Happy Anniversary!

Today is Mike and I's 29th wedding anniversary!

I don't think we are going to be doing anything special

besides perhaps going out for a nice dinner later on tonight.

We have SOOOOOOOOOOOOOooo many projects to work on at the house,

so I think that most of the day will be spent working on

taming some of the chaos within these walls!

I spent the morning doing a little embroidery on my new sewing machine

AND finishing up a project that I started over a year ago!

As you can see in the pictures below I made a label for the engagement quilt

that I made for Jenny and Rafael.

Since they are getting married in under 80 days now

I figured that I really should finish up the Engagement quilt!

As you can also see in the picture I have a one dollar bill with the label. This is an old custom. Early quilters used to sew a coin into the corner of thier quilts.

It was thought that this would bring wealth to the person who received the quilt.

Or........that they would never be broke since the coin was sewn into the layers of the quilt.

Usually I would sew a coin into the layers,

but I forgot until my daughter

reminded me about this.

I had sewn a coin from the year 2000 into my Millenium quilt

but unfortunately the coin was fairly heavy and it made a hole

in the fabric of the back of the quilt and worked its way out.

So this time I decided to sew a dollar bill under the label.

Hopefully I'll have better luck with that!

I did a little research online this morning and could not find any written evidence of this custom. However I did find a really neat Quilt History site. This site is chocked full of articles about the rich custom and folklore of quilting. Check it out here:

http://www.quilthistory.com/articles.htm

MadHatter 4 Life!

A few years ago.........actually QUITE a few years ago my husband coached a girls soccer team called the MadHatters. They were together for several years and formed a really special bond. They were a pretty good soccer team, won alot of games and such, but what they were really good at was socializing. Mike organized training hikes to be followed by a stop by Zuka juice. We had Soccer olympics at the beginning of the season and always a pot-luck picnic with the parents at the beginning and end of the season. We did a camping trip with some of the hatters and parents. We also hiked and camped down near Havasupi Falls. We had bonfires. There was always a Christmas break sleep-over.





Why am I writing about this? Well, when you form that close of a bond with people, even tho they are not part of your daily life anymore, you still wonder about them........what they are doing and such. So my friend Kathy and I started talking about having a MadHatters reunion.


It took place last night at one of my favorite places..........Caramba's!
Wow! was it ever GREAT seeing the girls all grown up!

Here are some of the pictures from the evening:

Seven of the Hatters attended

Nicole, Jennifer, Lacey, Kim

Amberle, Vanessa, Jenny

One is married, one has a baby, one has just started the nursing program, one is a second grade teacher, one is a biology major with a job at AZ game & fish, one just got back from South Africa helping the poor, and one is engaged!

It was really great to see them and learn about the wonderful adults they have become!

This picture includes the Hatters plus MIke, the coach and Paul and 3 of the brothers who were a big part of the team!

The parents were an awfully big part of the success of this team.

We're Back!

I have not posted for awhile because my family and I spent the last week at a condo in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Mammoth Lakes, California. It was a beautiful week filled with cool breezes, hiking, biking, music, food and wine. My mother and father from San Diego drove up and my brother and his family drove down from Oregon. My daughter and fiance drove over from Arizona. So we had a little family reunion. (We did miss my son and his wife and my other brother!)



Here is a picture of all of us together.
Back row: Tammy, Muriel, Rafael, John, Brent
Front row: Mike, Jenny (and Betsy), Lisa & John

This is Mike and I on a hike with the beautiful lake in the background.
Do you see that I am wearing a COAT! Wouldn't be doing that in Phoenix!

Another shot of a lake. There were several in the area. I think this one is Twin Lakes. I love how the sun is shining thru the trees in this picture.

Here we are on Horseshoe Lake. We rented a boat and went rowing around.

The property where we stayed had this sign in the garage. We didn't think too much of it until one morning we found trash strewn across the lawn in front and a big ole pile of bear droppings. After that we all really wanted to see a bear! (from the safety of the condo of course!) Alas, we never did see a bear.....except the ones pictured below!

This next picture is of a door mat in front of one of the lodges. I thought that it would make a perfect quilt pattern so I took a picture of it! Now I need to find the perfect quilt to put it on!

Round Robin

Hola! Way back in February some of my quilting buddies and I started a Round Robin wallhanging. I've never participated in this type of round robin so I was very excited to be in this group. Below you will see a picture of the center blocks that each one of us started with. Mine is the one on the bottom left.

The way the round robin works is that each person makes their center block and then the block is passed to the next person on the list. That person has to create a border following a set of guidelines. (We happen to be using the guidelines set out in the "Quilter's Home" magazine)

The first round we had to create a 3" border using triangles. The next border was to set the whole thing on point and add an applique design. The third border was a 4" one with rectangles. I am just putting the finishing touches on the 3 border of the top right hand block. How I wish I could post a picture, but alas............we have one more pass before each quilt is revealed to its owner. That is one of the rules...........you can't see your own quilt and how it is turning out until the end, which will be in 2 more months. I am getting really excited to see my quilt and see what the others have added! I know that it will be fabulous, because I have some really talented friends!

This is a picture of a quilt that I finished quilting this week. The quilt had a really strong graphic look to it and the maker told me that it MIGHT be a gift for a man, so I decided to quilt it with randomly sized and placed circles.

Here is a close-up shot:

Our dear son Brian got married and moved out about a year and almost a half ago. I called him several months ago to ask him how that marriage was going and if he was thinking of coming home. (Okay, I KNEW the answer.....they are just as happy as can be) The REAL purpose of my call was to kind of let him know that we were turning his old room into a den complete with a couch, bookshelves and of course the computer desk!

About a week ago I wrote about how I am touching up the paint around all of the windows in my house since my husband replaced them. Well, here is a funny story to go with that. We bought a couch with a pull-out bed to go in the "new" den. It was going to be arriving in the afternoon, so I took the opportunity to do some really detailed touch-up painting around this window. When the couch arrives the delivery men kinda shrugged thier shoulders and told us that the couch was NOT going to fit up the stairs. To give them credit, they did try a couple of times, but basically we were on our own. My husband took the railings off the stairs, he took out the light and the smoke detector at the top of the stairs. He even went as far to take the door off the closet at the top of the stairs...............Dang couch still would not fit. He took the couch apart as much as he could........still to no avail.

The couch is in the den now and it looks really lovely, but do know how we got it in there? No, it was NOT up the stairs...........Mike took out the second story WINDOW ( you know, the one I had just puttied and painted) and I mean the WHOLE window frame and all. Then they stood on the back of a pick-up truck on TOP of one of those foldy-type ladders and LIFTED that couch up and thru the window! Now WHY didn't I get a picture of that? Here's the new couch: (and the window it came thru....reputtied and repainted! AGAIN!)

Mamma Mia

Last night I went to see Mamma Mia with people who are near and dear to me. It was a silly, happy, fun and upbeat movie. I enjoyed the performance by Meryl Streep and the film location was so beautiful and colorful. Made me want to go to an island in Greece!

When we came out of the theatre is was getting ready to blow up an Arizona monsoon storm. We drove thru pouring rain and big time lightening. Arizona storms are really centralized. As I neared home there was no wind and no rain and only lightning in the distance. However when I got out of my car to retrieve some articles in the back seat my dress started blowing and the car door slammed hard against my arm. I"m hoping that there was no one around or they could have witnessed a FULL MOON as my dress was whipped up to my shoulders! Luckily I made it into the house before the rain started pouring down. As I made my way into the house I started thinking about Full moons and lightning and rain.............When it rains when the sun is out there is a rainbow.............what comes with a full moon and rain?

So Many projects.........So little time!

My side yard continues to SLOWLY take shape. The exciting news this weekend is that my husband had added two new water faucets and several electrical outlets along the back fence. I believe that he will also be installing a system where I can do timed watering. I'm hoping that I will be able to have all of this garden in place when the temperature finally dip below 100 degrees! Now you know that if I had DARED to plant actual flowers or vines or ANYTHING it would have withered and died! However you can see that the WEEDS have absolutely NO PROBLEM growing!

You are now looking at the beginning of a wall mural that is being painted in my secret garden area in my side yard. I am hoping to paint a beautiful countryside in between those arches. After the country scene is painted I will be adding vines and flowers on these arches.
Yeah! I finished up the blue and brown baby quilt. My client wanted it to be quilted with circles since her daughter is decorating the nursery with a circle theme.

Below you will see a picture of my current living room wall and the couch that was bought to go in it. As you can see they don't look very good together.
Here is one of my test walls. This is the entry hallway. First I painted it with a very light green and after that completely dried I used a sea sponge dipped into a paint/glaze mixture and sponged the color on the wall. I really liked the results but it was very time-consuming!!!!!

The training of our Betsy-girl continues. She is especially attentive while someone is eating.

Betsy is SURE that Jenny will share................
Jenny is giving Betsy "THE LOOK"

The plans for the wedding continue. My latest project has been making personalized shot glasses for the bridal party. I don't know if you will be able to see it in this photo, but using glass etching cream I added Maid Of Honor, Best Man, Bridesmaid, Groomsman and a name to each of these glasses.

Guess that's it for today. Time to get busy again!

Woo Hoo!

I received an email from a friend and quilt client this morning telling me that she entered her (our) quilts into a show in Indiana and both quilts won a ribbon! I am so VERY EXCITED!

This is what she said in her email.............

Hey girl.. you're a winner! The redwork got a blue and the patriotic got a red ribbon. If I would have had my head on straight I would have entered the patriotic under "machine quilted". In this neck of the woods, they don't care who quilted or who entered. Trust me, you would have won...hands down. It just didn't seem fair to enter under my name. All of my friends were so...so impressed with your quilting. In fact I went to the local quilt shop to get binding fabric and they thought you had a computerized quilting machine!!!! I'm not sure if they belived me when I said you did it on your own. I guess there is a $40,000 computerized quilting machine now. It will never compare to your artistic work.

I'll be handing out your cards at a workshop this week end and have made a few new friends in the quilting world, so maybe you'll have some Indiana customers soon.

Here are the winning quilts! I know I've put them in this before, but here they are again!

This is the house quilt that I just finished up last week. Now I am working on a pretty blue and brown baby quilt. Hopefully that will be finished today.

I have so many projects going right now my head is spinning! We got a new couch for our living room and darn it.........the color of the walls clash with the color of the couch. So now I have to paint the living room! Oh! and its a living room/dining room combined so it is really BIG! Oh, and everyone wants it to be faux painted..........NOT just reagular straight painting! I've also been doing some patching and touch up paint around the windows in my studio where my husband put in new double pane windows. I really enjoy painting so I guess I"ll be okay! Just wish there was more hours in the day so I could QUILT and Paint! Guess I should get busy!