Ahhh, my work day is done & tomorrow is my day off!!!!!

Hello, Hello!!! Wow am I glad to finally be home today and done with work until Thursday. The county fair is going on in our town right now and we figured we'd be slow this week. WRONG-A-RONI!!!! Actually I think it's quite the opposite. Seems like business has doubled just yesterday(Monday) and today. That's a good thing but man does this girl have to work when we are busy like that. I get a step aerobic workout everyday that I go to work. The kitchen and the hot deli area are up a step one way and up two steps the other way through the place. My main work area is down front on the lowest level. I am up and down and back and forth all day. When we're busy, I come home exhausted. You'd think I'd be getting thin as a rail but I'm finding that just the opposite too. I never used to eat much except for supper. Now that I work around food, all I want to do is eat. lol. It sucks. I get disappointed in myself. But, it's also good to actually feel hungry again once in awhile too. So, unless I get to where I can't get my pants on, I'm not gonna worry much about it for now. lol.

Speaking of the fair, I want to put in a plug here for the 2008 Ashland County Fair. This is the 157th annual county fair. Both my sons and their ladies are going to the Tracy Lawrence and Emerson Drive concert this evening. If they get any good pics, I'll post them. As like many folks, we experienced some extreme weather over the weekend apparantly due to Hurricane Ike, but on Sunday, September 14th, the opening day of this year's fair, they actually had to evacuate the fairgrounds that afternoon by 4:30 due to the weather we were experiencing, It did rain alot here Saturday but Sunday afternoon is the weirdest weather I have ever seen here in Ohio in my whole entire life. The wind was merciless. It had been a nice day, a bit windy and damp on Sunday but I noticed when I went to the store around 5:00 that there were alot of tree branches all over the place and the wind was definately picking up. I called home and told my husband to be ready to help me get the groceries in when I got there because I thought we were fixin' to get a tornado or something. The weird thing is and what scared me was there wasn't a drop of rain to be had. Just this extreme wind. Hubby and I went out riding around about an hour later and found two homes just barely spared by these huge massive old trees just either uprooted or snapped off right at the bottom. By 7:00, the power was out in about half the city and seems like all the rural areas. My brother is still without power and was told it could be 3 or 4 days before he'd be restored. My son's workplace lost power Sunday night as well and he was told tonight that it would be Friday before they were back up and running. Despite the inconveniences, we are fortunate. We could live in Texas. There have been alot of reports of damage throughout the county though. I feel for those who were in it's path whatever that was. Our power here at home was only off a few maybe 3 hours.

Again, mentioning the fair, lol, if I was smart I would have had a few of my items out there in a contest this year. Their theme was "around the world/transportation". I'm mad at an old lady who was supposed to get me info about getting in it this year so maybe next year I can get on board soon enough to get my own information and enter some of my sewing items. I probably am nowhere near being judged to win a contest this year anyway. lol.

I also wanted to share with everyone how I made that golf seat cover after all. I didn't use the technique I saw on Sewing With Nancy as I mentioned I might in a previous post. I ended up using a modified crib sheet pattern. If you check out this pattern, the third finishing option is the one I used. My first real time using elastic. Not as bad as I thought it would be and I learned something in the meantime, maybe. I'll find out when I make the covers for the seat backs. Maybe some of you might know. My problem was that I cut the 15 inch piece of elastic and pinned it in the middle and tacked it. Then I stretched it out 12 inches in either direction from there and tacked it. So when I went to sew it, I had that 12 inches of fabric to pull and stretch on. I didn't know whether to pull the back of it coming out of the machine after it sewed or let it relax. Seems like it would be easier on your machine to pull it still instead of letting it bunch behind the needle and then still pull on it from the front. I hope that makes sense. What I'm thinking is I need to break it down into 3 or 4 inch sections when I pin it and tack it. Then I only have to make sure in between tacks that that is all I need to pull tight to sew the elastic. If anyone has any tips, I'd appreciate it. There's a million things I'd love to make but using elastic has scared me off. Not til I can comprehend how to do it properly or have someone show me hands on. In the meantime I struggle. lol. If it works though, I say run with it. lol.

I was just out back and took some pics of the "storm" damage from Sunday. I won't complain, it could be way worse. Here's all I'm dealing with:







My hot pepper plant fell right over. lol.



Tomorrow I hope to get some of my fave links posted back on here for pattern sites and such. Someday they might save someone hours of searching like I have done to find some of these that I like so well and/or have used and tried. We'll see. Looks like I got yard work to do tomorrow if it isn't raining. Cold I can take, rain-uh no. Hope you all have a great evening.

Renee