A Post-Blizzard Post

Well Chicks, it looks like the BIG BLIZZARD turned out to be a BIG BUST....so I'm not going to bother showing any pics of my ruler in the snow or of the drifts and piles of snow. We had quite a bit but it certainly didn't break any records and I dont thing it merited the cancellation of school, but whatever....
Maybe what I should show you is my over-stuffed refrigerator? I let all the television news hype get me worked up and I actually went to 3 stores and stocked up on everything. Why? I dont know. I have no little children who will suffer if the milk runs out.
I did decide I better bake something, at the very least, since I purchased 2 different kinds of flour, so I made a small batch of peanut butter cookies (because I also bought peanut butter.....)

The week before the storm I spent several days out at the farm, sewing and watching the bird feeder.

This guy kept showing up at the feeder. Watching him run thru the yard was very comical....like something from a cartoon. Its been a very long time since Ive seen any pheasants this up-close....so it was fun to watch him.

I worked on a kit I bought at The Ice House in Grayling in 2005

(I think) when I went up to a Karen Stone class with The Chicks. I dont know why I waited so long to put it together, because it went together so fast (because it was so simple). Not sure where I'm going with it from here. I'll add a border or two to make it a little larger....use up some scraps on the back and maybe quilt it myself since it's not that large.

Thats it for now. I'm sitting in a nice sunny window, getting ready to work on my applique and sip my nice hot cup of tea.

Have a Great Day!

I Have Something To Share With You!

Ive been working on this all day...(not that I got it all this done in one day)

Hanging out here at the farm I find that I can devote alot of time to my projects without the distractions of home....so Ive been hard at work sewing away all day and having a good time doing it. I have a little dvd player going in the sewing room, and so far today I've watched The Hangover and Finding Nemo. I guess I have eclectic movie-viewing taste.

Anyway....here's what I have accomplished so far.
(DAMN BLOGGER WONT LET ME UPLOAD THE PICTURE. OMG! )



The pattern is from Small Favorites for All Seasons by Barb Adams and Alma Allen. Ive wanted to make this quilt for a couple of years now, so now I'm working onit exclusively.

I never have time to do a Christmas quilt before Christmas.....but after, when it's all cold and snowy (which it most certainly is here...) is a great time to work on one.



So that's it. Gotta get back to the sewing. Lots left to do......

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!!!

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?

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.....

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!

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!