of other folks' menu plans? Go to orgjunkie.com!

Some aprons

I did a good bit of apron making over the holidays. I apologize in advance for the pictures. I haven't been using my camera since it takes so long to upload the pictures to my laptop, so I've just been taking pics with my iPhone and emailing them to myself. I know they're not the best quality, but you get the point.

My sister had me make this one as a Christmas present for her friend:
It's the Lorelei pattern from the A is for Apron book, it's one of my favorite patterns. The picture is a little dark, the dark purple looks almost black, but in reality, it was a pretty eggplant color, and the main fabric was a pretty little floral pattern.

This one was a Christmas present for Mom McHacker since her favorite color is yellow:
I forgot to iron it before I took the picture (oops). The pattern is from Susan Branch and you can download the PDF here. This is my newest favorite pattern. Here's a closer look at the fabric:
I call it the "Busy Bee" apron. After finishing it, I went back over the bias tape to make it lie down flat, even though the directions did not say to do that. I think it gave it a more finished look. Speaking of bias tape, if you've not worked with it much, or have a hard time with it, you should watch this tutorial by Amy Karol.

I also used the Susan Branch pattern to make an apron for my youngest sister, but forgot to take a picture of the finished product. This is the fabric I used though:

I bought enough of it to make 2 aprons, so I'm going to use it to make one for myself. I'll try to remember to take a picture when I finish it.

I'm also going to try to participate in the upcoming Tie One On, due March first. Since I now have a bunch of new patterns, I'll probably be posting even more aprons in the future. Maybe I should rename this blog Crystal wants to share...her apron obsession!

More patterns

When we were at Mom and Dad McHacker's house after Christmas, I was looking at the JoAnn sale ad and saw that they were going to have a sale on McCall's patterns for 99 cents each! I know I just bought all of these Butterick patterns, but I just couldn't pass up this deal. I knew I wouldn't be in Meridian those days, so Mom was so sweet to pick them up for me. Here's what she got.
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Since I mostly make aprons and crafty things, I figured it's about time to try my hand at making clothes. This doesn't look too difficult.
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And I would really love to make these dresses to wear this summer when it gets warm again.
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I hoping that posting this will give me some motivation to actually make them!

Please pray

Please pray for Lindsey at Pleasant Drive. Her breast cancer has returned and she needs our prayers now more than ever. I can't even pretend to imagine what she is going through right now.

Better to write for yourself...

I keep telling myself, "this will be the day I will start blogging regularly again," and then the day is over and I didn't write a thing. So even though I don't have a great post today, I figured I needed to make an effort to write something. Anything. Just to get back into the habit. I miss blogging, but I struggle with wanting to write something that is interesting to others and wanting to write for myself about the mundane, ordinary things going on in my life. So I've got to find a balance between the two. I remember reading somewhere that some well-known blogger ( I can't remember who though) said that voice is more important than content, I take that to mean I should let my voice be heard, even if what I'm writing is not important to anyone else. As Cyril Connolly said, "Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." So if you find what I write boring, go away. It won't hurt my feelings.
I'm not going to try to write everyday, that would just be setting myself up for failure, but I am going to try to write more regularly.

Thanksgiving and Christmas and the whole holiday season was pretty good for us. I do have to admit that I'm glad it's over now though. We spent a lot of time with family and were out of town a lot, which I enjoyed, but it'll be good to get back into some kind of regular routine again.

I'm behind on blog reading again, but I'm slowly catching back up, and I'll try to start leaving more comments again. I hope you are all doing well, and staying warm in this cold weather.