A Whirlwind Of A Week-Phewwww!

What a lot of stuff packed in to a week and sprinkle some computer related problems on top of that - which means no post for a whole long week!! A very occasional email here and there, but for whatever reasons I could not post on blogger. Then my girl came to the rescue AGAIN, and here I am back in business.

The work shower last Sunday was wonderful. Photos you ask?? Well, seems as though my camera was set on video and pictures that were taken for me were not able to be downloaded to a file ....I am sure they can be I just can't figure it out! My friend Pat who was there taking pictures has a disk for me that I will get tomorrow, so pictures coming soon! So many wonderful friends were there. It was very overwhelming to Megan and myself and we are very grateful for all the work the girls went to for putting the shower together and to all those who came. Here's a picture I took before the shower of The Very Hungry Caterpillar quilt I made for Megan. The kit was from Fons and Porter and worked up really fast.

Today was the family shower. What fun! Megan's sister Gena gave the shower (she is pregnant also and due in November). I was in charge of punch and I found this really great recipe for a blue rubber duckie punch. Not only cute, but really tasty!! Here's Megan opening a giftie!!

.........say cheese! My two best girls posing for the paparazzi. I am a lucky mom! Myself and my sister-in-law Joanna. I always wanted sisters growing up. Who knew I would end up with two amazing sisters later in life who always are there for me no matter what! Here's Katie with a box of blocks that Matt and her use to play with at Grandma's house. John's mom presented them to me. All the great grand kids have played with them over the years and now it is time for our grand baby to use them. My kids loved these blocks and the box has been all taped up and kept in tack for all these years. It was such a thoughtful gift and OK, yes I got teary eyed over it! Thanks Mom...this meant so much to me!

This is Corey with sweet baby Ava. My son Matt's best friend Matt's wife and baby (we called them the Matt Matt's when they were in high school). Don't you just love those cheeks:-)?!

My last post was the day of late sewing with the Monday gals and our silly lil friend happened to join us. Here's a few of her quilts for show and share.
Love this Ocean Waves quilt .......

and isn't this one just Swell????!!!! The always wonderful pinwheel quilt. I guess the girl never sleeps, but boy does she make beautiful quilts.
And I know you all know the poem "When I Grow Old I Am Going To Wear Purple". Well I have a new one......When I Grow Old I Am Going to Wear Two Different Shoes!!!! Yep, I showed up to sewing wearing two different shoes and of course I had to point it out to everyone! Hey if you can't laugh at yourself......? !!!

So nice to be able to post again and visit around. I have missed what everyone is up to. There is still more secret grandma sewing going on, but I should be finished up this week. And did I tell you that grand baby boy is going to be named Luke? Love the name and we are all so excited about meeting him in person. Luke, you have lots of people waiting to give you hugs and kisses. Hope every ones week gets off to a great start. See you later alligators!

Life is Good.........and a really BIG surprise!

Life is good, I'm just sayin'!!! Busy time for us. Donna and the girls at the shop are throwing a baby/grandma shower for Megan and I at Donna's house this Sunday. We are both so excited. Pictures to follow :-)!! There is lots of top secret grandma sewing going on around here, but no pictures till after the shower.

With all the grandma sewing I haven't done any quilting but thought I would show you a quilt that I pulled out to decorate my front bench with. It's the watermelon quilt pattern from Black Mountain Quilts. It was so much fun to make. The watermelon seeds don't show up very well in the picture, but they are a wonderful touch to this quilt. My friend Carol (Nurse Carol as we call her) still continues to amaze me. Here's a quilt that she made to hang in the playroom in the pediatric unit where she works. So bright and cheery and I am sure it will bring some happiness to the room. The pattern is one of Marcie's.

I have been very lucky to get some goodies in the mail. First off it is my pleasure to introduce to you Mr. Hammie Uncle Sammie straight from The Polka Dot Pixie. I have wanted one of her creations for a long time but they are very hard to come by! And then late one night when I was doing some blog hopping I came across this wonderful site, Teresa's Primitive Treasures.........being a lover of everything country primitive I needed some of these!!!! Love those little stitchery ornies, and that pin keep is so cute as well as the candle light!! Then some sweetness came to me at work from some silly little person! It's a Betz White original...yummmmy! Looks good enough to eat. Speaking of work, I am having a little problem. This quilt is tauting me on a daily basis...buy me, buy me, buy me. My only hope is that the customers scoop up the kits to save me from myself!!!! Then my friend Evelyn gifted me with these leftover HAND PIECED stars! Wow am I lucky or what! As soon as her quilt is quilted I will make sure to get a picture to show you!

Now for that realllly BIG NEWS! Weighing in at 139 pounds and standing 6 feet tall is my daughter's newest charge. Isn't he the sweetest ever, well that's until our new grandbaby comes! And here's mom just checking him out - can you imagine the drop he made!! Here's dad with a buddy checking out the new baby.....and then finally trying out those looong legs .........hello world!!! Mother and son are doing well. I can't wait till we can go for a visit!

Well I definitely have been a jabber jibber, but there is just so much going on that I had to share. Like I said life is good in so many, many ways and I am so lucky to have such a wonderful family and such a supportive group of friends around me. Have a great weekend everyone and I hope you have time for some quilting. See you later alligators!

Not much new here!

Not much going on. I have been slowly getting through the mountain high pile of bindings that were waiting for me after our trip. I won't be back to work till

Tuesday, so by then I should be pretty well out of the hole! I did get a quilt done for the baby, The Very Hungry Caterpillar. I should have taken a picture, but when Donna is done working her magic I will definitely be posting it. That was my sons favorite book when he was little. I bought a hard book with the sweetest little caterpillar to go along with it.

Last Tuesday at work was Thank Goodness Susan Saved My Life Day, complete with cake..just no Orange Chicken! Since I couldn't find a sash with that on it, I made her Queen for the

day complete with tiara. What a good sport Susan is. She wore the sash and tiara all day..in fact I've heard that she pretty much is wearing it all the time! She even has the hand waving thing down really good.

I thought I would finish up our Washington trip with some more pictures. A beautiful home in Georgetown on our way to the Washington National Cathedral.......

The Cathedral is so beautiful and love this masonry work!!

Mt. Vernon...Washington's home..............

Some wonderful homes in the beautiful town of Staunton, Virginia. My kind of town!

The University of Virgina - wow!!! And here's a mother and son having a new student orientation. What an amazing place to go to school.......so much history!
A beautiful quilt from the 1800's - wonderful applique.

On the way to the airport my sister in law and myself talked the boys in to stopping at a quilt shop! The Artful Quilter which is featured in the new Quilt Sampler magazine. What a pretty shop with lots of wonderful samples and the ladies working there were so friendly!

Hopefully this week I will actually get some quilting done. I am only three months behind on my Christmas a month project....no problem, I see some potholders in my future:-)!

I hope everyone is having a great memorial day weekend and with our thoughts to all the men and woman who have served are country in the past and those who are currently serving to keep us all safe.

Let me bore you, I mean SHOW you, some vacation photos!

What a week. Who would ever know I would be working every Tuesday with my very own guardian angel! From here on I will probably be driving Susan crazy, but that's just the way it will have to be. Again, I am so grateful to her. And grateful to all of you for the kind comments and emails. You guys ROCK!!!!

Some changes ahead for me. I have decided to drop a day at work. Now I will work Monday and Tuesdays. Ok, not a big deal, well for me it is a big deal. I have worked Wednesdays for the last 16 years and there is a group that comes in the morning that I have known for about the amount of time. I will just have to make a point to stop in occasionally and visit. The extra day is good. The baby will be here soon and John is retiring in October, so who knows what lays ahead.

Coming home from vacation my little binding business had a record couple weeks - 23 quilts to be exact. Here they are on top of my work table, under my work table. It's time for me to buckle down and get to business .......here's a helper I have here with me, my grand doggy is visiting for a few days and she seems to think binding is something she can help with. Not so much! Her wiggly, giggly toy is just the distraction she needs.

On to some vacation photos - blogger has not been so cooperative with posting today, so I will see how far I can get. Where to start - there are so many!! This is the Korean War Monument.....and at night a wall that during the day you barely see these images. In fact when I took this picture they really didn't show up much, but once on the computer WOW. This is such a striking picture.

The World War II Monument...love this picture of John and my brother in law Russ taking a look. What a tribute .

The National Museum of the American Indian.....so thought provoking for me.

The building is so huge - and there was no way to capture the beauty of the building and it's amazing architecture. The museum tells the story of the American Indian from the perspective of all the tribes......much to think about, lots of different information than I ever learned in school. I am so disappointed that this picture turned out blurry - those are thimbles hanging at the ends of the leather pieces. Can you imagine the wonderful sounds they made, and my thoughts went to the woman that wore this beautiful garment. A creative woman, sister, that had a passion for cloth and handwork just like all of us!! What a great community of artisans we all belong to.

In a McFlurry??!!! :-) I don't know why this picture won't enlarge, but that's what it says on the hood. Had to have a picture of this...too cute. I will have to save more vacation photos for another day. Blogger and me just aren't getting along and I don't want to loose the post I have. Hope that your week gets off to a great start and that all of you have your guardian angles hanging around. Take it from me, you never know when you might need them. See you later alligators! ............now lead me to the bindings!!!

Grattitude...........

.........ever since I saw the snowball bush on pamkitty'sblog I have been thinking about trying to grow one of my own. Then when we went to Virginia, there they were everywhere taunting me, so I had to share this picture with all of you. If you click on the picture to enlarge it you will really see it's beauty. It was taken at Monticello, once the home of Thomas Jefferson. Such a pretty bush!!

My plan this evening was to post my zillions of pictures, but today life had a twist. Tuesdays I work with Susan at the shop. In the morning we have the sweetest group of ladies that come every week and there is always lots of laughter, lots of gabbing, and tons of creativeness going on. Susan and I have
a fun teasing thing going on between us, which spills over on to everyone else I'm afraid, even the unsuspecting customers that come in!! Laughter is definitely the rule for the day. The afternoon is also a drop in class and during both times Susan is at the ready to help with any and all quilting related issues. She amazes me....I tell her this all the time...because even after I have been quilting all these years I am always picking up something new from her!

After the morning class we decided to be bad and get Chinese food. Orange Chicken and rice to be exact.....yum......even though I was determined to get back on track with my eating after my grazing for two weeks while on vacation. We sat and chatted and ate our lunch, Susan finishing up early because the afternoon group had started to arrive. Class was kicking in to gear and I got up out of my chair, suddenly the bite I was chewing became lodged in my throat.Instantly I could not breathe...no air at all...instant fear and then I turned to where Susan was and she took one look at me and grabbed me from behind and did the Heimlich Maneuver which dislodged the chicken so I could breathe. I absolutely had no air coming in and the room was starting to go dark. I can't believe how calm and fast Susan reacted. It all happened so fast I don't think for a while the class really realized what had happened.

Coming home tonight I have replayed the scene over and over and am so grateful for her being there. Saying thank you just does not seem to be good enough words, but that's about all I could say to her. If I had been alone and that happened I would not have been able to help myself. Then thinking of my wonderful family and how much they all mean to me and the new little one on the way....I have so much to be grateful for in my life and so very grateful to Susan.

Since humor is the basis for our relationship, about an hour after our ordeal I answered the phone and it was a call for Susan. My response to Susan was(and please I hope I don't offend anyone), your holiness, the phone is for you!Well at the very least she is an angel to me! This evening I got a call from my girl and filled her in on the day and then had a good little cry after hearing her voice and thinking how things might not of turned out so well. Life is always full of lessons. For me, don't take for granted what I have. This evening I am feeling extremely lucky.

More pictures in a day or so!!

I'm Baaaaack and a BIG Happy Mothers Day To All You Mom's!!!

First off a very, very Happy Mothers Day to all you mom's! We got home last night around 11 p.m. and this sweet little statue was waiting for me. It says "Home is Where My Mom Is". My girl, she knows what I like! We had such a wonderful vacation and saw so many wonderful sights. I took a million zillion pictures......are you ready??? Well I won't bore you with all zillion of them, but will show a few in the next few days. We even got to visit one of the quilt shops featured in the new Quilt Sampler Magazine.
I had another surprise waiting when I got home. Hmmmmm, wonder what this could be? :-)!!! My sweet new little Polka Dot Annie from Nicole - love her! Thanks Nicole.
We are off to celebrate Mothers Day with my second mom, my mother-in-law! Hope that all of you have time spent with family with lots of hugs and kisses. I'll be back in a few days with some vacation photos. Oh and I forgot, I really, really, really missed you guys!! See you later alligators!