Well, another summer has come and gone. School started last week so we've had to get back into the school frame of mind. Happily it has been a pretty smooth transition so far. We thoroughly enjoyed our summer with trips to Arizona, Las Vegas (Big R celebrated his birthday at the Adventuredome), and California for Papa's 60th birthday party. This past weekend we spent some time camping in central Nevada. We saw some interesting sights, fished and enjoyed the beautiful weather in the mountains.And believe it or not, Nevada does have mountains with trees and rivers/creeks! We camped at Pine Creek and Kingston Canyon (No, not THAT Kingston Canyon, the one in NV!) On the way is the town of Austin, NV. We've been through before and noticed a castle perched on the top of a hill but this time we decided to stop and take a closer look.

If you'd like to learn a little more about Stokes Castle click here. Not far past Austin we spotted some wildlife.

Hee Haw-Wild Burro

Some more wild burros

They just stared at us. And we took pictures. Then we continued on. Further on, the road passed by Toquima Cave which contains ancient pictographs. Read about it here. We stopped and hiked about 1/4 mile to the cave. (And back)

Pictographs in Toquima Cave

More Pictographs

Wonder what they mean?

View from the mouth of the cave

Big R at Toquima Cave

MoMo (and Daddy) at Toquima Cave.

After hiking back to the truck we continued on to Pine Creek. When we arrived and were scoping out which site we wanted, we spotted a couple of deer right in the middle of the campground. 

Deer at Pine Creek (look at second tree from right-it has ears! LOL )

We chose an awesome spot and set up camp. Well, all the sites are pretty awesome. Most are adjacent to the creek with plenty of trees for shade. As we were coming in we got to talking with a couple who were camping near us which proved to be lucky. Later, they invited us to dinner. They were expecting their kids and grandkids to be there for dinner but at dinner time they still hadn't arrived. They had a whole Thanksgiving-esque feast prepared and didn't want it to go to waste so we got to enjoy an amazing dinner with them-dutch oven roasted turkey breast, stuffing, salad, rolls, cranberry sauce and peach cobbler for dessert! Yum! Thanks Kim and Glenn!

Fishing in Pine Creek

   We also did some fishing but unfortunately we didn't have a lot of success. The kids got some bites and Daddy caught a couple but they were little guys so they went back into the creek. MoMo was pretty disappointed that we didn't have any fish to cook up for lunch. But we had a campfire and the kids did some metal detecting around the campsite. They found what Big R called his treasures-mostly fishing weights, bullet shells and such but he did find a nickel and a couple of pennies. Plus a 2 euro coin later in Kingston Canyon.

Campfire

Since we weren't really catching any fish in Pine Creek we decided to try our luck in Kingston Canyon for our last night. We packed up camp and headed back over the Toquima Mountains to Kingston Canyon. In my atlas I noticed that we'd be passing by some hot springs, one called Diana's Punchbowl which sounded very interesting so I suggested we stop and take a look. Now the atlas didn't have any sort of description of the punchbowl so we didn't know precisely what we were looking for. We followed the road out and found hot water flowing but didn't find the source. The actual hot spring. Diana's Punchbowl. Nothing that seemed to fit the name Diana's Punchbowl. Somewhat unimpressed we started heading back to the main road and there was this big hill with a road right up the side. Hubby's got this thing where if he sees a hill  with a road he wants to/needs to drive up it. (And MoMo is right there egging him on to drive up the steepest hills) So seeing the road he figured we'd drive up. When we got to the top we realized the hill WAS the punchbowl! At the top was a huge hole.

Diana's Punchbowl

At the bottom, 30 feet or so down, is steaming hot water. 200 degrees hot according to this site.

So, you know, we stayed well back from the edge because we surely didn't want to fall in and get boiled alive. 

Hello from Diana's Punchbowl

 We made it to Kingston Canyon and we set up camp (again). Glad we have a tent that is super fast to set up and take down! This campground also had sites right along the creek so again we were right next to the water. Further into the canyon there is also a reservoir called Groves Lake. That's where we did most of our fishing in Kingston Canyon. Again, we didn't have much luck fishing. The first evening we went fishing in the lake we could see the fish actually jumping out of the water but they just didn't want any of our worms. There were people fly fishing that did catch a fish or two but we only had worms and didn't catch anything. Still we had a campfire and smores and the kids did metal detecting in out campsite and Big R found the euro coin. The next day we went past the lake to see if other parts of the creek had better fishing. We found a nice spot and Hubby caught a couple trout, though again they were small and went back in the creek. We drove up into the canyon and up Kingston Summit (almost to the top but not quite). The view was incredible.

View to the Notheast from just shy of Kingston Summit

View to the Southwest from just shy of Kingston Summit

We tried Groves Lake again before we had to pack up and head home.The fish seemed to be liking worms more this time. Got some bites but still didn't land any fish. So no fish lunch for us. Maybe next time. But even though we didn't have a lot of luck fishing we had a great time. Exploring. Spotting wildlife and natural wonders. Sitting around the campfire, roasting marshmallows. And we can't wait to do it again.

I just wanted to wish you all a very happy Pi Day! In honor of Pi Day I made a Pi (apple) Pie. Yum! So, how did you celebrate Pi Day?

p.s. the area of my Pi Pie (according to the formula A=πr²) is approximately 70.85 square inches. That's a lot of Pi Pie!

For the longest time I haven't had any inspiration when it comes to scrapping. But it seems I just got it back. So here are 4 layouts I put together.
That last Tooth Fairy layout has a photo that is from a while back. MoMo just lost another tooth this past Monday so she's got a real jack o lantern smile going on now!
cOh, and I also made some old fashioned (cruller) doughnuts. My sister gave me a book full of doughnut recipes for Christmas and these are the first ones I've tried. And they're super yummy! See, here's MoMo scarfing one down. (before losing her last tooth because now she's got a big hole on the top where her tooth used to be!) They definitely have her seal of approval. I think the next ones I'll try are the raised glazed ones...or maybe the devil's food cake...or maybe the blueberry. They all look delicious. I'm really going to have to pace myself. LOL Anyone want to come over for doughnuts?

Today I have pictures for you of my 3 latest quilts! These three are all I Spy quilts that I made for 3 of my nephews for Christmas. Each quilt is made up of 4" novelty fabric blocks. Each quilt used 114 completely different squares. Within each quilt there are no duplicates. The fabrics have so many fun things in them-everything from bees to cars to apples! I participated in 3 fabric swaps to collect so many different squares and I had over 600 squares to choose from when I put each quilt together. The fun part is that in addition to being a snuggly quilt, it is also a game! I included a label on each with a list of things to find on the quilt. My nephew Lil B and I also had a fun time finding an object on the quilt and then challenging the other to find it. I know I had a lot of fun making the quilts and I hope that my nephews enjoy them.
We spend Christmas at my Mom and Dad's house this year and with all my brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews there it was a full house! But despite (or maybe because of) the tight quarters we had a great time. All the cousins have such a great time together. Wish we lived closer together but I do feel fortunate that we usually get most everyone together at last once a year. Well, I guess I better get off the computer and get to making dinner. Until next time...

Hello! I just wanted to share my latest quilt with you all. I made it for my neighbors' new baby. The parents are hardcore hunters. And I really mean hardcore. As in, they pretty much only eat wild game they've hunted-deer, elk, antelope (they gave us some antelope chorizo and let me tell you it was pretty darn amazing but I digress...), javelina. And the husband is also a biologist for Fish & Game. So when I saw this new fabric line by Riley Blake (pretty awesome name, isn't it? Combines the names of two of my most favorite boys in the whole world!) I knew it had to be the fabric for their baby's quilt. Don't you just love this fabric? I kind of wanted to keep it for myself. I ordered the fabric back in October and waited (im)patiently for the UPS guy to deliver it to my house. Finally it arrived and I ripped into the package only to discover that they had made a mistake with my order. Instead of getting the print with all the animals, which is the main fabric of the quilt, they had sent me more of the blue. :( I contacted them and they said to go ahead and keep the blue fabric and they sent out the correct fabric. But that meant waiting even more (im)patiently for it to arrive. FINALLY I got all the fabric for the quilt and got it done. It's a pretty simple design and a small quilt. But I also decided to try using some of that super soft Minky type of fabric in the quilt. I had picked up a remnant, thinking that I might give it a go. I've seen quilts made with both 100% cotton and Minky but I had mixed feelings about it. I mean, MIXING COTTON AND POLYESTER!? But Minky is so soft and cuddly. So, I decided to do a bit of online research before committing to using it in the quilt. What I found almost made me run screaming in the opposite direction. The general consensus seemed to be that, yes, you could mix cotton and polyester (Minky) but that it was a huge pain. It's nearly impossible to cut square and accurately (which is pretty important with quilting). Plus is shed terribly and made a HUGE mess. And you had to use LOTS and LOTS of pins, something that I frown upon on principle-pins? Who needs pins? Not me! I have this thing where I always try to make do without using pins if at all possible. Do I make things way harder on myself? Frequently. Does it make me use pins the next time? Not if I can get away with not using them. What can I say, I live dangerously. So, anyway, I nearly scrapped the idea of using the Minky after reading all that. But I had enough fabric cut to end up with extra hourglass blocks so I promised myself I'd just make one block with the Minky and see how it went then decide whether or not to use it for the whole quilt. And you know what? I didn't have ANY of those problems mentioned. It cut beautifully, without anymore mess than cutting cotton and I sewed it just fine without using any pins. But then again, I figured it could be because it's not authentic Minky. It was actually labeled Joann Cuddle Fabric or something. Like a knockoff. I don't know. But I had no problems using it until...I started machine quilting. At which point my machine rebelled. Every time I'd hit one of the faux Minky parts the machine would skip stitches and then the thread would break. Grrr! but I consoled myself with the fact that it was a small quilt to begin with and that there were only 13 Minky sections. In the end I do like the look and it feels nice and cuddly. But I don't know if I'll ever try to machine quilt the stuff again. Of course, I say that now but I have enough fabric left over to make another quilt so maybe by the time I get around to making it I'll have forgotten about the Minky problem. But it's so cuddly and soft! How bad can it really be? Sort of like having babies. You sort of gloss over the bad parts and concentrate on the good. Otherwise no one would have anymore babies after the first one.
Anyway, I've also been busy working on lots of Christmas gifts. It's sort of looking and feeling like Santa's workshop here. So, I guess I better get back to it. Until next time...

I just wanted to share a quilt top that I just finished! I actually started it way back in May. I knew that my friend, aka The Twilight Evangelist, was going to be moving during the summer. :( She thought it would be end of July/August. I also knew that I wanted to make her a Twilight themed quilt as a going away gift. I figured I'd have time to get it done and be able to give it to her before she left. But then one day she called to say that they had just found out that they'd have to move in just 2 weeks! I started right away paper piecing the main blocks-the book covers. And, I didn't have time to complete the quilt before she moved. But I figured I'd finish it over the summer and send it to her. Well, summer came and went and I didn't work on the quilt at all. Got caught up in all the summer activities-camping and traveling and enjoying family. Recently, though, I realized that I hadn't finished the quilt and the release of another of the movies is coming up so I decided that I better get on it and get it done. So, this last week I've been working on it, and today I finally finished the top! Yay! I found the paper piecing patterns online but the rest of the design I sort of made up as I went. I cut up the rest of the black, red and white fabrics that I used in the paper pieced blocks and made Disappearing Nine Patch blocks. Basically I just made however many I could out of the fabric I had left. And once I got them done and I laid everything out, including the paper pieced blocks, I had EXACTLY the right number of Disappearing Nine Patches that I needed. Wow! Serendipity! Except then I realized that after I sewed the Nine Patch blocks back together, due to the seam allowances they'd end up just 1/2" smaller than the paper pieced blocks. Ack! I thought about cutting down the paper pieced blocks but ultimately dismissed that idea because some of the blocks had details near the edges which I didn't want to cut off. Which lead me to sewing sashing strips to make up the difference. And I figured that since I was doing sashing I'd go ahead and put red around the paper pieced blocks to highlight them a bit. I used black for the rest. And this is what I ended up with...And just at this very moment I realized that the block in the exact center is UPSIDE DOWN! (insert banging head on wall here) NOOOOOOO!!!!! Please excuse me while I go cry...

Happy Halloween! Out here they proclaimed today trick or treating day so today was pretty much our Halloween. MoMo was a witch and Big R was Yoshi. I sewed both costumes without actual patterns. For the witch I used a tshirt to make a template for the bodice then sewed on sleeves and skirt. I think it turned out pretty well. MoMo sure loved it. Then for Big R's I did buy a pattern (only 99 cents at Joann) for a zip up pajama, planning to add a tail and spikes and make a hood or something for the head. Then I got home and realized that the pattern I bought was WAY too big. It was the adult L/XL instead of the teen size. So, then I used the super large pattern as a guide to try to make a smaller Big R size. So, although it didn't come out perfect, the neckline was low, it wasn't too bad all in all. At least Big R liked it. So, we did our pumpkin carving and I even made up a creature from a tiny, unripe cantaloupe from our garden and a pepper and some green cherry tomatoes.
MoMo's pumpkin...
Big R's pumpkin...And mine...I made up some spooky food to eat. Mummy dogs...
And some crazy disgusting looking jello worms. Care for a worm?
If you can get past the ick factor they are actually pretty tasty. Oh, and, of course, the candy haul.
So, that's about it. Happy Halloween!