What do these have in common?

If you said nothing then you are correct! Last night some who shall remain nameless, aka Courtney, left this cup of water in the living room on the side of the couch.


Which of course goes against the rules that no drinks are allowed in said room.

I used the phone and set it on the side arm and it got knocked over, of course I wasn't too concerned as trusted there to be nothing but carpet down there. So when I went to pick it up later I found it in the cup.

Sigh...............I really liked this phone, we had a strong bond going and I looked forward to using it for at least a few more years regardless of when it was time to upgrade, after checking they no longer have this model and there is nothing comparable. And I can't just go to town to check out phones, we are still serviced out of Las Vegas and that means a road trip is now in order if I want to be able to stay in free contact with my Husband when he is gone. Kids!

It grew!

These are some of my finds from our trip.

This little dresser is what I seen on the first trip to Fat Quarters and thought about all week. I just see it filled with fat quarters or thread or patterns or......................

And the top lifts! Way cool and was a song! We did have to wrap it up tight is trash bags as it was raining pretty good and we still had a good 300 miles to go to get back home. Was very sweet of DH to get it for me, and not once did he ask where am I going to put it!

This was a panel that was just too cute to pass up.

And here are some beautiful flannels, I have two quilts planned with them and hope to get started real soon.

The fun in these is that in the bathroom of the quilt shop they had sale items, the towers were 50% off, there were many other temptations but since this was my out of the box purchase I stayed with it!

Then these finds were from the other shop, A Country Loft if my memory holds, could go and check from the previous post but am feeling a little lazy at the moment! The bottom black is homespun, don't see it in my parts so grabbed 5 yards worth.

And we were not untouched by the snow storm this past week, it is still quite heavy out and the thing we are dealing with now is the ice. The pic is from an orchard a couple miles from us, just was really pretty when we were driving by.

Pure Taunting!

Nightly was an all you can eat Sushi Bar! To say Scottie loves loves loves Sushi would be an understatement!

So Donnie had to show him a little of what he enjoyed!

Feel the Love Bro!

What they did~

William~

Blake~

Donnie~

William peeking to be sure I am still there watching his every move!

William and Donnie trying to catch some heat as the clouds were blocking out the sun! We couldn't have asked for better weather, the daily averages even out at sea was 85. Outstanding!!

Were Back!

What an amazing time we had, there are quite a few pictures taken and each from a total different perspective!

This is one of my favorites! We stopped at this shop Fat Quarter's and it was just eye candy overload!

I did purchase a couple things but I will save those for another time, need to get the camera back in order and get shots of what I found. We also made it to Rosie's Calico Cupboard and I was amazed at how much the shop has expanded, it has been at least 10 years since being there but still! It was rather over whelming and since I didn't have anything in particular material wise I did find 2 rulers in sizes that I needed.

Down a few door's from Rosie's was yet another overwhelming shop! The Quilted Rose, my Sis-in-Law purchased a Gammil Longarm from them so had to pop in and see what else they had and I was just blown away by all the thread and pantos that they had! Again I was very frugal in my purchasing, I really wanted a leaf panto and found 2 different kinds with the aid from Dh and the Kids.

It felt great to not splurge shop as it would have been so easy to do in all these shops! These stops were made prior to the cruise and once we were back we decided to stop at another shop that Fat Quarters heartily recommended, it was The Country Loft and again it was eye candy overload! What was so unique about the two mentioned is they are solely primitive/civil war types of fabrics, so I had to chuckle when my Dad asked if they had any Orientals or Batiks!!

I failed to have the camera ready to get any pictures though, in fact I don't think the camera was in my possession at the time anyway. We did stop back by Fat Quarters as there was one little thing that captured my heart and Dh was very kind to get it for me as a late anniversary present! He is such a great sport and that just made the week all that more special for me!

Vacation Time~

Well, now that I have done an overload of updates, that really has only scratched the surface but we are about all packed up and ready to head out the door at four in the morning!

We haven't taken a family vacation in quite awhile and although this ding-dong won't be able to go because of his work schedule it will be comforting to know the house will be guarded and the animals tended too!

I even think that he may have chosen to stay behind to watch after his little girl Mookie the Chinchilla. These two are too funny to watch together, Levia gifted him with her when he graduated from the academy six months ago and have they ever bonded!

This is Kaa, Donnie's Ball Python. He is Mookie's close neighbor, he is actually quite a bit bigger now than this photo, he is shedding right now so didn't want to disturb him while he does his thing so will just use an older shot of him! We have aged him to how long we have had him which is about 3 years now.

And he has found ways to escape every now and then and since Mookie moved in we all tend to check around her cage to make sure she isn't getting a nice neighborly squeeze from him.

About two weeks ago he got out and we couldn't find him anywhere, started getting a little nervous when two days went by, then around midnight I hear Scottie holler out to Donnie, not by his nickname either, it was the full blown including middle and Jr! Kaa, was cuddled in his dirty laundry and startled him, too funny! But he was able to sleep comfortably knowing that he was back in lock down.

And this represents a favorite birthday meal! The chops cook on low all day in the sauerkraut then we make a ton of potato dumplings to enjoy along with.

This is the pot loaded up and I wish I had a scale to measure it on, the pot itself weighs at least ten pounds, then there was ten pounds of kraut, and those two huge packages of chops, I kept a close eye on the oven rack just knowing it was going to cave!

The celebration was for Blake, who 12 on November 16th, he is such a sweet boy! He is the one in this posting with his nose in the pumpkin pie, not really, he was just joshing around!

We will have the meal again mid January as we have a slew of birthdays coming up and we will do a one big celebration when we can schedule everyone together. It will cover five birthdays, Scottie is the end of December, the Donnie, Levia and Chad are in January with DH coming up February 3rd.

Which leads to our trip, it is going to cover Christmas and all the birthdays, except for Scottie, he wants a satellite radio system for his unit that we are going to get him. We are heading to Cabo San Lucas and Ensenada via the Love Boat! It is something we have planned since the beginning of the year and everyone is beyond excited, the boys are looking forward to the all you can eat and we will enjoy watching them put it away!

The cameras are charged and I have two projects to work on. I am also very excited to be visiting the Fat Quarter Quilt Shop that is in the area and maybe even possibly Rosie's, oh yeah!!

Until next weekend!

Snowmen~

This was probably the most challenging thing I have ever done! The top was gifted to Merry at Fiddlestick's and she asked me to do it up! So the rest of the post is going to be a mini show!

Other Doings~

I did this one for a friend and boy oh boy did it give me trials!

The lesson I learned from it though was to stop and breath first, then start with the simplest solutions and work your way up, not the hardest backwards. I was getting eyelashes on the backside so I took apart and cleaned, wound different bobbins, now I will have to use up those extra four of a nice turquoise color on something!

Then I went onto changing out the bobbin case, keep an extra on hand! Nope, still fussing, then I went to bed and went ahead on to the bee and worked on the binding of the blues and got paperwork done for the new position I will be holding in the Guild! Yikes on that one!!

In the end, the great ott lite bulb went off and I changed the needle, and all was right again. A very happy moment indeed!

These are just a couple shots of the booth we had at the Cancer Fair, it was a fun experience and although a variety sold the best was the baby quilts that folks bought for their dogs! One even had her dog that was in her purse sniff the quilt to see if he liked it, if he did then she would by it because he is very finicky! He liked it! And I was happy as well.

The Bomb went off here!

I had started folding things back up when I decided to share the explosion that had taken place, really since August there has been NO organization what so ever, just one project to the next.

The farmers table is my main cutting station and at the time which was last week I cleared enough space to trim the blue boxes, but then started the folding so now there is no room to trim Lillian's.

This is the secondary cutting/ironing table. Not an inch to spare and I tell you the kids are loving it because daily there is at least one reward session going on because I can't find anything!!

It has gone beyond horrid...............

And did anyone catch on that there isn't a single quilt on the walls? We had the second craft fair in November and sold 8 quilts, it was a blue moment but in the end it came at a time when the funds were needed the most so I will enjoy getting them replaced.

I was also asked if I would be interested in putting quilts up at the Lodge here in the and also at a little coffee house downtown! Very honoring indeed!

Lillians~

This is Nate! He is just the sweetest thing and it is too fun to watch everyone interact with him. The boys are the worst though, he isn't allowed a grunt and they are wanting to know why that is being allowed to go on?! They do seem to disappear though when it comes time to taking care of the loaded nappy!

These photo's are long over due, Lillian needed this quilted in time for a class she was taking, the final was to be on binding techniques. Thankfully I had two weeks in which to get it done

but decided at the last minute to do a different design that was a little more intricate, I failed to guesstimate correctly on the amount left on the spool of thread and ended up running out about one row of completion!! Not very smart but thankfully the thread co took care of me and it was done and ready for her!

Then the below I did yesterday for her, DH will drop it off when we get back from our trip out of town this next week which will give her time to bind it and wrap it up as it is a Christmas gift!

It hasn't been trimmed yet, will do that here in a little bit,

I'll show why next post!