Welcome to Ma's Got'a Notion
Here at Ma's, we got your back...quilt back, that is!!!

Quilters, yes, it's that time of the year...where one of two things will happen: either you are the cook, or the guest. If you are like me, when I spend the day cooking a huge meal with all the trimmings, I do not want to eat it until the next day in the form of leftovers! If I am lucky enough to be the guest...I will gobble way too much, because a good guest will try it all, so we can brag on the excellent host's or hostess's culinary skills! After the meal, that is where the wobble comes in as we make our way through the desert line, and once again partaking in a bit of each one...you know, many of the guests might be bakers, and they brought along their specialty, and we really need to give praises to them too!

For me and my guest, just the hubs and one son will be at our table. We will keep it simple. I will serve Cornish Hens, baked potatoes, and, of course, one traditional dish: green bean casserole. With age, my upper body strength isn't what it once was, so lifting that turkey out of the oven once it's done is no longer among my talents as a cook! I now have only a conventional oven in our small retirement home. In the old house, I had plenty of ovens: one traditional oven and a wall oven, giving me dual ovens for all the dishes I once served. My kids are grown, and their kids have families and their own holiday traditions. That's alright with me, because I honestly do not miss the cooking nor the mess to clean up. Since I open the shop on the Friday after Thanksgiving and Small Business Day is the Saturday after the holiday, knowing I will be on my feet all day for a couple of days keeps me from making a little pig of myself at the Thanksgiving table! Simple it will be, with a pecan and a pumpkin pie of course!

With all that being said, a week off at Christmas, the circumstances will be different. During the Christmas week off from Ma's, there will be plenty of food at our house to satisfy all the appetites of our visitors! The CA kids will be in that week to help with the New Year's Day sale, along with a couple of the other adult kids and my friend Barb, so plenty of help this year! 

Once again, this New Year's Day, remember to save room for the buffet "Babes on Plum" will have, it's quite a spread. You can spend New Year's Day shopping and eating right here in the River City! My customers RAVED about how fantastic the food was last year, so don't miss it this year. We want at least one eatery open to get a meal on New Year's Day, and Babes on Plum does it up really well!

Here are the Holiday Hours in case you missed them:

Open 10 am to 3 pm on Wednesday 11/ 26; we will close early that day at 3 pm!

Closed on Thanksgiving Day 11/27

Open on Friday, November 28, 10 am to 5 pm, which is the day after Thanksgiving.

Please visit us on Small Business Saturday, November 29th, 10 am to 4 pm, and each shopper that day will receive a gift in appreciation of your supporting my small business!

Christmas furlow, we will be closed on the following days: Wednesday, Christmas Eve 12/24, Christmas Day Thursday 12/25, Friday 12/26, Saturday 12/27, Sunday 12/28, Monday 12/29, Tuesday 12/30, Wednesday 12/31/2025

Ma's will reopen at 10 am on Thursday, January 1, 2026, New Year's Day, and close at 5 pm for your shopping pleasure. I will send out an email as the day draws near on what will be on sale. Our regular hours will resume that day!

Here in my personal Taj Mahal, we are enjoying good health. Don has received good reports from his entire team of doctors as we have been knocking out follow-up appointments one after another, and each doctor has given a great review of his splendid recovery. We both understand that he's as good now as he will ever be, but we'll take what we can get after the year he has had.

I have had my "Watchman" (for those who may not know what that is; it's a filter to catch any blood clots that may try to sneak into my heart). Come to find out, I was a good candidate for a stroke; this little sponge device, placed in/alongside my heart, now lessens the chance of that happening. I have had it in place for several weeks now, and the follow-up procedure this past week gave me the go-ahead to get off the blood thinners. I am now on Plavix, also a heart pill to keep my ticker under control, and the regimen seems to be doing just what they were designed to do! So, we have lots to be thankful for, especially this year. Medical science is awesome! Please know that I keep those of you who have shared with me either your or your family's health struggles this past year in my thoughts, and I pray that your health and that of your loved ones improve soon. We can all be grateful for how far science in the service of good health has come.

The year may be winding down, but here in the shop, we are still getting in new things, and of course, we replace best sellers often. I have been pretty lax the last couple of weeks about posting on Facebook about what has been coming in because I have been busy with Don's appointments and my own, too.

 All of the things I thought I would do with weekly videos have all been put on the back burner. I hope that in the New Year, I can make a vow to do better and get them done...Well, I sure hope that will go better than my yearly New Year's diet resolutions!

Life in our 70s sure has a way of setting our schedules for us!

I have taken up enough of your time reading this. Please, let me make one thing clear...I am grateful for my family's health and my own health. I am thankful that I can get up each morning and go to a job that I absolutely love. I am grateful to have a roof over my head and food on the table, as many do not, and that brings me to another thing I want to remind you of. If you bring in non-perishable food, hygiene, or paper products from now until Dec. 20th, I will give you 10% off your total invoice. All donations go to the Mission of Hope here in Havana. Our small town has a 14.5% poverty rate. While the larger cities have many food drives, here in my tiny town, many are going hungry. Thank YOU all who have participated in this giving venture I have asked you to take part in, YOU are making a difference to a child who may have had to go to bed hungry.

That now brings me to a very important something that I am grateful for...YOU, my faithful customers who have returned often to shop in my humble establishment for the last 22 years, YOU are what makes getting up each morning and doing a job that I love worth it...YOU ROCK! 

No matter how you spend your Thanksgiving Day, cooking or as a guest, I hope you get in some pieceing to bring you peace at the end of the day! I know I will, as my guys are avid football fans, and their afternoon will be spent in front of the TV set (cheering as their after-dinner exercise), working off the calories from the meal they've consumed! LOL, my leg exercise will be pushing the pedal on my sewing machine, doing squats to pick up fabric pieces that seem to keep slipping off my table, and, of course, pressing "iron"! The life of a quilter, "seams" to be a fit one!