Dear blog,

How have you been?  I have been ok, although very busy.  I am sorry I seem to have neglected you.  I have been trying to balance two households.  Monday through Friday I am in one house getting ready to go to the other house and work  my butt off.  I am getting absolutely no sewing done. I did take my redwork with me last week, but after working all day my fingers hurt too much to work on it...which is just as well as I forgot to add embroidery thread to the kit... doh! 

I have a few things to look forward to...  I joined the St Louis chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild and we have our first meeting Oct 9th...  And that is a Saturday...and I'm excited.  I need to make a name tag and I am trying to think of ideas..  I would like red and white as those are my fav colors...or maybe yellow and white cause that's my second fav color...  and of course it needs to be cool and modern...am I too old to be "cool" and "modern"? I also need to gather up some show-n-tell and print off directions.  It's gonna take about an hour to drive there, but I am sure it will be totally worth it.

And I will be going on a little mini-sewing retreat the following week.  I guess I will need to find some time to get my supplies together...  Maybe next week? 

So please blog...hang in there.. I will have something soon... I hope... meanwhile I am off to the grocery store so we will have food this weekend..

So talk to you later blog... write back.

Nancy

things i learned...

I wasn't planning on letting the "house" blog bleed over into this one....  but we have decided to have THAT blog (see the new button to the right?) made into a book at the end of this reno project so I can't put personal observations over there...

So this is a post on what I learned last week...

• i can live without the internet
• my hubby secretly likes cats and will make a trip to the store to get cat food for them
• we get along better when we are working together
• you can't take too many trips into town
• i need to make a list so i don't forget something at the store
• it's EXACTLY 9.5 miles from our house to town
• we can hear the trucks on the highway at night...even though we are two miles away
• if we don't talk to the stray dogs and don't feed the stray dogs and IGNORE the stray dogs they might go away....then again they might not
• i can cook with only a microwave...an electric skillet...and a bbq pit  
• and we only used the microwave for hot water...
• I am really bad at decorating..

so...I could use some decorating help.  We will have dark hardwood floors in the living room, kitchen and dining room.  We will have carpet in the bedrooms.  I own two regular size dark chocolate brown sofas, one dark walnut end table and one dark oak coffee table.

I need to figure out...

1. wall color
2. trim color
3. carpet color
4. accent colors
5. kitchen cabinet colors and counter tops and appliances and everything in the kitchen (can you tell we are gutting the kitchen ? lol )

The house doesn't get a lot of sunlight because of all the trees, so I need to stick with a lighter color palette.
So....any ideas?

I think tonight is the last meeting of my Civil War Love Letters group.  I haven't gotten any further along than last meeting so I hope to remember to take my camera and take photos of what everyone else has accomplished. 

Nancy

Woo Hoo...

You will find me over here today...

Nancy

today...

A lot of this.....

.

is going on.

Come back tomorrow to find out why...

Nancy

sheesh...

Today was ridiculous. And tomorrow doesn't look much better...lol   BUT...it's always best to start at the beginning.... and it all started last night.  I was watching Survivor when my husband casually asked if my internet was working..   um...I'm not on the internet..remember I'm watching TV...Well, the internet is down, and the son is gone.  Hubby can do a few things...but apparently they weren't working..   So off to bed he goes (yea! now I can watch my show with no interruptions)  and this morning when I wake up at 7am the internet is still down. HORRORS!!!  He is to work from home and he can't.  So a call to CenturyLink and they talk him through all kinds of stuff (which is not easy since he is hard of hearing) and nothing works so they are sending a technician to the house between noon and 4pm.

We leave at 8am to take the dog to the groomer. Come home and have breakfast.

Then I realize that my hair appointment is next Tuesday and I will be out of town so I call and move it to...Today...So at 10:30am I left and got my haircut, took clothes to the cleaners, went to UPS to fax some business papers and bought a queen size bed frame...

Come home and eat lunch...

Hubby decides he needs new glasses. today.. and he doesn't have an appointment.  So he calls and gets an appointment at 3:30pm.  um...remember the internet man is coming between noon and 4pm.  And he doesn't want to go alone.   Luckily the son comes home and will stay here to meet the internet guy.

We leave at 3pm... $500 later..he has ordered new glasses and new prescription sunglasses.  We get a call from the groomer.  Oliver probably has an ear infections.  He won't let them trim his ears.  We go and pick him up and he looks funny...really funny...  He's a cocker and they are prone to ear infections.  Oh. they also shaved his ears and when they did they shaved a tick off...{shudder} and they aren't sure if they got the head... So while I pay the groomer ($30), hubby calls the vet and they can get him in "right now"...So off we go to the vet's office...(across the street) and sure enough...he has bilateral ear infections.. so $127 later we have a funny looking dog that is SICK!   So heck..the day is shot...might as well go get "heart stopping" KFC and call it a day...

And tonight is Project Runway and from the previews it looks like something fun is gonna happen tonight. Can't wait.  I love that it has expanded to 90 minutes...I love seeing more drama...lol

I did get this done between the hair cut and eye appt...  I found this tutorial over on Joanna's blog.. I immediately went upstairs and found the brown fabric and the little green vine fabric..and hand appliqued those leaves...  Then it got set aside...until today when I quilted it and made the pillow..  It's for my youngest daughter as soon as she stops a filthy habit she acquired in college.  Until then, it looks really nice on my couch..

 And the Internet was fixed... the Ethernet cable was bad and he gave us a new one for free..

Tomorrow I am up and out of here early...I will be selling raffle tickets for our guild raffle quilt..

Nancy

the time has come...

It's my least favorite thing to do...

I do not enjoy it...

it takes too much time...

it's boring..

what is it?



Clothes shopping...

actually.. jeans shopping.

and here is the problem..

Since I don't shop, I don't have a clue what to buy..



These?

Maybe these?

oh..these?

Really.. does anyone out there know if I should buy

wide leg or skinny leg

light denim or dark denim

high waist or low waist

belt or no belt

Yes, there are more important things in life to worry about

but

I don't want to embarrass my kids when I go out..


Nancy

Design wall Monday 9-13-2010

I have nothing on my design wall right now. I do have a huge amount of UFO's that are taking over my sewing room. I have 5 flimsys that are ready to be basted and quilted and my Civil War Love Letters hasn't been touched since I came back from retreat at the end of August. I am still putting rows together...

But I did put the binding on a quilt yesterday so I do have a finish...

This quilt will be donated for a very special purpose. My oldest daughter is the director of a Hospice. Part of their program is granting small wishes for the patients. Right now their funds are depleted so what does a quilter do? She makes a quilt and donates it...

pattern is Yellow Brick Road by Terri Atkinson

And while we are at it...let's donate another one!!

you can find the inspiration for this quilt HERE

And hubby said "don't leave me out"..so he donated one of his handmade oak picture frames...



I hope they raise a ton of money..

Go see what everyone else has on their design wall over at Judy's....

Nancy

tools...

I did this today.. It's kind of a rush job. My daughter is a director of a Hospice and they will raffle this off and use the funds to grant wishes for the patients. I hope they make tons of money..and so I pulled this little top out and basted it. I baste the same way every time. I have some clamps from Lowe's and I clamp the backing to my huge dining room table (it's ok...it's real old and I like all the scratches from the pins. It adds to the character, just ask my mom...she will tell you "I like all that old shit".) and then I pin...

I use an ice tea spoon to close all the pins... it doesn't work the best, but it keeps me from pinching my fingers and breaking what little fingernails I have. I use the long end...not the spoon side. I'm not an idiot..



Until today... (ok, not an idiot until today...I am still not an idiot...well, you know...) A while ago I entered a contest over at Kim's. I was very excited to find out I won this nice little gadget. It's a Kwik Klip. It's another one of those gadgets we all HAVE TO HAVE when we see it at the LQS. I have a whole sewing room full of those gadgets.. Except this one I will use. It works. It took less time to clip all those pins and I didn't break a nail and did I say it was fast?
It has earned it's place in the sewing room. It's a keeper.. Thanks Kim for the give away and especially for this tool.

The quilt is all quilted, binding on and I will work on doing the hand sewing tonight...

Today is grandparents day at one of the grandkids school, so I will be driving 180 miles round trip to spend 20 minutes in his classroom... should be fun...

Nancy

houses....and blessings...

I love houses...I love house quilts and I love looking at home design magazines. In another life I would have been an architect...

Monday when we took our little trip to the Arch and then to Fitz's we found ourselves only blocks from a house that holds many memories for our family.


This is the house that my husbands Grandparents and Uncle lived in before I met him. His Grandfather was a Pharmacist and owned a drugstore about 2 blocks away. After his grandparents passed away, his Uncle lived there alone for many years. In due course, I met my husband (at a drugstore, no less) and we got married. After his Uncle passed away, his mother became the owner of the house... That was the same year that my husband started Pharmacy school and our oldest daughter started Kindergarten.

My mother-in-law was nice enough to allow us to live here rent free and she paid for all the updates....new carpet, new kitchen, rebuilding the back porch.. Husband did all the work and we reaped the benefits. After he graduated, we decided to buy it from his mother.

This was the first house we ever bought... It was small.. two little bedrooms, one bathroom and an itty bitty kitchen.... and the steepest basement steps I have ever seen. Our oldest fell down them on the day we moved in and our second daughter was born to this house and fell down the steps before she was 18 months old ( I remember calling the ER at one of the largest hospitals in St Louis and asking if they had a doctor there,lol). Once we even had a swat team surround this house. I still remember my husband calling me at work.. He said "when you come home, drive around to the other end of the street and come in that way". When I asked why, he said " you might have trouble getting past the cops in the front yard". Apparently our neighbors son had run from the courthouse while being sentenced and came home...(which shows you his intelligence level) and the swat team found him holed up in the attic. We might have had something to do with that...I'm just saying. Our oldest daughter had her first (and only) ambulance ride from this house.. (she didn't clean up her room and crawled over a dish, breaking it and splitting open her knee which wouldn't stop bleeding)..

We moved from this house 28 years ago. Every so often I think about this house and realize that we have come a long way since then. We have moved 8 times. We have lived in 4 different states and raised 3 children. I went to nursing school, our oldest daughter went to college and then nursing school, our youngest daughter went to nursing school and this year our son started college. We have 5 wonderful grandchildren and have all we need in life...

I am so blessed.

Nancy

another beautiful day....

Hubby and I were just sitting around deciding what to do yesterday...I decided I would head up to the sewing room...I had an idea!! He was probably going to do what he does every weekend...Turn on FoxNews and lay on the couch with his laptop on his chest and scan ebay... lol

But it would have to wait as we got a phone call that the oldest daughter and her family were driving into St Louis and would we like to go to the Arch and Fitz's?

Um...Yea...

at the bottom

at the top

from the top to the south

to the west

to the north

we had a great time!!

We left the Arch and drove down to the Delmar loop and had some dinner at Fitz's. It's very well known for the their extensive menu of hamburgers...so I got fish. They call the area the Delmar loop because the street cars would travel from downtown to University City and then make a loop to go back. It's a very diverse area with small shops, Blueberry Hill, tattoo parlors, vintage shops, bars, band venues and more...

So when we got home, I did a quick copy/paste of all the names that entered the contest... I certainly wasn't bored..There were 104 comments. That was a lot of printing and cutting... and here are all the names... I used the top of the nice cake server from the auction...

hubby drew the winning name...with Oliver looking on from the hearth

and our winner is KIM

I sent Kim an email...

and the prize was a One Years Subscription to McCalls Quick Quilts.

Thanks to all that entered... I heard from a lot of lurkers nice readers.

I think I will work on that idea today...

Nancy

what a beautiful day....

Yesterday was GORGEOUS here in the Midwest. The temp was 50 when I got up at 7am and by 9am it had only gotten up to 62... We left the house and took off to an auction in a neighboring city.

This first thing we do when we get to an auction is to walk the entire place. If we spot anything we are interested in we get I send the hubby to get a bid number. If you have never been to an auction, you have to show your I.D., usually your drivers license, and then you hold your bid ticket up to your face and they take your picture. That's why the hubby always get the ticket... Then we fight over who gets property of it. Lately they have been adding the first name to the bid paper. It doesn't bother me at all to bid under my hubby's name... lol

Today, I took control and boy did I do a good job.....


first up is a stool... we checked and that seat will come off easy and I will recover it with something... not sure what yet...but it won't be ripped.. and I will probably spray paint it.. or maybe not...looking at it, it's in pretty good shape..

and here my model shows you that the seat comes up and exposes the steps...


and here she is showing how you can stand on it...

Oh, I love this... it is all metal and look at that price!! No one else bid on it... This will get painted although I am not sure what color yet...I am leaning towards red or yellow...

and a pot... I love big pots... and this one is in pristine condition.. and again...look at that price!! I will be making some spaghetti sauce in that one this weekend..

and I got carried away. I was danged if that old lady was going to steal this from me...She bid me up to $20...(she didn't know my limit was $25! HA!) There were 3 cake plates with covers... they put them all in the middle of the flat bed and it was bidders choice. You can bet I wanted that one... There is a little lever on the side that you slide and the little clips open up..then to lock it you slide it back again. So Cool!! And so totally 1950's.. My favorite piece of the day...

(please ignore the dirty table, remember we had 2 grandkids)

OMGosh...this is so funny... See right behind the cake plate? That big white thing? It's a Styrofoam cooler. It came with the grandson. Guess what is in there? BOOKS!! It's his traveling library, I guess... So funny.. of course I must be a proud grandma and tell you that he just started 2nd grade and is reading on a 3rd grade level... oh yea...both the grandsons are avid readers... they both read better than the granddaughter and I find that so backward... usually boys are the least likely to enjoy reading...or maybe I just think that because both my daughters read all the time (as do I and their dad) and my son only picks up a book if he HAS TO!!

Then we got the "would you like to take the grandkids so we can go to the World's Fair and get drunk" call so we took off and picked up two grandkids, fed them pizza, rented them a movie (which they didn't watch) and they went right to sleep at 9pm..

Today we will have pancakes, play more legos and they will go back home at noon...

Then I will nap... I did something to my neck and shoulders. They are so sore...very stiff neck...I must have slept crooked night before last...or maybe it was the open window..?

Don't forget the giveaway... I can't believe the number of lurkers comments there are... although I still have readers coming through as anonymous with no name and email... I can only do so much...
just remember I can't put you into the drawing for the surprise prize unless I know who you are...

Nancy

oh my....

here for the contest??? click here

oh my...

I am so excited to see all your favorite colors

and your favorite quilt magazines...

how fun...

BUT

oh come on...everyone's got a but and I am no different...

There are a few of you that are coming through as anonymous no reply commentors

that means when I add your name to the.... oh wait I CAN'T ADD YOUR NAME...

I can only add ANONYMOUS and how will I know which Anonymous it is???

If you left a message and it says ANONYMOUS on that message

and

you would like a chance to win...

go back and delete your comments (click on the little trash can icon)

and leave another one and add your name and email address...

otherwise you no chance

and really we all want a chance...

The prize is really good...

and you know me...

I like to keep my contests between me and you, my faithful reader..

so go check...

and I am off to swallow a bowl of cereal and go to that auction..

right after we stop at the pharmacy and BEG them to give my hubby a couple of extra pills

cause he forgot to call in his script and now he is out and there are no refills

and the doctor never called in the script yesterday

and this is the drama in my life

could be worse I guess....

Nancy




and a wee bit of something to get our blood going this am...

again, not a hint...just something fun!!

and no, the prize isn't a GO-Cutter....cause I don't even have one...

and now a .....

"OMGoodness...it's a holiday weekend and I have absolutely nothing planned except going to an auction tomorrow
and I am bored contest"

Yea...a contest...

or a

giveaway...

whatever you want to call it

doesn't matter

rules

I want to make them easy..

in case you have, like, great drinking plans or something...

1. leave me a comment telling me your favorite color..

2. leave me another comment telling me your favorite quilt magazine..

that's two entries to win

make sure you leave me some way to get hold of you

(limited to U.S.A. only..)


Oh...what's the prize?

um...it's a secret...


but you will like it
unless you are my sister and you don't sew

i promise

contest will end Monday night..

someone will draw a name

someone in this house..

K?

this photo is not part of the prize...
it's just pretty

sorry
didn't mean to tease...

Nancy

sheesh...you guys are ON it!! I was hoping at least SOME of you had something better to do.
I may not acknowledge your entry, but if you did it correctly
you have two tries to win...
thanks!

and now for something new...

Yesterday found me driving 90 miles west to entertain my 2 1/2 yo granddaughter.. Tuesday I got the "daycare is closed" call... I made a little side trip to my youngest daughters work to hand off some books. She and I are the avid readers in the family and she likes the same books that hubby reads.. so we share.. Then off to trade cars with the oldest cause it's easier to trade cars than change car seats in the rain... I picked up bitty baby, took her home, played for about a 1/2 hour and she went down for her nap.... she didn't wake up until her daddy got home. So why am I so tired?? lol Guess I'm old...

I did try something new...

sorry for the bad photo.... it's been raining all day

I have never done any hand applique... I found a tutorial (I will share when the project is finished) and really, really, really liked it.. and knew someone else that would like it..(or else I will keep it!) When I decided to start the leaf, I didn't know much about applique and I didn't want to do any research..I just wanted to START!! I can be patient when I need to, but I didn't need to this time.

So I drew some leaves on sew-able interfacing... put right sides together and sewed on the line.. Then I snipped into the back of the interfacing and turned it inside out... Press, baste and hand stitch... RIGHT?? Is that ok? I hope so, cause it was kind of fun and easy.. :- ) I might need to do some more...

Off to do dishes... hubby left at 4am to fly to Baton Rouge for a what ended up being a 10 minute interview and is now flying back... It might be nice to have a clean house when he gets home.


weather delay...plane didn't leave DFW (dallas fort worth) until 9:20pm to get in about 11:30pm and it will take him an hour to get home .all for a 10 minute interview.. wanna bet he works from home today? and takes a couple of cat naps?

Nancy

and now for something a little more modern...

This is the only quilt I actually finished at retreat last week... After unpacking my project totes, I realized that I had only packed 2 projects and my redwork... hm...that didn't give me much to choose from...

sorry about the wrinkles...

The pattern is by Buggy Barn (you can order it here). (The link is correct. I made version 2, directions are in that pattern and a photo is on the back, promise!)

I love the polka dots...I think they are perfect..even though they are different sizes and the borders aren't matchy, matchy... I love them... This is one of my 5 finishes for a guild challenge and will become a quilt for Shriners Hospital in St Louis...

I think I will make another one..the guild is having a class this month and I already have the pattern...just need to pick out some fq's...


And you can't attend retreat without going to the LQS (twice, but who's counting?)...which happens to be Hickory Stick in Hannibal, Mo.. I bought more, but it's a surprise and "someone" reading my blog would KNOW it was for her...

But I did buy these... Buy one, get one free.... so 2 yards of each... I have no plan for them yet...they are resting...

I also bought this book, but it went missing for a bit and didn't show up at photo time...

Love the red/white/black quilt on the cover... Maybe I will use some of these pinks with black and white...hm...just a thought..

Nancy