Garlic cauliflower, green beans, chicken

This is a simple one we (husband and I) like.

 It is the only combination, so far, where we like the garlic cauliflower.  We love it this way. It is so so every other way (to us).

I either bake/chop chicken or chop chicken and then cook on top the stove. I barely book the veggies, only enough time and heat to get them hot. I mix all of it. I divide into 3 servings. Dinner for two of us, lunch for one of us. 

I do not cook anything in the plastic bag/microwave. So some of the medleys I buy are advertised that way, but I do not cook them that way. 

Another Book List - these are the titles my group has already read over the years. 2009-2017 I think. So the books listed in the post are the "done books", we have already read, as a group. We do 11 books a year. The same books are listed two ways. First half is listed by author. Then the second half is the same books listed in alphabetical order by title. I have marked the books I have read with an * on the second list/by title.

Please keep in mind, this is a classics book group. 
If you happen to think of books this group has not read, 
that would be considered classics, 
I would really appreciate a list in comments. 


Author Order

Achebe, Chinua

 Things Fall Apart  (1958)

Adams, Richard:
Watership Down (1972)

Anderson, Sherwood:
Winesburg Ohio (1919)  

Austen, Jane:
Sense and Sensibility (1811)
Pride and Prejudice (1813)

Northanger Abbey (1817)

Bradbury, Ray:
Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

Bronte, Charlotte:
Jane Eyre (1847)

Bronte, Emilee:
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Buck, Pearl:
The Good Earth (1931)

Burgess, Anthony:
Clockwork Orange (1962)

Camus, Albert:
The Stranger (1942)

Capote, Truman

In Cold Blood (1966)

Card, Orson Scott:
Ender’s Game (1985)

Carroll, Lewis:
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
Through the Looking Glass (1871)

Cather, Willa:
My Antonia (1918)
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)

Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de:
Don Quixote (1605 and 1615)

Chopin, Kate:
The Awakening (1899)

Christie, Agatha:
Murder on the Orient Express (1934)

Collins, Wilkie

The Woman in White (1860)

Cooper, James Fenimore

The Last of the Mohicans (1826)

Conrad, Joseph:
Heart of Darkness (1902)

Lord Jim (1899-1900)

Cormier, Robert:
The Chocolate War: A Novel (1974)

Crane, Stephen:
The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

Craven, Margaret:
I Heard the Owl Call my Name (1960)

Defoe, Daniel: 
Robinson Crusoe (1719)

Moll Flanders (1722)

Dickens, Charles:
Bleak House (1852-1853)
Tale of Two Cities (1859)
Great Expectations (1860-1861)

Oliver Twist (1838)
Hard Times (1854)

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor:
Crime and Punishment (1866)
Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880)
Notes from the Underground (1864)

Doyle, Arthur Conan:
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901-1902)

Dreiser, Theodore:
An American Tragedy (1925)
Sister Carrie (1900)

Eliot, George

The Mill on the Floss (1860)

Ellison, Ralph:
Invisible Man (1952)

Faulkner, William

The Sound and the Fury (1929)

As I Lay Dying (1930)

Fitzgerald, F. Scott:
This Side of Paradise (1920)
The Great Gatsby (1925)
Tender is the Night (1934)


Forster, E.M.:
A Room With a View (1908)
Howards End (1910)
A Passage to India (1924)

Frank, Anne:
The Diary of a Young Girl (1947)

Golding, William:
Lord of the Flies (1954)

Hammett, Dashiell:
Maltese Falcon (1940)

Hardy, Thomas:
Tess of D’Urbervilles (1891)

Jude the Obscure (1895)

Far from the Maddening Crowd (1874)

The Return of the Native (1878)

Hawthorne, Nathaniel:
The Scarlet Letter (1850)

The House of the Seven Gables (1851)

Heller, Joseph:
Catch-22 (1961)

Hemingway, Ernest:
The Sun Also Rises (1926)
A Farewell to Arms (1929)
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)
Old Man and the Sea (1952)

Hersey, Jophn

Hiroshima (1946)

Hesse, Hermann:
Siddhartha (1922)

Hugo, Victor

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831)

Hurston, Zora Neal:
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

Huxley, Aldous:
Brave New World (1931)

James, Henry

The Turn of the Screw (1898)

Joyce, James

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916)

Kerouac, Jack:
On the Road (1957)


Kesey, Ken:
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962)

Kipling, Rudyard

Captains Courageous (1897)

Kim (1900-1901)

Knowles, John:
A Separate Peace (1959)

Lawrence, D.H.:
Sons and Lovers (1913)
Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928)

Women in Love (1920)

Le Carre, John

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974)

Lee, Harper:
To Kill a Mockingbird (1960)

Leroux , Gaston

The Phantom of the Opera (1909-1910)

Lewis, Sinclair:
Main Street (1920)
Babbitt (1922)
Arrowsmith (1925)

London, Jack:
The Call of the Wild (1903)
Sea Wolf (1904)

Machiavelli, Niccolo

The Prince (1513)

Marquez, Gabriel Garcia:
Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)

One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967)

Maugham, Somerset:
Of Human Bondage (1915)
The Razor’s Edge (1944)

Maurier, Daphne Du:
Rebecca (1938)

McCullers, Carson:
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
The Member of the Wedding (1946)

McEwan, Ian
Atonement (2001)

Mellville, Herman:
Moby Dick (1851)


Morrison, Toni:
Beloved (1987)

Nabokov, Vladimir:
Lolita (1955)

Obama, Barack

Dreams From My Father (1995)

Orczy, Baroness Emmuska:
The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905)

Orwell, George:
Animal Farm (1945)
1984 (1949)

Paton, Alan:
Cry the Beloved Country (1948)

Plath, Sylvia

The Bell Jar (1963)

Potok, Chaim

My Name is Asher Lev (1972)

Rand, Ayn

Anthem (1938)

Remarque, Erich Maria

All Quiet on the Western Front (1929)

Salinger, J.D.:
Catcher in the Rye (1951)

Scott, Sir Wallace:
Ivanhoe (1819)

Shelley, Mary:
Frankenstein (1818)

Sinclair, Upton:
The Jungle(1906)

Solzhenitsyn:
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962)

Spark,Muriel:
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961)

Steinbeck, John:
Red Pony (1937)
Of Mice and Men (1937)
Grapes of Wrath (1939)
East of Eden (1952)

Stevenson, Robert Louis:
Treasure Island (1883)
Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

Kidnapped (1893)

Stoker, Bram

Dracula (1897)

Stowe, Harriet Beecher:
Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) 

Styron, William:
Sophie’s Choice (1979)

Swift, Jonathon:
Gullivers Travels (1735)

Thoreau, Henry David

Walden (1854)

Tocqueville,  Alexis de

 Democracy in America (1835) abridged

Twain, Mark:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884)
Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894)

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889)

Verne, Jules

Around the World in 80 Days (1873)

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870)

Voltaire

Candide (1759) 

Vonnegut, Kurt:
Slaughterhouse-Five (1969)

Cat's Cradle (1963)

Walker, Alice:
The Color Purple (1982)

Waugh, Evelyn:
Brideshead Revisited (1945)

Wells, H.G.:
Time Machine (1895)

Wharton, Edith:
Ethan Frome (1911)
The Age of Innocence (1920)

Wilde, Oscar:
The Picture of Dorian Grey (1891)

Wilder, Thorton:
The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) 

Wolfe, Thomas:
Look Homeward Angel (1929)

Wolfe, Virginia

To the Lighthouse (1927)

Wright, Richard:
Native Son (1940)

SAME BOOKS IN TITLE ORDER

 (I have read books marked with an *)

*1984 (1949) by George Orwell

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1870) by Jules Verne

*The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884) by Mark Twain

*The Age of Innocence (1920) by Edith Wharton

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass (1871) by Lewis Carroll

*All Quiet on the Western Front (1929) by Erich Maria Remarque

An American Tragedy (1925) by Theodore Dreiser

*Animal Farm (1945) by George Orwell

Anthem (1938) by Ayn Rand

*Around the World in 80 Days (1873) by Jules Verne

Arrowsmith (1925) by Sinclair Lewis

As I Lay Dying (1930) by William Faulkner

*Atonement (2001) by Ian McEwan 

*The Awakening (1899) by Kate Chopin

Babbitt (1922) by Sinclair Lewis

The Bell Jar (1963) by Sylvia Plath

Beloved (1987) by Toni Morrison

*Bleak House (1852-1853) by Charles Dickens

*Brave New World (1931) by Aldous Huxley

*Brideshead Revisited (1945) by Evelyn Waugh

*Bridge of San Luis Rey (1927) by Thorton Wilder

*The Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

*The Call of the Wild (1903) by Jack London

Candide (1759) by Voltaire

Captains Courageous (1897) by Rudyard Kipling

*Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller

Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J.D. Salinger

Cat's Cradle (1963) by Kurt Vonnegut

*The Chocolate War: A Novel (1974) by Robert Cormier

Clockwork Orange (1962) by Anthony Burgess

*A Color Purple (1982) by Alice Walker

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court  (1889) by Mark Twain

*Crime and Punishment (1866) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

*Cry the Beloved Country (1948) by Alan Paton

Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) by Willa Cather

Democracy in America (1835) abridged by Alexis de Tocqueville

*The Diary of a Young Girl (1947) by Anne Frank

*Don Quixote (1605 and 1615) by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

*Dracula (1897) by Bram Stoker

*Dreams From My Father (1995) by Barack Obama

*East of Eden (952) by John Steinbeck

*Ender’s Game (1985) by Orson Scott Card

*Ethan Frome (1911) by Edith Wharton

Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury

*A Farewell to Arms (1929) by Ernest Hemingway

*Far from the Maddening Crowd (1874) by Thomas Hardy

*For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) by Ernest Hemingway

*Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley

*The Good Earth (1931) Pearl Buck

*Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck

*Great Expectations (1860-1861) by Charles Dickens

*The Great Gatsby (1925) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

*Gulliver's Travels (1735) by Jonathon Swift

Hard Times (1854) by Charles Dickens

*The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) by Carson McCullers

*Heart of Darkness (1902) by Joseph Conrad

Hiroshima (1946) by John Hersey

*The Hound of the Baskervilles (1901-1902) by Arthur Conan Doyle

*The House of the Seven Gables (1851) by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Howards End (1910) by E.M. Forster

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) by Victor Hugo

I Heard the Owl Call my Name (1960) by Margaret Craven

*In Cold Blood (1966) by Truman Capote

Invisible Man (1952) by Ralph Ellison

Ivanhoe (1819) by Sir Wallace Scott

*Jane Eyre (1847) by Charlotte Bronte

Jude the Obscure (1895) by Thomas Hardy

The Jungle(1906) by Upton Sinclair

*Kidnapped (1893) by Robert Louis Stevenson

*Kim (1900-1901) by Rudyard Kipling

Lady Chatterley's Lover (1928) by D H Lawrence

The Last of the Mohicans (1826) James Fenimore Cooper

*Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov

Look Homeward Angel (1929) by Thomas Wolfe

Lord Jim (1899-1900) by Joseph Conrad

*Lord of the Flies (1954) by William Golding

Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Main Street (1920) by Sinclair Lewis

*Maltese Falcon (1940) by Dashiell Hammett

*The Member of the Wedding (1946) by Carson McCullers

The Mill on the Floss (1860) by George Eliot

*Moby Dick (1851) by Herman Mellville

*Moll Flanders (1722) by Daniel Defoe

*Murder on the Orient Express (1934) by Agatha Christie

*My Antonia (1918) by Willa Cather

My Name is Asher Lev (1972) by Chaim Potok

Native Son (1940) by Richard Wright

*Northanger Abbey (1817) by Jane Austen

Notes from the Underground (1864) by Fyodor Dostoeavsky

Of Human Bondage (1915) by Somerset Maugham

*Of Mice and Men (1937) by John Steinbeck

*Old Man and the Sea (1952) by Ernest Hemingway

*Oliver Twist (1838) by Charles Dickens

On the Road (1957) by Jack Kerouac

*One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1962) by Solzhenitsyn

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962) by Ken Kesey

*One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

*A Passage to India (1924) by E.M. Forster

The Phantom of the Opera (1909-1910) by Gaston Leroux

*The Picture of Dorian Grey (1891) by Oscar Wilde

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) by James Joyce

*Pride and Prejudice (1813) by Jane Austen

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961) by Muriel Spark

The Prince (1513) by Machiavelli

*Pudd’nhead Wilson (1894) by Mark Twain

*The Razor’s Edge (1944) by Somerset Maugham

*Rebecca (1938) by Daphne Du Maurier

*Red Badge of Courage (1895) by Stephen Crane

*Red Pony (1937) by John Steinbeck

The Return of the Native (1878) by Thomas Hardy

*Robinson Crusoe (1719) by Daniel Defoe

*A Room With a View (1908) by E.M. Forster

*The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905) by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

Sea Wolf (1904) by Jack London

*Sense and Sensibility (1811) by Jane Austen

*A Separate Peace (1959) by John Knowles

Siddhartha (1922) by Hermann Hesse

Sister Carrie (1900) by Theodore Dreiser

Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) by Kurt Vonnegut

*Sons and Lovers (1913) by D.H. Lawrence

*Sophie’s Choice (1979) by William Styron

The Sound and the Fury (1929) by William Faulkner

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) by Robert Luis Stevenson

*The Stranger (1942) by Albert Camus

*The Sun Also Rises (1926) by Ernest Hemingway

*Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens

*Tender is the Night (1934) by F. Scott Fitzgerald

*Tess of D’Urbervilles (1891) by Thomas Hardy

*Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) by Zora Neal Hurston

*Things Fall Apart  (1958) by Chinua Achebe

*This Side of Paradise (1920) by F Scott Firzgerald

*Time Machine (1895) by H.G. Wells

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (1974) by John le Carre

*To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) by Harper Lee

*To the Lighthouse (1927) by Virginia Woolf

*Treasure Island (1883) by Robert Lewis Stevenson

*The Turn of the Screw (1898) by Henry James

*Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Walden (1854)  by Henry David Thoreau

*Watership Down (1972) by Richard Adams

*Winesburg Ohio (1919) by Sherwood Anderson

*The Woman in White (1860) by Wilkie Collins

Women in Love (1920) by D. H. Lawrence

*Wuthering Heights (1847) by Emilee Bronte

Book List

If you are looking for lists of book ideas for middle school/high school/older,
a good idea is to google "100 books everyone should have read".
All kinds of lists will pop up,
Like this one
http://www.listchallenges.com/kaunismina-bbc-6-books-challenge
That is a great place to get ideas of well written books.
(I had read 39 of them.)
There are variations like 100 American books or 100 classic books.
Lots of different lists.

Middle sent the above link and the list below to a mother who was looking for ideas for a sixth grader who has a high reading level. There are younger books toward the beginning of this list and it also has a very wide variety. It is in no particular order.


Brambly Hedge Series – Jill Barklem
The Borrowers Series – Mary Norton
The Little House Series – Varies Authors
Original Box Car Children Series – Warner
Island of the Blue Dophins – O’Dell
Misty of Chincoteague Series – Marguerite Henry
Mandie Series – Lois Gladys Leppard
The Three Investigators Series – Robert Arthur
A Walk in Wolf Wood – Mary Stewart
Redwall Series – Jacques
Hatchet Series – Gary Paulsen
Arthurian Series – Mary Stewart
Harry Potter Series – J. K. Rowling
Lord of the Rings – J. R. R. Tolkien
Narnia Series – C. S. Lewis
Ender Series – Orson Scott
Foundation Series – Isaac Asimov
2001 Space Odyssey Series – Arthur Clark
Dune Series – Frank Herbert
Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Series – Dounglas Adams
* https://www.commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-hitchhikers-guide-series-book-1:

The Midnighter Series – Scott Westerfeld
The Secret Hour – Westerfeld
Touching Darkness – Westerfeld
Blue Noon – Westerfeld
The Black Stallion – Walter Farley
Artemis Fowl Series – Eoin Colfer
Exodus – Julie Bertagna
The Pack – Tom Pow
Captives – Tom Pow
Host – Stephenie Meyer
Chasing the Falconers (On the Run) Series – Gordon Korman
Bunker 10 – J. A. Henderson
Life As We Knew It Series – Susan Beth Pfeffer
The Giver Series – Lois Lowry
The Good Earth – Pearl S. Buck
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
Hawksong (The Kiesha’ra) Series – Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Dreamland – Sarah Dessen
The Shadow of the Bear (A Fairy Tale Retold) Series – Regina Doman
Not connected to these exact characters but also in the
retold fairytales and a very good book: The Midnight
Dancers
Wicked Lovely Series – Melissa Marr
Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Peter and the Starcatchers Series – Ridley Pearson & Dave Barry
Peeps – Scott Westerfeld
Maximum Ride Series – James Patterson
Eragon Series – Christopher Paolini
Heir Apparent – Vivian Vande Velde
The Hunger Games Series – Collins
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Portofino – Frank Schaeffer
The Eyre Affair – Jasper Tforde
Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson
Lonesome Dove – Larry McMurtry
Watership Down – Richard Adams
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
Peace Life a River – Leif Enger
Homecoming, Dicey's Song, Izzy, Willy Nilly – Cynthia Voigt
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith
Specials and Midnighters and Uglies Trilogies – Scott Westerfeld
A Long Way from Chicago and A Year Down Yonder – Richard Peck
When Zachary Beaver Came to Town and Keeper of the Night – Kimberly Willis Holt
Chronicles of the Deryni – Katherine Kurtz
Wings Series – Pike
Dragon Rider – Funke
Percy Jackson Series – Riordan
Howl’s Moving Castle – Jones
Fire Within Series – D’Lacey
Inkheart Series – Funke
Book Thief – Zusak
Fablehaven Series – Mull
Outsiders – Hinton
Eye of the Dragon – Stephen King (not typical King book)
The Graveyard Book – Gaiman
Hardy Boys Series – Dixon
Where the Red Fern Grows – Rawls
Bridge to Terabithia – Paterson
Holes – Sacher
Across Five Aprils – Irene Hunt
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman – Ernest Gaines
Call It Courage – Armstrong Sperry
Catherine, Called Birdy – Karen Cushman
Dicey’s Song – Cynthia Voigt
The House of Dies Drear – Virginia Hamilton
Jacob, Have I Loved – Katherine Paterson
Johnny Tremain – Esther Forbes
Julie of the Wolves – Jean Craighead George
Keesha’s House – Helen Frost
My Brother Sam Is Dead – James Lincoln Collier
Out of the Dust – Karen Hesse
Red Badge of Courage – Stephen Crane
Rifles for Watie – Harold Keith
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry – Mildred Taylor
Scorpions – Walter Dean Myers
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle – Avi
The Watsons Go to Birmingham, 1963 – Christopher Paul Curtis
The Westing Game – Ellen Raskin
When You Reach Me – Rebecca Stead
The Witch of Blackbird Pond – Elizabeth George Speare
A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle
Number the Stars – Lowry
Diary of Anne Frank – Anne Frank
Silmarillion – Tolkien
Culture Series – Iain Banks
Time Machine – Wells
Call of the Wild – London
Treasure Island – Stevenson
Robinson Crusoe – Defoe
Maze Runner Series– Ball
Thief Lord – Funke
Series of Unfortunate Events Series – Hadler
The Important of Being Ernest – Wilde
Divergent Series – Roth
Jurassic Park – Crichton
Star Wars Series (Canon and ‘Legends’) – Multiple Authors
Truesight Series – David
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children Series – Riggs

Author’s Who Are Great and have lots of books:
Robert Louis Stevenson
Jerry Spinelli
Louisa May Allcott
Dickens
Patrick F McManus
Bill Bryson
John Steinbeck
Hemingway
Jane Austen (female characters but my older brother read in college/loved them)
Lois Duncan
James Herriot
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Isaac Asimov
Leo Tolstoy
Jules Verne
H. G. Wells
Judy Blume

*Read everything in the school’s autobiography section

Tracy Craft Night

http://www.shutterbean.com/2017/ladies-craft-night-valentines-party/?

Really great idea. Kids of any age tend to love this type of thing.

I attached the link because her pictures are gorgeous.

We had guys (26 and 27) making a gingerbread house at Thanksgiving with no arm twisting.

Middle was very happy doing headbands over Christmas break.

Most of youngest's friends love to draw and paint and do crafts.

So, from preschoolers to adults, very fun things to do.

We play a lot of games and cards when we have extra people, but arts/crafts are very good idea too.

So is cooking (not baking, COOKING). Many a boy has been my cooking assistant.

Storing doll and toddler patterns

My mother has a lot of doll clothes patterns. They are used over and over again.

My close friend who gave my mom all the fabric, suggested my mom interface all her pattern pieces. And she did.

Using 911FF (featherweight) Pellon interfacing (the iron on a medium dry setting and a press cloth) my mom reinforced all the tissue pattern pieces.

She uses an old sheet (cut up) as a press cloth for pattern pieces. (Normally we use muslin.) She has "top" marked on it so any sticky residue is on one side of the press cloth. When they get too sticky, she starts over with a new cloth. GREAT use for an old sheet.

Here is more information on press cloths:
https://didyoumakethat.com/2012/06/04/make-yourself-a-press-cloth/
http://www.threadsmagazine.com/item/18346/guide-to-press-cloths/page/all





I have kept all my baby and toddler clothing patterns. So I have my patterns which are 20+ years old and I also have older ones. So OLD tissue paper pattern pieces.

My mom and I went through and interfaced the patterns I knew I would use now. This allows the pieces to be used over and over again. I had to mend several pieces that were missing corners.

Once the pattern pieces have been interfaced, they no longer fit in the original envelopes. We use 14" x 18" manila envelopes which I got through office depot. (If they do not carry them in the local store, they will order them with free shipping.)

I made color copies of the pattern fronts (reducing them by 50% to save ink, for the front of each envelope. I used packing tape to secure the pictures to the envelopes. This is extremely handy for patterns that will be used for many years.

These (below) are the patterns I am currently using. I only interfaced the smaller sizes (2-4).

I have duplicates of some of these patterns in size 6 that I am saving but have not yet interfaced.

I have a large stack of other patterns, in larger children's sizes, that I have left alone for now.

I also have a lot of costume patterns (in child and adult) that I am saving but not interfacing.

And I have a few adult size nursing tops/dresses/jumper patterns that I am saving but not interfacing now.

Most of my adult patterns went in recycling. I went thru them carefully. If they were classic, I saved them. If no one would ever wear that style again, not even as a costume, I recycled them.

One of my local resale shops has a sewing section. I have taken things there. But these (old patterns) were truly dreadful patterns and really just needed to go. But I did NOT put them in the garbage, I put them in paper recycling bin.

Computer Room Clean Out

 I have learned that to really clean out something, everything needs removed and only the worthy things are returned. Having an empty space allows one to truly consider each item.

So I started on the wall cabinets by taking everything out of them. This involved my husband because these are tall cabinets.

We started with a step stool. When we thought to get a taller ladder out of the garage, I was able to do more by myself.

This (below) is the left side. It was easier to contemplate, so I did it first.  It now holds paper, envelopes, cards and notebooks.  I gave a lot of school supplies (book covers and notebooks and paper) to a family with four kids for them to use in school.

As you can see, I did not whittle myself down to nothing. If one of us needs to do a project, we still have supplies. All the paper is now out of my sewing closet.

I am not buying any more of these supplies to stock. And I have told all the kids - dig thru my stuff first before you buy anything.

These (below) are containers from Walmart. Exactly the right size to hold computer games (which all three of the kids wanted to save) and children's CD's. It might be that no one ever touches these again, but they all wanted them saved. Four bins held everything perfectly and my husband readjusted the shelf so they fit perfectly. Top shelf in the right cupboard, so they are out of the way.

This (below) is what the right cupboard now holds. Yes, one totally empty shelf. The short shelf with the horizontal binders is all related to building our current house. The bottom shelf holds empty binders, file folders, and pouches.

I suspect this whole pile (below) is garbage. It is all old stuff which might be related to old computers. Oldest is not happy, but will go thru it with me over Face-time. We have agreed to go thru things this way rather than me sending picture after picture. And when he grumbles, I say - be glad I am cleaning out and organizing (so you do not have to face so much when we are dead). As I finish cupboards, I send the kids pictures so they know where things are.

Youngest already went thru this pile (below). Yes, there were several things she wanted. Middle still needs to go thru it.

The stack on the bench is the over sized paper that did not fit in the cupboards. For now, it is staying on the bench.

My part of the computer room is now mostly done (below). I have the pile to sort with middle and the pile to sort with oldest. And under the counter, near the door are several file boxes for my husband to sort/purge/shred. And there are a lot of files in his office upstairs that need sorted/purged/shredded  and the keepers moved to this room.

Toddler dresses

I made a lot of clothes for our modern American Girl dolls last month.

I still have a few things cut out and ready to sew, will do sometime when I am looking for a quick project.

This month, I have been making toddler dresses.

This (18-24 mos I think) is the first one I did,. The pattern is McCalls 5791.

The dotted fabric is left from pillow cases I made for middle's class. The pink is fabric from the doll stash that my mother dishliked. So a good use for fabric that never would have been made into doll clothes. I had the jumbo black rickrack in my bins. It really ties the whole things together. The bodice is lined with white muslin. There is a zipper in the back. 

I used a (Simplicity 8197) pattern to make dresses for my niece long ago. Over twenty years ago. (I probably made some for middle too. But she does not remember them.) My niece loved them and I made a lot of them. At that time I probably did facings. Now I know to fully line the bodices. (My mother and I do not do facings. Instead we line the whole bodice. Easier to sew, easier to launder, easier to wear.) 

I am not very fast making these, yet. I have not yet fully figured out the order to sew things to enclose all the seams and make things easy. At some point in every dress, I sigh and have to rip out and resew something.

These first two are in a size 4. I have multiples of the same pattern. So I can make it in a size 2, 4, 6.

All the doll clothes sewing has been good warm up for garment sewing. It has probably been 20+ years since I did garment sewing and I am rusty. Plus now I do things a different way. I line bodices, I use a serger, I add trim and lace. The original dresses I made for my niece, were very, very plain.

The top/red fabric is from the doll stash. Fabric that came from my friend. The strawberry fabric is leftovers from a dress my mother made for youngest. I bought the red lining fabric and the jumbo rickrack. 

Extremely happy to use two strawberry buttons from one of my button boxes.
 (I have thousands of buttons.)
I made the loops instead of button holes because the pattern is made to have the bodice fabric meet in the back, not overlap. (I think the pattern calls for hooks and eyes.)
I wanted to use buttons and I think the fabric loops are very sturdy and cute. 

You have to get very close to see it. I sew rickrack three times. Down the center and then the outsides to hold the tips in place. (If I had not showed you, probably never would have noticed.) This will allow the rickrack to launder and wear very nicely. 

The fabric is leftovers from another dress my mother made for youngest. My mom has made 8-10 dresses for her, I think. I found the pink rickrack, pink piping, and white eyelet in the stash of doll stuff at my mother's. 

Very good use for two buttons from my boxes. Another set of loops. 

I am making these simply because I want to. I am mostly starting with fabric we already have.