Happy 23rd Anniversary!!!

Aren't we just the cutest newly married 80's couple?!?! We've had a pretty good life together all in all. Lot's of good times, a few bumps in the road, three beautiful daughters and even some sad times, but we've made it! I can't wait for the next 23 years!!!

Friday!!!

It's finally Friday...the only bad thing is I have to work tomorrow, but Emily is coming home tonight for the weekend. I haven't seen her since I moved her in August and that's a long time for a Mama to go without seeing her baby! LOL She's bringing her boyfriend, Joe with her. My hubby and I have met him only once and that was last year and that was before they were "together". She is very private about her personal life so she must really like this one.

I've been preparing food for her arrival like she's going to stay a month! :o)
I came home yesterday and made Posole, red chili, pico de gallo, sour cream/green chili enchiladas and prepped the steak and veggies for fajitas. I could feed 25 people at least with what I've made so far and I still have to make the cheese and onion enchiladas. Emily wants to make the homemade flour tortillas when she gets home, just showing off a little...lol Oh and I'm doing a banana pudding thingy for dessert. Plus some mageritas and coronas and you've got a party! YUM!!! I'll try to take a picture before we all dive in to the food.

I've posted another of the finished blocks from my Mom's quilt from Sisters Scraps that I've been working on. I noticed that Stitchen Heaven is offering this quilt as a BOM too. It's fun and pretty and much brighter in person than my pictures show.

Oh and I finished my fall quilt top yesterday before work. Hopefully the back will be here today and I can get it to the quilter. I can't wait to put it on my bed. Maybe just maybe the weather will cooperate and cool down for fall!

Have a great weekend everyone!

Bye, bye Gypsy 5/07 - 9/23/08

I had to have my Gypsy put to sleep yesterday. She started getting sick May 23rd and after many many trips to 2 different vets and lots of $$$$'s and no really clear answers, it had to be done. The very nice doctor who handled everything told me that it was FIP (feline intestinal peritonitis) which there is no cure for. Apparently cats with really healthy immune systems are able to fight off the corona virus, which is the virus that causes fip.

I really will miss this cat. We connected more that I ever have with any other animal in my life. She was a great comfort to me when my Dad died and she was very calming when she would sit on my lap and purr. She was also a mess...very, very ornery. I don't think I'll be getting another cat for quite some time. Plus there's always Baron (the dog) to pet.

My friends Sharon and Kathy and I took off and had a really good day. We went to several quilt shops (no big purchases), had lunch at Schlotsky's and ended up at Sam's. I was dreading coming home because I knew that I'd have to take care of getting all of the cat stuff picked up and taken care of, but my sweet, sweet hubby had done it all. He even had flowers waiting for me. He really is a sweet guy!

Today will be a good and busy day. After work I'm going to try and get borders on a new fall quilt that I'm working on....woohoo! I'll post pics before I take it to the quilters.

My Grandma

As my Mom and I were cleaning out her attic this summer many family treasures were found. One of the most precious to me were my Grandma Alyne's calendars/journals.



Not much to look at I know, but I love them. They span from 1961 to 1974 and most of the entries are just day to day life for her on the farm in SE Colorado. There are many notations about the weather and when she had a perm or colored her hair (which she denied doing...lol). There are a some personal writings though and I've found out that she was a thinker and ponderer. The journals have brought her back to me and at times it's almost overwhelming. She was my Dad's mom and he was so much like her and I am so much like them both, with a little of my mom thrown in for good measure! ;o) Yesterday would have been her 88th birthday and it's odd that it fell on Alzheimer's Day because that is what hastened her death.

I miss you Grandma and I love you.

Finished another one!!!

Actually I finished the quilt top about a year ago, but I just had it quilted a few weeks ago and it's already gone to a new home...



That's my Mom and I gave her the quilt as a "house warming" gift. She says that she really loves it and it will look really pretty in her new home. Don't look at the fever blister that she has, poor thing always gets them when she's sick and she's had an upper respiratory infection. Yesterday was 6 months since my Dad died and although she will always love and miss him, I think that she is doing good. Mom has gotten more involved in church, with friends and local activities. She says that she's happy and knows that there are still "firsts" to get through, but she'll be fine. We had a great day yesterday, even though she was still getting over being sick. I bought some fabric (I'll show it later) for a rag quilt for a nephew and a fall quilt for my bed...lol...I'm running out of room here!

Well off to work so that I can afford to quilt...you all know how that is...don't ya?!?!? Oh and if anyone cares the fabric for the quilt shown above is Civil War Anthem and the pattern is Vicksburg by Bonnie Blue Quilts.

Warning: Do NOT let your drivers license expire...

The is what I looked like after my day yesterday! My licensed expired August 31, 2008 and I completely forgot about it until yesterday morning. So not wanting to put off the inevitable and knowing that it was going to be a hassle, I grabbed my birth certificate and went to the tag agency which is across town from where I live. Now I've lived in this smallish town for 18 years and several of the people at the tag agency actually know me. So I wait my turn in line and I'm really proud to whip out my birth certificate when they see that my license is expired, then I have to wait until the one person in the place that can verify this is finished with what she is doing and when she gets to me the first words out of her mouth are "that birth certificate won't work". I'm like whaaat...it's my original, by the way. Well it seems that some states (Colorado) issue different kinds of birth certificates than Oklahoma. Mine is a County certificate instead of a certified life birth certificate from the State of Colorado. Okay so they send me to the drivers testing place to get it approved, which is back across town, not that big of a deal. Here I go again waiting in a smallish line and they take one look at my bc and say "Nope this won't work, sorry".
Whaaat!!! Okay what now and so they give me the phone number to some records office in Colorado. Let me mention here that these are the drivers examiners that I'm talking with and they continually drive up and down my street (i don't live far) to test new drivers. They see my address on my old DL and start going on and on about how pretty my hubby keeps the yard (hey, I help) and how pretty our house is and yadda, yadda, yadda. So these people obviously know that I'm a good upstanding citizen and one of them even says "didn't I have one of your daughters drive with me?"

So about this time I'm almost getting irritated, but I keep my cool and I head home where I start digging in files and I find a certified copy of my bc from when I lost my license at 18. I head back to the drivers place and they approve me and we visit for awhile and then back across town to the tag agency where I have to wait...and finally, well you see the end result in the picture!

Big lesson learned and I'm passing it along to you (because there where several of us in the same boat yesterday) DO NOT let your DL expire!

Have a great and productive day!

it's beginning to feel like fall ...

Where has this year gone???? I can't believe that Fall is upon us so soon. And it feels like it this morning. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this time of year because of the weather. Warmish days and cool nights. I've noticed that a lot of people out in blogland have started their fall decorating and it's got me in the mood. I guess I'll try to work on that this weekend. One thing I wish I had made in my 20 years of quilting is a fall bedquilt for my bed. I have one that I use for Winter, one for Spring and one for Summer....could be that I need to go shop for some beautiful fabric for this...hmmmm....we'll see.

Here is a picture of one of the blocks from the quilt I am making for my Mom for Sisters Scraps in Amarillo, Tx.



I've made some progress on this quilt in the last few days and I finished up row L on my Dear Jane quilt. I've still got to get the blocks sashed and added but the end is near and that's exciting. Also finished up a gift for my Mom for a house warming present. I need to finish making birthday siggies for Oct thru Dec so I can get that off of my plate. Siggie swaps are great fun but I find that they take me away from sewing that I really enjoy.

Have a wonderful day!

my mom's quilt

Good Friday morning. I thought I'd show you a couple of pictures of the quilt that my Mother's Grandmother made for her. She handpieced it I'm sure and then my Grandma had it quilted by machine in an all over pattern. I never knew this Grandmother...she was my Granddads mom...she passed away right before I was born.
We used this quilt all of the time when I was little and it shows. The fabric is thin in various places and the binding is just awful. It's that double fold binding that you buy in little packages at Walmart or Hancocks. I didn't come from a family of big quilters so I really treasure this quilt. Both of my Grandmothers did sew but they hated quilting. I do have quilts that they both made though...they thought it was a chore, imagine that...LOL I'll post pics of those quilts in a later post.

I hope and pray that everyone is safe from Hurricane Ike. It will probably affect our weather tomorrow afternoon, which affects my work plans. Oh well I've learned to roll with the punches. Also let me just add....I'm really getting sick of the presidential campaign...if you can call it that. That's all I'm gonna say! Have a great day.

New cleaning lady

Well tomorrow I have a cleaning lady coming. I hope that it is a better experience that merry maids was. Actually I hope that she does a great job so that I don't have to feel guilty about hiring someone to do what I usually take care of around here. This time of year I just don't have a lot of extra time so I've decided that I will try this...we'll see if it's worth it.

Here is a picture of 3 completed blocks from the quilt that I am making from Sisters Scraps (nice store) in Amarillo, Tx.



Geez I'm tired tonight. I'll post more tomorrow.

not much quilting done

The group of quilters that I meet with weekly met last night and we had a blast. Only a couple of people accomplished something and I wasn't one of them...lol
We were celebrating Kathy's birthday with good food, yummy cake and wine (several glasses for me which is highly unusual).

This is a very unique group of ladies that are my friends. I am by far the youngest but I think I've always been somewhat of an old soul. Sharon, Kathy, Paulette and Linda...my life is enriched because of you all.

my blog list

Does anyone that reads my blog know why my blog list is down at the very bottom of the page??? I'm not really computer savvy but I searched for help on this from Blogger and couldn't find anything that I could understand.

Hi again!

What a busy, busy week...whew! But I got through it okay, even managed to spend a little time in my sewing room....yeah! Next week will be more of the same, another home football game on Saturday. I am the manager/buyer for a spirit store located across the street from Oklahoma State University so my life, in the fall, revolves around college football. Enough about that, let's get on to the important things in life!

I finished another of my Truly Scrumptious blocks from Cinderberry Stitches, http://www.cinderberrystitches.com/.



These blocks are so much fun to make and I like the fact that I'm using left overs from another quilt that I made. It just so happens that the original was made from this same fabric. I've seen it done as a BOM from a store in California (can't remember the name right now) out of different fabrics and it was just a cute.

Just previewed this post and noticed that in the above & below pictures that you could see my messy, messy sewing area. Sorry about that! I also noticed my DJ stuff sticking out. I did make a DJ block this morning and hope to get several more done this afternoon. I'm really ready to get back to my red and white Nearly Insane blocks, but I'm not sure when that will happen.

Have you ever felt obligated to buy something at your quilt store before? Well I did/do when I go to one particular store, probably because the owner has gotten to know me over time and most of the time I really want what I buy, but in the next picture you will see a fat quarter bundle that I don't really like all that well. I bought it because I was asked by the owner if she should carry some civil war reproductions (no one in our area really does) and I replied YES, because I love CW repros. Well several weeks later I walk in the store and she basically said here's the bundle that you ordered and I felt obligated to buy it. I did get my 20% birthday discount but that was still $80 that I didn't plan on spending. Well anyway I think I've found a pattern that will work for this fabric, what do you think?

Now I just need to pick up the rest of the fabric to make this and I'll have another complete project in a bag waiting for me to have more time...lol

The weather here is very fall like...I LOVE it and I hope that it doesn't get too hot today and we have to break down and turn the A/C back on. Have a great Sunday everyone.

just a little progress

Well I did have a pretty good weekend, in spite of having a troop of kids here for most of it...lol They pretty much stay to themselves unless they get hungry. Now, I have three daughters and they can put away some food when they're really hungry, but those teenage boys can do some damage. I couldn't afford to feed three teenage boys on a regular basis. I guess that's why God gave me girls...and they come with their own set of issues.

The top 2 pictures are of the little sewing purse that I made for my friend Kathy. It was fun and easy to make. I need one for myself now!

The 3rd picture is a block that I prepared for applique. It is from a bom from www.sistersscraps.com in Amarillo, Texas. I tried to put the other blocks that I've finished in another post, but for some reason they wouldn't load. I also finished a couple of DJ blocks and worked on a secret project ...hehehe

Time to go and cook supper...I wish I was a gourmet cook or even liked to cook. The family probably wishes it too.