Road Trip Part 2

Our final destination in our road trip was San Diego

to visit with my parents.

They have been "competing" in the "Great Tomato Race".

Mom is growing her cherry tomatoes in a traditional pot,

while dad is using a Topsy Turvy planter that I got him for Father's day.

They both have tomotoes, but dad's is having

some sort of problem with his. It'll be interesting to see how this goes as time goes on!

One of my absolute favorite places to eat in the San Diego area

is the Chicken Pie Shop located in North Park.

They serve up the most delicious chicken pot pie dinner

with mashed potatoes, gravy, cole slaw, veggie,

dinner roll and pie.

All for the ridiculously low price of about $5.50.

However, when the restaurant opened the price for the

dinner was $.45

Here I am enjoying this amazing dinner!

Mom and Dad have 2 kitties. This is Patch

And this is Pumpkin!

I also delivered one of the Camp Reach for the Sky quilts

to Rosies Calico Cupboard while in San Diego.

And when you are at Rosie's you have to

stop in at

The Quilted Rose

right next door.

On Saturday we spent some time down

near Mission Beach having breakfast there

and then driving over to LaJolla Coves.

It was really hard to come back to 100+ temperatures here in Phoenix!

Spring Blooms Mini Quilt swap update!

I'm nearly finished with my little quiltlet for the

Spring Blooms quilt swap.

Machine embroidery was done yesterday as well as the

machine quilting.

The person that I am sending this to requested a primitive style using no bright or light colors.

I hope that I have fulfilled her wishes.

This was a stretch for me as I really like to work with brights and batik fabrics.

All I need to do now is to hand sew a button, binding and label and I'll be all finished.

The techniques used on this pieced and appliqued quilt are hand embroidery, machine embroidery, yo-yo flowers, mock trapunto and longarm quilting.

Another project that I am working on is one I found in the most recent issue of Quick Quilts. There were quite a few fun projects in this issue including this one for quick placemats.

The placemats were two different styles.

I made the one that is pictured in the back.

You had to go on the website to get the pattern for

this placemat, but they also gave directions for napkins

and napkin rings.

Here is the link to the site:

http://www.quiltmag.com/sewing-projects/quick-quilts102-placemat-variation-napkins-napkin-rings/

My placemats in progress:

I grew up in a little town in Ohio called The Plains. At one time we had this enormous garden where mom and dad grew all kinds of veggies. Unfortunatly I didn't really like many vegetables back then. I keep hearing about how tasty a REAL tomato tastes. Not like those store bought ones! As I posted several months ago, my daughter and son-in-law bought me one of those Topsy Turvy tomato planters. I didn't have much luck..the tomato plant died within weeks. I started thinking about what I had done wrong and I think it was that I used regular ole dirt in the planter. The dirt packed in there so hard that they poor ole roots didn't even have a chance to grow! So I am trying again...this time I used Miracle Grow Moisture control potting soil.

Wish me luck, I'd sure like to have some tasty homegrown tomatos!

It may take a miracle!

The Great Tomato Race

I spent last week in San Diego visiting with my parents. The weather was beautiful and just perfect for planting flowers and such. The above are pictures of mom and dad with thier tomato plants. One planted in a pot....(to be moved to a bigger pot soon) and another planted in the Topsy Turvy Tomato planter. I named it the "Great Tomato Race". I'm anxious to see which tomato plant does better. Altho it is NOT a controlled experiment.......they both have different varieties of tomato plants............

Dad has a Boxcar Willy heirloom variety (named after Willy Nelson) and mom has a grape tomato plant. It'll still be fun to see what effect the growing method has on the tomato plant.

Hopefully they will send me pictures!

While in San Diego I read an article in the local paper about a man who decided to "help" in these hard economic times by growing his own tomatoes. He produced 17 tomatoes during the growing season, but spent the equivilant of $64 PER TOMATO on soil, soil amendments, fertilizer, etc. YIKES! Let's hope that is NOT the case with mom and dad's tomatos!