Happy 2011

Stay safe out there everyone. It's a cold one.  -24 wind chill according to the weather guy on TV. I'm staying inside and my big celebration will be having a piece of homemade peach pie with ice cream before I go to bed. Could it be that I'm getting old????

Christmas 2010 in pictures

We're ready!!

How do I get these apart?

This will look nice on the dining room table.

Can you see me?

Max enjoys Christmas too.

He's a Husker.

New fish cleaning table.

Wow, Laser Tag.

She loves purple.

A new album for all those pictures she'll take with her new camera.

Clean-up crew.

Figuring out how to make the toys work. Always a team effort.

Where am I?  Behind the camera, of course. My favorite spot. And, if you look really carefully at the photo of the dog you can see my knee at the bottom of the picture.  LOL

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone!! As of 9pm the the kitchen is put back together, the house is cleaned, pies & rolls baked and the presents are wrapped & under the tree that was put up just yesterday. The Christmas decorating was much simplified this year...just no time, energy or desire for anything else.

It was 9pm, but they're under there.

Kitchen is finished, or at least as finished as it's getting for now.

 

And here's where we started from:

Quite a difference!!

Now I'm going to get the bird ready to go in the oven bright and early in the morning, then have a piece of pumpkin pie and think about getting to bed. I'm TIRED.

Lookin' better

Before I go to bed tonight there will be another coat of primer and a coat of finish paint on the upper cabinets. The end is in sight.

Progress

Bottom cabinets with primer.

Primed cabinet doors & drawers. So lovely in the living room.

The last two photos show what's going on in my sewing room. No sewing, that's for sure.  Since I took these pictures I added another coat of primer and then after supper. a coat of finish. Hoping I can get another coat on tomorrow after work.

A New Christmas Carol

I came across this on another blog and decided to share:



Now, doesn't that build up your Holiday Cheer....and wish you had that kind of talent?

Today's the day

Lori asked when we'd see some of my painting. Today's the day, here are a couple pictures:

The color shows more true in the second picture. It's called Nutmeg Frost and the surprising thing is that the dried color on the walls is actually a little bit lighter than the sample, which is good, since I thought it might get too dark. I really like it. The DH wants to start taking the doors and hardware off the other cabinets to paint yet before Christmas.....but I tell you, I'm tired and the walls could really stand another coat.

There's still a few boo-boos to fix too. It's funny how when you correct one it causes another. It's so much easier to just paint everything white, then there aren't any boo-boos to fix.  LOL

Life's little surprises

Anyway, on Wednesday I finally broke down & went shopping. Needed some things for next week & it's too late to order & get them on time, so off I went.  I only went to three stores but they were busy, busy, busy. I will repeat....I hate the new layout at the Wal*Mart store. I about walked my legs off in that place looking for what I needed. And, if they expect people to spend any time in there shopping they should turn down the heat a little. Since I avoid shopping whenever possible, here's a picture to prove I went.

 

As if me going shopping wasn't a big enough surprise the real surprise came a little later in the evening. I was on the computer and a window appeared saying I needed to restart so AVG (my anti-virus program) could finish an update. Now, this has happened before so I just clicked OK and waited for it to reboot. It didn't. And wouldn't. Windows 7's automatic fixes..uh,uh. Now I don't know if some code-writer at AVG got careless, if they got hacked or if I was lucky enough to receive a fake update, but it changed the drive letters. Drive C is supposed to be the operating system, Drive E is the Recovery partition. The "update" had switched the drive letters around so my poor computer received a literal lobotomy.....couldn't remember how to boot itself up. I knew I'd have to reinstall Windows and  I always set my personal computers up so I have a Drive D partition where I keep all my personal data & knew it would be safe. At least I thought so. For some reason the reinstall took away my "Downloads" file on the D partition. Strange. (Update: Guess what? I found the contents of the "Downloads" file in my downloaded audio-books folder. Imagine that!! So my recent experience with reinstalling the OS wasn't quite so strange.)  Reloading programs is tedious and time consuming, but all is mostly back to normal now. The whole episode has convinced me I need to subscribe to a backup service, probably Carbonite.

So that's what I've been up to the last couple of days. No sewing at all, I'm sad to say. No genealogy and not much reading either. Still piddling with the kitchen redo. Maybe I'll get it done before I hit retirement age. LOL

 

Turkey Day

Happy Thanksgiving!!

We had our family Thanksgiving on Sunday so today it's just the two of us....and Daughter's dog....the cats are hiding.  We're having roast chicken and all the fixings. DH doesn't care for turkey white meat so going the turkey breast route is out.

Did I mention before that I'm babysitting Daughter's dog over this holiday weekend. Don't you think he looks pretty content?

Sometimes he does the cutest things. Last night he decided he wanted to take his stuffed kitty outside. So finally I put him on his leash(he's a runner) & he picks up his kitty, takes it out and carefully lays it on the porch while he goes out in the yard to take care of business. Then he comes back, carefully picks up kitty and brings it in the house. Silly dog. I just stood there laughing.

This is the lastest quilt....a Quilt Group quilt that went to a member's son who was in a car accident. I only quilted it & did the binding.

 

TGIF

Friday.  Since my last post all the damned blasted wallpaper is off the walls and two big deer have been cut up on my kitchen table.  Guess who still has some meat to wrap.

All the blocks for Orange Crush have been sewed together and have been pressed since this picture was taken. The star blocks are shown in an earlier post.

I have no idea when I'll get to lay them out to put the top together. When you have a refrigerator setting in the living room with the furniture pushed out of the way to make room it doesn't leave much space for laying out a quilt. LOL After seeing the blocks next to each other I kind of wish I had used a brighter red in the star blocks, but what I used was what I had at the time..................and I don't do do-overs!!!!  It'll be fine, just a little darker than it might have been.

Enjoy your week-end. We'll be having Thanksgiving at our daughter's on Sunday and celebrating our younger granddaughter's 12th birthday.

Another step done

Lately, I haven't said much about progress on Orange Crush...because there hasn't been any, but today I finished putting these together. Thirty of them.

I'd slop wallpaper remover on the wallpaper and then while it was soaking I'd go sew two or three blocks, scrape off the wallpaper and repeat, repeat, repeat.

Now I can start working on the ORANGE part of Orange Crush. Do you suppose I'll get this top done before Bonnie starts posting clues for the next mystery later this month?  That's a mystery in itself.  LOL

Heart quilt

Last week I was working on a Heart quilt that I couldn't share a photo of. Since it has now gone to live with its recipient I can post a picture of the quilt & the new owner.

 

Our quilt group makes these quilts from group blocks to give to people who have had some sort of set-back. Wanda's had a pretty rough year so we're happy for her to have one of them.

As for me, I'm still stripping wallpaper....hope to have it finished by the end of the week.  I work at it until my hands & shoulders hurt too much, then quit for a while. The fridge will have to be moved out to really finish the job. Then it's washing everything down, putting on primer and finally painting the color. If I could only make up my mind about the exact color!!!!!!!!!!!  LOL

I'd rather be sewing

No pictures today. I'm having so much fun stripping wallpaper off my kitchen walls!!!  NOT. If you want to come help me just leave a comment with your e-mail & I'll give you directions for how to get here. How's that for an offer you can't refuse???

I just wonder what stroke of decorating genius possessed me to put that stuff up. As the saying goes, what goes up must come down. Must have forgotten that little detail. Anyway, if anybody even suspects that I might be thinking of looking at a wallpaper sample book, ever,  please come slap some sense into me.

My goal is to at least have the walls, ceiling & woodwork all painted by Christmas and have the new flooring put down. Probably the cabinet painted that requires moving the fridge too, so I don't have to move it a second time. Then I can take my time over the winter scrubbing down the cabinets & painting them. It'll be tedious, but I'll just take my time. I just wish I hadn't procrastinated for three years on this...my hands hurt a lot less back then.

New record set

We had THREE Trick-or-Treaters last night. That's right, THREE. A great improvement over the past two years when we didn't have any at all.  I remember when my kids went out....I think they hit every house in town. Aren't kids greedy for candy any more? Or is it that their parents are driving them now and will only go to the streets where the houses are close together?? Halloween just isn't what it used to be.

Tomorrow I work at the election so it will be a loooonnnngg day. Predictions are for low voter turnout so it could be boring as well. Maybe the school board race or sheriff's race will bring them out. Hope so. I hate sitting there trying to stay awake & thinking of all the sewing I could be getting done if I was home. How many complaints do you suppose there would be if I set my sewing machine up on the table next to the ballots & kept myself busy.  The County Clerk's phone would probably be ringin' of the wall. LOL

End of October

Happy Halloween Comments
                   

What the heck???

That's not fog and it's not a dirty window on my storm door. It's SNOW!!! I really thought we'd make it through October this year without seeing any of this stuff. Why can't those folks in ND & SD keep it in their own states and not send it to NE?  We really wouldn't mind if they were a little selfish this time. Really, we wouldn't.

It's just showers, but still......that storm could go further south than predicted and then I'd be really bummed. Oh well, got in another quilt top today so I should hustle my buns and work on the ones already waiting, snow or no snow.

Sunday at home

After sleeping in this morning I spent the better part of the day sewing together a quilt top out of group heart blocks. No pictures yet.....not until after the recipient gets it next month though I doubt she reads my blog.

Would you believe the Alco store in O'Neill no longer sells fabric?? They still have yarn and quilt batting, but I wonder for how long. Didn't see any notions at all. How the heck do they expect people to "shop at home" when they don't carry what we want? I hadn't been there for a few months and the whole store had been redone. Totally rearranged and so much stuff in it you can hardly push a cart through it. All I can say is "Thank God for online shopping" since it's about the only way to find reasonably priced fabric. And Alco's fabric was usually pretty good quality too. I always liked their $2.99 a yd. sales.

My daughter called me this afternoon to tell me my oldest grand-daughter's good friend from Norfolk Catholic had been killed in a car accident last night. Only 17 years old, such a tragedy. It was a one-car accident so no one knows exactly what happened. The Pierce Co. Sheriff's Dept. is investigating but they suspect cell phone use might have been a factor. If so, these kids are learning a lesson a very hard way. The kids who were friends with the girl all congregated at my daughter's house, the parents showed up and the school guidance counseler was called in too, to talk to the kids. A pretty shaken up bunch...they'd all been together last night going to haunted houses. Not the quiet Sunday at home my daughter's family was expecting to have.

Goin' batty

This afternoon we took the window air conditioners out to store away for the winter. It's a two person operation. DH goes outside and holds it so it doesn't fall out the window and I get the window open and the AC lifted up and pulled inside. The bigger one in the LR is awkward so he comes inside and we both carry it out to the garage. The smaller one in the sewing room I can lift out of the window by myself, put it on the table and then close the window. That's where I got a little surprise....a bat had taken up housekeeping under the AC, between it and the bottom of the window. I'm sure glad he wasn't awake enough to fly out into the house. From the evidence he left behind, I'd say he'd been living there for a while. Anyway, he's history now.

On the quilting front, part of Part Four of "Orange Crush" is finished and now I can start putting blocks together as shown:

Here's a pic of the quilt I got quilted on Friday:

All made out of Thimbleberry fabrics and I quilted it in one of my favorite designs....Bayside. A nice curvy, flowing pattern.

And this is my Nicky, relaxing in her favorite position....flat on her back with all four little paws sticking up in the air. Silly kitty......

Moving right along

Part three of "Orange Crush" is finished:

This is the last of the tiny little pieces. Now I can move on to some larger ones and start putting blocks together.

Things are going kind of slow this week. I came down with a nasty cold on Saturday, and though I'm starting to feel better, I just feel tired. At least today I can breathe again. Sunday afternoon was Quilt Club and I stayed home. I felt really lousy and didn't want to pass my germs on to the others. From what I hear I was the only one that didn't make it, but everyone should be glad I stayed away.

DH and his cousin are sitting in the kitchen peeling apples for T.'s freezer. Kind of funny listening to them talking like a couple of kids. :-D I just keep out of the way and let them go at it.

Part Two...

of "Orange Crush" done.

On to Part Three!!! More little pieces, but not so many of them.

My son's chocolate lab who passed away of cancer last Saturday night. R.I.P. Jenny.

I always called her my grand-dog since they don't have any kids, just dogs. We'll miss her a lot and will always remember her as the BEST dog. Here's her "puppy picture." 

(Oops, I looked back and see I posted that first picture before. Oh, what the heck, she was a great dog. She can have her picture on my blog twice.)

Orange Crush

Part one:

 

Part two:  Cut out & ready to sew.

 Have a batch of apples in the dehydrator and that's about been my day. If anyone would like to come and put dishes in the dishwasher and cook supper, that would be fine with me.

Bad news on a beautiful day

After a couple of chilly, rainy, even stormy, days I'm really enjoying a perfect fall day today. Blue sky, about 70 degrees, light breeze. Just the kind of gorgeous Fall weather we wait for all summer. I feel like I should just go outside and sit in the sun, soaking up as much of its warmth as I can.

But even on such a beautiful day there is sadness too.  Last week my son's Chocolate Lab, Jenny, had a biopsy on a lump that they found on her belly. It turned out to be cancer so this morning they had x-rays done to see if it was localized or if it had spread. Unfortunately, it has spread to her lungs and the vet says it's a very aggressive strain. She said normally a dog could have from four weeks to six months to live, but as aggressive as this cancer is they probably shouldn't count on much more than the lower end of that estimate.  Son & Daughter-in-law are just broken hearted. Jenny is only eight years old and they thought they'd have her with them for many more years.

 

Our beautiful girl. Great personality, loves kids, loves to swim and hunt and go camping. According to my son the best dog ever.

Marathon sewing.....

...produced this mountain of 4-patches this afternoon:

Someday these will become an Orange Crush quilt so I put the Orange Crush icon over in the sidebar. I love the Bonnie Hunter quilts, but they sure do have lots of little pieces. (The better to use your scraps, my dear.)

Not much else going on around here. We had FCE Club last night at Eileen's new house. While it's not a big house, it's so nice and open that it seems bigger. Her kitchen cabinets were made at a local cabinet shop and are beautiful and I just love her countertops. If I had the painting all done in my kitchen I'd seriously consider getting some just like them. Is it a compliment to copy someone's design choices?? I hope so, because I wouldn't mind being a copy-cat where those countertops are concerned.

Sunday morning

Here I am, back in Pierce, staying with the kids for the weekend. Just having a peaceful hour or so while the two younger ones are in Sunday school. The Oldest is awake, I can hear her music, but she's having her own peaceful time before the others come back.

Daughter sent pictures and called to let us know all about the blue skies, sunshine, sandy beaches, palm trees, sight-seeing, etc. in Mexico, but she forgot to get out warmer clothes for the Youngest. A bit challenging to find clothes for Sunday school this morning.....he wound up going in shorts, the long pants we could find were high waters or way to big around the waist. Hopefully God won't care that he went with cold, bare legs.

So, what do the kids do while Grandma is here? Let's see.

Obviously, they like computers. The Oldest usually watches TV, uses the computer and texts simultaneously.

Here's Max. Do you think we should get him a computer too???