Cookies 🍪

 Today I made cookies from a cake mix box. I used a Betty Crocker butter pecan box of cake mix and mixed it with 1/2 cup of oil and two eggs. I then added the rest of a package of almond slivers I bought for Greek Easter bread on May 1. You can do this with any cake mix and 1/2 cup vegetable oil and two eggs!  

Thrift Store 25 cent Day and Denim Chenille Quilts

There is a thrift store near me that is an outlet location of a large chain of thrift stores. The items are priced based on what day of the week it is, with Thursday being the most expensive at $2.25 per item and Wednesday being the cheapest at 25 cents per item. In Wednesdays, they’re only open from 7:30 am until 11:30 am, so I only go if I’m able to. (If there’s no inventory).  When they close in the afternoon, they get their new shipment from the other locations and discard whatever is left from 25 cent day into the landfills. 

For the last few months, I’ve been making denim chenille quilts in order to practice the technique so I can make several of them for an Etsy shop. I made two for my daughter, one for my mom, and two for myself to keep. Of the two that I kept, one is a rainbow. Denim chenille quilts have denim on the back and regular quilting fabric on the front. The rainbow quilt is denim of all colors of the rainbow on the back with the corresponding colors on the front. Of all five quilts I made for practice, the rainbow was the one I got most compliments on. Here are three pictures of my rainbow denim quilt- one of the denim side,

One of the quilting fabric side, and one to show both sides. 

Because of what a hit it was, I decided that whenever I go to 25 cent day now to buy jeans for these quilts, to get the rainbow colored jeans no matter what- even if the legs are too skinny to get my ruler all the way down, even if they have several tears or are capris so that I can’t get as many squares out of them. This hypothetical Etsy shop needs to have at least a couple rainbow quilts, as well as regular denim chenille quilts made from blue jeans and black jeans with darker black themes on the front. Then I got to 25 cent day today and there were over a dozen pairs of white jeans all grouped together. I threw them all in my cart. A white one would be nice, too- especially since I have over five yards of plain white solid quilting fabric (which I’d alternate with white or off white prints). I didn’t even think of doing one with white denim until I saw them all grouped together like that. 

Below is a picture of my dining room table with all of the 25 cent denim items in colors of the rainbow. There was one purple denim shirt in there!  The rest are all pants. You can see the white jeans under the table. I’ll get to them later. And yes my cat Mitchell is concerned!  

 Another thing I want to learn to do is how to make t-shirt quilts. People charge good money to make these for people out of their old memorable shirts. Memory quilts out of a recently deceased person’s old clothes are a nice thing to do as well, but I would try and do memory quilts as volunteer work. When I told Kevin about t-shirt quilts, he seemed way more stoked about the idea than I ever have been. I told him I would have to do a few practice quilts before I felt comfortable enough either charging someone or volunteering to cut up their deceased loved ones clothing. So he said, just get a bunch of shirts on 25 cent day. And that’s what I did. All of the T-shirts I got were either pink, gray, or tie-dye with warm hues. They’re all in the wash now. 

I also got this skirt:

 

If you can’t tell, those are beads. I can cut those off for my bead stash. 

On the way home, a really old song came on that I had completely forgotten about.  No, I'm not an Eminem "fan" by any means, but I don't dislike him either.  Most of his music all sounds exactly the same to me. However, I have always liked Not Afraid especially the chorus.  

Even more than the chorus, I love the second line in the beginning of the entire song.  

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/j5

"I guess I had to go to that place to get to this one."

He says it so matter of fact-  he doesn't say it all dramatically like someone trying to squeeze sympathy out of you.  I suffered panic attacks for ten years: from January of 2014 until about the end of 2022.  I often mention that I do side jobs on apps taking pictures and doing small audits in retail stores.  For a couple of years, that's all I did actually.  I drove my Camry hybrid all over the place and did these jobs in nine states.  Someday, I'll blog more about that.  I would not have done that if not for my severe panic attacks.  Travelling around like that was probably the beginning of my healing.  If I had not done that for those two years or so, I also would not have been working for the inventory service, and if not for working for the inventory service, I would have never met Kevin.  I love living out in "the country" with him.  I love having him as a partner.  We do life so well together.  Four days from now, October 6, will be our one year anniversary.  October 6th is also the day I found out I was pregnant with my daughter in 2006.  I'll blog more about both events on October 6!  But, the second statement in "Not Afraid" is so for real.  "I guess I had to go to that place, to get to this one."  One thing leads to another, leads to another, and leads to another.  Being paralyzed with panic for so long destroyed me.  But in the end, I had to go to that place to get to this one.  When I was a little girl, I used to "know" that when I got to the middle of my life, that I would go through something awful.  I remember being as young as five or six, dreading it, and then quickly putting it out of my head.  I don't know if you believe in the idea of a soul contract, but I understand it a lot more when I look back on that.  I definitely had to go to that place to get to this one.  

Crazy Quilt Blocks and Daily Tidbits

I finished a few crazy quilt blocks. They are pictured below. The large floral strip will be a border. They’ve been ironed and put away for the next time I have a lot of scraps. 

This morning, Kevin worked while I was off. We usually work together on the same crew, but once in a while the big boss only wants to send salaried people to some accounts that she probably isn’t making much on. I’m hourly, so I get a day off by myself. Last night, I found out that the port workers went on strike so I decided to do a major shopping trip this morning. I went 30 miles away to the town of Brenham because there were some appealing opportunities on two of the apps I do little side jobs on, both in Brenham. I then hit up both Walmart and H-E-B, which are across the street from each other there. I bought all of our favorite frozen foods, several of our favorite canned foods, 12 and 24 packs of all our favorite drinks, and a few fridge staples. Don’t get me wrong, I really hope the port workers get what they deserve. In fact, I think a lot of people in this country need to go on strike, but that’s a rant for another day. I just like to be prepared. And I didn’t want to go to any store in the afternoon or evening when it would be packed. That’s another reason I chose Brenham instead of the other direction, which is a suburb of Houston. Fewer people in the stores. 

I checked out the fabric and craft section at Walmart in Brenham, and found several fat quarters for only 50 cents on clearance. If you don’t know what a fat quarter is, it’s quilting fabric 18” by 22”. My goal is to make denim chenille quilts for an Etsy shop. They are denim chenille on the back and have cotton quilting fabric on the front. I got 50 cent fat quarters in lavender (4 of them), gray (6), navy blue (3), and pastel blue (4). That was all they had. I should hit up other Walmarts when I have time. 

I think I actually did a great job shopping in the two stores even though my mind was racing a little bit. I suffer from anxiety and ADHD, so sometimes a 100% smart shopping trip is a crap shoot. But this time I did pretty good!  One thing I need to make sure I sit down and do-  I need to sit down with my two favorite cookbooks- The Joy of Cooking and my dad’s old Fanny Farmer cookbook- and make my own recipe cards for shopping trips. I absolutely done googling recipes, because I can’t handle the insanely long articles that precede!  

 

Traders’ Weekend

 Yesterday, my boyfriend Kevin took me and my daughter Evita to a flea market called Trader’s Village. Kevin said he went there often in the 80’s and 90’s, and there was an old man who sold vinyl records. Kevin has a large collection of vinyl that he mostly bought from this guy, and didn’t want them anymore except for seven of them. So we browsed Saturday, got a few things each, and met with one vendor who said yes, that old man is still here!  He then gave us directions to his booth. Kevin was almost certain this man would be dead by this point, as he seemed to be very elderly 30 years ago. He told him he would buy his records, and Kevin told him he’d be back tomorrow. So this morning, I went on my own to do three side jobs on one of the apps I do side jobs for. They were offering a $10 bonus for every 3 completed this weekend. While I was there, Kevin called and said the old man gave him $250!

Then we came home and I worked a little bit on a Crazy Quilt. These are what quilters use their scraps on. Crazy quilting is just all the scraps thrown together. I just sewed pieces together in twos and pressed them. Here are some pictures: 

Intro- My Story

 Hi I'm Danielle, and I sometimes went by Akasha online.  I'm a middle aged woman living in Waller, Tx with my partner Kevin in a guesthouse on his parents' property.  We have two cats, and I have a 17 year old daughter who will be graduating high school in the class of 2025.  We both work for an inventory service which takes us all over Texas and Louisiana.  I also do side jobs on apps that pay you for small jobs in stores.  I had about a 20 year career working with children in a few different capacities.  I started when I was 16 and stopped when I was 36.  Suffering from panic attacks when I was about 36 led me to need something a little more quiet and simple, so I started caregiving for elderly and disabled people in their homes.  One of the companies I worked for used me as a "sub", so I was working with a lot of different people every few days whenever their regular caregivers needed days off.  I have also been a regular caregiver, but all of my previous main clients have passed away.  After about ten years of battling panic attacks, I feel like I'm ready to start working with kids again.  But the inventory service pays pretty good, unlike any caregiving profession ever.  So I'm easing back into it by writing a book about my experiences.  I'm titling the book The Child Advocate.  It's currently sitting at a word count of 21,713.  That's a very rough draft.  I hope to participate in NaNoWriMo in November, but the daily commitment is hard on me with the kind of heavy content I'm writing.  My therapist told me that I suffer from secondary trauma as a result of caregiving jobs for both kids and adults.  As a result, I have to take the writing slowly.  Other times, a writing session is extremely therapeutic, cathartic, and helps me discover things about myself I've never realized before.  

I'm also passionate about sewing and crafts, especially up cycling.  I am working on making denim chenille quilts for an Etsy shop, and I love to make upcycled jewelry.  A thrift store near my partner's old home has 25 cent Wednesdays from 7:30-11:30 am, and I go if there are no inventory jobs. I stock up on items I can cut up for upcycled crafts.  

I'm also really passionate about self-directed education and thinking outside the box.  Self-directed learning has led me to where I am today.  It's a really long story.  I'm a firm believer that if people just pursue their passions and interests all the time, then many prosperous doors will open up as a result of those pursuits.  It doesn't matter what the interests are.  I will blog more later about how I pursued my own passions and interests, and how those led to doors opening for me.  Thanks so much for reading, and I can't wait to form new connections.