The Sewing Mom

As a member of Parent Reviewers, I have been given the opportunity to read the fictional novel “Irreplaceable” and provide my thoughts on this debut novel by Stephen Lovely. I have to tell you, the beginning of the book was quite shocking. I am not going to tell you what happens in that first chapter, but the event that occurs is the basis for the entire rest of the book.

Irreplaceable is a touching story of how the death of a soul mate and best friend affects not only those who knew her, but also those who had never even met her. This story took me through every emotion imaginable including shock, sorrow, sadness, healing, love and the strength of family.

While this novel is fiction a story of life and love, it also carries a very strong message. Even if you’ve never considered organ donation, this story will at least make you consider signing the back of your driver’s license to be an organ donor.

Whatever your view on organ donation, “Irreplaceable” is worth the read.

# Hardcover: 352 pages
# Publisher: Voice (February 3, 2009)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 1401322824
# ISBN-13: 978-1401322823

I’ve have been very busy this last week doing some very in depth cleaning which has been long over due. One of the first things I did was to clean and organize my sewing room. In fact, I cleaned it so well that I’m not even sure it is still my sewing room! Even my sewing machine has been put away (temporarily).

We do have some very special out of town guests coming to visit this weekend which did give me the incentive to get things done. I’m sorry I don’t have a before picture, but just imagine these cabinets opened with their interiors spilling out, 2 folding tables set up plus my full size ironing board right in the middle of all of it. There was truly barely any room to walk.

I’m very happy with the way the room looks, even if it means that I can’t sew right now. I don’t have time to sew anyway, so it takes away the temptation! Oh, let me just warn everyone, DON’T OPEN THE CLOSET DOOR!

My sister Grace has been sewing like mad lately and has just completed another of the cutest aprons I’ve ever seen! I love the color combination on this one and it would be perfect for Memorial Day or 4th of July or as an every day apron. She does such nice work and I enjoy the pocket detail, it’s so cute.

Isn’t the rick rack such a great detail?! The apron is made from 100% quilt quality fabric and is machine washable.

This apron is for sale for only $20 plus shipping.

I have survived the last week, and trust me when I tell you, there were a number of days when I didn’t think I would. My blogs imploded, I’m working my new job which is adding a truck load of stress, I had orders for sewing projects and I have company coming in one week’s time and I need to be getting my house in order. In the end, I am thankful for my blogging friends, they really pulled me through the last week and helped me regain some control over the chaos.

One of those friends is Val who hosts Four Foods on Friday and she has kindly offered to help me update with Wordpress on both of my blogs and I will be asking her to do just that very soon. Rebecca was able to get the huge kinks worked out and dealt with my host to get my blogs enabled and I still can’t thank her enough. I want to send her a HUGE hug!

In the mean time, I want to celebrate the fact that I survived it all by getting back into the swing of things and participating in my favorite meme, Four Foods on Friday. Here are this week’s questions and my answers:

#1. Potato chips. Flavored? Regular, ridged or stacked? I prefer flavored chips unless there is a good dip, then I like plain. Ruffles are excellent with ranch dip!

#2. Cheese doodles. Yellow or white? Puffed or crunchy? I don’t eat these much, but when I do, I like yellow and puffy.

#3. Pretzels? Your favorite shape? Favorite flavor? I like round or “pretzel” shaped, regular flavor and salty.

#4. Share a recipe for salsa or dip. Take one package of softened cream cheese and place it on a serving dish. Shred one package of crab meat and sprinkle over the top of the cream cheese. Serve. As the “mound” gets dipped into, the crab meat will be pushed into the cream cheese and it tastes wonderful.

I just want to say thank you to all of you who emailed me or contacted me through my sister Karen after noticing my sudden disappearance. Unfortunately, I was just as shocked as you at the fact that my account had been “suspended” by my web host. I will go into those details at a later time. I’m still working on technical issues and attempting to get quite a bit updated and archived. I couldn’t have done any of this without help and I definitely got help!

Rebecca, author of Freaky Frugalite and New York Renovator among others, kindly came to my rescue. She actually had to go in through my c-panel to deactivate plugins and quite a bit more of which I will let her tell you. The best news is that she is planning to write a “how to” post for all of us to learn what to do when this type of situation happens. Trust me, I will be keeping a copy of her instructions close at hand for future reference. While I hope my account is never again “suspended”, I will always need to know how to keep things updated and current to keep my site running smoothly.

Needless to say, I have learned how important it is to keep things current, particularly plug ins, and to not overload a blog with code that can bog down a web host’s server. As you can see, I’ve removed quite a bit from my side bars and what you can’t see is all of the plug in and database updates that are going on behind the scenes. I am also looking for a new theme, something that will allow my blog to load more quickly and smoothly.

The last week has been extremely frustrating for me as a blogger, at one point I almost called it quits. I just never realized how much stress I was feeling because of this and I didn’t feel up to dealing with the web host, it was too exhausting. I want to say a big, loud, ginormous THANK YOU to Rebecca, I would not be here posting tonight if it were not for her.

I still have comments to return and EC to drop, although, I’m not quite ready to get back to all of that yet.  I do still have a couple of sewing projects that I’m working on completing in the next few days and then hope to get back to my blog recovery.  In the mean time, thanks again to all of you!