August Goals

I'm a tad late in getting my August goals set.  It's not that I don't have a million items that I could list for the month, but the time is going to be short for sewing.  I need to keep my goals realistic if I want to have a finish.  So.....I have decided to finish up my Easy Street from last winter's QAL.  I loved the project and I really can't wait to finish it up.   I am linking up to A Lovely Year Of Finishes.

With August already in full swing I am noticing the trend towards fall.  I am seeing a definite change in the daylight hours and we have had a hint of fall in the air.  Some of the trees are actually changing their colors already.  How quickly the summer has slipped past!

I saw a quick and easy table runner in one of the quilting magazines and thought it would make a nice gift for a friend whom I am going to visit.  I may have to make one for myself too.

My Kindle died a quick death this past week - in the middle of a good book.  You can actually trade your dead ones in for a discount on a new one.  Who knew????  The problem is that the new one is much smaller than my old one so it did not fit into my handy case.  To protect the new one, I made a padded case to store it in when I am through reading.  It works great.

We had a fun weekend attending a Diana Ross concert at the Hollywood Bowl with some friends.  The concert was wonderful and she still has an amazing voice. 

Yesterday I was able to attend our granddaughter's dressage lesson.   I think if she ran away from home she would go live at the stable.  She just loves the horses. 

The Crash

The better part of the week has been spent in a slump.  You see....my computer died ;-(  I still have the old desktop, but everything is so slow going on it and the laptop is where I have my computer programs.  I had been trying to learn to use my embroidery software more efficiently and I think my fried brain burned up the machine!!

It just makes for more sewing time....that's the good side.  Right???? 

There are lots of little ones starting to loose their teeth around here so Tooth Fairy pillows were needed.  I actually made four, but forgot to take pictures of the blue and green one before sending them to their new owners. 

Pockets on the back for the teeth and what the good fairy leaves in exchange.

I FINALLY finished piecing my Easy Street.  I love this quilt and it is huge.  I laid it out on the grass, but the wind kept blowing up the edges.  It ended up at 94" square.   I know it looks like a rectangle in the photo, but it is square.

There are so many fun quilt-alongs happening right now and it is hard to avoid joining in on them.  I started working on the String of Pearls and have my steps 1 through 3 completed.  This one should go up quickly.

Since a lot of time is spent in the garden these days, I thought I would share some of the flowers with you.

My gardenias are blooming prolifically right now so I love to bring them into the house.  They fill the room with the most delightful fragrance. 

The hibiscus are also pretty right now.  As you can see, they grow well in our climate.

My favorite bush.

My job this week is canning the apricots.  They are at the point of needing to be picked before the birds beat me to them.  A day in the house and they will be ready to go.

Have you ever enjoyed a "donut peach"?  Ours are also just getting ripe.  These are flat little things (thus the name "donut") and they are white in color on the inside.  Their flavor is amazing!

Lastly....our baby quail have grown up and are now as big as their parents.  We just love listening to them and having them come to the feeders. 

Have you been enjoying the Super Moon this weekend?  It is really pretty.  Makes me want to put on the old record album of  Henry Mancini - Concert for Young Lovers.   I think I'll go see if I still have it! 

Have a great week and I will be back visiting when my computer gets sorted out.

Enjoying Easy Street

Blogger is not playing nicely so I did my post on Live Writer and cannot enlarge the pictures from here.  Sorry!

The new year brought out the final steps in assembling our Easy Street blocks that we have been working on since Thanksgiving.   I really love the way that this has come together and I am enjoying the colors as well - so bright and happy.

The best part of Easy Street is that it was completely made with fabrics already in my stash. I have decided that this is going to be a scrap busting year for me. I have so many groupings of fabrics with ideas in mind and I am going to try to plow through some of them. So far I am off to a good start.

I had a floral fabric in my collection that I pulled out and added to some paper foundation flowers that I had made some time ago. Magic....I now have four placemats that I will be giving to a friend whom we are going to visit soon. I'm not sure how long I have had the fabric, but the selvage has a date of 2007 on it.

The last few days have been spent pruning my roses - over 100 of them!!! It always feels so good to finish that job and look forward to the new growth which should start soon now.  A little A*leve afterwards is a big help too.

Each year Beth has a Neighborhood Block party and this was my house contribution to the neighborhood.  Each of the houses are so cute and looked fabulous together.

The Christmas tree also came down today and the last of the red and green has been removed until next December. It seems as though I always manage to find one or two little items that I forgot. Does anybody else do that?


New Year's Eve was quiet for us. We stayed up long enough to know that midnight had happened - in New York!!! Our daughter and her children came over for dinner since her husband had to work. We had a nice dinner and I made cream puffs for dessert.

Yum!

Guess there is one way to eat them....just go for it!!

Another bit of sewing was my mug rug for my January/February partner. I can't show the piece yet, but I played around a bit with the scraps and made a small mug rug from them. The little HSTs finish off at 3/4"....tiny, but fun.

I am going to be linking up with A Year of Finishes.  Click on the link and you can see what it is all about.  My goal for this month is going to be to finish up the blocks for my Just Takes 2 quilt.  I hope to be able to "finish it up" by the end of January.



So....January is off to a productive year so far and I haven't bought any fabric yet. I think I may keep a record of how long this lasts.

Sharing Christmas

Christmas came so quickly and now is stored into our memories.  It is hard to believe that we are closing out on 2012 and getting ready to ring in the new year.

I managed to finish up my projects before they needed to be unwrapped.  Isn't that always a great feeling? 

This was such a fun and fast knitted project that I made three of them.

A closer look at the yarn - so lacy and pretty.

We had such a wonderful Christmas at our house.  The anticipation (and noise level) peaked early in the evening with all of the children here.  Our home is definitely NOT the place to be if you like a quiet Christmas. 

Wall to wall bodies!

Hmm...Your head feels as bald as mine!!!

Why do little girls always want to dress up little boys?

Baby Frosty.

  It's nice to have little believers here on Christmas morning.

One tradition we do each year is to drive through the neighborhood and look at all of the lights with the little ones.  I let them use my "special" glasses this year and they were thrilled to see the snowmen and wreaths when they looked at the lights.

Our house guests left yesterday morning and then it was a nose to the grindstone cleaning, laundry and sorting out day.  Today was errands and, hopefully, a little time reacquainting myself with my sewing machine.  I am looking forward to it.

I've have several lovely packages arrive in the mail in the last few days.   The first to arrive was this fabulous messenger bag from a Blog Hop win from Polly at Polly's Porch.  I love the size of this and the fabrics are wonderful.  Her work on it is so well done.   Thanks so much, Polly.  I will get a lot of use out of it.  Polly also has a wonderful tutorial featured today at Moda Bake Shop.

Another Blog Hop win was from Frieda from Walks in the Woods - Art Quilts.  Her work is AMAZING and I was thrilled to have won a few of her patterns, some hand dyed fabrics and threads.  I am looking forward to trying the heavenly looking Peace quilt.  If you have not visited her blog before I recommend you checking out her eye candy.

Today the mailman stopped and left me some terrific Gutermann threads from Debuko - all the way from Poland - at Quilts My Way.  These are terrific neutral colors and I KNOW they will be put to great use.

I am hoping to keep up with my Easy Street Mystery quilt now that I have a bit more time.  These are the blocks for this week - turquoise with purple.  I can hardly wait to start on the lime greens.  While I am trying to keep up with one Easy Street, Connie at FreeMotion By the River is doing two, one in orange, red and yellows.  It looks gorgeous too.

All in all, it has been a wonderfully busy week around our house to finish off a good 2012.  I wish for a healthy and blessed 2013 to all of you.

 

The Stockings Were Hung

Of course not being a blogger when I started making Christmas stockings for the grandchildren, I did not photograph them as I completed them.  WHY would I have done such a thing???  The other day when we were at one of our son's homes I decided to photograph some of the stockings that I have made in my pre-blogging years.  I will try to photograph some of the others this year as we visit the homes over Christmas.

I am linking these stockings up with Pat at Quilting Lines.  Please check it out and add any of your stockings as well.  It is always fun to see what others have created.

Again, the week has been a busy one.  We were home for dinner just one night.  At this rate I will forget how to cook!!  It has been so much fun to celebrate the season with family events. 

The newest little one was baptized over the weekend.  It is always a joyous occasion.

I love the look on her face in this one.

We were thrilled to go visit with Santa this week.  He was pretty harmless when he came out of his little house to sing Christmas carols with us, but it was a different story when we entered his house and sat on his lap.  This was an amazing Santa, if I do say so myself.  He knew the REAL meaning of CHRISTmas.  Even his hair and beard were the real thing!

I've had a couple of really fun wins lately.  I received some lovely Christmas fabrics from Peach Patch Quilts.  These will be such fun to use in future projects.  After seeing some of the cute patchwork stockings, I am thinking that these might come in very handy.

As well, look at this adorable little hedgehog and mini quilt that I received from Susan.  Is this not the cutest little guy ever with his little scarf?   I just love it and was so thrilled to have been chosen as her winner.  Thanks so much, Susan.  I don't know how many of you follow her, but she does such beautiful work and I have followed her almost since I started blogging. 

This week I have been working on some Christmas gifts in my sewing room.  I really can't show them yet, but it has been fun to slip away into the studio and forget the messiness of the house.  I also had a bit of time to work on Easy Street.  The best part was the cutting of the lime green squares.  Since lime green is one of my all time favorite colors, I have a TON of fabrics in that color.  I could have probably cut 145 squares and not have one match!!!!!  I am ready for step five on Friday.

Since I doubt that I will be blogging in the next week as we will be having houseguests for Christmas, I would like to wish all of you a wonderful and joyous Christmas.