Still Here

Yep, I am still around despite the fact that my good intentions to be a better blogger seemed to have flown away as quickly as February.   

The weather has been so nice and that tends to take me outside more than staying inside and stitching.  It has been the calm before the storm as I hear we are in for another big series of storms starting tomorrow.  What is it that they say, "Make hay while the sun shines"???

I managed to finally get my Allietare quilt finished.  I put the binding on and them remembered that it was suppose to have a scalloped edge.  Dang!  I may eventually take the binding off and redo it with the scallops as I love the look of scallops on quilt edgings.  Of course, that means that I will need to redo the binding with a biased binding too. 

Before I do that I need to get Scrap Dance Waltz and En Provence quilted.

As those of you who have followed my blog for awhile, it is the time of the year for the grandchildren's school auction.  That means it is time to get my 18" doll uniform made.  Have I ever told you how much I love sewing doll clothing????  ;-)

See those perfectly matched plaids?  TOTAL accident, but don't you love it when that happens?

As I mentioned, we've had some really nice temperatures lately and my Temperature Quilt is "heating up" nicely. 

I'm part of a couple of bees/swaps this year.  The first is our Gridster Bee.  The block this month was a pineapple block for Sherri.  I really enjoyed this block and can see a pineapple quilt at some point in my future. 

Using the same design I made a little garden flag for Jeanna. 

The second bit of fun was a mug rug swap with a group of gals who have sewn together for several years.  This is the block that I made for my partner's request for a Halloween mug rug. 

Ida made me this darling Valentine's mug rug.  I really like the scrappiness of it.  I love swapping out my mug rugs throughout the year and keep a little quilted box of them on my table.

We went to our eldest son's for their Super Bowl party.  What a game!  Taco Man came again this year.  I am fascinated by how this is done.  It is thinly slicked meat skewered with pineapple.  It is then cooked from the back while rotating.  As it cooks, they continually slice off the cooked part into nice little shreds for the tacos.  Can I tell you that it is delicious?

Several of my orchids have started blooming with lots more to follow.  They must know spring is quickly approaching.

As well, the Christmas cactus is finishing up with its blooming.  They stay outside all year so their bloom depends on the weather each year.  This is a special plant as it is an offspring of one that belonged to my grandmother.  I have started so many new ones from the initial piece she gave me. 

I'll see if I can do a better job of blogging.  No promises!

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.

 

First Monday of Fall

I am enjoying seeing the photos on different blogs of the fall colors starting to appear.  We don't have much in the way of color changes, but the leaves are starting to fall and the lighting is completely different on the hills.   It won't be long before we are talking about Christmas.  I am sure that everyone is ready for it.....right????

My Christmas tree quilt is finished and ready to hang.  I just LOVE the way it turned out.  As I mentioned in my last post,  it is a design by Cherry from Cherry Blossoms Quilting.  I FMQ-ed  ribbons and bows around the tree and feathers along the outer border - a first for both!
 

Halloween will soon be here and I had a couple of costumes to make for some of the little ones here.  I'm sure most everyone has seen Woody in Toy Story and that was the look I was going for.  One vest has the sheriff badge embroidered onto it.  Why just one???  Well, we all know that "there's room for only one sheriff in this town".   I doubt that the two year old will care that there is only one. 

Mhairi's mug rug for our fall swap arrived from Australia this week.  She included some fancy teas and a wonderful Australian magazine.  The mug rug is so cute and has a handy little pocket on the side for keeping a spoon or a napkin in it.  Thank you so much, Mhairi.  I will enjoy it this season. 

I've had the joy of having little ones several days this week as well as older ones spending the night over the weekend.  Life is busy...life is good!!!



Oh no....I don't have to stay with Grandma...do I????

Here's hoping this posts since I am now being forced to use the new interface!!!!

The Peeps Have Arrived

You either love them or hate them.  Right?  I am one of those that love them so my mother each year manages to gift me with Peeps.  Don't ask me how many are gone already!!

It's been another delightfully busy week from this end.  We managed to take a couple of days to visit my brother and SIL who live a few hours north from us.  They are in the Central Coast wine country so we always end up doing a bit of wine tasting while we are there.  It was a delightful day and we were thrilled to sit out and soak up the warm sun.



Greeters at one of the wineries.  So cute!



Check out this make believe bird feeder at one of the wineries.  I really think I could make this a real feeder with a few adjustments. 

We also visited a car/air museum.  They actually had a plane that my husband flew when we were in the Navy.  He had to land this thing on an aircraft carrier!!!  It was a delight to see it restored and looking just like it did when he flew it.  The nickname for it is "the Stoof" (in real aircraft language it is a S-2).

BIL, sister, brother, SIL, DH

We enjoyed three grandsons and one dog for the weekend.  In spite of the rainy Sunday, we got a little kite flying in too.  Rainy day session included many wicked games of Hearts while snacking on popcorn.

I only managed one good day of sewing, but I did accomplish a few projects.  I made an Easter dress which will eventually have a pinafore to go with it and a couple of mug rugs. 

The garden has also been beckoning.  The rain has brought lots of weeds that need to be pulled, but the flowers are really popping right now.



First bloom starting on my cactus that I started from a paddle a few years ago.



Lastly...the winner of the BINGO card was Carmen.  She has received it and I am excited to see how she does with the BINGO game.

BTW...What do you think of the new Blogger interface?  I tried it, but switched back again.  It kept telling me that I could not leave comments and I really did not like how you follow blogs.  I'm sure they will probably make us all switch over soon.  SIGH!

Randomness

Random thoughts and movements - that's all that is happening around here.  I feel like it is a constant game of catch up after a delightful month away from real life.  I am not complaining about it, but it is amazing how long it takes to get back to being "in the groove" of life.  Of course it would help if I didn't have to spend hours on the phone with customer support figuring out printer problems and figuring out why I have had nothing other than a blue screen on the television since we got home.  All is settled now and we are now able to watch more than DVDs!!!  Great news! 

Speaking of DVDs....is everyone out there enjoying Down*ton Abbey?  We are loving it.  Surprisingly, we only heard about it when we visited Ireland.  We have since caught up on Season One.  It is similar to Up*stairs, Downstairs, but a bit more modern.

I am hopelessly behind in my Civil War blocks.  I think I need to make five to catch up.  I am finishing my September Birdie Stitches block and it is almost time for November's to come out.  Sigh!!  But......I have been doing some sewing since returning.  Halloween is approaching and I have finished a couple of costume for the little ones.  This family consists of a flower and a watering can.  The parents will someday have to take the wrath for coming up with this idea.

A couple of mug rugs also made their way into my sewing machine.  I loved the witches undies fabric.

My quiet time stitching has been a cross stitch Christmas stocking.  I started it on our trip and have the backstitching left to do.  I love to see the features come alive with the backstitching. 



 While our British guests were here we did spend a lot of time in the studio.  The guys were golfing so the gals kept busy piecing and quilting.  We managed to complete four quilts (except for hand sewing the binding down), but somehow I only managed to photograph three of them.  We put them all in a Space*Saver bag, sucked all the air out and she managed to carry them on board with her. 

We took four little ones to the pumpkin patch this week.  It is an amazing place on a farm near us.  The children had as much fun as we did.



A pumpkin house!!!


We then picked up lunch and went to the park to eat, play and feed the ducks.  I hope they slept well for their parents afterwards.

This week while watering my pots I noticed two seed pods on my plumeria.  I have raised these for years and have never had even one seed pod.  Needless to say I was thrilled to see it.  This is a plant that was my father's so it is even more special to see it.

They look like little helicopter blades.

I wanted to share a couple of fun pictures from San Diego.  We were on the 25th floor and each morning the fog would roll in.  We loved looking down on it.

The morning we left - looking the opposite direction with the moon shining on the bay.

The last random photo is one I snapped after church last Sunday.  The children were fascinated by this dead snake that was in the parking lot.