About Me

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I'm a quilting, knitting, sewing, cooking,reading, gardening nut who can never find enough hours in the day to get it all done. Then again, getting it all done is out-of-the question. I'm too easily distracted.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Just a quick post

No photos with this one. Head on over to p.s. i quilt for her give away.....it's a fat quarter bundle of Kona Solids..................Hurry up! The drawing is Saturday!!!

Sunday, December 12, 2010

First Big Snow!


My new pic is of my neighbors Santa Pumpkin.
Last year my good friend and neighbor Shawn forgot about her pumpkin on her porch. Winter came, snow piled up, and I joked with her that I was going to sneak over and put some lights on it. I really would have liked to do it, but I just never did.
Well, it's a year later and I got another opportunity, so tonight, when the wind from our fabulous winter storm died down I took the Santa hat Nikki grabbed for me at the dollar store and an old strand of lights and decorated the snow covered pumpkin. Took a quick pic and ran back home (careful not to slip on the icy walk) and then sent my neighbor a text telling her someone was at her door.
She laughed. I laughed.
Is there a (potential) Santa Pumpkin in your life?

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Tim and Sharon's Big Adventure 2...Hallodega Edition

INSERT PHOTO HERE!


You should be looking at a picture....What the heck happened to the frigging picture?Anyway........
It was supposed to be a picture of the balled up, ripped up RV awning.
It's ok to chuckle. Laugh. Gaffaw, if you will.

It's ok.
I did.
It happened like this.

We were driving down I-75 We were near Flatrock, MI . High wind warnings are posted on the electronic billboards. The winds make staying in our lane difficult, if not impossible....but Trucker Tim is at the wheel and everything is under control.

We were making tracks in the fast lane, passing a very long line of slow trucks, when we heard a very loud BANG!
I looked out my window and yelled "Shit Tim! The Awning! YOU HAVE TO GET OVER! THE AWNING IS GONE!
By gone I meant open......unfurled....flapping in the wind and metal supports dragging on the ground.

(As I said before....it's ok to laugh.)

I co-piloted Tim across the 2 right lanes to the shoulder, all the while asking "Are the flashers on? Are the flashers on? The flashers....ARE THEY ON????"

So we make it to the shoulder, alive.....(no images were taken for safety reasons....) I think we both were concerned that we might be taken ou by a passing semi....

We secured the awning with bungee straps and drove slowly along the shoulder to the exit and pulled into a parking lot. Tim decided the canvas was beyond repair and cut it off the frame with
our trusty Ginsu knife.
(Cant locate the pic of this either. Maybe I was in shock and didn't actually take a pic of this!)
He secured the awning frame to the motorhome with the bungee straps, and then deposited our destroyed awning in a dumpster.




It was at that point that I felt overcome with laughter.....(because it really was funny.....in a scary-OMG-It -Could-Have-Been-So-Much-Worse kind of way.

Ps.......shortly after that we had to pull off the road after the winds got so strong that we felt the motor home lift up off the road. WE are now in Bowling Green Ohio....in the Hampton Inn.
There is an old hotel turned flop house (for lack of a better word) across the parking lot and there is someone in the room above us who must weigh 650 pounds....judging from the sound of their foot steps.

Im not sure that we will be going much further with this adventure. Tim is ready to throw in the towel. We'll see if a night's sleep will make for a more optomistic tomorrow.....
























Thursday, October 7, 2010

Nothing Very Creative About This....

The youngest child, who's not all that young anymore, got into an accident last night on her way home from work......

No one was hurt (except her poor Jeep)...It was NOT her fault so she didn't get a ticket, and the other person involved was a good (TALL!) guy who stuck around and waited for the police to show up. He even provided her with tape to hold things together until she could get home.
Now we get to share cars for a couple of weeks until this thing gets fixed. Hopefully our favorite body shop (and we DO have one..) won't be too busy and it will be fixed quickly!

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Fall, 2010


Since my last post, I enjoyed one of the nicest summers I can ever remember---hot and sunny---a perfect sitting-by-the-pool summer and I did plenty of that. I soaked up lots of sun, read a ton of books, enjoyed a week in Traverse City and spent time with good friends. What I didn't do was sew.

Not one stitch.

Now it's fall. The leaves are changing and falling, the air has cooled off, and the local farm stands have replaced sweet corn and berries with pumpkins, cornstalks, mums and squash. It's time again to plant bulbs, bake and make pot roast on Sundays.

And sew.

I kicked off my fall sewing this past week by attending Gwen Marston's retreat in Elk Rapids with my friends Faye and Nancy. We had a great time, and although we ate too much and slept too little we managed to work in alot of sewing time.

The theme for this years retreat was Liberated Quilting--which really appealed to me. I've wanted to attend this retreat and work in a liberated style since I first found Gwen's book Liberated Quilting in the library years ago.....

This is what I put together:



Somehow I don't have a finished pic of what i did....but I think I'll wait and post that when it is totally complete. This pic was taken while I had my work taped onto a window....which explains the glare.
Here are Nancy ad Fayes WIP's: Fayes is the red baskets, Nancy's is the blue and green bags...



Now....I've given you a quick peek at what we did....next time I'll show some other pics of the retreat. For now, I need to get off this computer so I can get stuff done!

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Photos of Home.....

Just sharing some pics of the front yard....Mostly for the benefit of my daughter who is much too far away from home (but very happy being where she is....)
This is the bloom on the hosta by the front walk..........the biggest one I've ever seen on this plant.

I wish I remembered the name of the big hosta....I guess I'll have to do some research to find that out. Its easily 5' across this year. I've been trying for years to dig a piece of this one out, but I've never been successful. It's so darn big and the roots are so dense I can't cut through them.


The iris's are beginning to bloom. The rhododendrons are half way through their bloom---they are not as vivid in color this year as in years past. I think it's time for some fertilizer!
So there you go D. I would have had more to share, but your sister went to the freezer for a treat and found that the darn thing had defrosted. Had to pack up the contents and take them to Dad's work....now I'm off to clean it up.




Sunday, April 25, 2010

Good Morning from Talladega! Here's another quilt to view....






I don't have race pics yet. It's early and the sun is shining so everyone is up an at 'em, even if there isn't anything to do until a little later this morning.
(I'm Thrilled to see the sunshine!)
Anyway, I wanted to share a quilt from Paducah that I thought was interesting.
I was taken by the qilting....and I felt like I wanted to meet this quilter (if only for a minute) so I would know who had made it and what her inspiration was.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Tough to post today...

We are in Talladega right now. We had about 12 hours of heavy rains, with tornado warnings and watches all that time.
We were fortunate that we only had rain and wind.....we are safe along with the thousands of other that are here camping out.
Dissapointed that the race activities all had to be cancelled, but both races will be run tomorrow, weather permitting, so we will still have lots of fun.

Important Life Lessons....Part 1

This is the most important gauge on the motor home. It's more important than the gas gauge, more important than the oil light, and even more important than steam shooting out of your radiator.
This gauge tells you if your holding tanks are full.
(For those of you who are not aware of what a holding tank is, it's where the grey and black water are stored. To be more specific (and perhaps a bit more graphic) 4 lights lit would tell you that the shi**ers full.
I'll give you a moment to digest that information.


Now, when this occurs you should make plans to empty your tanks. You will know that you should do this when you see 3 of those 4 lights lit....You should not wait till you are ankle deep in water in your tiny little shower, with shampoo in your hair (and eyes) and no one around to hear you scream.
Fortunately for me, Tim heard me scream. He said "Oops".
It's sweet words like that, said by him, that that caused me to marry him. Really.

So Tim got ready. He put on his very expensive Clark's Driving Mocs and headed out to the side of the rv and got out the hose............
And discovered that the hose was too short.
Now...this is the point where, if you saw the Robin Williams movie RV...you know that you should start laughing.
Our very helpful neighbor who I called Wisconsin (cuz that's where he's from) came over immediately and saw that Tim had a problem and jumped right in to help.....Wisconsin is on the right....Tim is on the left.


Fortunatley for us, Wisconsin had an extra length of hose....and a COUPLER.
I thought that they had a hose spreader but I later found out that they had a simple screwdriver that they used to help slide the second length of hose onto the coupler (again...if you saw the movie you should also laugh here....

To Be Continued.....


Important Life Lessons...Part 2











So after lots of fiddeling, stretching, and more fiddling, and a little more stretching, the coupler was firmly attatched to the hose, the hose was fitted into the appropriate emptying place, and Tim flipped the lever to allow the grey and black water to exit the RV. I did my part by running water to help clean out the system, (and of course take pictures and laugh ALOT)
And after the valiant team effort of Tim, Wisconsin, and I, Tim was able to re-enter the rv to changed his clothes, laugh some more with me at the hilarity of the situation (and the similarity of our RV trips to that in the movie RV...).




Job well-done, Tim Grieser. You are The Master Of Your Domain!



Thursday, April 22, 2010

World War 2 Quilts at the Paducah Rotary




And here you go chicks..........some more "Style"!








A few more quilts.................

Aren't these gorgeous?





Having a wonderful time.....Wish you were here!



Fashion Matters...............

These chicks have it going on. They've got style and they arent afraid to show it.






Yep........I love the Hawaiian Whole Cloth Quilts.........


I'll share more later.........We might head back to the show for a bit this morning...and then go to the local quilt show before we return our rental car and head back to the RV for the day.
There is a local racetrack that has a pretty big race tonight...so we might ck that out....and then we'll pack up, say goodbye to our new friends, and hit the road for Talladega!



More quilts!

Hexigons! Thousands of tiny hexigons!









We went to the museum the first day here. Not very big....not that many quilts (well, not as many as I was hoping to see.) Hollis Chateline (sp?) was there, speaking about her quits, and there was an exhibit of Sunflower quilts. Those were very nice. They made me want to go home and sew. The Beatles Quilt was there...and it was very cool to see that , indeed, all of the lyrics of all of the songs are written on the back of the quilt. Very Cool.




Wednesday, April 21, 2010

The Quilt Show

Yep. That's me. Posing in front of the goofy backdrop. I had a normal smile on my face until Tim said "Are you ready?" and then began a countdown. By then the smile had deteriorated and I was speaking through gritted teeth. Well, this is how I look when I'm almost mad enough to march forward and snatch the camera out of Tim's hands. My kids know this look. They saw it last Christmas when we were trying to take pics in front of the tree.
Loved this quilt....I think it's one of the few that were NOT made by a Japanese quilter (boy, there were LOTS of those at the show)

I saw the dots and thought of you first, Nancy. And then I thought of you, Faye (because of your current bom). Isn't this neat?


Here's a quit by one of my faves, Karen Stone. I sure wish that the colors were true in this pic...the quilt was really beautiful.
I can only load 5 pics at a time or my computer refuses to cooperate, so I guess you'll just have to wait for some more.
TTYL!




A Little Place We Like To Call Home

Yep. We are proud (temporary) residents of the Duck Creek RV Park.
This is our spacious camp spot. Shortly after this photo was taken we put the slide out about 6" out.....and rolled out the awning. Put down our rug (to accentuate the gravel) and unfolded our chairs.

This is Tim....seated in one of the gazebo's at the front of the park. Note the faux palm trees.


From this angle you can see some of the many, many potted plants.........real and otherwise.
Behind the main building is a laundry and a pool with a bath house. Haven't yet made use of either of those amenities yet, although this afternoon, after the quilt show, I did get a massage next to the pool. It was fabulous!