Wednesday's Thoughts

This will be just a quick post as I am running here and there. The next one will definitely be longer.


The first week of autumn has quickly flown past and Christmas will be here before we know it. It always seems as though once Halloween is here the others are right behind. It seems hard to imagine. I can remember as a child that I thought the days would never come.



The other day I was merrily working on a project in my sewing room and I happened to see something flit across the yard. Upon closer inspection this is what I noticed it was.

A Roadrunner!!! We have them occasionally and it was a delight to see him/her in the yard. I guess there are advantages of not having a dog.










My DIL celebrated her 35th birthday today and her request was for a set of towels with her name on them so that no one else would use them. This is what I made up for her.

We will be busy babysitting nine of our grandchildren for the next four days. Their parents will be out of town and we are delighted to have them. Needless to say, there will not be a lot (if any) of computer time during that period.

After that we will be one vacation for a few weeks. We are headed to England and Scotland via the QM2 from New York. This is a late celebration of our 40th anniversary. We are terribly excited about going and looking forward to visiting with some dear friends. I have a few hand sewing projects lined up to take along with me.

While we are away we will be adding another grandchild to our family. It will certainly make the return trip exciting knowing that we will get to meet him or her once we get home.


I will miss catching up on what is going on out in blog world, but will do so as soon as we return. Please all take care while we are away as I don't want to read any bad news when I get home.

A New Friend

As I mentioned in a previous post, I participated in The Friendship Bag Swap and my partner's swap bag arrived at my house this week. It came all the way from the Netherlands! Dorine was my secret swap partner and we have quickly become friends. She speaks Dutch and yet she writes beautifully in English. She has also started doing an English translation on her blog just for me!!!!! My Goo*gle translation left a bit to the imagination. Not only does she enjoy sewing for her grandchildren like myself, she also has a background in nursing. Can you believe how well we were paired up? Please check out her blog.





















This was a photo that I took from her blog of the Friendship Bag. I love how she used her traditional fabrics when she constructed it. Inside she tucked all sorts of wonderful goodies from her homeland - a darling thimble, a wonderful 2010 calendar (so I can think of her each day), a fabulous magnet, a brochure and some gorgeous fabrics.

I LOVE these fabrics and can't wait to find a special project to use them. Thank you so much, Dorine.

Over the weekend we went to a Dodger vs. Giant game with some friends of ours. A day at the ballpark is a great way to spend an afternoon especially when your team wins.

During the games they always have a roaming camera that they call the "Kiss Cam." The idea is that if they capture you on the big screen you are to kiss whomever you are with in the picture. There was one couple where the guy got down on his knees and proposed. I am sure it was all planned ahead, but cute just the same. Of course you could not hear the words but you could see her reaction. It was great.

That was accompanied by this sign being flashed. I don't think the poor girl ever saw the sign, but someone behind her held up a huge sign that said "She said YES!"

This week I have been working on Halloween costumes. Since many of them are in parts while I await fittings, I do have this Little Red Riding Hood cape to share with you. I'll share more as I finish them.

Our son's family gave DH a remote control plane to him for his birthday. The kids all love going to fly the plane with Grandpa. This was not a good flying day as we had several crashes. Perhaps it was because of the fog!!! Maybe the little remote pilot needed to be flying IFR. Oh wait, I don't think the plane got up that high! There must be another good excuse.

It hasn't felt like autumn here. Our leaves have started to change but the heat has finally hit. We had a high yesterday of 105*. Of course I love the heat so you won't hear me complaining. The humidity was only 5% and that made it the perfect condition for fires. We had one that broke out in our county, but it has not been too bad. The winds are calm and they have it fairly well under control. The media always makes it worse that it is.

My roses always tend to take on more fall colors at this time of the year. The red and peach colored ones make for such a lovely fall bouquet. I picked these this morning and took a big bouquet to my mom's as well as placing some around the house.

Thank You

I want to thank everyone for all the fabulous help that has been given to me as I try to figure out the photo problems that I have been experiencing. I read and re-read each comment and e-mail and I will be attempting other means of uploading my photos. It is amazing how many different ways people can upload photos. I am impressed with all of you. So....thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!!!







So....instead of playing with the computer I have been working in my sewing room on things that I know I can do. One great thing about blogging is that there are so many wonderful avenues to explore. There are swaps, benefits and all else. I have enjoyed participating in several different ones and will continue to do so.







This week I have been working on a couple of fun projects. One is for Amanda Jean who was requesting 12" blocks for quilts to be made for the Quilts of Valor program. The Wonky Stars are done in red, white and blue. If you check out her blog you will be amazed at the number of people who volunteered to make a single block when she was asking for help. Mine is finished and ready to be shipped off. Thanks Amanda Jean for such a great project.


















Another swap out there is from Jane's blog. It is the Disappearing Nine Patch done in red and aqua fabrics. Each person makes twenty five blocks which are then cut into four pieces. Those 100 blocks will be sent to Jane and distributed to all the participants. I have loved doing both the Wonky Stars and the D9P in the past and both of these were fun to do again.

As well, I have been doing some embroidery work for our son's restaurants. I do their embroidery for their caps and work shirts. All are done and ready to be picked up. Guess I could have ironed one of the shirts before photographing it, but you get the picture. They are polo knit shirts so the wrinkles are only temporary.

This is my next project. My DIL found this child's rocker and asked me if I could make a new seat for it so she can fix it all up. It should be a fun project as well. There are so many fun things that could be done with this little chair.

I am surprised that my Plumerias are doing so well with the cool summer that we have had this year. These at one time belonged to my dad who started them from small cuttings. I wish that I knew the names of them, but I don't. They are the flowers with which the Hawaiians make their leis so you can imagine how wonderful the patio smells when they are in bloom. I love this red one.

This is the actual tree with the flowers on it. Isn't it lovely?

This is another one in yellow.

It seems hard to imagine that the first day of autumn is just a week away. Although the temperatures are telling us that is so, it is still hard to believe. Enjoy the last week of summer.

One More Try

Since Blogger has been giving me such fits about where I want my photos to be placed, I am about to give up this activity called blogging. Again, I cannot move my photos around as I wish so the order of this blog is going to be very random. I took the advice of others who have had the same issue and loaded my pictures in first rather than the other way around. Now.....I have to add the story around my photos.

Since the weather has finally decided to become summer, much of my time has been spent enjoying the outside. I've been spending a lot of time in the garden and not a lot of time in the sewing room. I did manage to work on a Christmas quilt with redwork "Days of Christmas" embroidery. I am still not happy with the border so will redo that with something else, but I love the wonky stars. They were so much fun to do and go up so quickly.

Last week we managed to get out of town for a few days and headed up to the High Sierras for a little fishing, hiking and just enjoying ourselves. Coming home, this was the view that could be seen for miles and miles of the big Station fire that has been burning in Los Angeles. We were worried that the road coming home would be closed, but we managed to get through shortly before they closed all the canyon roads down.

We spent our time with our daughter, SIL and their ten month old grandson in Mammoth. One of the days we took the gondola to the top of the mountain, ate lunch and hiked around a bit. It is tough breathing when you are at 11,000 feet plus elevation, but the views were spectacular. Unfortunately, the area was impacted with all the smoke from the fires.

Isn't this an interesting tree? We came across it while hiking and I thought it was strange that it had two completely different types of needles. When we got up close to it we noticed that there was a second tree growing right in front of the larger tree. Too funny!!!

The drive was a little long for a ten month old who had to be restrained in the car seat. Of course we made a lot of stops, but it was cute to see his different expressions. They would fluctuate from this.....

to this.

Apparently all of God's creatures are appreciating the fact that summer has finally arrived to our area. This delightful little fellow was perched atop the Society Garlic bushes and enjoying the sunshine.

This weekend our son and his family will be home to celebrate Labor Day and my husband's birthday with the rest of the family. My husband was actually born on a Labor Day. Guess laboring on Labor Day is the right thing to do.

So life has been good.