Happy Birthday To Our Girl!

Twenty six years ago today we became the very proud parents of our daughter. We had a mini birthday party with some of her friends. They met up at our house, on their way to a three day vacation in Las Vegas. Got out the old Sunbeam mixer (it was my mom's), and whipped up a cake befitting of our cupcake......a giant cupcake cake for our cupcake girl................and a girl has to do what a girl has to do :-)!!! And of course no party would be complete without tiaras!! Happy day to you. You are the best daughter ever!!

Lots going on here. We had Bailey dog for 3 days and had loads of fun with her. There was some fast running...... helping with some pool cleaning......

......and some resting in the house with her favorite giraffe toy. Boy, somebody needs to get the binding on your quilt Bailey!!!!.....and making the world famous barbecued pizza that Sharon came up with! Now that's some pizza pie...yumo, yumo, yumo!!! Bailey quite enjoyed the crusts!

I finished the top for my Summer Stash Challenge and a sweet little Mary E. Christmas hanging, and started working on another quilt using charm squares and a jelly roll..love that Mary E fabric.

So now I am only 3 months behind on my Christmas project a month challenge!No problem....the middle of next week we are off for 5 days of camping in the can, and the plan is to work on the 3 Christmas projects...hmmm, we shall see!! I just had to share this sweet butterfly quilt...Pat, who is one of our Tuesday morning group, made it. I love how the one butterfly is flying off to the right. Great job Pat and lucky is the person who will be getting it!!

Hope everyone is having a great week. The plan here is for a couple more days of sewing, an outing with a friend, and then getting ready for our trip. Well gotta RUN....see you later alligators :-)!!! PS: Just in case anyone forgot we are getting close to 5 weeks for Mr. Luke's arrival :-)!!!!!!

Happy 4th of July... Summer Stash Update...some of this and some more of that!

Happy 4th of July to everyone in blogland! (well in the States that is)!!!!! Hope that you will be enjoying some time with your families. We are still very hot here, 100 today. Tomorrow we are babysitting our grand dogie, Bailey Baxter, so be sure some pictures will follow.

My Summer Stash Challenge project is coming along nicely. I have all the rows together and I plan to piece the rows tonight. I am even thinking ahead for another project to make from my stash. There is the 2 1/2 strip Challenge and I have a project all cut and ready to sew for that one. I also finished block one of the Designer Block of the Month Series. Love it, love it....and finished the top for a shop sample. We are selling kits for this at the shop as well as at the Long Beach Quilt Show. Speaking of which.....I CAN'T WAIT! Two of my buddies and myself are planning on attending Friday. I think we are leaving at 3 a..m.(not really!!) but we are so excited to be going ..I know we won't hardly sleep the night before. The 25th is not really that far away.

I was reading over on Freda's Hive about the No Spend July Challenge. With the cost of everything I think we are all thinking on ways to save. The challenge which was started over at Brain Fog Blog is to reduce spending in July, and try to only spend $$$ on things you reallllllllly need (I guess that would mean no fabric). So in the spirit of "trying", I am trying to at least think a little more about what I spend $$$ on. I know that I will be spending at the Long Beach Quilt Show, so I will give it a go until then. I was out today gabbing and lunching and I am happy to say resisted buying any extras, even though I was mighty tempted!!!

Our Baby is getting very close to showing himself!! About 6 weeks to be exact. Mommie to be is looking so wonderful. She is going to be such a great mom. I have a few more grandma sewing projects I need to get busy on, but I think I will always have grandma projects!!

Tomorrow we have planned a relaxing day. Mr. will be golfing early, Mrs. will be sewing ALOT. Since Bailey is visiting for the weekend I moved all my sewing stuff to the dinning room so she can supervise!! We are planning on making Sharon's famous barbecued pizzas, so wish us luck!! UPDATE #2 - Miss Sharon is having a giveaway....hop on over and sign up...really cute bags, WOO and a HOO!!! Hope that your holiday is safe and a wonderful one. See you later alligators :-)!!

UPDATE#1 - I was just about to publish my post when the home phone rang, the cell phone rang and then a knock on the door. John was calling from work about 5 minutes away, and he wanted to know if I knew what was going on down the road from our house and he told me to go look out front....(the knock was a neighbor at the door) always scary to see this sight and we deal with it about this time every year. Luckily as I write this it is pretty much under control, but our thoughts go out to all those in Northern California that unfortunately are dealing with many, many fires.

Let The Sewing Begin........FINALLY!!!

Where to begin! First off, last Saturday we were without electricity for 18 hours! Yuck, I was a very whiny girl. Poor John. You would think he could control the electricity better. 45 homes in our area were affected and the temperature got up to 105. A very hot sweaty 105. Whine, whine, whine.....I even feel bad writing about it because now it seems so silly, but at the time it was not so funny!

Thanks for all the wonderful comments and emails I got about my mojo! Seems to be something that just happens from time to time to all of us. I am glad to report that my mojo is back and it's full steam ahead!

I decided this week to rearrange my sewing room....no this is not how my sewing room normally looks, but this is how it looked after I moved everything from two sides out to the middle. Don't ask me why I didn't have a better organized system....making piles just seemed to work. The reason for the redo I was moving a sewing table in that was given to me. It was a table that belonged to my friend Deb who passed away a few years ago, and her husband was kind enough to give it to me. It's a wonderful old antique desk that weighs a million pounds, maybe I exaggerate a little, but it is darn heavy. It has been living in Katie's old room, don't ask me why I didn't bring it in to my sewing room before now, guess I just wasn't ready. Katie's room is becoming Mr. Luke's new hang out room when he comes to visit grandma and grandpa and needs to take a nap. Only 7 more weeks to go. We are so excited!!!!!!!!!!

To get the desk from there to here required me taking the legs off. I felt so smart...I used my pink duct tape (love my pink duct tape!) to match the leg to the proper corner, and remembering lefty loosey, righty tighty got the legs off! Then look what I discovered...Deb obviously was way smarter than me. She had written on the legs where they went. It was nice to see her writing!! So by yesterday afternoon everything was back in it's place, and I think this has a lot to do with the return of my mojo. This sewing table is just ousing mojo!!....a very happy place. I finally have decided what to work on for Eileen's Summer Stash Challenge. I figured I would use 30's, because lets just say I happen to have some 30's!! I am going to make Crows Fence from Laps From Fats. It has a border print, but I have tons of muslin and quite a bit of Olde Green, so think I will put a thin border of green and then do a muslin outer border. Since I am doing my not sleeping thing again, last night I got my strips cut, sewed some strip sets and got them subcut. Boy it felt good!!! Today I decided to move some quilts around and get ready for 4th of July - I love to decorate for 4th of July. Here's a Crazy 9 Patch I made for John. It's his favorite! This quilt is from a group I use to quilt with. We each picked a block and then made enough to swap with each other. My friends Chris and Karen pieced the blocks together for me and machine quilted it and then surprised me with it. It made me cry happy tears...it's one of my favorites and has lots of good memories pieced in to it! Thanks girls it means more to me than I can tell you. And finally this one is called Barbra's Antiques. I made it out of civil war reproductions. It's not so much patriotic, but I always bring it out this time of year. It was really fun to make.

Well there you have it. A little craziness as usual, but it feels good to be back to sewing. Think I can even catch up on my Christmas a month challenge. I am only 4 months behind after all! Also, I could not resist the Cupcake Swap going on over at Sharon's.....I'm all over this one. Gotta love all things cupcake! I know there's lots of quilting going on. Visiting all the blogs is very inspiring, so everyone keep up the good work. Later gators :-)!!!

PS - Almost forgot to mention our knitting class! Well ......there's my knitting!! The learning curve for me was not so good. I went and got a knitting for dummies book and that was even hard, but I found a great U Tube video and now I am really getting the hang of it. Megan was a wiz and is already making a blanket for her sister, who by the way we just found out is having a baby girl!!!! It was still a fun day even though I struggled a bit!!!

Going to the zoo, zoo, zoo how about you, you, you.....

My kids loved that zoo song when they were little. Yesterday was a wonderful day at the zoo with my friends Carol and Evelyn. What a great day, and what a hot day...only 114!! And the star of the day.....hello bloggers gotta love me ..I'm the baby!! He is so sweet and no name yet, but there is a contest going on to pick one. He's a little shy and won't come up as close as the others, but still he seemed to love having his picture taken. Here I am with my girl and one of her buds!! ...think of all the chocolate you could eat with that tounge!!! Carol up close and personal! A little smooch.......smack!!! Carol checking out one of the wild dogs....wait, I think the wild dog is checking out Carol!!! Yummy she looks good enough to taste :-)!

Now for some quilty business. I would love to tell you that this is my quilt, oh that would be a lie so I can't do that, but my friend Carol is at it again. Don't ya just love these flip flops. It's from Fons and Porter and will be hanging in the hospital where she works. The quilting Chris and Karen did on both quilts is wonderful. Here is her wonderful Prairie Paisley quilt and here is my wonderful Paisley quilt..............................

snickering, do I hear snickering??!!! How about some bloggy support here! My mojo seems to be on vacation again. Saturday night I will be sewing with the gals and getting some sewing done!! We shall see as someone I know says :-)!

Today I had lunch with Sharon at our usual Mexican restaurant sitting in our window seat as usual. We were the only people in there eating. Really weird. Normally the place is packed. And before lunch we went and shopped at my all time favorite store (and hers too), Crackerjacks, only to find out after 19 years they are closing. Very sad. Some of my very favorite Christmas goodies have come from that place. They are sad to say that due to the economy, Internet shopping and the big chain stores business has really declined. Very, very, sad!!! Here's my grandma package from Miss Sharon to help me on the road to happy hooking! Check out the bag...tooo funny!! Tomorrow Megan and I start our knitting/crochet class which I know will be lots of fun. Great visit Sharon!! Well there's my couple of days wrapped up in a nice hot sweaty package!!! Hope the your week has been running smoothly and that your mojo is way better than mine! See ya later alligators!

Where To Begin??!!

These once a week posts have got to stop! I have a huge list of things to chat about.....where or where to begin?!!

Pay It Forward!!! Anyone up for a Pay It Forward Challenge? The rules are that the first three people to join the challenge on my blog will receive a handmade gift from me. I will have 365 days to make and send you your gift. In turn, you must do a post on your blog inviting 3 more people to join in and receive a handmade gift from you. If you would like to join, please say so in your comment that you leave. I originally joined Jackie, at Canton Village Quilt Works, PIF the end of March and forgot to post on my blog, so my 365 days will

post date to March!! Chock it up to grandma brain....I just can't seem to focus on what I need to do :-)! Speaking of Jackie, she is having a great giveaway - free quilting on quilt! So hop on over and make a comment :-)!!

Have to share this wonderful photo with you all. This is my niece Beth....so pretty! She's in Paris for a month studying abroad. We have had fun following her blog with all the latest details of her adventures. While she is getting some studying in, sounds to me like there is more fun going on than anyone should have!! I'm jealous Beth...next time you need to take your Mom and Auntie's along :-)! We can't wait till you are home to hear about your travels.

At work on Tuesday we had quite the birthday celebration for Susan. Just a little food to get us through the day. The Tuesday morning group pampered her good, after all she is the queen ever since she saved my life!! Here's a photo of a quilt one of her students made - WOW! Debra did such a great job. She is relatively new to quilting but has jumped in feet first and now she is hooked just like the rest of us! Not much quilty from me though. Baby business is pretty much what we are all about around here and loving every minute of it! A while back Megan had picked out this quilt and fabric for me to make for Luke. The soft colors of the Swell line made up nice in this quilt, and hey look, there's some polka dots and rick rack tucked right in! Matt and Megan have the room all set up and I think Mr. Luke is going to love his new room. I have managed to whittle my binding pile down to 10 quilts, and three of those will be done by Monday, so I might even be able to actually work on a quilt this week. Oh, and my Christmas project a month goal - well let's say I am now 4 months behind:-(! I had to mentioned that because my friend Carol will be sure to remind me to keep me honest:-)!

Megan and I had a shopping/lunch day on Friday and we signed up to take a knitting class. I have always wanted to learn how to knit. There was this really cute felted knit purse hanging in the shop we visited, and the sweet lady helping us said it would be really easy...hmmm, we'll see. Megan plans to knit a small blanket for her sister's baby. Then on Friday afternoon we had this wonderful sighting out front of our house ........it's the Katie mobile.....yeah!!!!!! Katie was home for a quick Father's Day visit. Dad and Katie got in some Mario Cart playing and a round of racket ball and then she scooted back home this afternoon. A whirlwind visit but always nice to have our girl home!!

Today I had this wonderful parcel that arrived. I signed up for the Cyber Stitching Day over at Mrs.Martins Quilt Shop. There are some wonderful goodies inside but I am going to wait a few days to post until the others have received theirs.
I may not be getting much quilting done, but I sure have been doing a lot of blog hopping. I ran across this challenge on Eileen's blog. She is taking sign ups for a Summer Stash Challenge. No buying of fabric necessary. Just make a quilt from your stash, any size you want. Deadline is August, beginning or end. You just need to put the logo on your sidebar and post about what you are working on and your progress...easy, smeasy and hey, USING YOUR STASH! What a novel idea :-)!! Check out her post from June 10!

And finally for tomorrow, a very happy Father's Day to all the wonderful dads out there! My dad has been gone for 23 years, but there is not a day that I don't think about him. I was a real daddies girl. My dad was the best dad I ever could imagine. He was funny, caring, compassionate, always tried to do the right thing and treated people the way he wanted to be treated. He always made me feel special and I was his little princess. I had to laugh, when I was going through pictures to find one to post I ran across this one....he must have been helping with the potty training too. Miss you dad! Tomorrow we will spend part of the day with my second dad, my father in law, who is every bit the man my dad was. I am very lucky to have two wonderful dads! In the afternoon Matt and Megan will be over for a barbeque and to watch the basketball playoff game! Go Lakers!!! See you later alligators.