Happy Birthday, Mom

Ninety years ago today a nearly ten pound baby girl was born to a tiny little woman - in a farmhouse in Iowa.  Happy birthday, Mom.  She has been an amazing inspiration for all of us as she lives a full and happy life.   Never complaining about becoming a paraplegic seventeen years ago, she continues to celebrate her life with her family and friends.  She is a beautiful woman, inside and out.  Sunday we celebrated with a family dinner. 

Such a beautiful smile as she enters her 91st year!!

Cotton dishtowels are something she has been wanting lately.  I found some terrific towels at http://www.acshomeandwork.com/flour-sack-towels.html.  These are the softest towels and we all know how great they are for drying dishes.  There is nothing like them.  I remember as a child learning to hand embroidery on this kind of towel.  It was also our first experience in ironing!!  Anyway, I ordered some flour sack towels - very reasonable, too - and they included a few extra in my order.  I decided a giveaway was in order.  Just leave a comment and if you are also a follower, leave a second comment to be entered.   I'll draw a winner next Tuesday evening (March 5th).

This is what I did with them.

The designs are from www.designsbyjuju.com .  They have some of my favorite redwork machine embroidery designs as they always stitch out so beautifully.  The best part is that their design SETS are on sale through February for only $5.  You could easily pay that for each design.  Be sure not to miss that offer. 

Her birthday card.......

Our warm weather has finally arrived and I am loving it.  It's time to head out to the garden and play with a little dirt before my sister and I take my mom out to lunch.

Snow and More Snow





We've been away again enjoying our family with our annual trip to the snow.  I am sure that snow is probably the last thing many of you would want to hear about right now, but we always enjoy the trip.  I guess one can do that if you do not have to live in it.  There was a lot of snow this year which made for some excellent sledding for the children.  Of course they got a really big storm up there on Tuesday.  One of these years we may get snowed in up there.

 

 





I can never get enough of this view.

 

The adults had a little island to sit on while watching all of the children sledding.

WHAT is it????  First feel of snow.

Loving the ride.



Two man downhill.

 

The old folks.

#1 son and wife

#2 son and wife

#3 son and wife

Daughter and family

 

#4 son's wife had to miss the trip as she was down with a head cold so he would not pose for a picture by himself.  ;-(

 

A Hint of Spring

 

Although our temperatures have been unseasonably cool with some freezing nights, I can start to see that spring is coming to the yard. 

Busy bees!!!

Peach tree in bloom

Pear trees in full bloom too

The kids were all over this weekend helping to reduce the abundant supply of citrus that is currently ripe in the orchard.  Thank heavens for the help!  At the moment we are loaded with tangerines, Meyer lemons, naval and Blood oranges as well as grapefruit. 

Tangerines



Blood oranges

Lemons

I even put up some preserved lemons this year.  I recently attended a cooking class and they used the preserved lemons in a salmon dish.  It was heavenly!  They will be ready to use in a month.

Those of you who follow my blog know that spring is also the time when I make a doll's uniform for the grandchildren's school auction.  That was my project for the weekend. 

I also finished up the last of the stars for my Starburst QAL.  Now to assemble it!

Saturday I received a wonderful box of fabrics in the mail from Jacquelynne Steves of The Noble Wife.  She is a new sponsor to my blog and her fabrics are beautiful and fun.  I am really looking forward to playing with them over the next few weeks.  Oh....the ideas I have for this line are numerous!!  The line is called "Happy Town" and it certainly lives up to it's name.  As I said in my last post, the royalties from the fabric sales are donated to Quilts for Kids - such a great cause.  Be sure to check out my sidebar for a link to the contest using the fabrics. 

We enjoyed celebrating another birthday in the family over the weekend.  Why do they grow up so quickly?  The years are just flying these days.

Cousin love

I had to waste time this morning canceling my credit card.  Someone decided to use my numbers to book tickets on Exped*ia and Or*bitz.  Grrrrr.  Need I say more?

A Walk in the Dark

DH always takes an early morning walk - before light.  You can imagine his shock when this came bounding out of the bushes to greet him this morning.  Remember our dog was killed by a mountain lion in our yard not so long ago and we've had many coyotes in our yard as well.   One never trusts animals coming out of the dark.

It followed him for the entire walk and back to our house.  SIGH!!!  We have placed "lost dog" signs throughout the neighborhood and that someone will call SOON.

We had a delightful five days at our annual business trip in Florida.  The weather was the best that we have ever experienced there.  Some of the sights we enjoyed.....

View from our room.

Ooooh!!!  The flowers!!!!

I know that I showed this last year too, but it still fascinates me.

As you can see, it continues across the entire front of the house.

There is a wonderful pond that I always thought was a lily pond, but after seeing Vicki's beautiful quilt in the making, I am thinking that it might be lotus flowers.  Am I right, Vicki?

Our dear friends departed in style for Maine as we dreaded the long lines of security and a cattle car plane trip home.

Have you heard about the wonderful contest with the projects going to a terrific cause?  Please check it out at http://www.henryglassfabrics.com/media/fabrics/projects/HappyTown_join_form.pdf .

The fabrics being used are Henry Glass fabrics designed by Jacquelynne Steves and the winning quilts will be displayed at International Quilt Market in Portland.  All submitted quilts will be donated to the Quilts for Kids charity and distributed to hospitals throughout the U.S. As well,  all royalties from the fabric sales of the Happy Town line will be donated to the charity.  Hurry though as the deadline is April 15th.

 
I took more scarf making material with me for the long flights and managed to get MORE scarves finished.  I think I have filled all the granddaughter's wishes now.

The orange is great.

Another block is finished for our Starburst QAL.  I really like the yellows in this one.

I'm trying to sort out my goals for this month.  I really need to hand sew the binding on this very large quilt and I would like to quilt my Halloween Schnibble that I made a few years ago.  It's a busy month with our family snow trip coming up, two sets of houseguests arriving and my mom's upcoming birthday party.  Wish me luck!  I'm linking up with a Lovely Year of Finishes.

Busy Days

It's been a busy week and I think I am still playing a bit of catch-up since being away.  I managed to catch up on the Starburst Quilt Along.  I was way behind on that, but selected my fat quarters and got the first few steps done.  My fabric diet has gone really well this month as I continue to pull from the stash.  This week we were to do our flying geese.  Being that far along, I stitched out my first star.  These are big stars at 24" so they will make a nice finish.

We've also celebrated a couple of birthdays.....



Did you notice the Christmas bag???  Oh well...it is still January...right?

Other than a few days of watching little ones, dermatology appointments, haircut, laundry, cleaning and an author's luncheon, it has been a normal running week. 

Did you notice the full moon this week?  I tried to capture it as it was popping up between the trees last night.  It, along with the sunrises and sunsets have been stunning this week.

Seeing Old Friends

Did you ever work on a QAL and stash the completed blocks safely away only to become reacquainted with them a year later?   It’s like meeting old friends again.  This week I finished blocks #96-100 of the Just Takes Two QAL and I met my old blocks all over again.  I remembered working on them throughout the year – hand appliquing some as I sat on the beaches in Hawaii and slaving over other new techniques.  What a fun year it was and here is the end result.



I really did not think I would finish the top, but once I got going I couldn’t stop myself.  I am linking this finish up with A Lovely Year of Finishes – one down and eleven months to go!!!

Blocks # 96-100

I took a couple of projects along with me on our vacation.  It was lovely to have something to keep my hands busy.  My granddaughters have loved the lacy scarves that I have been knitting and they are snatched up as quickly as they are made.  These were all claimed immediately upon returning home.

My cross stitch stocking also made so great progress.  I love to see it change along the way.

Before

Now

There have been a lot of Churn Dash blocks on blogs lately.  Thearica has a Churn Dash linky and although I did not make this unique Churn Dash quilt, I promised her that I would post it.  It is a vintage quilt that is not particularly well made, but I love all of the scraps used in it.  This was done before all of our fancy tools, rotary cutters and beautiful scraps.  I am sure it was a utility quilt made from scraps. 



Be sure to check out the beautiful red, black and white blocks that you can find at Pigtales and Quilts and see her Churn Dash Sew Along..
I had several fun packages arrive while we were gone.  One was from Mary at Quilt Hollow.  She is downsizing in getting ready for a move and was looking forward to getting rid of some of her scraps.  You have never seen such a full box of all sorts of fabulous goodies.  I told her she can come pack for me anytime!!!  There are many wonderful bits, blocks, hsts and all else.  Why is it someone else’s scraps are always more interesting that your own?



Another great package came from Maria.  We belong to a mug rug swap and she was my partner this month.  Look at her beautiful mug rug she sent me.  I love the darling hearts that she embroidered on it and the fun little extras that she included.




This was the mug rug that I made for Maria.



Our warm weather has switched to rains overnight which are very welcomed here.  The weekend will be busy so there will be no sitting around and enjoying the good rain.  I hope those of you in the bitter cold will get your warming trend.  Spring is just around the corner.....right????